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ron and including the Chancellor Sparre a man of unparalleled cunning and baseness than whom Satan himself could have selected no better advocate. During her examination Fraulein von Rudenskjöld was most cruelly treated and the words of the correspondence were distorted with infamous subtlety into whatever construction best suited her accusers. Sparre twisted his physiognomy which in character partook of that of the dog and the serpent into a thoughtful expression and regretted that according to the Swedish laws the offence of which Miss Rudenskjöld was found guilty could not be punished by the lash. The pillory and imprisonment in the Zuchthaus the place of confinement for the most guilty and abandoned of her sex formed the scarce milder sentence pronounced upon the unfortunate victim. ""It was early on an autumn morning--a thick canopy of grey clouds overspread the heavens--and the dismal half-light which prevailed in the streets of Stockholm made it difficult to decide whether or not the sun had yet risen. A cold wind blew across from Lake Maeler and caused the few persons who had as yet left their houses to hasten their steps along the deserted pavement. Suddenly a detachment of soldiers arrived upon the square in front of the Ritterhaus and took up their station beside the pillory. The officer commanding the party was a slender young man of agreeable countenance; but he was pale as death and his voice trembled as he gave the words of command. The prison-gate now opened and Miss Rudenskjöld came forth escorted by several jailers. Her cheeks were whiter than the snow-white dress she wore; her limbs trembled; her long hair hung in wild dishevelment over her shoulders and yet was she beautiful--beautiful as a fading rose. They led her up the steps of the pillory and the executioner's hand was already stretched out to bind her to the ignominious post when she cast a despairing glance upon the bystanders as though seeking aid. As she did so a shrill scream of agony burst from her lips. She had recognised in the young officer her own dearly-loved brother who by a devilish refinement of cruelty had been appointed to command the guard that was to attend at her punishment. ""Strong in her innocence the delicate and gently-nurtured girl had borne up against all her previous sufferings; but this was too much. Her senses left her and she fell fainting to the ground. Her brother also swooned away and never recovered his unclouded reason. To his dying day his mind remained gloomy and unsettled. The very executioners refused to inflict further indignity on the senseless girl and she was conducted back to her dungeon where she soon recovered all the firmness which she had already displayed before her infamous judges. ""Meanwhile Armfelt was exposed in Italy to the double danger of secret assassination and of a threatened requisition from the Swedish government for him to be delivered up. He sought safety in flight and found an asylum in Germany. His estates were confiscated his titles honours and nobility declared forfeit and he himself was condemned by default as a traitor to his country."" Concerning the ultimate fate of this luckless pair of lovers Mr Boas deposeth not but passes on to an account of the disturbances in 1810 when the Swedish marshal Count Axel Fersen suspected by the populace as cause of the sudden death of the Crown Prince Charles Augustus was attacked while following the body of the prince through the streets of Stockholm. He was sitting in full uniform in his carriage drawn by six milk-white horses when he was assailed with showers of stones from which he took refuge in a house upon the Ritterhaustmarkt. In spite of the exertions of General Silversparre at the head of some dragoons the mob broke into the house and entered the room in which Fersen was. He folded his hands and begged for mercy protesting his innocence. But his entreaties were in vain. A broad-shouldered fellow a shopkeeper named Lexow tore off his orders sword and cloak and threw them through the window to the rioters who with furious shouts reduced them to fragments. Silversparre then proposed to take the count to prison and have him brought to trial in due form. But on the way thither the crowd struck and ill-treated the old man; and although numerous troops were now upon the spot these remained with shouldered arms and even their officers forbade their interference. They appeared to be there to attend an execution rather than to restore order. The mob dragged the unfortunate Fersen to the foot of Gustavus Vasa's statue and there beat and ill-treated him till he died. It was remarked of the foremost and most eager of his persecutors that although dressed as common sailors their hands were white and delicate and linen of fine texture peeped betrayingly forth from under their coarse outer garments. Doubtless more than one long-standing hatred was on that day gratified. It was still borne in mind that Count Fersen's father had been the chief instrument in bringing Count Eric Brahe and several other nobles to the scaffold upon the very spot where half a century later his son's blood was poured out. The murder of the Count-Marshal was followed by an attack upon the house of his sister the Countess Piper; but she had had timely notice and escaped by water to Waxholm. Several officers of rank who strove to pacify the mob were abused and even beaten; until at length a combat ensued between the troops and the people and lasted till nightfall when an end was put to it by a heavy fall of rain. The number of killed and wounded on that day could never be ascertained. These incidents are striking and dramatic--fine stuff for novel writers as Mr Boas says--but we will turn to less sanguinary subjects. In a letter to a female friend who is designated by the fanciful name of Eglantine we have a sketch of the present state of Swedish poetry and literature. According to the account here given us Olof von Dalin who was born in Holland in 1763 was the first to awaken in the Swedes a real and correct taste for the _belles lettres_. This he did in great measure by the establishment of a periodical called the _Argus_. He improved the style of prose writing and produced some poetry which latter appears however to have been generally more remarkable for sweetness than power. We have not space to follow Mr Boas through his gallery of Swedish _literati_ but we will extract what he says concerning three authoresses whose works highly popular in their own country and in Germany have latterly attracted some attention in England. These are--Miss Bremer Madame Flygare-Carlén and the Baroness Knorring the delineators of domestic rural and aristocratic life in Sweden. ""Frederica Bremer was born in the year 1802. After the death of her father a rich merchant and proprietor of mines she resided at Schonen and subsequently with a female friend in Norway. She now lives with her mother and sister alternately in the Norrlands Gatan at Stockholm or at their country seat at Arsta. If I were to talk to you about Miss Bremer's romances you would laugh at me for you are doubtless ten times better acquainted with them than I am. But you are curious perhaps to learn something about her appearance and _that_ I can tell you. ""You will not expect to hear that Miss Bremer a maiden lady of forty retains a very large share of youthful bloom; but independently of that she is really any thing but handsome. Her thin wrinkled physiognomy is however rendered agreeable by its good-humoured expression and her meagre figure has the benefit of a neat and simple style of dress. From the style of her writings I used always to take her to be a governess; and she looks exactly like one. She knows that she is not handsome and on that account has always refused to have her portrait taken; the one they sell of her in Germany is a counterfeit the offspring of an artist's imagination stimulated by speculative book-sellers. This summer there was a quizzing paragraph in one of the Swedish papers saying that a painter had been sent direct from America to Rome and Stockholm to take portraits of the Pope and of Miss Bremer. ""In Sweden the preference is given to her romance of _Hemmet_ (Home ) over all her other works. Any thing like a bold originality of invention she is generally admitted to lack but she is skilled in throwing a poetical charm over the quiet narrow circle of domestic life. She is almost invariably successful in her female characters but when she attempts to draw those of men her creations are mere caricatures full of emptiness and improbability. Her habit of indulging in a sort of aimless and objectless philosophizing vein _à propos_ of nothing at all is also found highly wearisome. For my part it has often given me an attack of nausea. She labours however diligently to improve herself; and when I saw her she had just been ordering at a bookseller's two German works--Bossen's _Translation of Homer_ and Creuzer's _Symbolics_. ""Emily Flygare is about thirty years of age. She is the daughter of a country clergyman and has only to write down her own recollections in order to depict village life with its pains and its pleasures. Accordingly that is her strongest line in authorship; and her book _Kyrkoinvigningen_ (the Church Festival ) has been particularly successful. Married in early life to an officer she contracted after his death several engagements all of which she broke off whereby her reputation in some degree suffered. At last she gave her hand to Carlén a very middling sort of poet some years younger than she is; and she now styles herself--following the example of Madame Birch-Pfeiffer and other celebrated singers--Flygare-Carlén. She lives very happily at Stockholm with her husband and is at least as good a housewife as an authoress not even thinking it beneath her dignity to superintend the kitchen. Her great modesty as to her own merits and the esteem she expresses for her rivals are much to her credit. She is a little restless body and does not like sitting still. Her countenance is rather pleasing than handsome and its charm is heightened by the lively sparkle of her quick dark eyes. ""The third person of the trio is the Baroness Knorring a very noble lady who lives far away from Stockholm and is married to an officer. She is between thirty and forty years old and it is affirmed that she would be justified in exclaiming with Wallenstein's Thekla-- 'Ich habe gelebt und geliebet.' She was described to me as nervous and delicate which is perhaps the right temperament to enable her accurately to depict in her romances the strained artificiality and silken softness of aristocratic existence. Her style also possesses the needful lightness and grace and she accordingly succeeds admirably in her sketches of high life with all its elegant nullities and spiritless pomp. One of her best works is the romance of _Cousinerna_ (The Cousins ) which as well as the other works of Knorring Bremer and Flygare has been placed before the German public by our diligent translators."" Upon the subjects of Swedish society and conversation Mr Boas is pleased to be unusually funny. Like the foreigner who asserted that Goddam was the root of the English language he seems prepared to maintain that two monosyllables constitute the essence of the Swedish tongue and that they alone are required to carry on an effective and agreeable dialogue. ""It is not at all difficult "" he says ""to keep up a conversation with a Swede when you are once acquainted with a certain mystical formula whereby all emotions and sentiments are to be expressed and by the aid of which you may love and hate curse and bless be good-humoured or satirical and even witty. The mighty and all-sufficing words are '_Ja so!_' (Yes indeed!) usually pronounced _Jassoh_. It is wonderful to hear the infinite variety of modulation which a Swede gives to these two insignificant syllables. Does he hear some agreeable intelligence he exclaims with sparkling eyes and brisk intonation 'Ja so!' If bad news are brought to him he droops his head and after a pause murmurs mournfully 'Ja so!' The communication of an important affair is received with a thoughtful 'Ja so!' a joke elicits a humorous one; an attempt to banter or deceive him is met by a sarcastic repetition of the same mysterious words. ""A romance might be constructed out of these four letters. Thus:--Lucy is sitting at her window when a well-known messenger brings her a bouquet. She joyfully exclaims 'Ja so!' and presses the flowers to her lips. A friend comes in; she shows her the flowers and the friend utters an envious 'Ja so!' Soon afterwards Lucy's lover hears that she is faithless; he gnashes his teeth and vociferates a furious 'Ja so!' He writes to tell her that he despises her and will never see her again; whereupon she weeps and says to herself between two tears 'Ja so!' She manages however to see him and convinces him that she has been calumniated. He clasps her in his arms and utters a 'Ja so!' expressive of entire conviction. Suddenly his brow becomes clouded and muttering a meditative 'Ja so!' he remembers that a peremptory engagement compels him to leave her. He seeks out the man who has sought to rob him of his mistress and reproaches him with his perfidy. This rival replies by a cold scornful 'Ja so!' and a meeting is agreed upon. The next day they exchange shots and I fully believe that the man who is killed sighs out with his last breath 'Ja so!' His horror-stricken antagonist exclaims 'Ja so!' and flies the country; and surgeon relations friends judge all in short who hear of the affair will inevitably cry out 'Ja so!' Grief and joy doubt and confidence jest and anger are all to be rendered by those two words."" The province of Dalarna or Dalecarlia which lies between Nordland and the Norwegian frontier and in which Miss Bremer has laid the scene of one of her most recent works is spoken of at some length by Mr Boas who considers it to be in various respects the most interesting division of Sweden. Its inhabitants unable to find means of subsistence in their own poor and mountainous land are in the habit of wandering forth to seek a livelihood in more kindly regions and Mr Boas likens them in this respect to the Savoyards. They might perhaps be more aptly compared to the Galicians who leave their country not as many of the Savoyards do to become beggars and vagabonds by the aid of a marmoset and a grinding organ but to strive by the hardest labour and most rigid economy to accumulate a sum that will enable them to return and end their lives in their native village. ""The dress of the Dalecarlians (_dale carls_ or men of the valley) consists of a sort of doublet and leathern apron to the latter of which garments they get so accustomed that they scarcely lay it aside even on Sundays. Above that they wear a short overcoat of white flannel. Their round hats are decorated with red tufts and their breeches fastened at the knees with red ties and tassels. The costume of their wives and daughters who are called Dalecullen (women of the valley ) is yet more peculiar and outlandish. It is composed of a coloured cap fitting close to the head of a boddice with red laces a gown usually striped with red and green and of scarlet stockings. They wear enormous shoes large awkward and heavy made of the very thickest leather and adorned with the eternal red frippery. The soles are an inch thick with huge heels stuck full of nails and placed not where the heel of the foot is but in front under the toes; and as these remarkable shoes _lift_ at every step the heels of the stockings are covered with leather. On Sundays ample white shirt-sleeves broad cap-ribands and large wreaths of flowers are added to this singular garb amongst the wearers of which pretty faces and laughing blue eyes are by no means uncommon. ""The occupations of these women are of the rudest and most laborious description. They may be literally said to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow and their hands are rendered callous as horn by the nature of their toil. They act as bricklayers' labourers and carry loads of stones upon their shoulders and up ladders. Besides this it is a monopoly of theirs to row a sort of boat which is impelled by machinery imitating that of a steamer but worked by hand. These are tolerably large vessels having paddle-wheels fitted to them which are turned from within. Each wheel is worked by two young Dalecarlian girls who perform this severe labour with the utmost cheerfulness while an old woman steers. They pass their lives upon the water plying from earliest dawn till late in the night and conveying passengers for a trifling copper coin across the broad canals which intersect Stockholm in every direction. Cheerful and pious the bloom of health on her cheeks and the fear of God in her heart the Dalecarlian maiden is contented in her humble calling. On Sunday she would sooner lose a customer than miss her attendance at church. One sorrowful feeling and only one at times saddens her heart and that is the _Heimweh_ the yearning after her native valley when she longs to return to her wild and beautiful country which the high mountains encircle and the bright stream of the Dalelf waters. There she has her father and mother or perhaps a lover as poor as herself and she sees no possibility of ever earning enough to enable her to return home and become his wife. ""It was in this province that I now found myself and its inhabitants pleased me greatly. Nature has made them hardy and intelligent for their life is a perpetual struggle to extract a scanty subsistence from the niggard and rocky soil. Unenervated by luxury uncorrupted by the introduction of foreign vices they have been at all periods conspicuous for their love of freedom for their penetration in discovering and promptness in repelling attacks upon it. Faithful to their lawful sovereign they yet brooked no tyranny; and when invaders entered the land or bad governors oppressed them they were ever ready to defend their just rights with their lives. From the remotest periods such has been the character of this people which has preserved itself unsophisticated true and free. It is interesting to trace the history of the Dalecarlians. Isolated in a manner from the rest of the world amongst their rugged precipices and in their lonely valleys it might be supposed they would know nothing of what passed without; yet whenever the moment for action has come they have been found alert and prepared. ""At the commencement of the fifteenth century Eric XIII. known also as the Pomeranian ascended the Swedish throne. His own disposition was neither bad nor good but he had too little knowledge of the country he was called upon to reign over; and his governors and vice-gerents for the most part foreigners tyrannized unsparingly over the nation. The oppressed people stretched out their hands imploringly to the king; but he who was continually requiring fresh supplies of money for the prosecution of objectless wars paid no attention to their complaints. Of all his Vögte or governors not one was so bad and cruel as Jesse Ericson who dwelt at Westeraes and ruled over Dalarna. He laid enormous imposts on the peasantry and when they were unable to pay he took every thing from them to their last horse and harnessed themselves to the plough. Pregnant matrons were compelled at his command to draw heavy hay-waggons women and girls were shamefully outraged by him and persons possessing property unjustly condemned in order that he might take possession of their goods. When the peasants came to him to complain he had them driven away with stripes or else cut off their ears or hung them up in the smoke till they were suffocated. ""Then the men of Dalarna murmured; they assembled in their valleys and held counsel together. An insurrection was decided upon and Engelbrecht of Falun was chosen to head it because although small of stature he had a courageous heart and knew how to talk or to fight as occasion required. He repaired to Copenhagen laid the just complaints of his countrymen before the king and pledged his head to prove their truth. Eric gave him a letter to the counsellors of state some of whom accompanied him back to Dalarna and convinced themselves that the distress of the province was inconceivably great. They exposed this state of things to the king in a letter with which Engelbrecht returned to Copenhagen. But on seeking audience of Eric the latter cried out angrily 'You do nothing but complain! Go your ways and appear no more before me.' So Engelbrecht departed but he murmured as he went 'Yet once more will I return.' ""Although the counsellors themselves urged the king to appoint another governor over Dalecarlia he did not think fit to do so. Then in the year 1434 so soon as the sun had melted the snow the Dalecarlians rose up as one man marched through the country and Jesse Ericson fled before them into Denmark. They destroyed the dwellings of their oppressors drove away their hirelings and retainers and Engelbrecht advanced with a thousand picked men to Wadstena where he found an assembly of bishops and counsellors. From these he demanded assistance but they refused to accord it until Engelbrecht took the bishop of Linköping by the collar to deliver him over to his followers. Thereupon they became more tractable and renounced in writing their allegiance to Eric on the grounds that he had 'made bishops of ignorant ribalds entrusted high offices to unworthy persons and neglected to punish tyrannical governors.' The Dalecarlians advanced as far as Schonen where Engelbrecht concluded a truce and dismissed them. His army had consisted of ten thousand peasants all burning with anger against their oppressors and without military discipline; yet to his great credit be it said not a single excess or act of plunder had been committed. ""On hearing of these disturbances the king repaired in all haste to Stockholm whereupon Engelbrecht again summoned his followers and marched upon the capital in which Eric entrenched himself with various nobles and governors who had burned down their castles and hastened to join him. Things looked threatening but nevertheless ended peaceably for Eric was afraid of the Swedes. He obtained peace by promising that in future the provinces with few exceptions should name their own governors and that Engelbrecht should be vögt at Oerebro. As usual however he broke his word and before sailing for Denmark he appointed as vögt a man who was a notorious pirate a robber of churches and abuser of women. For the third time the peasants revolted. In the winter of 1436 they appeared before Stockholm which they took the burghers themselves helping them to burst open the gates. Engelbrecht seized upon one fortress after another meeting no resistance from King Eric who fled secretly to Pomerania leaving the war and his kingdom to take care of themselves. Several members of the council followed him thither and after some persuasion brought him back with them. ""In the midst of these changes and commotions Engelbrecht was treacherously assassinated by the son of that bishop whom he had formerly affronted at Wadstena. With tears and lamentations the boors fetched the body of their brave and faithful leader from the little island where his death had occurred and which to this day bears his name. The spot on which the murder was committed is said to be accursed and no grass ever grows there. Subsequently the coffin was brought to the church at Oerebro and so exalted was the opinion entertained of Engelbrecht's worth and virtue that the country people asserted that miracles were wrought at his tomb as at the shrine of a saint."" It was nearly a century later that Gustavus Vasa flying with a price upon his head from the assassins of his father and friends took refuge in Dalecarlia. Disguised in peasant's garb and with an axe in his hand he hired himself as a labourer; but was soon recognised and his employer feared to retain him in his service. He then appealed to the Dalecarlians to espouse his cause; but although they admired and sympathised with the gallant youth who thus placed his trust in them they hesitated to take up arms in his behalf; and hopeless of their assistance he at last turned his steps towards Norway. But scarcely had he done so when the incursion of a band of Danish mercenaries sent to seek him and the full confirmation of what he had told them concerning the massacre at Stockholm roused the Dalecarlians from their inaction. The tocsin was sounded throughout the provinces the Danes were driven away and the two swiftest runners in the country bound on their snow-shoes and set out with the speed of the wind to bring back the royal fugitive. They overtook him at the foot of the Norwegian mountains and soon afterwards he found himself at the head of five thousand white-coated Dalecarlians. The Danes were approaching and one of their bishops asked--""How many men the province of Dalarna could furnish?"" ""At least twenty thousand "" was the reply; ""for the old men are just as strong and as brave as the young ones."" ""But what do they all live upon?"" ""Upon bread and water. They take little account of hunger and thirst and when corn is lacking they make their bread out of tree-bark."" ""Nay "" said the bishop ""a people who eat tree-bark and drink water the devil himself would not vanquish much less a man."" And neither were they vanquished. Like an avalanche from the mountains they fell upon their foes beat them with clubs and drove them into the river. Their progress was one series of triumphs till they placed Gustavus Vasa on the throne of Sweden. The last outbreak of the Dalecarlians was less successful. On the 19th of June 1743 five thousand of these hardy and determined men appeared before Stockholm bringing with them in fetters the governor of their province and demanding the punishment of the nobles who had instigated a war with Russia and a new election of an heir to the crown. They were not to be pacified by words; and even the next morning when the old King Frederick surrounded by his general and guards rode out to harangue them all he could obtain was the release of their prisoner. On the other hand they seized three pieces of cannon and dragged them to the square named after Gustavus Adolphus where they posted themselves. ""There were eight thousand men of regular troops in Stockholm but these were not all to be depended upon and it was necessary to bring up some detachments of the guards. A company of Süderländers who had been ordered to cross the bridge went right about face as soon as they came in sight of the Dalecarlians and did not halt till they reached the sluicegate which had been drawn up so that nobody might pass. It was now proclaimed with beat of drum that those of the Dalecarlians who should not have left the city by five o'clock would be dealt with as rebels and traitors. More than a thousand did leave but the others stood firm. Counsellors and generals went to them and exhorted them to obedience; but they cried out that they would make and unmake the king according to their own good right and decree and that if it was attempted to hinder them the very child in the cradle should meet no mercy at their hands. To give greater weight to their words they fired a cannon and a volley of musketry by which a counsellor was killed. ""Orders were now given to the soldiers to fire but they had pity on the poor peasants and only aimed at the houses shattering the glass in hundreds of windows. But the artillerymen were obliged to put match to touch-hole and a murderous fire of canister did execution in the masses of the Dalecarlians. Many a white camisole was stained with the red heart's-blood of its wearer; fifty men fell dead upon the spot eighty were wounded and a crowd of others sprang into the Norderström or sought to fly. The regiment of body-guards pursued them and drove the discomfited boors into the artillery court. A severe investigation now took place and these thirsters after liberty were punished by imprisonment and running the gauntlet. Their leader and five others were beheaded. ""The Dalecarlians are a tenacious and obstinate people and their character is not likely to change; but God forbid that they should again deem it necessary to visit Stockholm. They were doubtless just as brave in the year 1743 as in 1521 and 1434; but though _they_ had not altered the times had. Civilization and cartridges are powerful checks upon undisciplined courage and an unbridled desire of liberty."" Returning from Dalecarlia to Stockholm Mr Boas takes not without regret his final farewell of that city and embarks for Gothenburg passing through the Gotha canal that splendid monument of Swedish industry and perseverance which connects the Baltic with the North Sea. He passes the island of Mörkö on which is Höningsholm Castle where Marshal Banner was brought up. A window is pointed out in the third story of the castle at which Banner when a child was once playing when he overbalanced himself and fell out. The ground beneath was hard and rocky but nevertheless he got up unhurt ran into the house and related how a gardener had saved him by catching him in his white apron. Enquiry was immediately made but far or near no gardener was to be found. By an odd coincidence Wallenstein Banner's great opponent when a page at Innspruck also fell out of a high window without receiving the least injury. On the first evening of the voyage the steamer anchors for the night near Mem a country-seat belonging to a certain Count Saltza an eccentric old nobleman who traces his descent from the time of Charles XII. and fancies himself a prophet and ghost-seer. His predictions relate usually to the royal family or country of Sweden and are repeated from mouth to mouth throughout every province of the kingdom. And here we must retract an assertion we made some pages back as to the possibility of our supposing this book to proceed from any other than a German pen. No one but a German would have thought it necessary or judicious to intrude his own insipid sentimentalities into a narrative of this description and which was meant to be printed. But there is probably no conceivable subject on which a German could be set to write in discussing which he would not manage to drag in by neck and heels a certain amount of sentiment or metaphysics perhaps of both. Mr Boas we are sorry to say is guilty of this sin against good taste. The steamer comes to an anchor about ten o'clock and he goes ashore with Baron K---- a friend he has picked up on board to take a stroll in the Prophet's garden at Mem. There they encounter Mesdemoiselles Ebba and Ylfwa lovely and romantic maidens who sit in a bower of roses under the shadow of an umbrageous maple-tree their arms intertwined their eyes fixed upon a moonbeam piping out Swedish melodies which to our two swains prove seductive as the songs of a Siren. The moonbeam aforesaid is kind enough to convert into silver all the trees bushes leaves and twigs in the vicinity of the young ladies with the Thor-and-Odin names; whilst to complete this German vision a white bird with a yellow tuft upon its head stands sentry upon a branch beside them the said bird being we presume a filthy squealing cockatoo although Mr Boas gay deceiver that he is evidently wishes us to infer that it was an indigenous volatile of the phoenix tribe. Sentinel Cockatoo however was caught napping and the garrison of the bower had to run for it. And now commences a series of hopes and fears and doubts and anxieties and sighings and perplexities which keep the tender heart of Boas in a state of agreeable palpitation through four or five chapters; at the end of which he steps on board the steam-boat Christiana blows in imagination a farewell kiss to Miss Ebba of whom by the bye he has never obtained more than half a glimpse and awaking as he tells us from his love-dream which we should call his nightmare sets sail for Copenhagen. Of the various places visited by Mr Boas during his ramble few seem to have pleased him better than Copenhagen and he becomes quite enthusiastic when speaking of that city and of what he saw there. The pleasure he had in meeting Thorwaldsen is perhaps in part the cause of his remembering the Danish capital with peculiar favour. He gives various details concerning that celebrated sculptor his character and habits and commences the chapter which he styles ""A Fragment of Italy in the North "" with a comparison between Sweden and Denmark two

countries which both in trifling and important matters but especially in the character of their inhabitants are far more dissimilar than from their juxtaposition might have been supposed. Listen to Mr Boas. ""On meeting an interesting person for the first time one frequently endeavours to trace a resemblance with some previous acquaintance or friend. I have a similar propensity when I visit interesting cities; but I had difficulty in calling to mind any place to which I could liken Copenhagen. Between Sweden and Denmark generally there are more points of difference than of resemblance. Sweden is the land of rocks and Denmark of forest. Oehlenschlägel calls the latter country 'the fresh and grassy ' but he might also have added 'the cool and wooded.' ""The Swedish language is soft and melodious the Danish sharp and accentuated. The former is better suited to lyrical the latter to dramatic poetry. ""When a Swede laughs he still looks more serious than a Dane who is out of humour. In Sweden the people are quiet even when indulging in the pleasures they love best; in Denmark there is no pleasure without noise. In a political point of view the difference between the two nations is equally marked. Beyond the Sound all demonstrations are made with fierce earnestness; on this side of it satire and wit are the weapons employed. On the one hand shells and heavy artillery on the other light and brilliant rockets. The Swedes have much liberty of the press and very little humour; the Danes have a great deal of humour and small liberty of the press. As a people the former are of a choleric and melancholy temperament the latter of a sanguine and phlegmatic one. ""Whilst the Swedish national hatred is directed against Russia that of Denmark takes England for its object. Finland and the fleet are not yet forgotten. ""The Swede is constantly taking off his hat; the Dane always shakes hands. The former is courteous and sly the latter simple and honest. ""If Denmark has little similarity with its northern neighbour neither has it any marked point of resemblance with its southern one. It always reminds me of the _tongue_ of a balance vibrating between Sweden and Germany and inclining ever to that side on which the greatest weight lies. Thus its literary tendency is German its political one Swedish. ""The best comparison that can be made of Denmark is with Italy; and to me although I shall probably surprise the reader by saying so Copenhagen appears like a part of Rome transplanted into the north. In some degree perhaps Thorwaldsen is answerable for this impression; for where he works and creates one is apt to fancy oneself surrounded by that warm southern atmosphere in which nature and art best flourish. When he returned to Copenhagen it was a festival day for the whole population of the city. A crew of gaily dressed sailors rowed him to land and whilst they were doing so a rainbow suddenly appeared in the heavens. The multitude assembled on the shore set up a shout of jubilation to see that the sky itself assumed its brightest tints to celebrate the return of their favourite. ""I had been told that I should not see Thorwaldsen because he was staying with the Countess Stampe. This lady is about forty years of age and possesses that blooming _embonpoint_ which makes up in some women for the loss of youthful freshness. She became acquainted with the artist in Italy and fascinated him to such a degree that he made her a present of the whole of his drawings which are of immense artistical value. She excited much ill-will by accepting them but at the same time it must in justice be owned that Thorwaldsen is under great obligations to her. He had hardly arrived in Copenhagen when innumerable invitations to breakfasts dinners and suppers were poured upon him. Every body wanted to have him; and as he was known to love good living the most sumptuous repasts were prepared for him. The sturdy old man who had never been ill in his life became pale and sickly lost his taste for work and was in a fair way to die of an indigestion when the Countess Stampe stepped in to the rescue carried him off to her country-seat and there fitted him up a studio. His health speedily returned and with it the energy for which he has always been remarkable and he joyfully resumed the chisel and modelling stick. ""I had scarcely set foot in the streets of Copenhagen when I saw Thorwaldsen coming towards me. I was sure that I was not mistaken for no one who has ever looked upon that fine benevolent countenance that long silver hair clear high forehead and gently smiling mouth--no one who has ever gazed into those divine blue orbs wherein creative power seems so sweetly to repose could ever forget them again. I went up and spoke to him. He remembered me immediately shook my hand with that captivating joviality of manner which is peculiar to him and invited me into his house. He inhabits the Charlottenburg an old chateau on the Königsneumarkt by crossing the inner court of which one reaches his studio. My most delightful moments in Copenhagen were passed there looking on whilst he worked at the statues of deities and heroes--he himself more illustrious than them all. There they stand those lifelike and immortal groups displaying the most wonderful variety of form and attitude and yet strange to say Thorwaldsen scarcely ever makes use of a model. His most recently commenced works were two gigantic allegorical figures Samson and Aesculapius. The first was already completed and I myself saw the bearded physiognomy of Aesculapius growing each day more distinct and perfect beneath the cunning hand of the master. The statues represent Strength and Health."" In his house and as a private individual Thorwaldsen is as amiable and estimable as in his studio. In the centre of one of his rooms is a four-sided sofa which was embroidered expressly for him by the fair hands of the Copenhagen ladies. The walls are covered with pictures some of them very good others of a less degree of merit. They were not all bought on account of their excellence; Thorwaldsen purchased many of them to assist young artists who were living poor and in difficulties at Rome. Dressed in his blue linen blouse he explained to his visitor the subjects of these pictures without the slightest tinge of vanity in his manner or words. None of the dignities or honours that have been showered upon him have in the slightest degree turned his head. Affable cheerful and even-tempered he appears to have preserved to his present age of sixty much of the joyous lightheartedness of youth. With great glee he related to Mr Boas the trick he had played the architects of the church of Our Lady at Copenhagen. ""Architects are obstinate people "" said he ""and one must know how to manage them. Thank God that is a knowledge which I possess in a tolerable degree. When the church of Our Lady was built the architect left six niches on either side of the interior and these were to contain the twelve apostles. In vain did I represent to them that statues were meant to be looked at on all sides and that nobody could see through a stone wall; I implored I coaxed them it was all in vain. Then thought I to myself he is best served who serves himself and thereupon I made the statues a good half-foot higher than the niches. You should have seen the length of the architects' faces when they found this out. But they could not help themselves; the infernal sentry-boxes were bricked up and my apostles stand out upon their pedestals as you may have seen when you visited the church."" Thorwaldsen is devotedly attached to Copenhagen and has made a present to the city of all his works and collections upon condition that a fitting locality should be prepared for their reception and that the museum should bear his name. The king gave a wing of the Christiansburg for this purpose the call for subscriptions was enthusiastically responded to and the building is now well advanced. Its style of architecture is unostentatious and its rows of large windows will admit a broad decided light upon the marble groups. Pending its completion the majority of the statues and pictures are lodged in the palace. Mr Boas appears bent upon establishing his parallel between Denmark and Italy. He traces it in the fondness of the Danes for art poetry and music in their gay and joyous character and in their dress. He even discovers an Italian punchinello figuring in a Danish puppet-show; and as it was during the month of August that he found himself in Denmark the weather was not such as to dispel his illusions. ""It would be erroneous "" he says ""to suppose that Danish costumes weaken or obliterate the idea of a southern region conveyed by this country. A Bolognese professor would not think of covering his head with the red cap of a Lazzarone and Roman marchesas dress themselves like Danish countesses according to the _Journal des Modes_. National costumes in all countries have taken refuge in villages and the peasants in the environs of Copenhagen have no reason to be ashamed of their garb which is both showy and picturesque. The men wear round hats and dark-blue jackets lined with scarlet and adorned with long glittering rows of bullet-shaped buttons. The women are very tasteful in their attire. Their dark-green gowns with variegated borders reach down to their heels and the shoulder-strap of the closely fitting boddice is a band of gold lace. The chief pains are bestowed upon the head-dress which is various in its fashion sometimes composed of clear white stuff with an embroidered lappet falling down upon the neck; sometimes of a cap of many colours heavily embroidered with gold and having broad ribands of a red purple which flutter over the shoulders. One meets every where with this original sort of costume; for the peasant women repair in great numbers to the festivals at the various towns and in Copenhagen they are employed as nurses to the children of the higher classes. ""During my sojourn in the Danish capital the weather was so obliging as in no way to interfere with my Cisalpine illusions. The sky continued a spotless dome of lapis-lazuli out of which the sun beamed like a huge diamond; and if now and then a little cloud appeared it was no bigger than a white dove flitting across the blue expanse. The days were hot a bath in the lukewarm sea scarcely cooled me and at night a soft dreamy sort of vapour spread itself over the earth. I only remember one single moment when the peculiarities of a northern climate made themselves obvious. It was in the evening and I was returning with my friend Holst from the delightful forest-park of Friedrichsberg. The sky was one immense blue prairie across which the moon was solitarily wandering when suddenly the atmosphere became illuminated with a bright and fiery light; a large flaming meteor rushed through the air and bursting with a loud report divided itself into a hundred dazzling balls of fire. These disappeared and immediately afterwards a white mist seemed to rise out of the earth and the stars shone more dimly than before. Over stream and meadow rolled the fog in strange fantastical shapes floating like a silver gauze among the tree-stems and foliage till it gradually wove itself into one close and impervious veil. To such appearances as these must legends of elves and fairies owe their origin."" It is something rather new for an author to introduce into his book a criticism of another work on the same subject. This Mr Boas who appears to be a bold man tolerably confident in his own capabilities and acquirements has done and in a very amusing although not altogether an unobjectionable manner. He must be sanguine however if he expects his readers to place implicit faith in his impartiality. Under the title of ""A Tour in the North "" he devotes a long chapter to a bitter attack on the Countess Hahn-Hahn's book of that name. Here is its commencement:-- ""A year previously to myself Ida Countess Hahn-Hahn had visited Sweden and the fruit of her journey was as is infallible with that lady a book. When I arrived at Stockholm people were just reading it and I found them highly indignant at the nonsense and misrepresentations it contains. When a German goes to Sweden he is received as a brother with a warmth and heartiness which should make a doubly pleasing impression if we reflect how important it is in our days to preserve a mutual confidence and good-will between nations. When meddling persons make the perfidious attempt to embitter a friendly people by scoffing and abuse there should be an end to forbearance and it becomes a duty to strike in with soothing words. We must show the Swedes how such scribblings are appreciated in Germany lest they should think we take a pleasure in ridiculing what is noble and good."" And thereupon Mr Boas does ""strike in "" as he calls it; but however soothing his words may prove to his ill-used Swedish friends we have considerable doubts as to their emollient effect upon the Countess supposing always that she condescends to read them. He hits that lady some very hard knocks not all of them perhaps entirely undeserved; makes out an excellent case for the Swedes and proves much more satisfactorily to himself than to us that Madame Hahn-Hahn is of a very inferior grade of bookmaking tourists. ""In the first place"" he says ""I declare that her work on Sweden is no original but a dull imitation of Gustavus Nicolai's notorious book 'Italy as it really is.' Like that author the Countess labours assiduously to collect together all the darkest shades and least favourable points of the country and people she visits; exaggerates them when she finds them and invents them when she does not. For the beauties of the country she has neither eye nor feeling; she intentionally avoids speaking of them and her book is meant like that of Nicolai to operate as a warning and scare away travellers. The good lady says this very explicitly. 'Travellers are beginning to turn their attention a good deal to the north for the south is becoming insufficient to gratify that universal rage for rambling with which I myself as a true child of the century am also infected. But the north is so little known--I for my part only knew it through Dahl's poetical landscapes--that one feels involuntarily disposed to deck it with the colours of the south because the south is beautiful and the north is said also to be so. Thus one is apt to set out with a delusion and I think it will therefore be an act of kindness to those who may visit Sweden after me if I say exactly how I found it.' Uncommonly good Gustavus the second. But it would be unfair to Nicolai to assert that his book is as dull and nonsensical as that of the Countess Hahn-Hahn. He went to Italy with the idea that it never rained there and that oranges grew on the hedges as sloes do with us. This was childish and one could not help laughing at it. But when his imitatress perpetually laments and complains because on the Maeler lake under the 59th degree of latitude she does not find the sultry southern climate--it becomes worse than childish and one is compelled to pity her. The Countess chanced to hit upon a cool rainy month for her visit--I am wrong she was not a month in Scandinavia altogether--and thereupon she cries out as if she were drowning and despises both country and people."" It is easy to understand that there can be little sympathy between the Countess Hahn-Hahn an imaginative and somewhat capricious fine lady with strong aristocratic and exclusive tendencies and such a matter-of-fact person as Mr Boas who in spite of his sentimentality which is a sort of national infirmity and although he informs us in one part of his book that he is a poet leans much more to the practical and positive than to the imaginative and dreamy and we moreover suspect is a bit of a democrat. Having however taken the Countess _en grippe_ as the French call it he shows her no mercy and it must be owned displays some cleverness in hitting off and illustrating the weak points of her character and writings. ""Hardly "" he resumes ""has the female Nicolai reached Stockholm when she begins with her insipid comparisons. 'The golden brilliancy of Naples and the magic spell of Venice are here entirely wanting.' Is it possible? Only see what striking remarks this witty and travelled dame does make! In the next page she says:--'Upon this very day exactly one year since I was in Barcelona; but here there is nothing that will bear comparison with the land of the aloe and the orange. Three years ago I was on the Lake of Como in that fairy garden beyond the Alps! Five years ago in Vienna amongst the rose-groves of Laxenburg;' &c. Who cares in what places the Countess has been? Surely it is enough that she has written long wearisome books about them. Every possible corner of Italy Spain and Switzerland is dragged laboriously in to furnish forth comparisons; and soon no doubt a similar use will be made of Egypt Syria and Mesopotamia. These comparisons are invariably shown to be to the disadvantage of Sweden; and although the lady is oftentimes compelled to confess to the beauty of a Swedish landscape she never forgets to qualify the admission by observing how much more beautiful such or such a place was. For example she is standing one night at her window looking out on the Maeler lake. 'I wrapped my mantilla shiveringly around me stepped back from the window shut it and said with a slight sigh: In Venice the moonlight nights were very different.' Really this would be hardly credible did any other than a countess assure us of it."" ""Every thing in Sweden is disagreeable and adverse to her; roads houses food people and money; rocks trees rivers and flowers; but especially sun sky and air. She talks without ceasing of heavy clouds and pouring rains but even this abundance of water is insufficient to mitigate the dryness of her book."" ""I am always sorry "" says a witty French writer ""when a woman becomes an author: I would much rather she remained a woman."" Does Mr Boas perchance partake this implied opinion that authorship unsexes; and is it therefore that he allows himself to deal out such hard measure to the Countess Ida? Even if we agreed with his criticisms we should quarrel with his want of gallantry. But it is tolerably evident that if Madame Hahn-Hahn finding herself on the shores of the Baltic in a July that might have answered to December in the sunny climes she had so recently left allowed her account of Swedes and Sweden to be shaded a little _en noir_ by her own physical discomforts; it is evident we say that on the other hand our present author either more favoured by the season or less susceptible of its influence sins equally in the contrary extreme and throws a rosy tint over all that he portrays. Though equally likely to induce into error it is the pleasanter fault to those persons who merely read the tour for amusement without proposing to follow in the footsteps of the tourist. Your complaining grumbling travellers are bores whether on paper or in a post-chaise; and truth to tell we have noticed in others of the Countess's books a disposition to look on the dark side of things. But this is not always the case and when she gets on congenial ground she shines forth as a writer of a very high order. Witness her Italian tour and her book upon Turkey and Syria with which latter English readers have recently been made acquainted through an admirable translation by the accomplished author of _Caleb Stukely_. She has her little conceits and her little fancies; rather an overweening pride of caste and contempt for the plebeian multitude and an addiction to filling too many pages of her books with small personal and egotistical details about herself and her sensations and what dresses she wears and how thin she is and so on. But with all her faults she is unquestionably a very accomplished and clever writer. Her criticisms on subjects relating to art and especially her original and sparkling remarks on painting and architecture although qualified by Mr Boas as twaddle stamp her at once as a woman of no common order. She has profound and poetical conceptions of Beauty and at times a felicity of expression in presenting the effects of nature and art upon her own mind that strikes and startles by its novelty and power. As a delineator of men and manners she is remarkable for shrewdness subtle perception and truthfulness that cannot be mistaken. Should our readers doubt our statements or haply Mr Boas turn up his nose at the eulogium we would simply refer them and him to the last work that has fallen from her pen the Letters from the Orient and bid them open it at the page which brings them to a Bedouin encampment--a scene described with the vigour that belongs to a masculine understanding and all the fascination which a feminine mind can bestow. Still we are free to confess that the Countess has written perhaps rather too much for the time she has been about it and thus laid herself open to an accusation of bookmaking the prevailing vice of the present race of authors. The incorrigible and merciless Mr Boas does not let this pass. ""The question now remains to be asked "" says he; ""Why did Ida Hahn-Hahn upon leaving a country in which she had passed a couple of weeks--a country of the language of which she confesses herself ignorant and with which she was in every respect thoroughly displeased deem it incumbent on her forthwith to write a thick book concerning it? The answer is this: her pretended impulse to authorship is merely feigned otherwise she would not have troubled herself any further about such a wearisome country as Sweden. Through three hundred and fifty pages does she drag herself grumbling as she goes; a single day must often fill a score of pages for travelling costs money and the _honorarium_ is not to be despised. If I thus accuse the Countess of bookmaking I also feel that such an accusation should be supported by abundant proof and such proof am I ready to give."" Oh fye Boas! How can you be so ruthless? Besides the impolicy of exposing the tricks of your trade all this is very spiteful indeed. You would almost tempt us were it worth while to take up the cudgels in earnest in defence of the calumniated Countess and to give you a crack on the pate which as Maga is regularly translated into German for the benefit and improvement of your countrymen would entirely finish your career whether as poet tour-writer or any thing else. But seeing that your conceits and lucubrations have afforded us one or two good laughs and considering moreover that you are of the number of those small fry with which it is almost condescension for us to meddle we will let you off and close this notice of your book if not with entire approbation at least with a moderate meed of praise. HOUSE-HUNTING IN WALES. ""Change of air! change of air!"" Every body was in the same story. ""Medicine is of no use "" said the doctor; ""a little change of scene will set all to rights again."" I looked in the child's face--she was certainly very pale. ""And how long do you think she should stay away from home?"" ""Two or three months will stock her with health for a whole year."" Two or three months!--oh what a century of time that is now that we have railroads all over the world and steam to the Pyramids--where in all the wide earth are we to go? So we got maps of all countries and took advice from every one we saw. We shall certainly go among hills wherever we go; beautiful scenery if we can--but hills and fresh air at all events. We heard of fine open downs and an occasional tempest in the neighbourhood of Rouen. A steamer goes from Portsmouth to Havre and another delightful little river-boat up the Seine. For a whole day we had determined on a visit to the burial-place of William the Norman--the death-place of Joan of Arc; we had devised little tours and detours all over the mysterious land that sent forth the conquerors of England; but soon there cane ""a frost a nipping frost ""--are we to be boxed up in an hotel in a French town the whole time? No we must go somewhere where we can get a country-house--a place on the swelling side of some romantic hill where we can trot about all day upon ponies or ramble through fields and meadows at our own sweet will. So we gave up all thoughts of Rouen. ""I'll tell you what sir "" said a sympathizing neighbour: ""when I came home on my three years' leave I left the prettiest thing you ever saw a perfect paradise and a bungalow that was the envy of every man in the district."" ""Well?"" I said with an enquiring look. ""It's among the Neilgherries; and as for bracing air there isn't such a place in the whole world. I merely mention it you know; it's a little too far off perhaps; but if you like it it is quite at your service I assure you."" It was very tempting but three months was scarcely long enough. So we were at a nonplus. Scotland we thought of; and the Cumberland lakes; and the Malvern hills; and the Peak of Derbyshire; and where we might finally have fixed can never be known for our plans were decided by the advice of a friend which was rendered irresistible by being backed by his own experience. ""Go to Wales "" he said. ""I lived in such a beautiful place there three or four years ago--in the Vale of Glasbury--a lovely open space with hills all round it--admirable accommodation at the Three Cocks and the most civil and obliging landlord that ever offered good entertainment for man and beast."" Out came the maps again; the route was carefully studied; and one day at the end of May we found ourselves eight people in all viz. four children and two maids in a railway coach at Gosport fizzing up to Basingstoke. There is such a feeling of life and earnestness about a railway carriage;--the perpetual shake and the continual swing swing on and on without a moment's pause with the quick bustling breathless sort of tramp of the engine--all these things and forty others put me in such a state of intense activity that I felt as if I kept a shop--or was a prodigious man upon 'Change--or was flying up to make a fortune--or had suddenly been called to form an administration--or had become a member of the prize ring and was going up to fight white-headed Bob. However on this occasion I was not called upon either to overthrow white-headed Bob of the ring or long-headed Bob of the administration; and at Basingstoke we suddenly found ourselves bag and baggage wife maids and children standing in a forlorn and disconsolate manner at the door of the station-house; while the train pursued its course and had already disappeared like a dream or rather like a nightmare. There were at least half-a-dozen little carriages each with one horse; and the drivers had each and all of then the audacity to offer to convey us--luggage and all--sixteen miles across to Reading. Why there was not a vehicle there that would have held the two trunks; and as to conveying us all it would have taken the united energies of all the Flies in Basingstoke with the help of the Industrious Fleas to boot to get us to our destination within a week. While in this perplexing situation wondering what people could possibly want with such an array of boxes and bags a quiet-looking man who had stood by chewing the lash of a driving-whip in a very philosophical manner said ""Please sir I'll take you all."" ""My good friend have you seen the whole party?"" ""Oh yes sir I brought a bigger nor yourn for this here train--we have a fly on purpose."" What a sensible man he must have been who devised a vehicle so much required by unhappy sires that are ordered to remove their Lares for change of air! ""Bring round the ark "" we cried; and in a minute came two very handsome horses to the door drawing a thing that was an aggravated likeness of the old hackney coaches with a slight cross of an omnibus in its breed. It held seven inside with perfect ease and would have held as many more as might be required; and it carried all the luggage on the top with an air of as much ease as if it had only been a bonnet and it was rather proud than otherwise of its head-dress. The driving seat was as capacious as the other parts of the machine and we had much interesting conversation with the Jehu--whose epithets we are sorry to say as applied to railroads were of that class of adjectives called the emphatic. There is to be a cross line very shortly between Basingstoke and Reading uniting the South-Western and Great Western Railways--and then what is to become of the tremendous vehicle and its driver? The coach to be sure may be retained as a specimen of Brobdignaggian fly but my friend Jehu must appear in the character of Othello and confess that ""his occupation's gone."" Thank heaven! people wear boots and many of them like to have them cleaned so with the help of Day and Martin you may live. ""That's the Duke's gate sir "" he said pointing with his whip to a plain lodge and entrance on the left hand. ""The lodge-keeper was his top groom at the time Waterloo was--and a very nice place he has."" This was Strathfieldsaye: there were miles and miles of the most beautiful plantations all the fences in excellent order the cottages along the road clean and comfortable and every symptom of a good landlord to be seen as far as the eye could reach. ""If it wasn't for all this here luggage "" said Jehu in a confidential whisper with a backward jerk of his head towards the moving pyramid behind us; ""we might go through the park. The Duke gives permission to gentlemen's carriages."" So the poor man deluded himself with the thought that if it wer'n't for the bandboxes we might pass muster as fresh from the hands of Cork and Spain. ""That's very kind of the Duke."" ""Oh he's the best of gentlemen--I hears the best of characters of him from his tenants and all the poor folks round about."" Now here was our driver--rather ragged than otherwise and as poor as need be--bearing evidence to the character of the greatest man in these degenerate days on points that are perhaps more important than some that will be dwelt on by his biographers. The best of characters from his tenants and the poor;--well glorious Duke I shall always think of this when I read about your victories and all your great doings in peace and war; and when people call you the Iron Duke and the great soldier and the hero of Waterloo I shall think of you as the hero of Strathfieldsaye and the best of characters among your tenants and the poor folks round about. ""Does the Duke often come to Reading?"" ""No; very seldom."" ""I should have thought he would come by the Great Western and drive across."" ""He!"" exclaimed the driver giving a cut to the near horse by way of italicising his observation. ""He never comes by none of their rails. He don't like 'em. He posts every step of the way. He's a reg'lar gentleman he is the Duke."" And in the midst of conversation like this we got to Reading. Through some wretched streets we drove and then through some tolerable ones; and at last pulled up at the Great Western Hotel a large handsome house very near the Railway station; and in a few minutes were as comfortably settled as if we had travelled with a couple of outriders and had ordered our rooms for a month. The sitting-room had three or four windows of which two looked out upon the terminus. At these the whole party were soon happily stationed watching the different trains that came sweeping up and down every few minutes; long luggage trains pursuing their heavy way with a business-like solidity worthy of their great weight and respectability; short dapper trains that seemed to take a spurt up the road as if to try their wind and condition; and occasionally a mysterious engine squeaking and hissing and roaring and then with a succession of curious jumps and pantings backing itself half a mile or so down the course and then spluttering and dashing out of sight as if madly intent upon suicide and in search of a stone wall to run its head upon. As to feeling surprise at the number of accidents the only wonder a sensible man can entertain on the subject is that there is any thing but accidents from morning to night. And yet when you look a little closer into it every thing seems so admirably managed that the chances are thousands to one against any misfortune occurring. Every engine seems to know its place as accurately as a cavalry charger; the language also of the signals seems very intelligible to the iron ears of the Lucifers and Beelzebubs and the other evil spirits who seem on every line to be the active age

ts of locomotion. Why can't the directors have more Christianlike names for their moving power? What connexion is there between a beautiful new engine shining in all its finery--the personification of obedient and beneficent strength--with the ""Infernal "" or the ""Phlegethon "" or the ""Styx?"" Are they aware what a disagreeable association of ideas is produced in the students of Lemprière's classical dictionary by the two last names? or the Charon or Atropos? Let these things be mended and let them be called by some more inviting appellations--Nelson St Vincent Rodney Watt Arkwright Stephenson Milton Shakspeare Scott;--but leave heathen mythology and diabolic geography alone. As night began to close the sights and sounds grew more strange and awful. A great flaming eye made its appearance at a distance; the gradual boom of its approach grew louder and louder and its look became redder and redder; and then we watched it roll off into the darkness again on the other side of the station on its way to Bath--till tearing up at the rate of forty miles an hour came another red-eyed monster breathing horrible flame and seeming to burn its way through the sable livery of the night with the strength and straightness of a red-hot cannon-ball. And then we called for candles and went to bed. The train was to pass on its way to Bristol at half-past eleven so we had plenty of time to see the lions of Reading--if there had been any animals of the kind in the neighbourhood--but after a short detour in the street and a glimpse into the country we found ourselves irresistibly attracted to the railway. The scene here was the same as on the previous night and we were more and more confirmed in our opinion that next to the sea or a navigable river a railway is the pleasantest object in a rural view. As to the impostors who extort thousands of pounds from the unhappy shareholders on the pretext that the line will be injurious to their estates they ought at once to be sent to Brixton for obtaining money under false pretences. It gives a greatly increased value to their lands as may be seen by the superior rents they can obtain for the farms along the line; and as to the picturesqueness of the landscape it is only because the eye is not yet accustomed to it nor the mind embued with railway associations that it is not considered a finer ""object"" than the level greenery of a park or the hedgerows of a cultivated farm. Painters have already begun to see the grandeur of a tempestuous sea ridden over by steamers; and before the end of the next war some black ""queller of the ocean flood "" with short funnel and smoke-blackened sails will be thought as fit a theme for poetry and romance as the Victory or the Shannon. Knowledge which we are every where told is now advancing at railway speed is still confined within very narrow limits we are sorry to say among railway clerks and other officials. They still seem to measure the sphere of their studies by distance and not by time; for instance not one of the _employés_ at Reading could give us more information about Bristol than if it had been three days' journey removed from him. Three hours conveys us from one to the other--and yet they did not know the name or situation of a single inn nor where the boats to Chepstow sailed from nor whether there were any boats to Chepstow at all. In ancient times such ignorance might be excusable when the towns were really as distant as London and York now are; but when three hours is the utmost limit and every half hour the communication is kept up between them it struck us as something unaccountable that Bristol should be such a complete _terra incognita_ to at least a dozen smart-looking individuals who stamp off the tickets and chuck the money into a drawer with an easy negligence very gratifying to the beholder. Remembering the recommendation of the Royal Western Hotel given us by a friend with the whispered information that the turtle was inimitable and only three-and-sixpence a basin; we stowed away the greater portion of the party in a first-class carriage and betook ourselves in economical seclusion to a vehicle of the second rank. And a first-rate vehicle it was--better in the absence of stuffing on that warm day than its more aristocratic companion; and in less than three minutes we were all spinning down the road--a line of human and other baggage at least a quarter of a mile in length. At Swindon we were allowed ten minutes for refreshment. The great lunching-room is a very splendid apartment--and hungry passengers rushed in at both doors and in a moment clustered round the counters and were busy in the demolition of pies and sandwiches. Under a noble arch the counters are placed; the attendants occupying a space between them so that one set attend to the gormandizers who enter by one of the doors and the rest on the others. It has exactly the effect of a majestic mirror--and so completely was this my impression that it was with the utmost difficulty I persuaded myself that the crowd on the other side of the arch was not the reflection of the company upon this. Exactly opposite the place where I stood--in the act of enjoying a glass of sherry and a biscuit--I discovered what I took of course to be the counterfeit presentment of myself. What an extraordinary mirror I thought!--for I saw a prodigious man with enormous whiskers ramming a large veal pie into his mouth with one hand and holding in the other a tumbler of porter. I looked at the glass of sherry and gave the biscuit a more vigorous bite--alas! it had none of the flavour of the veal and porter; so I discovered that the law of optics was unchanged and that I had escaped the infliction of so voracious a double-ganger. The country round Chippenham is as beautiful as can be conceived; all the fruit-trees were in full blossom and we swept through long tracts of the richest and prettiest orchards we ever saw. Hall and farm and moated grange passed in rapid succession; and at last the fair city of Bath rose like the queen of all the land and looked down from her palaces and towers on the fairest champaign that ever queen looked upon before. Seen from the railway the upper part of the town seems to rise up from the very midst of orchards and gardens; terrace above terrace but still with a great flush of foliage between; it is a pity it ever grew into a fashionable watering-place; though even now it is not too late to amend. Like some cynosure of neighbouring eyes fed from her gentle youth upon all the sights and sounds of rural life she is too beautiful to put on the airs and graces of a belle of the court. Let her go back to her country ways--her walks in the village lanes--her scampers across the fields; she will be more really captivating than if she was redolent of Park Lane and never missed a drawing-room or Almack's. But here we are at Bristol and must leave our exhortations to Bath to a future opportunity. It is amazing how rapidly the passengers disperse. By the time our trunks and boxes were all collected the station was deserted the empty carriages had wheeled themselves away and we began to have involuntary reminiscences of Campbell's _Last Man_. Earth's cities had no sound nor tread--so it was with no slight gratification that we beheld the cad of an omnibus beckoning us to take our place on the outside of his buss. The luggage had been swung down in a lump through a hole in the floor and by the time we reached the same level by the periphrasis of a stair every thing had been stowed away on the roof where in a few moments we joined it; and careered through the streets of Bristol for the first time in our lives. ""Do you go to any hotel near the quay where the Chepstow steamers start from?"" was our first enquiry; but before the charioteer had time to remove the tobacco from his cheek to let forth the words of song a gentleman who sat behind us very kindly interfered. ""The York Hotel sir is quite near the river in a nice quiet square and the most comfortable house I ever was in. If they can give you accommodation you can't be in better quarters."" Next to the praiseworthiness of a good Samaritan who takes care of the houseless and the stranger is the merit of the benevolent individual who tells you the good Samaritan's address. We made up our minds at once to go on to the York Hotel. ""For Chepstow sir?"" said the stranger--""a beautiful place but by no means equal to Linton in North Devon. Do you go to Chepstow straight?"" ""As soon as a boat will take us: we are going into Wales for change of air and the sooner we get there the better."" ""Change of air!--there isn't such air in England no nor anywhere else as at Linton. Why don't you come to Linton? You can get there in six hours."" ""But Welsh air is the one recommended."" ""Nonsense. There's no air in Wales to be compared with Linton. I've tried them both--so have hundreds of other people--and as for beauty and scenery and walks and drives Linton beats the whole world."" All this was very difficult to resist; but we set our minds firmly on the Three Cocks and Glasbury vale and repelled all the temptations of the gem of the North of Devon. Every hour that took us nearer to our goal brought out the likeness we had formed of it in our hearts with greater relief. A fine secluded farm--of which a few rooms were fitted up as a house of entertainment--a wild hill rising gradually at its back--a mountain-stream rattling and foaming in front--all round it swelling knolls and heathy mountains. What had Linton to show in opposition to charms like these? We rejected the advice of our good-natured counsellor with great regret more especially as a sojourn in Linton would probably have enabled us to cultivate his further acquaintance. The York was found all that he described--clean quiet and comfortable. When the young fry had finished their dinner away we all set on a voyage of discovery to Clifton. Up a hill we climbed--which in many neighbourhoods would be thought a mountain--and passed paragons and circuses and crescents on left and right wondering when we were ever to emerge into the open air. At last we reached the top--a green elevation surrounded on two sides by streets and villas--crowned with a curious-looking observatory and ornamented at one end with a strange building on the very edge of the cliff; being one of the _termini_ of the suspension bridge which got thus far and no further. Going across the Green the sight is the most grand and striking we ever saw. Far down skirting its way round cliffs of prodigious height--which however except when they are quarried for building purposes are covered with the richest foliage--along their whole descent winds the Avon at that moment in full tide and covered in all its windings with sails of every shape and hue. The rocks on the opposite side are of a glorious rich red and consort most beautifully with the green leaves of the plantations that soften their rugged precipices by festooning them to the very brink. Then there are wild dells running back in the wooded parts of the hill and walks seem to be made through them for the convenience of maids who love the moon--or more probably and more poetically too for the refreshment of the toiling citizens of the smoky town who wander about among these sylvan recesses with their wives and families and enjoy the wondrous beauty of the landscape without having consulted Burke or Adam Smith on the causes of their delight. As you climb upwards towards the observatory you fancy you are attending one of Buckland's lectures--the whole language you hear is geological and philosophic. About a dozen men with little tables before them are dispersed over the latter part of the ascent and keep tempting you with ""fossiliferous specimens of the oolite formation "" ""tertiary "" ""silurian "" ""saurian "" ""stratification "" ""carboniferous."" It was quite wonderful to hear such a stream of learning and to see at the same time the vigour of these terrene philosophers in polishing their specimens upon a whetstone laid upon their knees. A few shillings put us all in possession of memorials of Clifton in the shape of little slabs of different strata polished on both sides and ingeniously moulded to resemble a book. A little further up we got besieged by another body of the Clifton Samaritans the proprietors of a troop of donkeys all saddled and bridled in battle array. Into the hands of a venerable matron the owner of a vast number of donkies and two or three ragged urchins who acted as the Widdicombs of the cavalcade we committed all the younkers for an hour's joy between the turnpike and back and betook ourselves to a seat at the ledge of the cliff and ""gazed with ever new delight"" at the noble landscape literally at our feet. But the hour quickly passed; the donkeys resigned their load; and we slid as safely as could be expected down the inclined plane that conducted us to the York. We did not experiment upon the turtle-soup as we had been advised to do at the Royal Western but some Bristol salmon did as well; and after a long consultation about boats and breakfast at an early hour we found we had got through our day and that hitherto the journey had offered nothing but enjoyment. The morning lowered; and heavily in clouds but luckily without rain we effected our embarkation at eight o'clock on board the Wye--a spacious steamer that plies every day according to the tide between Bristol and Chepstow. We were a numerous crew and had a steady captain with a face so weather-beaten that we concluded his navigation had not been confined to the Severn sea. The first two or three miles of our course was through the towering cliffs and wooded chasms we had admired from the Clifton Down. For that part of its career the Avon is so beautiful and glides along with such an evident aim after the picturesque that it is difficult to believe it any thing but an ornamental piece of water adding a new feature to a splendid landscape; and yet this meandering stream is the pathway of nations and only inferior in the extent of its traffic to the Thames and Mersey. The shores soon sink into commonplace meadows and we emerge into the Severn which is about five miles wide from the mouth of the Avon to that of the Wye. All the way across new headlands open upon the view; and far down the channel you catch a glimpse of the Flat Holms and other little islands; while in front the Welsh hills bound the prospect at a considerable distance and form a noble background to the rich wooded plains of Monmouthshire and the low-lying shore we are approaching. Suddenly you jut round an enormous rock and find yourself in a river of still more sylvan gentleness than the Avon. The other passengers seemed to have no eyes for the picturesque--perhaps they had seen the scenery till they were tired of it; and some of them were more pleasantly engaged than gaping and gazing at rocks and trees. Grouped at the tiller-chains were four or five people very happily employed in looking at each other--a lady and gentleman in particular seemed to find a peculiar pleasure in the occupation; and were instructing each other in the art and mystery of tying the sailor's knot. Time after time the cord refused to follow the directions of the girl's fingers--very white fingers they were too and a very pretty girl--and with untiring assiduity the teacher renewed his lesson. We ventured a prophecy that they would soon be engaged in the twisting of a knot that would not be quite so easy to untie as the sailor's slip that made them so happy. On we went on the top of the tide rounding promontories and gliding among bosky bowers and wooded dells till at last our panting conveyer panted no more and we lay alongside the pier of Chepstow. The tide at this place rises to the incredible height of fifty and sometimes on great occasions of seventy feet; so they have a floating sort of foot-bridge from the vessel to the shore that sinks and rises with the flood connected with the land by elongating iron chains and illustrating the ups and downs of life in a very remarkable manner. I will not attempt to describe Chepstow on the present occasion for a stay in it did not enter into our plan. The Three Cocks grew in interest the nearer we got to their interesting abode. We determined to hurry forward to Abergavenny--thence to send a missive of enquiry as to the accommodations of the hostel--to go on at once if we could be received--and (leaving all the lumber including the maids and the younger children) to make a series of voyages of discovery that would entitle us to become members of the Travellers' Club. A coach was on the strand ready to start for Monmouth; a whisper and half-a-crown secured the whole of the inside and two seats out against all concurrents; and the Wye the boat the knot-tying passengers were all left behind and we began to climb the hill as fast as two miserable-looking horses could crawl. A leader was added when we had got a little way up; but as they neglected to furnish our coachman with a whip long enough to reach beyond his wheeler's ears our unicorn pursued the even tenor of his way with very slackened traces while our friend sat the picture of indignation with his short _flagellum_ in his hand and implored all the male population who overtook us to favour him by kicking the unhappy leader to death. An occasional benevolent Christian complied with his request to the extent of a dig with a stout boot under the rib; but every now and then the furibund jarvey apologised to us for the slowness of our course by asking--""Won't I serve him out when I gets a whip!"" A whip he at last got and made up for lost time by belabouring the lazy culprit in a very scientific manner; and having got us all into a gallop he became quite pleasant and communicative. All the people in Monmouthshire are Welsh that is very clear; and Monmouthshire is as Welsh a county as Carnarvon in spite of the maps of geographers and the circuits of the Judges. The very faces of the people are evidence of their Taffy-hood. We have had no experience yet if they carry out the peculiar ideas on the rights of property attributed to Taffy in the ancient legend which relates the method that gentleman took to supply himself with a leg of beef and a marrow bone; but their voices and names are redolent of leeks and no Act of Parliament can ever make them English. You might as well pass an Act of Parliament to make our friend Joseph Hume's speeches English. And therefore throughout the narrative we shall always consider ourselves in Wales till we cross the Severn again. We trotted round the park wall of a noble estate called Pearcefield and when we had crowned the ascent our Jehu turned round with an air of great exultation pulling up his horses at the same time and said--""There! did you ever see a sight like that? This is the Double View."" He might well be proud--for such a prospect is not to be equalled I should think in the world. The Wye is close below you with its rich banks frowned over by a magnificent crag that forms the most conspicuous feature of the landscape; and in the distance is the river Severn pursuing its shining way through the fertile valleys of Glo'stershire and by some _deceptio visus_ for which we cannot account raised apparently to a great height above the level of its sister stream. It has the appearance of being conveyed in a vast artificially raised embankment laughing into scorn the grandest aqueducts of ancient Rome and bearing perhaps a greater resemblance to the lofty-bedded Po in its passage through the plains of Lombardy. The combination of the two rivers in the same scene with the peculiar characteristics of each brought prominently before the eye at once make this one of the finest ""sights"" that can be imagined. The driver seemed satisfied with the sincerity of our admiration and like a good patriot evidently considered our encomiums as a personal compliment to himself. The whole of the drive to Monmouth is through a succession of noble views only to be equalled as far as our travelling experience extends by the stage on the Scottish border between Longtown and Langholm. But soon after this the skies that had gloomed for a long time took fairly to pouring out all the cats and dogs they possessed upon our miserable heads. An umbrella on the top of a coach is at all times a nuisance and incumbrance so in gloomy resignation to a fate that was unavoidable we wrapt our mantle round us and made the most of a bad bargain. To Monmouth we got at last and to our great discomfort found that it was market-day and that we had to dispute the possession of a joint of meat with some wet and hungry farmers. We compromised the matter for a beefsteak for which we had to wait about an hour; and having seen that the whole of the garrison was well supplied we proceeded to make enquiries as to the best method of getting on to Abergavenny. Finding that information on a matter so likely to remove a remunerative party from the inn was not very easy to be obtained from the denizens thereof we made our way into the market. The civility of the natives when their interests are not concerned is extraordinary; and in a moment we were recommended to the Beaufort Arms a hotel that would do honour to Edinburgh itself--had ordered a roomy chaise and procured the services of a man with a light cart to follow us with the heavy luggage. The sky began to clear the postillion trotted gaily on and we left the county town not much gratified with our experience of its smoky rooms and tough beefsteaks. We followed the windings of the Trothy a stream of a very lively and frisky disposition passing a seat of the Duke of Beaufort who seems lord-paramount of the county and at length came in view of the noble ruins of Ragland Castle. But now we were wiser than we had been at the early part of the journey and had bought a very well written guide-book by Mr W.H. Thomas which at the small outlay of one shilling made us as learned on ""the Wye with its associated scenery and ruins "" as if we had lived among them all our days. Inspired by his animated pages we descanted with the profoundest erudition to our astonished companion on the box about its machicolated towers and the finely proportioned mullions of the hall. ""If you ascend the walls of the castle "" we exclaimed in a paroxysm of enthusiasm as if we were perched on the very top ""you will see that the castle occupies the centre of an undulating plain checkered with white-washed farm-houses fields and noble groves of oak. The tower and village of Rhaglan lie at a short distance picturesquely straggling and irregular. To the north the bold and diversified forms of the Craig the Sugar Loaf Skyrids and Blorenge mountains with the outlines of the Hatterals perfect the scene in this direction; whilst the ever-varying and amphitheatrical boundary of this natural basin may be traced over the Blaenavons Craig-y-garayd (close to Usk ) the Gaer Vawr the round Twm Barlwm the fir-crowned top of Wentwood forest Pen-cae-Mawr the dreary heights of Newchurch and Devauder; the continuation of the same range past Llanishen the white church of which is plainly visible; Trelleck Craig-y-Dorth and the highlands above Troy Park where they end."" We were going on in the same easy and off-hand manner to describe some other peculiarities of the landscape when a sudden lurch of the carriage brought the book we were furtively pillaging into open view and we were forced with a very bad grace to confess our obligations to Mr W.H. Thomas. A very beautiful ruin it is certainly and we made a vow to devote a day to exploring its remains and judging for ourselves of the accuracy of the guide-book's description. Even if the road had no recommendation from the lovely openings it gives at every turn it would be a pleasure to travel by it in sunshine for the hedges along its whole extent were a complete rampart of the sweetest smelling May. Such miles of snow-white blossoms we never saw before. It looked like Titania's bleaching-ground and as if all the fairies had hung out their white frocks to dry. And the hawthorn blossoms along the road were emulated on all the little terraces at the side of it; the apple and pear trees were in full bloom and every little cottage rejoiced in its orchard--so that with the help of hedges and fruit trees the whole earth was in a glow of beauty and perfume--and we prophecy this will be a famous year for cider and perry. Abergavenny has a very bad approach from Monmouth and we dreaded a repetition of the delays and toughnesses we had just escaped from; how great therefore was our gratification when we pulled up at the door of the Angel and were shown into a splendid room thirty-five or forty feet long by twenty wide secured bedrooms as clean and comfortable as heart could desire and had every thing we asked for with the precision of clockwork and the rapidity of steam. The Three Cocks began to descend from the lofty place they held in our esteem and we resolved for one day at least to rest contentedly in such comfortable quarters and look about us; so forth we sallied and in the course of our pilgrimage speedily arrived at Aberga'ny Castle. Talk of picturesqueness! this was picturesque enough for poet or painter with a vengeance--great thick walls all covered over with ivy crowning a round knoll at the upper part of the town and looking over a finer view we will venture to say than that we have just described as seen from Ragland; and to complete the beauty of it--the comforts of modern civilization uniting themselves to ancient magnificence--the main walls have been fitted up by one of the late lords into a pretty dwelling-house which is at this moment occupied by one of the surgeons of the town. This is the true use of an antique ruin--this is replacing the coat of mail with a rain-proof mackintosh--the steel casque of Brian de Boisguilbert with the Kilmarnock nightcap of Bailie Nicol Jarvie. And in this instance the change has been effected with the greatest skill; the coat of mail and steel casque are still there but only for show; the mackintosh and nightcap are the habitual dress: and few dwellings in our poor eyes are comparable to the one that outside has the date of the crusaders and inside the conveniences of 1845. The town has a noble body-guard of hills all round it; and perched high up on almost inaccessible ledges are little white-walled cottages that made us long for the wings of a bird to fly up and inspect them closer; no other mode of conveyance would be either speedy or safe for the sides of the mountains are nearly perpendicular and would have put Douglas's horse to its mettle when he was on a visit to Owen Glendowr. Dark gloomy Tartarean hills they appear and no wonder; for their whole interior is composed of iron and day and night they are glimmering and smoking with a hundred fires. They have a dreadful stern metallic look about them and are as different in their configuration from the chalk hills of Hampshire as _they_ are from cheese. Some day we shall ascend their dusky sides and dive into Pluto's drear domains--the iron-works--a god who in the present state of railway speculation might easily be confounded with Plutus; and with this and many other good resolutions we returned to the hospitable care of our friend Mr Morgan at the Angel. Next day was Sunday and very wet. We slipped across the street and heard a very good sermon in the morning in a large handsome church which was not quite so well filled as it ought to have been and were kept close prisoners all day afterwards by the unrelenting clouds. But our object was not yet attained and we resolved to start off with fresh vigour on our expedition to the Three Cocks. It was only two-and-twenty miles off; our host with none of the spirit that they say is always found between two of a trade spoke in the highest terms of the Vale of Glasbury and its clean and comfortable hotel. He also made enquiry for us as to its present condition and brought back the pleasing intelligence that it was not full and that we should find plenty of accommodation at once. This did away with the necessity of writing to the landlord and in a short time we were once more upon the road maids and children inside as usual and a natty postilion cocking his white hat and flicking his little whip in the most bumptious manner imaginable. Through Crickhowell we went without drawing bridle and went almost too fast to observe sufficiently its very beautiful situation; past noble country-seats bower and hall we drove; and at last wound our solitary way along a cross-road among some pastoral hills that reminded us more of Dumfries-shire than any country we have ever seen. The road ascended gradually for many miles; and on crowning the elevation we caught a very noble extensive view of a rich flat thickly-wooded plain that bore a great resemblance to the unequalled neighbourhood of Warwick. Down and down we trotted--hills and heights of all kinds left behind us--trees shrubs hedges all in the fullest leaf lay for miles and miles on every side; and the scenery had about as much resemblance to our ideal of a Welsh landscape as ditch water to champagne. Through this wilderness of sweets stifling and oppressive from its very richness we drove for a long way looking in vain for the hilly region where the Three Cocks had taken up their abode. At last we saw a little way in front of us at the side of the road--or rather with one gable-end projecting into it a large white house with a mill appearing to constitute one of its wings. ""The man will surely stop here to water the horses "" was our observation; and so indeed he did--and as he threw the rein loose over the off horse's neck--there! don't you see the sign-board on the wall? Alas alas this is the Three Cocks! An admirable fishing quarter it must be for the river is very near and the country rich and beautiful but not adapted to our particular case where mountain air and free exposure are indispensable. But if it had been ten times less adapted to our purpose we had travelled too far to give it up. ""Can you take us in for a few weeks?"" The landlord laughed at the idea. ""I could not find room for a single individual if you gave me a thousand pounds. A party has been with me for some time and I can't even say how long they may stay."" And corroborative of this we saw at the window our fortunate extruders who no doubt congratulated themselves on so many points of the law being in their favour. Here were we stuck on the Queen's high road--tired horses cooped-up children--and the Three Cocks as unattainable as the Philosopher's stone. The sympathizing landlord consoled us in our disappointment as well as he could. The postilion jumped into his saddle again and we pursued our way to the nearest place where there was any likelihood of a reception--namely the Hay a village of some size about five miles further on. ""Come along we shall easily find a nice cottage to-morrow or get into some farm-house and ruralize for a month or two delightfully."" Our hopes rose as we looked forward to a settled home after our experience of the road for so many days; and we soared to such a pitch of audacity at last that we congratulated ourselves that we had not got in at Glasbury but were forced to go forward. The world was all before us where to choose. The country seemed to improve--that is to get a little less Dutch in its level as we proceeded--and we finally reached the Hay with the determination of Barnaby's raven to bear a good heart at all events and take for our motto in all the ills of life ""Never say die!--never say die!"" The hotel had been taken by assault and was occupied in great force by a troop of dragoons on their march into Glo'stershire. We therefore did not come off quite so well as if we had led the forlorn-hope ourselves; but after so long a journey we rejoiced in being admitted at all. Two or three Welsh girls who perhaps would have been excellent waiters under other circumstances appeared to consider themselves strictly on military duty and no other; so we sate for a very long time in solitary stateliness wondering when the water would boil and the tea-things be brought and the ham and eggs be ready. And of our wondering there was likely to be no end till at last the hungry captain the lieutenant and the cornet were fairly settled at dinner and at about eight o'clock we got tea but no bread; then came the loaf--and there was no butter; then the butter--and there was no knife; but at last all things arrived and the little ones were sent

ff to bed and we amused ourselves by listening to the rain on the window panes and the whistling of the wind in the long passages; and with a resolution to be up in good time to pursue our house-hunting project on the morrow we concluded the fifth day of our peregrinations in search of change of air. We had a charming prospect from the window at breakfast. A gutter tearing its riotous way down the street supplied by a whole night's rain and clouds resting with the most resolute countenances on the whole face of the land. At the post-office--that universal focus of information--to which we wended in one of the intervals between the showers we were told of admirable lodgings. On going to see them they consisted of two little rooms in a narrow lane. Then we were sent to another quarter and found the accommodation still more inadequate; and at last were inconceivably cheered by hearing of a pretty cottage--just the thing--only left a short time ago by Captain somebody; five bed-rooms two parlours large garden; if it had been planned by our own architect it could not have been better. Off we hurried to the owner of this bijou. The worthy captain on giving up his lease had sold his furniture; but we were very welcome to it as tenant for a year! ""Are there no furnished houses in this neighbourhood at all?"" ""No--e'es--may be you'll get in at the shippus ""--which being Anglicized is sheep-house; and away we toddled a mile and a half to the shippus--a nice old farm-house with some pretensions to squiredom and the inhabitants kind and civil as heart could wish. ""Yes they sometimes let their rooms--to families larger than ours--they supplied them with every thing--waited on them--_did_ for them--and as for the children there wasn't such a place in the county for nice fields to play in."" We looked round the room--a good high ceiling large window. ""This is just the thing--and I am delighted we were told of your house."" ""It would have been very delightful but--but we are full already and we expect some of our own family home."" And why didn't you tell us all this before?--we _nearly_ said--and to this hour we can't understand why there was such a profuse explanation of comforts--which _we_ were never destined to partake of. ""But just across the road there is a very nice cottage where you can get lodged--and we can supply you with milk and any thing else you want."" Oho! there is some hope for us yet; and a few minutes saw us in colloquy with the old gentleman the proprietor of the house. With the usual politeness of the Welsh he dilated on the pleasure of having agreeable visitors; and with the usual Welsh habit of forgetting that people don't generally travel with beds and blankets carpets and chairs and tables and crockery on their shoulders he seemed rather astonished when the fact of the rooms destined for us being unfurnished was a considerable drawback. So in not quite such high spirits as we started we returned to the Hay. After a little rest we again sported our seven-league boots and took a solitary ramble across the Wye. A beautiful rising ground lay in front; and as our main object was to get up as high as we could we went on and on enjoying the increasing loveliness of the view and wondering if a country so very charming was really left entirely destitute of furnished houses and only enjoyed by the selfish natives who had no room for pilgrims from a distance. In a nest of trees surrounded on all sides by trimly kept orchards and clustering round a venerable church we came at a winding of the road on one of the most enchanting villages we ever saw. Near the gate of a modest-looking mansion we beheld a gentleman in earnest conversation with a beggar. The beggar was a man of rags and eloquence; the gentleman was evidently a political economist and rejected the poor man's petition ""upon principle."" A lady who was at the gentleman's side looked at a poor little child the man carried in his arms. ""Go to your own place "" said the gentleman; ""I never encourage vagrants."" But it was too good-natured a voice to belong to a political economist. I wish I were as sure of a house as that the poor fellow will get a shilling in spite of the new poor-law and Lord Brougham. The lady after looking at the child said something or other to her companion; and as we turned away at the corner we heard the discourager of vagrants apologizing to himself and also reading a severe lecture on the impropriety of alms-giving. ""Remember I disapprove of it entirely. You are indebted for it to this lady who interposed for you."" So the poor man got his shilling after all; and we considered it a favourable omen of success in getting a house. The next turn brought us to a dwelling which we think it a sort of sacrilege to call a public-house. The Baskerville Arms in the village of Clyroe is more fit for the home of a painter or a poet than for the retail of beer ""to be drunk on the premises."" There was a row of three nice clean windows in the front; the house seemed to stand in the midst of an orchard of endless extent though in reality it faced the road; and with a clear recollection of the line ""Oh that for me some cot like this would smile "" upon our heart and lips we tapped at the door and went into the room on the right hand. Every thing was in the neatest possible order--bunches of May in the grate and bouquets of fresh flowers in two elegant vases upon the table. What nonsense to call this a public-house! It puts us much more in mind of Sloperton Moore's cottage in Wiltshire; and in a finer neighbourhood than any part of Wiltshire can show. The landlady came; a fit spirit to rule over such a domain--the beau-ideal of tidiness and good humour. There were only two bedrooms; and one parlour was all they could give up. The raven of Barnaby Rudge had a hard fight of it to maintain his ground. We very nearly said die! for we had felt a sort of assurance that this was our haven at last. The landlady saw our woe. ""There's such a beautiful cottage "" she said ""a mile and a half further on."" ""Is it furnished?"" ""Well I don't know. I think somehow it is. Would you like to go and see it? I don't know but my husband would put enough of furniture into it to do for you if you liked it."" It was at all events worth the trial. A little girl was sent with us to act as guide; and along a road we sauntered in supreme delight--so quiet so retired and so rich in leaf and blossom that it seemed like a private drive through some highly-cultivated estate; and finally we reached the cottage. It stood on the side of an ascent; it commanded a noble view of the Herefordshire hills and the valley of the Wye; and there could be no doubt that it was the identical spot that the doctors had seen in their dreams when they described the sort of dwelling we were to choose. I wish I were a half-pay captain with a wife and three children a taste for gardening and a poney-carriage. I wish I were a Benedict in the honeymoon. I wish I were a retired merchant with a good sum at the bank and a predilection for farming pursuits. I wish I were a landscape painter with a moderate fortune realized by English art. I wish--but there is no use of wishing for any thing about the cottage except that Mr Chaloner may furnish it at once and let us be its tenant for two or three months. Mrs Chaloner on our return to the Baskerville Arms was gratified at our estimate of the surpassing beauties of the house. She would send her husband to us at the Hay the moment he returned; and in the midst of ""gay dreams by pleasing fancy bred "" we returned to our barrack and created universal jubilee by the prospect we unfolded. In a sort of delirium of good nature we waited patiently till the soldiers had had all the attentions of the household again. We had almost a sense of enjoyment in all the discomforts we experienced. The doors that would not shut--the waiters that would not come--all things shone of the brightest rose-colour seen through the anticipation of ten or twelve weeks' residence in the paradise we had seen. Late at night Mr Chaloner was announced. He had heard the whole story from his worthy half; was in hopes he should be able to meet our wishes but must consult his chief. If _he_ agreed he would see us before ten next morning--if not we were to consider that the furniture could not be put in. And again we were slightly in the dumps. At half-past nine next morning we rang the bell and ordered a carriage to be at the door at ten. If we hear from Chaloner we shall drive at once to the Baskerville Arms; if not there is no use of house-hunting in such an inhospitable region any more; let us get back to our friend at Abergavenny. If there is no house near _it_ let us go back to Chepstow; if we are disappointed there let us go home and tell the doctor we have changed the air enough. Ten o'clock.--No Chaloner; but as usual also no carriage. Half-past ten.--No Chaloner. At eleven--the carriage;--and behold in three hours more the smiling face of Mr Morgan--the great long room and clean apartments of the Angel and the end of our expectations of house and home except in an hotel. We have no time on the present occasion to tell how fortune smiled upon us at last. How our landlord exerted himself not only to make us happy while under his charge but to get us into comfortable quarters in a large commodious house in the neighbourhood. In some future Number we will relate how jollily we fare in our new abode. How we are waited on like kings by the kindest host and hostess that ever held a farm; and how we travel in all directions leaving the little ones at home in a great strong gig drawn by a horse that hobbles and joggles at a famous pace and gives us plenty of good exercise and hearty laughter. All these things we will describe for the edification of people under similar circumstances to ourselves. The present lucubration being intended as a warning not to move from _one_ home till another is secured; the next will be an example how country quarters are enjoyed and a description of how pale cheeks are turned into red ones by living in the open air. TORQUATO TASSO. Any thing approaching to an elaborate criticism of the _Torquato Tasso_ of Goethe we do not in this place intend to attempt; our object is merely to translate some of the more striking and characteristic passages and accompany these extracts with such explanatory remarks as may be necessary to render them quite intelligible. There is we cannot help remarking a peculiar awkwardness in introducing a veritable poet amongst the personages of a drama. We cannot dissociate his name from the remembrance of the works he has written and the heroes whom he has celebrated. Tasso--is it not another name for the _Jerusalem Delivered_? and can he be summoned up in our memory without bringing with him the shades of Godfrey and Tancred? We expect to hear him singing of these champions of the cross; this was his life and we have a difficulty in according to him any other. It is only after some effort that we separate the man from the poet--that we can view him standing alone on the dry earth unaccompanied by the creations of his fancy his imaginative existence suspended acting and suffering in the same personal manner as the rest of us. The poet brought into the ranks of the _dramatis personae!_--the creator of fictions converted himself into a fictitious personage!--there seems some strange confusion here. It is as if the magic wand were waved over the magician himself--a thing not unheard of in the annals of the black art. But then the second magician should be manifestly more powerful than the first. The second poet should be capable of overlooking and controlling the spirit of the first; capable at all events of animating him with an eloquence and a poetry not inferior to his own. For there is certainly this disadvantage in bringing before us a well-known and celebrated poet--we expect that he should speak in poetry of the first order--in such as he might have written himself. It is long before we can admit him to be neither more nor less poetical than the other speakers; it is long before we can believe him to talk for any other purpose than to say beautiful and tender things. Knowing as we do the trick of poets and what is indeed their office as spokesmen of humanity we suspect even when he is relating his own sufferings and complaining of his own wrongs that he is still only making a poem; that he is still busied first of all with the sweet expression of a feeling which he is bent on infusing like an electric fluid through the hearts of others. Altogether he is manifestly a very inconvenient personage for the dramatist to have to deal with. These impressions wear off however as the poem proceeds--just as in real life familiar intercourse with the greatest of bards teaches us to forget the author in the companion and the man of genius in the agreeable or disagreeable neighbour. In the drama of Goethe we become quite reconciled to the new position in which the poet of the Holy Sepulchre is placed. _Torquato Tasso_ is what in this country would be called a dramatic poem in opposition to the tragedy composed for the stage or _quasi_ for the stage. The _dramatis personae_ are few the conduct of the piece is on the classic model--the model we mean of Racine; the plot is scanty and keeps very close to history; there is little action and much reflection. The _dramatis personae_ are-- Alphonso Duke of Ferrara. Leonora d'Este sister of the Duke. Leonora Sanvitale Countess of Scandiano. Torquato Tasso. Antonio Montecatino Secretary of State. In Tasso we have portrayed to us the poetic temperament with some overcharge in the tendency to distrust and suspicion which belongs as we learn from his biography to the character of Tasso and which again was but the symptom and precursor of that insanity to which he fell a prey. Both to relieve and develope this poetic character we have its opposite (the representative of the practical understanding) in Antonio Montecatino the secretary of state the accomplished man of the world the successful diplomatist. It may be well to mention that the speeches in the play given to Leonora d'Este with whom Tasso is in love are headed _The Princess_; and it is her friend Leonora Sanvitale Countess of Scandiano who speaks under the name of _Leonora_. ""ACT. I.--SCENE I. _A garden in the country palace of Belriguardo adorned with busts of the epic poets. To the right that of Virgil--to the left that of Ariosto._ PRINCESS LEONORA. ""_Princess._--My Leonora first you look at me And smile then at yourself and smile again. What is it? Let your friend partake. You seem Very considerate and much amused. ""_Leonora._--My Princess I but smiled to see ourselves Decked in these pastoral habiliments. We look right happy shepherdesses both And what we do is still pure innocence. We weave these wreaths. Mine gay with many flowers Still swells and blushes underneath my hand; Thou moved with higher thought and greater heart Hast only wove the slender laurel bough. ""_Princess._--The bough which I while wreathing thoughts have wreathed Soon finds a worthy resting-place. I lay it Upon my Virgil's forehead. [_Crowns the bust of Virgil._ ""_Leonora._ And I mine My jocund garland on the noble brow Of Master Ludovico. [_Crowns the bust of Ariosto._ Well may he Whose sportive verse shall never fade demand His tribute of the spring! ""_Princess._ 'Twas amiable In the duke my brother to conduct us So early in the year to this retreat. Here we possess ourselves here we may dream Uninterrupted hours--dream ourselves back Into the golden age which poets sing. I love this Belriguardo; I have here Pass'd many youthful many happy days; And the fresh green and this bright sun recall The feelings of those times. ""_Leonora._ Yes a new world Surrounds us here. How it delights--the shade Of leaves for ever green! how it revives-- The rushing of that brook! with giddy joy The young boughs swing them in the morning air; And from their beds the little friendly flowers Look with the eye of childhood up to us. The trustful gardener gives to the broad day His winter store of oranges and citrons; One wide blue sky rests over all; the snow On the horizon from the distant hills In light dissolving vapour steals away."" The conversation winds gracefully towards poetry and Tasso. We will answer at once the interesting question whether the poet has represented Leonora d'Este the princess as being in love with Tasso. He has; and very delicately has he made her express this sentiment. From the moment when doubtless thinking of the living poet she twined the laurel wreath which she afterwards deposited on the brow of Virgil to the last scene where she leads the unhappy Tasso to a fatal declaration of his passion there is a gentle _crescendo_ of what always remains however a very subdued and meditative affection. She loves--but like a princess; she muses over the danger to herself from suffering such a sentiment towards one in so different a rank of life to grow upon her; she never thinks of the danger to _him_ to the hapless Tasso by her betrayal of an affection which she is yet resolved to keep within subjection. To be sure it may be said that all women have something of the princess in them at this epoch of their lives. There is a wonderful selfishness in the heart while it still asks itself whether it shall love or not. The sentiment of the princess is very elegantly disguised in the jesting vein in which she rallies Leonora Sanvitale-- ""_Leonora._--Your mind embraces wider regions; mine Lingers content within the little isle And 'midst the laurel grove of poesy. ""_Princess._--In which fair isle in which sweet grove they say The myrtle also flourishes. And though There wander many muses there we choose Our friend and playmate not alone from _them_ We rather greet the poet there himself Who seems indeed to shun us seems to fly Seeking we know not what and he himself Perhaps as little knows. 'Tis pretty when In some propitious hour the enraptured youth Looking with better eyes detects in _us_ The treasure he had been so far to seek. ""_Leonora._--The jest is pleasant--touches but not near. I honour each man's merit; and to Tasso Am barely just. His eye that covets nothing Light ranges over all; his ear is fill'd With the rich harmony great nature makes; What ancient records what the living scene Disclose his open bosom takes it all; What beams of truth stray scattered o'er this world His mind collects converges. How his heart Has animated the inanimate! How oft ennobled what we little prize And shown how poor the treasures of the great! In this enchanted circle of his own Proceeds the wondrous man; and us he draws Within to follow and participate. He seems to near us yet he stays remote-- Seems to regard us and regards instead Some spirit that assumes our place the while. ""_Princess._--Finely and delicately hast thou limn'd The poet moving in his world of thought. And yet methinks some fair reality Has wrought upon him here. Those charming verses Found hanging here and there upon our trees Like golden fruit that to the finer sense Breathes of a new Hesperides: think you These are not tokens of a genuine love? * * * * * And when he gives a name to the fair object Of all this praise he calls it Leonora! ""_Leonora._--Thy name as well as mine. I for my part Should take it ill were he to choose another. Here is no question of a narrow love That would engross its solitary prize And guards it jealously from every eye That also would admire. When contemplation Is deeply busy with thy graver worth My lighter being haply flits across And adds its pleasure to the pensive mood. It is not us--forgive me if I say it-- Not us he loves; but down from all the spheres He draws the matter of his strong affection And gives it to the name we bear. And we-- We seem to love the man yet love in him That only which we highest know to love. ""_Princess._--You have become an adept in this science And put forth Leonora such profundities As something more than penetrate the ear yet hardly touch the thought. ""_Leonora._ --Thou Plato's scholar! Not apprehend what I a neophyte Venture to prattle of""-- Alphonso enters and enquires after Tasso. Leonora answers that she had seen him at a distance with his book and tablets writing and walking and adds that from some hint he had let fall she gathered that his great work was near its completion; and in fact the princess soon after descries him coming towards them:-- ""Slowly he comes Stands still awhile as unresolved then hastes With quicken'd step towards us; then again Slackens his pace and pauses."" Tasso enters and presents his _Jerusalem Delivered_ to his patron the Duke of Ferrara. Alphonso seeing the laurel wreath on the bust of Virgil makes a sign to his sister; and the princess after some remonstrance on the part of Tasso transfers it from the statue to the head of the living poet. As she crowns him she says-- ""Thou givest me Tasso here the rare delight With silent act to tell thee what I think."" But the poet is no sooner crowned than he entreats that the wreath should be removed. It weighs on him it is a burden a pressure it sinks and abashes him. Besides he feels as the man of genius must always feel that not to wear the crown but to earn it is the real joy as well as task of his life. The laurel is indeed for the bust not for the living head. ""Take it away! Oh take ye gods this glory from my brow! Hide it again in clouds! Bear it aloft To heights all unattainable that still My whole of life for this great recompense Be one eternal course."" He obeys however the will of the princess who bids him retain it. We are now introduced to the antagonist in every sense of the word of Tasso --Antonio secretary of state. In addition to the causes of repugnance springing from their opposite characters Antonio is jealous of the favour which the young poet has won at the court of Ferrara both with his patron and the ladies. This representative of the practical understanding speaks with admiration of the court of Rome and the ability of the ruling pontiff. He says-- ""No nobler object is there in the world Than this--a prince who ably rules his people A people where the proudest heart obeys Where each man thinks he serves himself alone Because what fits him is alone commanded. Alphonso speaks of the poem which Tasso has just completed and points to the crown which he wears. Then follow some of the unkindest words which a secretary of state could possibly bestow on the occasion. ""_Antonio._--You solve a riddle for me. Entering here I saw to my surprise _two_ crowned. [_Looking towards the bust of Ariosto._ ""_Tasso._ I wish Thou could'st as plainly as thou see'st my honours Behold the oppress'd and downcast spirit within. ""_Antonio_--I have long known that in his recompenses Alphonso is immoderate; 'tis thine To prove to-day what all who serve the prince Have learn'd or will."" Antonio then launches into an eloquent eulogium upon the _other_ crowned one--upon Ariosto--which has for its object as well to dash the pride of the living as to do homage to the dead. He adds with a most cruel ambiguity ""Who ventures near this man to place himself Even for his boldness may deserve a crown."" The seeds of enmity it is manifest are plentifully sown between Antonio and Tasso. Here ends the 1st Act. At the commencement of the 2d Act the princess is endeavouring to heal the wound that has been inflicted on the just pride of the poet and she alludes in particular to the eulogy which Antonio had so invidiously passed upon Ariosto. The answer of Tasso deserves attention. It is peculiar to the poetic genius to estimate very differently at different times the value of its own labours. Sometimes do but grant to the poet his claim to the possession of genius and his head strikes the stars. At other times when contemplating the lives of those men whose actions he has been content to celebrate in song he doubts whether he should not rank himself as the very prince of idlers. He is sometimes tempted to think that to have given one good stroke with the sword were worth all the delicate touches of his pen. This feeling Tasso has finely expressed. ""_Princess._--When Antonio knows what thou hast done To honour these our times then will he place thee On the same level side by side with him He now depicts in so gigantic stature. ""_Tasso._--Believe me lady Ariosto's praise Heard from his lips was likely more to please Than wound me. It confirms us it consoles To hear the man extoll'd whom we have placed Before us as a model: we can say In secret to ourselves--gain thou a share Of his acknowledged merit and thou gain'st As certainly a portion of his fame. No--that which to its depths has stirr'd my spirit What still I feel through all my sinking soul It was the picture of that living world Which restless vast enormous yet revolves In measured circle round the one great man Fulfils the course which he the demi-god Dares to prescribe to it. With eager ear I listen'd to the experienced man whose speech Gave faithful transcript of a real scene. Alas! the more I listen'd still the more I sank within myself: it seem'd my being Would vanish like an echo of the hills Resolved to a mere sound--a word--a nothing. ""_Princess._--Poets and heroes for each other live Poets and heroes seek each other out And envy not each other: this thyself Few minutes past did vividly portray. True it is glorious to perform the deed That merits noble song; yet glorious too With noble song the once accomplish'd deed Through all the after-world to memorize."" When she continues to urge Tasso to make the friendship of Antonio and assures him that the return of the minister has only procured him a friend the more he answers:-- ""_Tasso._--I hoped it once I doubt it now. Instructive were to me his intercourse Useful his counsel in a thousand ways: This man possesses all in which I fail. And yet--though at his birth flock'd every god To hang his cradle with some special gift-- The graces came not there they stood aloof: And he whom these sweet sisters visit not May possess much may in bestowing be Most bountiful but never will a friend Or loved disciple on his bosom rest."" The tendency of this scene is to lull Tasso into the belief that he is beloved of the princess. Of course he is ardent to obey the latest injunctions he has received from her and when Antonio next makes his appearance he offers him immediately ""his hand and heart."" The secretary of state receives such a sudden offer (as it might be expected a secretary of state would do) with great coolness; he will wait till he knows whether he can return the like offer of friendship. He discourses on the excellence of moderation and in a somewhat magisterial tone little justified by the relative intellectual position of the speakers. Here again we have a true insight into the character of the man of genius. He is modest--very--till you become too overbearing; he exaggerates the superiority in practical wisdom of men who have mingled extensively with the world and so invites a tone of dictation; and yet withal he has a sly consciousness that this same superiority of the man of the world consists much more in a certain fortunate limitation of thought than in any peculiar extension. The wisdom of such a man has passed through the mind of the poet with this difference that in his mind there is much beside this wisdom much that is higher than this wisdom; and so it does not maintain a very prominent position but gets obscured and neglected. ""_Tasso._--Thou hast good title to advise to warn For sage experience like a long-tried friend Stands at thy side. Yet be assured of this The solitary heart hears every day Hears every hour a warning; cons and proves And puts in practice secretly that lore Which in harsh lessons you would teach as new As something widely out of reach."" Yet spurred on by the injunction of the princess he still makes an attempt to grasp at the friendship of Antonio. ""_Tasso._--Once more! here is my hand! clasp it in thine! Nay step not back nor noble sir deny me The happiness the greatest of good men To yield me trustful to superior worth Without reserve without a pause or halt. ""_Antonio._--You come full sail upon me. Plain it is You are accustomed to make easy conquests To walk broad paths to find an open door. Thy merit--and thy fortune--I admit But fear we stand asunder wide apart. ""_Tasso._--In years and in tried worth I still am wanting; In zeal and will I yield to none. ""_Antonio._ The will Draws the deed after by no magic charm And zeal grows weary where the way is long: Who reach the goal they only wear the crown. And yet crowns are there or say garlands rather Of many sorts some gather'd as we go Pluck'd as we sing and saunter. ""_Tasso._ But a gift Freely bestow'd on this mind and to that As utterly denied--this not each man Stretching his hand can gather if he will. ""_Antonio._--Ascribe the gift to fortune--it is well. * * * * * The fortunate with reason good extol The goddess Fortune--give her titles high-- Call her Minerva--call her what they will-- Take her blind gifts for just reward and wear Her wind-blown favour as a badge of merit. ""_Tasso._--No need to speak more plainly. 'Tis enough. I see into thy soul--I know thee now And all thy life I know. Oh that the princess Had sounded thee as I! But never waste Thy shafts of malice of the eye and tongue Against this laurel-wreath that crowns my brow The imperishable garland. 'Tis in vain. First be so great as not to envy it Then perhaps thou may'st dispute. ""_Antonio._ Thyself art prompt To justify my slight esteem of thee. The impetuous boy with violence demands The confidence and friendship of the man. Why what unmannerly deportment this! ""_Tasso._--Better what you unmannerly may deem Than what I call ignoble. ""_Antonio._ There remains One hope for thee. Thou still art young enough To be corrected by strict discipline. ""_Tasso._--Not young enough to bow myself to idols That courtiers make and worship; old enough Defiance with defiance to encounter. ""_Antonio._--Ay where the tinkling lute and tinkling speech Decide the combat Tasso is a hero. ""_Tasso._--I were to blame to boast a sword unknown As yet to war but I can trust to it. ""_Antonio._--Trust rather to indulgence."" We are in the high way it is plain to a duel. Tasso insists upon an appeal to the sword. The secretary of state contents himself with objecting the privilege or sanctity of the place they being within the precincts of the royal residence. At the height of this debate Alphonso enters. Here again the minister has a most palpable advantage over the poet. He insists upon the one point of view in which he has the clear right and will not diverge from it; Tasso has challenged him has done his utmost to provoke a duel within the walls of the palace; and is therefore amenable to the law. The Duke can do no other than decide against the poet whom he dismisses to his apartment with the injunction that he is there to consider himself for the present a prisoner. In the three subsequent acts there is still less of action; and we may as well relate at once what there remains of plot to be told and then proceed with our extracts. Through the mediation of the princess and her friend this quarrel is in part adjusted and Tasso is released from imprisonment. But his spirit is wounded and he determines to quit the court of Ferrara. He obtains permission to travel to Rome. At this juncture he meets with the princess. His impression has been that she also is alienated from him; her conversation removes and quite reverses this impression; in a moment of ungovernable tenderness he is about to embrace her; she repulses him and retires. The duke who makes his appearance just at this moment and who has been a witness to the conclusion of this interview orders Tasso into confinement expressing at the same time his conviction that the poet has lost his senses. He is given into the charge of Antonio and thus ends the drama. Glancing back over the three last acts whose action we have summed up so briefly we might select many beautiful passages for translation; we content ourselves with the following. The princess and Leonora Sanvitale are conversing. There has been question of the departure of Tasso. ""_Princess._--Each day was _then_ itself a little life; No care was clamorous and the future slept. Me and my happy bark the flowing stream Without an oar drew with light ripple down. Now--in the turmoil of the present hour The future wa

es and fills the startled ear With whisper'd terrors. ""_Leonora._ But the future brings New joys new friendships. ""_Princess._ Let me keep the old. Change may amuse it scarce can profit us. I never thrust with youthful eagerness A curious hand into the shaken urn Of life's great lottery with hope to find Some object for a restless untried heart. I honour'd him and therefore have I loved; It was necessity to love the man With whom my being grew into a life Such as I had not known or dream'd before. At first I laid injunctions on myself To keep aloof; I yielded yielded still Still nearer drew--enticed how pleasantly To be how hardly punish'd! ""_Leonora._ If a friend Fail with her weak consolatory speech Let the still powers of this beautiful world With silent healing renovate thy spirit. ""_Princess._--The world _is_ beautiful! In its wide circuit How much of good is stirring here and there! Alas! that it should ever seem removed Just one step off! Throughout the whole of life Step after step it leads our sick desire E'en to the grave. So rarely do men find What yet seem'd destined them--so rarely hold What once the hand had fortunately clasp'd; What has been giv'n us rends itself away And what we clutch'd we let it loose again; There is a happiness--we know it not We know it--and we know not how to prize."" Tasso says when he thought himself happy in the love of Leonora d'Este-- ""I have often dream'd of this great happiness-- 'Tis here!--and oh how far beyond the dream! A blind man let him reason upon light And on the charm of colour how he will If once the new-born day reveal itself It is a new-born sense."" And again on this same felicity ""Not on the wide sands of the rushing ocean 'Tis in the quiet shell shut up conceal'd We find the pearl."" It is in another strain that the poet speaks when Leonora Sanvitale attempts to persuade him that Antonio entertains in reality no hostility towards him. In what follows we see the anger and hatred of a meditative man. It is a hatred which supports and exhausts itself in reasoning; which we might predict would never go forth into any act of enmity. It is a mere sentiment or rather the mere conception of a sentiment. For the poet rather thinks of hatred than positively hates. ""And if I err I err resolvedly. I think of him as of my bitter foe; To think him less than this would now distract Discomfort me. It were a sort of folly To be with all men reasonable; 'twere The abandonment of all distinctive _self_. Are all mankind to us so reasonable? No no! Man in his narrow being needs Both feelings love and hate. Needs he not night As well as day? and sleep as well as waking? No! I will hold this man for evermore As precious object of my deepest hate And nothing shall disturb the joy I have In thinking of him daily worse and worse."" _Act. 4 Scene 2._ We conclude with a passage in which Tasso speaks of the irresistible passion he feels for his own art. He has sought permission of the Duke to retire to Rome on the plea that he will there by the assistance of learned men better complete his great work which he regards as still imperfect. Alphonso grants his request but advises him rather to suspend his labour for the present and partake for a season of the distractions of the world. He would be wise he tells him to seek the restoration of his health. ""_Tasso._--It should seem so; yet have I health enow If only I can labour and this labour Again bestows the only health I know. It is not well with me as thou hast seen In this luxuriant peace. In rest I find Rest least of all. I was not framed My spirit was not destined to be borne On the soft element of flowing days And so in Time's great ocean lose itself Uncheck'd unbroken. ""_Alphonso._--All feelings and all impulses my Tasso Drive thee for ever back into thyself. There lies about us many an abyss Which Fate has dug; the deepest yet of all Is here in our own heart and very strong Is the temptation to plunge headlong in. I pray thee snatch thyself away in time. Divorce thee for a season from thyself. The man will gain whate'er the poet lose. ""_Tasso._--One impulse all in vein I should resist Which day and night within my bosom stirs. Life is not life if I must cease to think Or thinking cease to poetize. Forbid the silk-worm any more to spin Because its own life lies upon the thread. Still it uncoils the precious golden web And ceases not till dying it has closed Its own tomb o'er it. May the good God grant We one day share the fate of that same worm!-- That we too in some valley bright with heaven Surprised with sudden joy may spread our wing. * * * * * I feel--I feel it well--this highest art Which should have fed the mind which to the strong Adds strength and ever new vitality -- It is destroying me it hunts me forth Where'er I rove an exile amongst men."" _Act V. Scene 2._ DAVID THE ""TELYNWR;""[20] OR THE DAUGHTER'S TRIAL. A TALE OF WALES. BY JOSEPH DOWNES. The inhabitants of the white mountain village of K---- in Cardiganshire were all retired to rest it being ten o'clock. No--a single light twinkled from under eaves of thick and mossy thatch in one cottage apart and neater than the rest that skirted the steep _street_ (as the salmon fishers its chief inhabitants were pleased to call it ) being indeed the rock thinly covered with the soil and fringed with long grass but rudely smoothed where very rugged by art for the transit of a _gamboo_ (cart with small wheels of entire wood) or sledge. The moonlight slept in unbroken lustre on the houses of one story or without any but what the roof slope formed and several appearances marked it as a fisher village. A black oval pitched basket as it appeared hung against the wall of several of the cottages being the _coracle_ or boat for one person much used on the larger Welsh rivers very primitive in form and construction being precisely described by Caesar in his account of the ancient Britons. Dried salmon and other fish also adorned others pleasingly hinting of the general honesty and mutual confidence of the humble natives poor as they were for strangers were never thought of; the road such as it was merely mounting up to ""the hill"" (the lofty desert of sheepwalk) on one hand and descending steeply to the river Tivy on the other. A deadened thunder rising from some fall and brawling shallow ""rapid"" of the river was the only sound except the hooting of an owl from some old ivied building a ruin apparently visible on the olive-hued precipice behind. The russet mass of mountain bulging as it were over the little range of cots gave an air of security to their picturesque white beauty; while silver clouds curled and rolled in masses grandly veiling their higher peaks and sometimes canopied the roofs many reddened with wall-flower; the walls also exhibiting streaks of green where rains had drenched the vegetating thatch and washed down its tint of yellow green. Aged trees green even to the trunks luxuriant ivy enveloping them as well as the branches stretched their huge arms down the declivity leading to the Tivy the flashing of whose waters through its rich fringe of underwood caught the eye of any one standing on the ridge above. A solitary figure tall and muffled did stand with his back in contact with one of these oaks so as to be hardly distinguishable from the trunk. A poet might imagine looking at a Welsh village by moonlight thus embosomed in pastoral mountains canopied with those silver mists whose very motion was peace and lulled by those soft solemn sounds more peace-breathing than even silence that _there_ at least care never came; there peace ""if to be found in the world "" would be surely found; and soon that one light moving--that prettier painted door stealthily opening--would prove that peace confined to the elements only. ""Here I am!"" would be groaned to his mind's ear by the ubiquitous foul fiend Care; for thence emerged a female form--_simplex munditiis_--the exact description of it as to attire--rather tall than otherwise but its chief characteristic a drooping kind of bowed gait in affecting unison with a melancholy settled over the pale features so strongly as to be visible even by the moon at a very short distance. Brushing away a tear from each eye as she held to her breast a little packet of some kind as soon as she found (as she imagined) the coast clear she proceeded after fastening her door toward one of the bowered footpaths leading to the river. The concealed man looked after her prepared to follow when some belated salmon fisher his dark coracle strapped to his back nodding over his head appeared. This lurking personage was nicknamed ""Lewis the Spy"" by the country people. He was the agent newly appointed to inspect the condition of a once fine but most neglected estate which had recently come into possession of a ""Nabob "" as they called him--a gentleman who had left Wales a boy and was now on his voyage home to take possession of a dilapidated mansion called Talylynn. Lewis his forerunner and plenipotentiary was the dread and hate of the alarmed tenants. He had already ejected from his stewardship a good but rather indolent old man John Bevan who had grown old in the service of the former ""squire;"" and besides kept watch over the doings on the farms in an occult and treacherous manner prowling round their ""folds"" by dusk and often listening to conversations by concealing himself. Such was the man who now accosted the humble fisherman. Reverentially as if to the terrible landlord himself the peasant bared his head to his sullen representative. ""Who is that young woman?"" he enquired sternly though well knowing who she was. ""Dim Saesneg "" answered the man bowing. ""None of your Dim Saesneg to me fellow "" rejoined Lewis sternly. ""Did not I hear you swearing in good English at a _Saesyn_ (Englishman or Saxon) yesterday?"" The Welshman begged pardon in good Saxon and answered at last-- ""Why then if it please your honour her name be Winifred--her other name be Bevan--_Miss_ Bevan the school--her father be Mister Bevan of Llaneol steward that was to our old squire of the great house 'the Hall'--Talylynn Hall--where there's a fine lake. I warrant your honour has fished there. You Saesonig gentlemen do mostly do nothing but fish and shoot in our poor country; I beg pardon but you look _Saesoniadd_ (Saxonlike ) I was thinking--fine lake but the trout be not to compare""---- ""Well "" interrupted the other laughing ""your English tongue can wag as glib as your outlandish one. A sweetheart in the case there isn't there? What the devil's she going down to the river for at this time of night else?"" ""Why to be sure there be!"" the man answered. ""_We_ all know that; poor thing she had need find some comforter in all her troubles--her father so poor and in debt to this strange foreigner who's on the water coming home now and has made proposals for her in marriage so they do _say_; but it's like your honour knows more of that than I do--for be not you Mr Lewis I beg pardon Lewis Lewis esquire?"" ""And what do you know of this sweetheart of hers? Is he her _first_ think ye? _I_ doubt that "" rejoined Lewis not noticing his enquiry---- ""_You_ may doubt what your honour pleases but _we_ don't--no; never man touched her _hand_ hardly never one her lips before--I did have it from her mother; but as for this one she's found at last we wish she'd a better""---- ""What's the matter with him then?"" ""Oh nothing more than that he's poor sir--poor; and that _we_ don't know much about the stranger""---- ""What '_we_' do you mean while you talk of 'we'?"" ""Lord bless ye sir why us all of this bankside and this side Tivy the great family of us she's just like _our_ little girl to us all; for don't she have all our young ones to give 'em learning whether the Cardigan ladies pay for 'em or don't? And wasn't poor dear old John Bevan the man who would lend every farmer in the parish a help in money or any way only for asking? So it is you see she has grown up among us. This young man though he may be old for what I know never seeing him in my life--you see sir we on this side of Tivy are like strangers to the Cardy men t'other side--_they_ are _Cardie's_ sure enow _true_ ones as the Saxon foreign folk do call us _all_ of this shire. I wouldn't trust one of 'em t'other side no further than I could throw him. I'll tell ye a story""---- ""Never mind. What about David?"" ""Oh ho! You know his name then? Well and that's all _I_ do--pretty nigh. He lives with a woman who fostered him after his own mother died in travail with him they do say who has a little house beyond that lump of a mountain above all the others we see by daylight; he has been in England and is a strange one for music. He owes (owns possesses ) a beautiful harp--_beautiful_! The Lord knows some do say that's all he owes in the world so (except) his coracle and the salmon he takes and what young people do give him at weddings and biddings where he goes to play: and what's that to keep a wife? Poor Davy _Telynwr_! Yet by my soul we all say we'd rather see her his than this foreigner gentleman's who has almost broke her heart they say by coming between her and her own dear one."" ""He's _not_ come yet "" muttered the other sullenly; adding sharply and bitterly ""Mighty good friends you all are to wish her married to a beggar a vagabond harper rather than to a gentleman."" ""Why--to be sure sir--but vows be vows--love's love--and to tell truth sir "" (the Welsh blood of the Cardy peasant was now up ) ""if any foreign half Welsh half wild Indian sort of gentleman had sent his fine letters asking my sweetheart's friends to turn _me_ off in my courting days and prepare my wench to be his lady instead of my wife--I'd have--I'd have""-- ""_What_ would you have done?"" asked the other laughing heartily. ""Cursed him to St Elian!"" roared the other; then dropping his voice into a solemn tone ""put him into his well.[21] _I'd_ have plagued him I warrant. But for _my_ part "" added the man archly ""I don't believe there's any _squire_ lover in the case--nor that your honour ever said there is."" The agent here vanished as if in haste abruptly down the steep path. During this conversation Winifred had reached the river. While she stands expectant not in happiness but in tears it is time to say a few words of the lover so expected. David who was lately become known ""on t'other side Tivy "" by the name of _Nosdethiol Telynwr_ that is ""night-walking harper "" was an idle romantic young man almost grown out of youth who had long lived away from Wales where he had neither relative nor friend but one aged woman who had been his first nurse he having been early left an orphan. Without settled occupation or habits he was understood almost to depend for bread on the salmon he caught and trifling presents received. A small portable harp of elegant workmanship (adorned with ""_real_ silver "" so _ran the tale_ ) was the companion of his moonlight wanderings. He had a whim of serenading those who had never heard of a ""serenade "" but were not the less sensible of a placid pleasure at being awakened by soft music in some summer sight. The simple mountain cottagers whose slumbers he thus broke or soothed often attributed the sweet sounds to the kindness of some wandering member of the ""Fair Family "" or _Tylwyth Têg_ the fairies. Nor did his figure if discovered vanishing between the trees if some one ventured to peep out in a light night dispel the illusion; for it appears that the fairy of old Welsh superstition was not of diminutive stature.""[22] That he was ""very learned "" had somewhere acquired much knowledge of books however little of men was reported on both sides of the river; and these few particulars were almost all that was known even to Winifred who had so rashly given all her thoughts all her hopes all her heart almost (reserving only one sacred corner for her beloved parents ) to this dangerous stranger--for stranger he was still to her in almost all outer circumstances of life. This was partly owing to the interposition of that narrow river however trivial a line of demarcation that must appear to English people accustomed to cross even great rivers of commerce like the Thames as they would step over a brook or ditch by the frequent aid of bridges and boats. In Wales bridges are too costly to be common. When reared some unlucky high flood often sweeps them away. Intercourse by ferryboats and fords is liable to long interruptions. The dwellers of opposite sides frequent different markets and belong frequently to different counties. The nature of the soil also often differs wholly. Hence it happens that sometimes a farmer whose eye rests continually on the little farm and fields of another on the opposite ""bank "" rising from the river running at the base of his own confronting hill-side lives on ignorant almost of the name quite of the character of their tenant to whom he could almost make himself heard by a shout--if it happens that neither ford ferry nor bridge is within short distance. ""The people of t'other side "" is an expression implying nearly as much strangeness and contented ignorance of these neighbours and no neighbours as the same spoken by the people of Dover or Calais of those t'other side the Channel. It was not therefore surprising that poor Winifred (albeit not imprudent save in this new-sprung passion ) might have said with the poet too truly ""I know not I ask not what guilt's in that heart; I but know that I love thee whatever thou art."" This wild reckless sentiment (though scarcely true to love's nature which is above all things curious about all belonging to its object) did in her case illustrate her feelings. Winifred had lately disclosed to her dear ""unknown"" the ruin impending over her father the result of his mingled good-nature and indolence he having permitted the tenants to run in arrears and suffer dilapidations as already said;--the long neglect however of the East Indian landlord being at the root of the evil who had been as remiss in his dealings with the steward as the steward with the tenants. The first appearance of this newly appointed agent who announced the early return of his employer to take possession of the decayed manor-house was as sudden as ominous of the ruin of old John Bevan. The hope he held out of the ""Nabob"" espousing his long-remembered child Winifred and the consequent salvation of her father seemed too romantic to be believed. Yet this man proved himself duly accredited by his principal and exercised his power already with severity. The fine old house of Talylynn a mansion rising close to a small beautiful lake skirted by an antique park with many deer was already almost prepared for the reception of the ""squire from abroad."" Meanwhile--what most excited the ill-will of the tenantry--this odious persecutor of the all-beloved John Bevan had also furbished up a neat old house adjoining the park gate as a residence for himself; while poor Bevan's farm-house of Llaneol was suffered to fall into ruinous decay--the new steward even neglecting to keep it weather-tight. Thus decayed and almost ruinous it seemed more in harmony with the fortunes of the ever resigned and patient man. But his less placid dame after losing the services of Winifred had fallen into a peevish sort of despondency as the father missing her society and its finer species of consolation had sunk into a more placid apathy. David had received the hint of her possible self-devotion to the coming ""squire"" with very little philosophy little temper and no allowance for the feelings of an only daughter expecting to see a white-headed fond father dragged from his home to a jail. He had been incensed; he had wronged her by imputations of sordid motives--of pride of contempt for _himself_ as a beggar; and at last broke from her in sullen resentment after requiring her to bring all his letters at their next interview which was to be a farewell one. And now she was bringing every thing she had received from him in sad obedience to this angry demand. Nor was all his wrath his injustice and his despair really unacceptable to her secret heart. She would not have had him patient under even the prospective possibility of her marrying another. But his manner at this meeting announced a change in his whole sentiments. His very first words (cold yet kind but how altered in tone!) with his constrained deportment expressed his acquiescence in her purpose whether pride jealousy or a juster estimate of her filial virtue had induced the stern resolve. Winifred had never known the full strength of her own passion till now! The idea of an early eternal end to their ungratified loves which had for some time become familiar to her own secret mind assumed a new and strange terror for her imagination the moment it ceased to be hers _alone_. The shock was novel and overpowering when the separation seemed acquiesced in by him thus putting it out of her own power to hesitate further between devotion to the lover or to the parent. His reconciled manner his calm taking her by the hand even the kiss which she could not resist were more painful than his utmost resentment would have been. Yet there was a sad severity in his look as his fine countenance of deep melancholy turned to the bright moon which a little comforted her and indicated that it was pride rather than patience which led to his affected contentment. _He_ had not a parent to nerve _his_ heart to the sacrifice. ""I passed _your_ home yesterday "" he began sarcastically: ""it is a fine place again already that hall of Talylynn and wants only as fine a mistress."" ""You wrong me David _bach_! on my life and soul you do _dear_ David!"" she replied sobbing. ""'Tis a hateful hall--a horrid hall! If it were only I your poor lost Winifred that was to suffer oh! how much sooner would I be carried dead into a vault than alive and dressed in all the finest silks of India into that dreadful house you twit me with!--unkind unkind!"" And almost fainting her head sunk upon his shoulder and his arm was required to support her. Instantly she recovered and stood erect. ""But oh David there is another dreadful place and another dear being besides you dearest that I think of night and day! The horrid castle jail--my dear dear father! Oh if this Lewis speaks truth and if that strange boy--I only knew him as a boy you know--who has power to ruin him (_will_ surely ruin him!) will _indeed_ forgive him all he owes; will really become his son--his son-in-law instead of his merciless creditor; oh! could I refuse _my_ part shocking part though it be? I should not suffer long David--I feel I should not."" ""And pray what _kind_ of youth--_boy_ as you are pleased to call him--was this nabob then?"" enquired her lover apparently startled at learning the fact of her having had some previous knowledge of his powerful rival. ""A youth! a mere child when I last saw him "" she answered. ""I thought you had known all about him."" ""Nothing more than his name; how came you in his company?"" ""His father living in India was half-brother to our old squire Fitzarthur of Talylynn. His mother dying his widower father whose health was broken up before came over here this being his native country in hope of recovering it; but died at Talylynn leaving one child that little orphan boy heir after his half-uncle's death to all this property. You have often heard me tell how like two brothers my dear father and _our_ old squire were always--though father was only a steward--how he used to have me at the great house for a month at a time where he had me taught by a lady who lived with him before I went to school; and so I used often to see that little boy in black--very queer and sullen he was thought; but he had no playfellow except an owl that he kept tame I remember and cried when he buried him in the garden --the only time he was ever known to cry he was so still and stern. It was _I_ caught him then acting the sexton by himself close by the high box hedge under a great tree. I remember the spot now and remember how angry I made him by laughing."" ""And you did wrong to laugh if it was so serious to him."" ""Oh! but I did not know he was crying when I laughed and _was_ sorry when I detected it. One thing was the old gentleman was so jovial and loved a good laugher and was rather too fond of wine and mostly out hunting so that the poor boy had to find his own amusement. He seemed fond of me but hated he said his uncle and his hounds and his ways and every thing there but his own owl; so that nobody was sorry when he was fetched back to India to be put in the where he was to make the fortune he has now made I suppose."" ""And your little heart did throb a little and sink for a day when this playfellow was shipped off for life as you thought and you _did_ remember his funeral tears over his owl and""--a quaver of voice and betrayed earnestness revealed the jealous pang shooting across the heart of the speaker; but her own was too heavy and deeply anxious to prolong this desultory talk. She only added--""Heaven knows how little I thought that poor stranger boy would ever grow to be what he is to me now."" ""_What he is to you?_ Why what then is he Winifred?"" ""The horror of my thoughts my dreams my""----she answered sobbing. ""But why should I say so? Wicked I am to feel him so if he is _indeed_ to be the saviour of my dear dear father!"" And she turned away to shed relieving tears. ""And this little packet contains my letters--_all_ does it?"" he asked touching the small parcel she had deposited within a cleft of the hollow river-side tree by which they stood the post-office of their happier days where concealed by thick moss gathered from the bole those letters had every one been searched for and found--with what a leap of heart first felt! how fondly thrust into her bosom for the leisure delight of opening at home--and all in vain! ""All but one "" she answered tremulously; ""I brought then because you bade me--but you were so angry _then_--let me take them back?"" and she clutched them eagerly. ""At least we may wait David--we don't know yet; I do suspect that Lewis Lewis--he shuns me as if he was conscious of some wickedness; he's as horrid to me as his master--the thought of his master--I do forbode something awful from that man! It was but just before I heard you brushing among those great low branches in your coracle that I fancied I saw him stealing as if to watch or perhaps waylay you; but I am full of dismal thoughts."" He had not the heart to force his letters so reluctantly resigned from her chilly hand. But he held in his what was calculated to inspire pain quite as poignant. In the fond admiration of her fancy's first object she had vehemently longed for a portrait of that rather singular face--a long oval with lofty forehead already somewhat corrugated by habits of deep thought in his lonely night-loving existence; its mixture of passion dumb poetry its constitutional or adventitious profound melancholy ever present till his countenance gradually lighted up after her coming and her animating discourse like some deep gloomy valley growing light as the sun surmounts a lofty bank gleaming through its pines. She had forced him to take a piece of money for procuring this so desired keepsake and every time they met she had fondly hoped to have the little portrait put into her hand. Now instead he presented the unused money--would she retain the image of a sweetheart in the home of her stern and lordly husband? Her heart confessed that she must no longer wish for it--but it sunk within her at the thought how soon that innocent would be a guilty wish; and when he surprised her with the money so suddenly she involuntarily shuddered forebore to close her hand upon it let it slide from her palm and murmured only with her innocent plaintiff voice ""I shall never have your picture now--_never_!"" And then she dejected her eyes to the little parcel of letters written received kissed and kept like something holy so long in vain; and all the charming hopeful hours in which each was found when some longer absence had given to each a deeper interest and higher value--those hours never to return came shadowing over her mind memory and soul and a lethargy of despairing grief imposed a ghost-like semblance of calm on her whole figure and her face slowly assumed a deadly paleness even to the lips visible even by the moon. David grew alarmed relapsed into the full fondness of former hours folded the dumb drooping and agonized young woman in his arms to his bosom! without her betraying consciousness and yet she was not fainting; she stood upright and her eyes though fixed as if glazed still expressed love in their almost shocking fixedness. The young man grew terrified. ""Look up! speak to me! Winifred _dear_ Winifred my _own_ Winifred in spite of all!"" he broke forth. ""Smile at me my dearest once more and keep these foolish letters you so value keep them _all_."" And he thrust them into her passive hand. Aroused by his words and action poor Winifred starting with a gasp wildly kissed the little packet and thanked him by an embrace more passionate than her prudence or modesty would have permitted had they been happy. ""And my portrait--my ugliness in paint and on ivory too dearest you shall have yet as you desire it "" he added forcing pleasantry; ""only do not fall into that frightful sort of trance again."" He little knew what deadliness of thoughts almost of purpose had produced that long abstracted fit. The most exemplary prudence (the result of a sound mind and heart) had characterised this young woman till now. While yet at home her bodily activity surprised her parents. Their means having been long but low they had little help in their dairy and small farming concerns. She often surprised her mother with the sight of the butter already churned the ewes already milked or the cheeses pressed when she arose. She was abroad in the heavy dews of morning when the sun at midsummer rises in what is properly the night regarded as the hour of rest--abroad happy and cheerful calling the few cows in the misty meadows. Nor did this habit of early rising prevent her indulging at night her _one_ unhappy habit--romance-reading; a pleasure which she enjoyed through the kindness of many ladies of the town of Cardigan who afterwards established her in her school at K----. They supplied her with these dangerous volumes that exalted passion--love in excess--above all the aims and pursuits of life: represented her who loves most madly as most worthy of sympathy; and even too often crowned the heroine with the palm of self-martyrdom--making suicide itself no longer a crime or folly but almost a virtue under certain contingencies. When poverty increased the activity of her powerful intellect was brought into display as much as her personal activity had been in devising resources. She had acquired some skill in drawing through the kindness of the neighbouring gentry and she improved herself so far as to execute very respectable drawings of the ruins of Kilgerran Castle on her own river and other fine scenes of Wales; and these were sold for her (or rather for her parents) by others at fairs and wakes where she never appeared herself. When residing at the village her wheel was heard in the morning before others were stirring and at late night after every other one was still. Her little light gleaming in the lofty village espied between the hanging trees was the guiding star of the belated fisher up the narrow goat's-path which led to the village who could always obtain light for his pipe at ""_Miss Bevan's_ the school "" when not a casement had exhibited a taper for hours. But the evil of all this wear and tear of mind and body was that it maintained an unnatural state of excitement in the one and of weakness (disguised by that fever of imagination) in the other. Sleep the preserver of health and tranquillity of mind was exchanged for lonely emotions excited by night reading. She was weeping over the dramatist's fifth act of tragedy or the romancist's more morbid appeals to the passions while nature demanded rest. Then an accidental meeting with the young harper--he recovering a book she had dropped into the Tivy out of her hand from having fallen asleep through exertion and restoring it with a grace quite romance-hero like--produced a new era and new excitement--that of the heart. Thenceforth she became ""of imagination all compact "" however her strong sense preserved her purity and virtue. But no more dangerous lover could

e imagined than such a loose hanger-on rather than member of society as David the _Telynwr_--for _his_ nature was _hers_; except perhaps in virtuous resolution he was a female Winifred. Yet he possessed a romantic ""leaning at least to virtue's side."" This was oddly exemplified now (to return to their present position;) for as soon as her partial recovery had removed his alarm he grew cold and almost severe in his manner and broke forth-- ""_So_ then Winifred would willingly pore over the love-letters of a sweetheart while under a husband's roof! She thinks this beauty enough for _him_--she would reserve her thoughts wishes every thing else for his old rival;--every thing but what a ring and a few words makes his right by law the poor husband is to leave to any old sweetheart that may come prowling round his gates! That's gross! Is it _not_ Winifred?"" Alas! the heart-broken young woman had been meditating on far other issue to their brief attachment! On death!--death on her wedding-day as the only means of preserving at once her father's liberty and her own virtue; for her reading had taught her that marriage where the mind and heart were so wholly engaged elsewhere was no better than legalised prostitution. With a look of dark intensity of meaning Winifred broke her lengthened silence saying hollowly-- ""I was not looking so far forward--I was not looking beyond _that_ day--not to that""----_night_ she would have said but modesty stopped her speech. ""And _you_ can be so calm! so thoughtful! _You_ can be reasoning about my duties during a life! you can be pleading for _my_ future husband! Oh I wish I were like you! And yet I bless God that you are not like _me_! I would not have you feel as I do for the world! No not even know what I am feeling thinking dearest at this moment."" ""No!"" David again muttered more and more severely ""I cannot submit to have my letters and trifling keepsakes to be tossed about by _him_! It is weakness to wish it Winifred Bevan; and worse for me to grant it."" ""You shall have them all--all--all!"" she exclaimed in passionate agony composed of tenderness anguish anger recklessness with a bitterness of irony keener to her own heart than to him who roused that terrible reaction of her nature. ""I'll run and fetch them all this very night! Oh they'll serve for _your_ new love. You may copy your letters. I'm sure if she have a human heart they'll move it--they'll win it! Strike my name out and you may send the very letters. She will not know that another heart was broken by giving them up! She will not know the stains are tears of pleasure dropped upon them! And you shall have _that_ too if you will--if you must!"" ""Which? what? dearest creature but compose yourself--pray do!"" he said again alarmed. ""_That_ you sent with the lock of hair--_this_ hair!"" she answered wildly. ""But you _will_ leave me the little lock? Oh there's plenty to cut for _another_ here!"" and she laughed hysterically frightfully and played with his profusion of raven hair; but it was mournful play. ""Leave me--_do_ leave poor Winifred that David for the love of God! In mercy leave it! I will not ask for the picture again--I will not _wish_ it if _you_ say I must not; but the hair--the poor bit of hair--he! oh misery! he shall never see it! I myself will never cry over it--never look at it if you think it wrong--never till I'm dying David--dying! There will be no harm then you know in looking--in a poor dying creature's look who has done with passions life love every thing. And none--none shall see it but those who lay me out or they who find my--oh! we none of us know where we may die or how! It may be alone dearest--_alone_! Oh the comfort it will be to have a part of very _you_ to hold--to hold by like this very hand in my death-damp one. Let me have it!"" she shrilly implored in delirious energy. ""I want it to take with me to my death-bed--to my death-pit--my grave whatever it may be--to heaven itself--to our place of meeting again if it were possible! Oh that it _were_ possible! and that I might bring back to you there the kiss--the long kiss--you shall leave on these wretched lips when we part for ever and for ever here! _Will_ you take it from me David my heart my soul? No you will not?"" The crisis of love's parting agony was at its height. Half-conscious of her own dangerous prostration of soul and mind under its power she turned from the dear object and rested her forehead against the trunk of their old tree of assignation; and a steady sadder shower of tears relieving her full heart followed this storm of various and rapid emotions sweeping over one weakened mind like thunderclouds charged with electric fire borne on a whirlwind over a whole landscape in a few minutes of mingled gloom and glory. For in the sublime of passion whatever be its nature is there not a terrible joy a secret glorifying of the earthy nature which we may compare to such elemental war--now hanging all heaven in mourning and bringing night on noonday and presently illuminating that day with a ghastly momentary light brilliant even beyond its own? CHAPTER II. Llaneol the dilapidated farm-house of the expelled steward old Bevan stood beautifully in a wooded glen watered by a shallow stream between a brook and river in size. A pretty greensward of perpetual vivid hue stretched quite up to the threshold--its ""fold "" or farm-yard being small and situated behind. A wooded mountain rose opposite topped by a range of many-tinted cliffs splintered like thunder-stricken battlements and resembling in their fretted and timeworn fronts rich cathedral architecture in ruins. Extensive sheep-walks rose in russet lofty barrenness behind but allowing below breadth for venerable oaks and a profusion of underwood to shelter the white but no longer well-thatched farm-cottage and screening that umbrageous valley from the colder wind; while the many sheep seen and but just seen dotting the lofty barrier beautified the scene by the pastoral ideas which their dim-seen white inspired. Only the songs of birds distinguished the noonday from the night unless when the flail was heard in the barn through the open doors of which coloured by mosses the river glistened and the green with its geese gleamed the more picturesquely for this rustic perspective. As Winifred was approaching this tranquil vale--her native vale--after an absence at the town of Cardigan where she had been seeking assistance for her father with little success she was startled by the unusual sound of many voices and soon saw aghast the whole of the rustic furniture standing about on the pretty green her infant play-place; the noisy auctioneer mounted on the well-known old oaken table; even her mother's wheel was already knocked down and sold and her father's own great wicker chair was ready to be put up while rude boys were trying its rickety antiquity by a furious rocking. On no occasion is so much joviality indulged (in Wales) as on that of an auction ""under a distress for rent "" (which was the case here)--an occasion of calamity and ruin to the owner. Even in the event of an auction caused by a death where the common course of nature has removed the possessor from those ""goods and chattels"" which are now useless to him a sale is surely a melancholy spectacle to creatures who use their minds and possess feelings befitting a brotherhood of Christians or even heathens. To see the inmost recesses of ""home sweet home "" thrown open to all strangers; the most treasured articles (often descended as heir-looms from ancestors and therefore possessing an intrinsic value quite unsuspected by others for the owner ) ransacked tossed from hand to hand and at last ""knocked down"" at a nominal price--even this is a mournful exhibition. But where the ruthless hand of his brother man has wrested those valuables from their possessor instead of inevitable death's tearing him from them--where that very owner and his family are present sadly listening to the ceaseless jokes (thoughtlessly inhuman) lavished by the auctioneer and re-echoed by the crowd over those old familiar objects--witnessing the happy excitement of rival bidders and the universal pleasure over his ruin like the cry and flocking of vultures over a battle-field witnessed by wretches still alive though mortally wounded; what can exceed the shocking transgression of human brotherhood presented by such a scene! A scene of every-day occurrence--a scene never seeming to excite even one reflection kindred to these natural surely and obvious feelings--yet one terribly recalling to the pensive observer that axiom _Homo ad hominem lupus est!_ Doubtless the fraudulent or utterly reckless debtor is in the eye of reason the first ""wolfish"" assailant of his brother. But how many of these familiar tragedies are as truly the result of unforeseen unforeseeable contingencies as diseases or other events considered the visitations of God! One or two or three sick and heavy hearts and wounded minds in the midst of a hundred happy light ones buoyed up by fierce cupidity and keen bargain-hunting and exhilarated by drink and by fun and all drawn together by the misery of those outcast few. Poor Bevan had been taken by surprise in this sudden execution put in by his treacherous supplanter Lewis Lewis. But what most excited the anger of his old attached neighbours was the fact that many of these goods were bought by an agent of Lewis to finish furnishing his own newly repaired house by the old park wall. Winifred learned that her parents had removed to a friendly neighbour's at some distance but suspected the worst--his removal to jail. Not now the weakness of woman prevailed over her presence of mind as we have lately seen it do in her interview with a beloved object. She commanded her agitation so far as to bid for her father's old chair but in vain; for her timid bidding faltered from behind a crowd failed to catch the ear of the jocular auctioneer (who in Wales must always be somewhat of a mountebank ) and the favourite chair was gone at once after the wheel and the many old familiar chattels which she saw standing now the property of strangers. Events crowded fast on each other hurrying on that terrible hour in which a revolting act of self-devotion was to render even this domestic horror of little injury to her parents. ""I will buy 'daddy' a better chair or he shall have enough to buy a better when I am gone "" she murmured to herself. For now the rumour grew rife that Mr Fitzarthur had actually landed was daily expected; and in confirmation she received through a neighbour present a letter left for her by her father stating that he had now actually received under the Nabob's own hand a proposal of marriage which the generous old man (who well knew her engagements to another) solemnly charged her to reject at all hazards to himself. He further begged her to come quickly to the temporary place of refuge he and her mother had found under the roof of a hill cottage just now tenantless through the death of a relative. Thither with heavy heart Winifred hastened by the first light of morning. ""_The_ hill "" an expression much in the mouths of Welsh rural people signifies not any particular one as it would in England but the whole desolate regions of the mountain heights; the homeless place of ever-whistling winds and low bellowing clouds mingling with the mist of the mountain into one black smoke-like rolling volume--the place of dismal pools and screaming kites full of bogs concealed by a sickly yellowish herbage in the midst of the russet waste boundlessly wearying the eye with its sober monotony of tint. If a pool or lake relieve it by reflecting the sky on approach it is found choked all round by high rushes and shadowed by low strangely-shaped rocks tinted by mosses of dingy hue; the water that glistened pleasantly in the distance shrinks now to a mere pond (the middle space too deep for bullrushes and other weeds to take root.) The deep stillness or the unintermitted hollow blowing of the wind (according to the weather) are equally mournful. The rotten soil is cleft and torn into gulleys and small channels in which the mahogany-coloured rivulets springing from the peat morass straggle silently with a sluggish motion in harmony with the lifeless scene. There if a weedy-roofed hut do appear (detected by its thin feeble smoke column) or the shepherd who tenants it should show his solitary figure in the distance the only upright object where is not one tree-trunk neither the home of man nor man's appearance lessens the sense of almost savage solitude; the one so lonely not a smoke-wreath being visible all round beside; the other as he loiters by watching some sheep on some distant bank so shy and wild-looking and to appearance so melancholy so forlorn. Meanwhile as we ""plod our weary way "" some dip in the wavy round of olive-hued lumpish mountains or an abrupt huge chasm of awful rocks each side being almost perpendicular startles the traveller with a far-down prospect of some sunshiny rich leafy valley region at once showing at what a bleak elevation he has been roaming so long and tantalizing him with the contrast of that far far off low luring landscape rendering more irksome than before the dead heathery desert interminably undulating before behind and all round him. The little farm whither old Bevan had retired stood high in such a desert as this on the very verge of such a mountain-portal (a _bwlch_ pronounced boolch the Welsh call it ) an antique stone cottage hanging like a nest on one of the side banks dismal itself but all that under world of pastoral pleasantness below in full though dim perspective. A premature decay is always visible on these kind of wild weather-beaten homes in the torn thatch; the walls tinged with green and generally propped to resist the effects of the powerful winds. If white-washed which they really are broad streaks of green are visible from the frequent heavy rains tinged by the mosses and weeds of the roof. The clouds attracted by the heights career on the strong blast so low and close as often to shut up the dingy human nest in a dreary day of its own while all below is blue serene. To this melancholy abode its few rustic chattels still standing there left since the death of its tenant Winifred toiled up by a steep wild but well-known track but found not father mother or living thing except one so much in unison with the wild melancholy of the scene as to exalt it almost to horror. This was a wretched idiot man dressed in female attire perfectly harmless and kept as a parish pauper at an adjacent farm. He was noted for fidelity to any one who flattered him by some little commission. This ragged object presented to her the key of the padlock on the door with the words ""gone gone gone!"" She entered and found to her surprise excellent refreshment provided in the desolate house evidently but lately deserted. But what riveted her eyes was a letter to herself in the handwriting of David but tremulously written announcing his inability to keep an appointment (one more!) which they had made to part for ever--her terrible distress it will be remembered on the last occasion deterring the young man from any further trial of her feelings. He further informed her that Mr Fitzarthur was certainly arrived and had taken up his temporary abode at the pretty house by the park designed by Lewis Lewis for his own residence. Moreover she learned that her father and mother anxiously expected her at that house to which they had removed but did not reveal that he had _been removed_ in the care of two bailiffs and the house named was but a resting place in his transit to jail. When the mind is enfeebled by repeated blows it often happens that some one which to others may appear the slightest of all produces the greatest effect its pain being quite disproportioned to its real importance. Thus it happened that amidst all her trials Winifred felt the loss of her father's favourite chair as a crowning misery trivial as was that loss when hope itself was lost. She had identified that very humble chattel with his figure almost her life long. She almost expected to see the two fair hands (for truth to tell the aged steward had never worked hard) on each side and the venerable kind face projected forwards from its deep concave arched over that white head to smile welcome to her even as it stood out on the little green. The intrusion of boy clowns one after another into its seat seemed a grievous insult to the unhappy owner though absent. Yet a sad comfort rose in the thought of her ability to reinstate her father in all his lost comforts through this terrible marriage. Then she grew impatient in her longing to console him by assurance of this notwithstanding his generous wish that her hand should go where he knew her heart had irretrievably been given. But these repeated disappointments in finding the parents she longed to fold to her bosom postponing this little gratification (the telling him she would repurchase the old family chair ) now quite overcame the fortitude she had till now exhibited. She sate down sick at heart--turned with aversion from the refreshment her fatigue required and wept bitterly. Superstition and two mysterious incidents even while she remained on the hill if indeed they were more than superstition's coinage helped to depress her. Just before she reached this forlorn house with the haggard aged horrid-looking idiot prowling round it with his rags fluttering in the wind she thought that the figure of the hated steward and spy moved along a wild path on the opposite side of that great mountain cleft traversed by a noisy torrent almost the depth of the whole hill near the top of which this cottage was perched. His being there alone was nothing marvellous but an ominous horror seemed in her mind to hover round that man who (as if conscious of some deadly evil which was through him to overwhelm her some time) studiously avoided direct intercourse with his victim. The second incident which might have sprung from the dwelling of her mind's eye on the absent features of him who it seemed refused to meet her again was an apparition or what she deemed such of her dear Night-harper! One of those dense flying clouds so common even at moderate elevations when the mists roll down the hills suddenly enveloping the lone lofty spot left but a little area of a few yards for vision a dungeon walled with fog which kept circulating furiously on the blast like a great smoke in continuous whirls. And through some momentary fissure in this white wall she imagined the pallid and almost ghastly visage of her forsaken lover appeared intensely looking toward her as she stood on the rude threshold looking out on the temporary storm that had shut her up. Her vague apprehension of some evil arising to David her mind's perpetual object from the man she believed herself to have espied just before was rarely absent from her thought. Combining the two appearances she became more and more fancy-fraught thus confined as it were in an elemental solitude of the mountain and the cloud where for the present we leave her to narrate the fate of her father. The novel calamity of arrest for debt was borne by the respectable old man John Bevan with a patience and dignity that no study of philosophy could have inspired. Though somewhat inactive he felt that in the honest discharge of his duty he stood acquitted in the sight of God though not in the eye of the law of all fault at least of any one meriting the terrible punishment of imprisonment. It was near nightfall when two emissaries of the law appeared announcing that horses waited at the neighbouring inn to convey him to jail with the first light of morning. The poor old dame his wife was not to be pacified by the efforts of the two bailiffs who executed their commission with the utmost gentleness by order as it appeared of the Nabob himself notwithstanding that the old man's stern self-denying rejection of his overture for his daughter's hand had determined him to let his agent proceed to extremities. Soothing as well as he could both her grief and her rage--for the latter rose unreflectingly against the mere agents in this grievous infliction--old Bevan smoked his pipe as usual to the end and then requested permission to take a little walk only to the church which stood a short way from the solitary house where they surprised him. ""You see I cannot run for I can hardly walk with these rheumatics my friend "" he observed; ""but I have a fancy to visit the churchyard to-night as it will be moonlight and we shall be pretty busy in the morning. My dame is gone to bed with the good woman of this cottage as I begged her to go; so pray let us walk--you shall see me all the while by the moon without coming into the churchyard with me."" Arrived at the low stone stile he crossed it by the help of the man and proceeded alone to the tomb of his old master's grave surrounded by a rail with a yew growing inside marking the site of the ancient family vault. The moon now shining clearly the bailiff saw him kneel and uncover his head which shone in its light in the distance resembling a scull bleached by the wind. He remained a long time in this position and his murmuring voice was partly audible to the man. At last he returned thanking him for his patience and shaking him very cordially by the hand. So touched was even this rugged lower limb of the law by this proof of his affectionate remembrance of his old patron that he behaved throughout with great courtesy and even respect. Bevan and his departed master had lived as has been said almost on the footing of cronies a certain phlegmatic ease of nature being the characteristic of both. So proud indeed was Bevan of his brotherlike intercourse with the great man that he made himself for years almost a personal _fac-simile_ of him even to the cut and colour of his coat wig everything; and being a fine specimen of a ""noble peasant "" externally as well as internally his assumption of the _squire_ in costume well became his tall figure mild countenance (streaked with the lingering pink of his youthful bloom ) and gentle demeanour. A rigid observer might have thought that to this indulgent but indolent master the poor steward owed his ruin; his habits of ""forgiving"" his tenants their rent debts so often having extended themselves to the former further increased by the strange inattention of the new landlord. The gratitude of Bevan was however deserved--for never was a kinder master. ""It is a thing not to be thought "" he said while returning with the man ""that I shall ever come back here to the old church again alive or dead; seeing that I am too poor for any one to bring my old bones all the way from Cardigan to put them in the same ground with _his_ as I did dream of in my better days and too old for a man used to free air and the hill-sides all his life to live long in a prison or indeed out of one--but we must all die. I assure you my honest man and kind you have done me good in mind and body by letting me take leave of his honour! Well I may call him so now he is in heaven whom I did honour when here from my very heart of hearts; kind he was to me--a second father to my child--God bless him! Sure I am if he were still among us how his good heart would melt how it would _bleed_ for us--for _her_--I _know_ it would."" Here the old man sobbed and kept silence a space then proceeded--""You see how weak old age and over-love of this world make a man sir. Yet I am content. Next to God I owe to him whose dear corpse I have just now been so near a long and happy life --thanks thanks thanks! To both up yonder I do here render them from my inmost soul;"" and he bared his head again looking up to the placid moon with a visage of kindred placidity and an eye of blue lustre so brightened by his emotion as almost to be likened to the heaven in which that moon shone. ""Why should I repine or fear the walls of a prison as my passage to that wide glorious world without wall or bound or end where I hope to live free and for ever in the sight of my Redeemer and perhaps of him who was Hugh Fitzarthur Esq. of Tallylynn hall when here? I hope I am not irreverent but in truth friend I fear I have almost as vehemently longed for the presence of him once more as for that more awful presence: heaven pardon me if it was wicked! So welcome prison welcome death! Half a hundred and nineteen years spent pleasantly on these green hills free and fresh and hale I can surely afford a few weeks or months to a closer place were it but as in a school for my poor earthly and ignorant soul to purify itself to prepare itself for that glorious place to learn to die."" Next morning the old couple dame Bevan being mounted on a pillion behind him proceeded on their melancholy journey. They reached the house by the park where it was proposed that an interview should take place between the old man and the landlord himself with some view to arrangement prior to his imprisonment. While they there expect the long delayed comfort of Winifred's embrace let us return to that good daughter now more eager to fly to that dreaded suitor to reverse her father's resolve to offer herself a victim than ever she had been to reach that dearer one who had now cruelly disappointed her in the hope of one more meeting--that perhaps the last she could have innocently allowed! The dreaded day of trial arrived. But we must revert to her sad meditations and wild irresolute thoughts while shut up by the storm-cloud and alone in the mountain house. Doating passion pain of heart terrible suggestions of despair kept altering her countenance as she leaned against the mouldering door-post imprisoned by the black mists that prevented her safely leaving the hovel. A sudden dire revolution in her religious impressions was wrought or rather completed in that dismal scene. David had more than once wrung her very soul by dark hints of self-destruction in the event of her ever forsaking him. He had thus been led into discussions on suicide and had even argued for the moral right of man to end his own being under circumstances. Persuasion hangs on the lips of those we love. What she would have rejected as impious from some immoral man in dispute sank deep into her soul emanating from a heart she loved through lips that to her seemed formed for eloquence as much as love to make its throne. Wild and tragical modes of reconciling her two furious fighting irreconcilable wishes--that of saving her father--that of blessing her lover--began to take terrible form and reality in her mind as the wind howled the ruinous house shook and its timbers groaned and the blackness of the sky as the storm increased deepened the lurid hue of the foul and turbulent fog (for such the mountain cloud thus in contact with her eyes appeared.) The world as it were already left behind or rather below the elements alone warring round her her high-wrought imagination began to regard life and death and the world itself as things no longer appertaining to her except as a passive instrument toward one great object the preservation of her father's freedom and if it _were_ possible also of her own inviolate person--that person which she had indeed most solemnly vowed to one alone David the Telynwr. Not _to_ him--for her innate delicacy rendered such vows repugnant to her; but alone by the moon or stars by the cataract and in the lonely lanes and woods she had vowed herself to one alone--had dedicated her virgin beauty (in the spirit of those romances she had fatally devoured) to her ""night-harper"" with as true devotion as ever did white vestal at the end of her noviciate devote herself alive and dead to the one God. Instilled by the touching tone the wild pathos the swimming eye of a wayward passionate character weak yet bold of whom she knew almost nothing this devoted girl yielded up her better reason to his rash innovations in morals his examples of suicidal heroes and even _moralists_ among the ancients; and in the wild height alone among the clouds she almost wrought up her fond agonizing soul to a terrible part--the accomplishing her father's preservation _on her wedding-day_ through the influence she might naturally expect to obtain in such a season and that done make her peace with God; and before night--black pools--rock precipices fearful as Leucadia's--mortal plants and even the horrid knife and halter--floated before her mind's eye without her trembling even like terrible yet kind ministrants proffering escape--escape from legalised violation!--escape from _perjury_ to her the self-doomed Iphigenia! For her morbid fancy whispered to by her intense tenderness conjured up that dilemma between faith broken to her lover and abandonment of a dear parent to his fate. Despair suggested that self-destruction itself might seem venial even before God when rushed upon as the only alternative to perjury--to prostitution; for such her romantic purity taught her to consider submission to the embrace of any living man except her heart's own--her affianced--""her beautiful!""--her lost! Such were the feelings under whose influence our humble heroine pursued her mountain journey of a few miles to the place of meeting with her parents; and it was probably beneath the roof of the lone cottage in the cloud that under the same morbid mood of mind she penned a letter to Mr Fitzarthur which was afterwards discovered dated at top ""My Wedding Day "" containing a passionate appeal on behalf of her father for a bond of legal indemnification to be executed before night as a present which she had set her heart on giving her father as a bridal one _that very day_. Arrived at the house fitted up for the hated supplanter of her father ""Lewis the Spy "" her heart beat so violently before she could firm her nerves to ring the bell that she stood leaning some time against the wall. This old house was now almost rebuilt and not without regard to rural beauty in harmony with the fine scenery of an antique park with its mossy ivied remains of walls and venerable trees overshadowing it and was called ""The Little Hall of the Park."" She sighed deeply as she glanced at its comfortable aspect remembering how long it had formed the secret object of her mother's little ambition (for the dame had a touch of pride in her composition beyond her ever-contented mate) to occupy that _little_ hall. It seemed so appropriate that the lesser squire--the _great_ squire's friend--should also have _his_ ""hall "" though a little one! Indeed it had been in incipient repair for him that the old men might spend their winter evenings together at the real hall divided but by a short path across an angle of the park without a dreary walk for Bevan impending over the end of their carouse with never-wearied reminiscences of their boyhood--when sudden death stopped all proceedings and left poor Bevan alone in the world as it seemed to him--""in simplicity a child "" and as imbecile in conflict with it as any child. She nerved her mind and hand by an effort and rang the bell--(the _bell_ there a modern innovation.) No sound but its own distant deadened one was heard within; but some dog in the rear barked and then howled as if alarmed at the sudden breach of long prevailing silence. Again she rang--again the troubled growl and bark suppressed by fear of the only living thing as it seemed within hearing alone responded. The situation was very solitary the only adjacent house the hall being yet tenantless and night was gathering fast; for that storm which had first detained her in the lofty region (where a darker storm had gathered round her mind and soul ) had desolated the lower country all day flooded the brooks and delayed her on the road during several hours. She fancied a sort of suppressed commotion within as of whisperings and stealthy steps and one voice she clearly overheard but it was not her father's. Whether it was that of Lewis (who however was not yet residing there) she knew not never having heard it in her life; he avoiding as was stated direct intercourse with her--disappearing ""like a guilty thing"" whenever her figure appeared in distant approach. What should this mean? Wild fears even superstitious ones of some indefinite ill or horror impending began to shake her forced fortitude as she stood half-fearing to ring again--again to hear the melancholy voice of the dog as of one lost--to wait--listen--and dream of--David--death--murder--or even worse till even the giant horror--the jail!--and the white-headed prisoner shran

before the present ominous mystery--ominous of she _knew_ not what therefore involving every thing dreadful. Meanwhile the swinging of the large oak branches in the close of a squally day their groaning and the vast glooms that their foliage shed all below the twilight rapidly deepening into confirmed night all tended to the inspiration of a wild unearthly melancholy. Suddenly the door was opened while she hesitated to ring again and by a _black_ man! Persons of colour are rarely seen inland in Wales and Winifred had never visited a seaport of any consequence; so that even this was almost a shock. She quickly however guessed that this was a servant of the ""Nabob "" brought over with him. The man learning her name bade her enter adding that she would see her father _soon_ but that ""massa"" was within settling some affairs with Mr Lewis and begged to see her. A sort of grim grin though joined to a deference that seemed to her troubled and broken spirit and sunken heart a cruel mockery relaxed the man's features and half shocked half irritated her. Her spirits however rose with the occasion demanding all her fortitude and all her tact; for now she was to make that impression on this terrible suitor's fancy through which alone she could work out her father's salvation. In a few minutes more she stood in the same apartment with her David's detested rival! The embers of a large fire decayed cast red twilight which made it appear already dark without; and there he stood at the long room's extreme end between her and the hearth. To Winifred the personal attributes of the man whom in her awful resolve she regarded merely as the instrument of that filial good work were utterly indifferent; yet she stopped--she shuddered--and trembled all over as she caught the mere outline of his figure by the fire-light. There he was! to her idea the embodied evil genius of her family! the sullen apostate from the finer part of love--the victim of satiety (as rumour said ) the selfish contemner of women's better feelings!--indifferent to all but person in his election of a wife; willing to unite himself with one whose heart and mind were stranger to him on bare report of her health and beauty and some slight recollections of her childhood! Seeing her stop and even totter he advanced a few steps; but she with the instinctive recoil and antipathy of some feeble creature from its natural enemy retreated at his first movement--and shocked by this betrayed repugnance he again stood irresolute. Then rushed back upon her heart with all the horror of novelty the renunciation of poor David now it was on the point of being sealed for ever. Now father mother all beside was forgotten--the ghastliness of a terrible struggle within the stern horror of confirmed despair began to disguise her beauty as with a death-pale mask--the features grew rigid her heart beat audibly her ears rang and tingled and sight grew dim. She was fainting falling. Mr Fitzarthur sprang to support her but putting his arms too boldly round her waist that detested freedom at once startled her into temporary self-possession back into life. She gasped struggled against him as if she had rather have fallen than have been supported by _him_; and turned to him that white face white even to the lips imploringly where was still depicted her unconquerable aversion. Some astonishment seemed to rivet that look upon his face but half-visible by the dusky light--astonishment no longer painful when the Nabob emboldened renewed his now permitted clasp and only uttering ""My _dear_! don't you know me?"" in the tenderest tone to which ever manly voice was modulated increased his grasp to a passionate embrace advanced his face--his mouth to hers advanced and pressed unresisted--and before her bewildered eyes closed in that fainting fit which had been but suspended stood revealed to them (as proved by one delighted smile flashed out of all the settled gloom of that countenance ) as her heart's own David--no longer the night--wandering poor _Telynwr_ but David Fitzarthur of Talylynn Esq. The story of the eccentric East Indian may be shortly told. From childhood he was the victim of excessive morbid sensibility and constitutional melancholy. The jovial habits of his good-natured Welsh uncle were repugnant to his nature; and after becoming an orphan the solitary boy had no human object on which the deep capacity for tenderness of his _occult_ nature could be exerted. Thus forced by his fate into solitariness of habits and secreted emotions he was deemed unsocial and reproached for what he felt was his misfortune--the being wholly misunderstood by those his early lot was cast among. Hence his perverted ardour of affection was misplaced on the lower living world--dog cat or owl whatever chance made his companions. Returning to India where he had known two parents to meet no longer the tenderness of even one the melancholy boy-exile (for Wales he ever regarded as his country) increased in morbid estrangement from mankind as he increased in years; till his maturity nearly realized the misanthropic unsocial character for which his youth had been unjustly reproached. Though in the high road to a splendid fortune he loathed East Indian society far beyond all former loathing of fox-hunters and topers in Wales whose green mountains now became (conformably to the nature ""_semper varium et mutabile_ "" of the melancholic) the very idols of his romantic regrets and fondest memory. In India were neither green fields nor green hearts. External nature and human nature appeared equally to languish under that enfeebling hot death in the atmosphere which seemed to wither female beauty in the moment that it ripened. The pallidness of the European beauties sickly as the clime disgusted him--their venality still more. Female fortune-hunters were far more intolerable to his delicacy than the coarsest hunter of vermin--fox or hare--ever had been at his uncle's hall whom he began to esteem and sincerely mourned--when death had removed all of him from his memory but his kindness his desire to amuse him the ""sulky boy "" his substantial goodness and warm-heartedness. Knowing that every female in his circle was well informed of his ample fortune still accumulating he fancied art deceit coquetry in every smile and glance (for suspicion of human hearts and motives ever besets the melancholic character;) and thus it was natural that he should sometimes sigh over the idea of some fresh mountain beauty not trained by parents in the art and to the task of husband-hunting. Even the soft-faced child just growing into woman who had held her pinafore for fruit in the orchard whose half-fallen apple-tree was his almost constant seat floated across his vacant yet restless mind. In truth when she surprised him in his part of sexton to his owl she had evinced rather more sympathy than she had admitted to his other self David the wood-wanderer; and though she had indeed laughed it was with tears in her eyes elicited by one she detected in the shy averted orbs of his. Yet was the sweetness of the little Welsh girl left behind for a long time even when manhood failed to banish its idea no more than his statue to Pygmalion or his watery image to Narcissus. But having no female society save those marketable forms that he distrusted and despised; yet pining in his romantic refinement for _pure_ passion--for reciprocal passion--panting to be loved _for himself alone_ he kept imagining her developed graces exaggerating the conceit of some childish tenderness toward himself his position and his nervous infirmity keeping a solitude of soul and heart ever round him into which no female form had free and constant admission but that aërial one the little Winifred of far far off green Wales! The promise of pure beauty which her childhood gave his _dream_ fulfilled; and his imagination seized and cherished the beautiful cloud painted by fancy till it became the goddess of his idolatry though conscious of the self-delusion and retained with that tenacity conceivable perhaps to the morbidly sensitive alone. The habit of yielding to the importunity of one idea strengthens itself; every recurrence of it produces quicker sensibility to the next; deeper and deeper impression follows till one form of mania supervenes--that which consists in the undue mastery and eternal presence of one idea. Childish and _fugitive_ as it _seemed_ a passion had actually commenced in his _boy's_ heart which clung to that of the man though under the same light fragile and dreamlike form. Poetry might liken it to the mere frothy foam of the infant cataract when it gushes out of the breast of the mountain to the rising sun which arrested by an intense frost ere it can fall in the very act of evanishing there hangs still hangs the mere air-bubbles congealed into crystal vesicles defying all the force of the mounted sun to dissipate their delicate white beauty evanescent as it _looks_. The chill and the impenetrability of heart kept by circumstances within him such frost might typify--that pure fragile-seeming yet durable passion that snow-foam of the waterfall. True it was that this fantastic fancy had the power to draw him to his Welsh patrimony earlier than worldly ambition would have warranted. But his after conduct--his actual overtures were not so wildly romantic as might appear from the foregoing narrative; but of this in the sequel. And where was her father--mother? Why had the law been allowed by this eccentric lover to violate the humble sanctuary of home at the desolate Llaneol? What was become of the wicker chair? Was the hated Lewis to be maintained in his usurpation of the chair of Bevan's _ancestral_ post of steward (for his father had been steward to the father of the squire deceased?) Above all was Dame Bevan to see that home of her heart's hope the permanent home of the harsh supplanter of her husband? Passing over the affecting scene of poor Winifred's fainting which drew round her father and mother and others from below proceed we to answer those queries and conclude our tale. When perfectly restored Winifred leaning on the arm of her future husband accompanied her parents down into the comfortable kitchen where by a huge fire stood the veritable wicker chair familiar to her eyes from infancy rickety as ever but surviving its desecration by the boys at the auction; and looking round she saw standing the whole solid old oaken furniture coffers dressers &c. even to the same bright brazen skillets pewter dishes and sundries--the pride of Mistress Bevan's heart the splendour of better days. Mr Fitzarthur led the old man by the hand to his own chair his wife to another; and then having seated himself by their daughter began over the fumes of tea and coffee (the honours of which pleasant meal so needful after her agitation he solicited Winifred to perform ) to narrate various matters which we must condense into a nutshell. To their surprise and amusement they now learned that the hated ""spy"" who had prowled round their folds and fields so long would resign to Mistress Bevan the house in which they sat and that atonement made vanish into thin air--_a vox et preterea nihil!_ being in reality the Proteus-like mysterious handsome though sallow stranger and no stranger sitting among them! We said that Mr Fitzarthur's conduct in espousing this long-unseen mistress of his fancy was not quite so extraordinary and wild as it appeared. For coming back grown into maturity and altered by climate in complexion and all characteristics he found himself quite unrecognised and conceived the idea of at once reconnoitring his dilapidated estate and watching the conduct of his long-remembered Winifred. _Two_ disguises seemed necessary toward these two purposes and he adopted the two we have seen one on the ""hither side Tivy "" the other on the ""far side Tivy "" which his coracle allowed him to cross at pleasure. His close watch of the blameless girl's whole life confirmed the warm and romantic wishes of his soul which her beauty inspired--that beauty as fully confirming the vision of his love-dream when far and long away. It was during the alarm of her prolonged fainting produced by the surprise of this discovery and the previous agitations (whereby perhaps the prudence rather than the affection of the eccentric lover was impeached ) that her mother searching her pocket for a bottle of volatile salts turned forth the letter lately referred to melancholy evidence of the desperate extremity to which two powerful antagonist passions--love and filial love--had driven a mind not unfortified by religion but beleaguered by despair and all its powers till resolution failed and peril impended over an otherwise almost spotless soul. As the old man's affections were not wholly weaned from Llaneol ruinous as it was his son-in-law had it restored as a temporary summer residence for the old people as well as occasionally for himself and his beloved bride. It hardly needs to be told that the arrest and its executors were but parts of the delusion the amount of real infliction being no more than a ride in a fine morning of some miles. Whether the whole as involving some little added trouble of mind to that whose whole weight he was going so soon to remove was too severe a penance for the steward's neglect may be variously judged by various readers. In the halcyon days that followed Winifred never forgot the place on the Tivy bank where she slept and dropped her book; nor did the happy husband melancholic no more forsake his coracle or his harp utterly but would often serenade his lady-love (albeit his wedded love also) on some golden evening as she sat among the cowslips and harebells that enamelled with floral blue and gold the greensward bank of the Tivy under the fine sycamore tree--the ""trysting-place"" of their romantic assignations. FOOTNOTES: [20] Harper. [21] _St Elian._--A saint of Wales. There is a well bearing his name; one of the many of the holy wells or _Ffynnonan_ in Wales. A man whom Mr Pennant had affronted threatened him with this terrible vengeance. Pins or other little offerings are thrown in and the curses uttered over them. [22] In the ""History of the Gwyder Family "" it is stated that some members of a leading family in the reign of Henry VII. being denounced as ""Llawrnds "" murderers (from _Llawrnd_ red or bloody hand ) and obliged to fly the country returned at last and lived long disguised in the woods and caves being dressed all in green; so that ""when they were espied by the country people all took them for the ""_Tylwyth Têg_ the fair family "" and straight ran away. NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. No. VI. SUPPLEMENT TO DRYDEN ON CHAUCER. From the grand achievements of Glorious John one experiences a queer revulsion of the currency in the veins in passing to the small doings of Messrs Betterton Ogle and Co. in 1737 and 1741; and again to the still smaller of Mr Lipscomb in 1795 in the way of modernizations of Chaucer. Who was Mr Betterton nobody we presume now knows; assuredly he was not Pope though there is something silly to that effect in Joseph Warton which is repeated by Malone. ""Mr Harte assured me "" saith Dr Joseph ""that he was convinced by some circumstances which Fenton had communicated to him that Pope wrote the characters that make the introduction (the Prologue) to the Canterbury Tales published under the name of Betterton."" Betterton is bitter bad; Ogle ""_wersh_ as cauld parritch without sawte!"" Lipscomb is a jewel. In a postscript to his preface he says ""I have barely time here the tales being already almost all printed off to apologize to the reader for having inserted my own translation of The Nun's Priest's Tale instead of that of Dryden; but the fact is _I did not know that Dryden's version existed_; for having undertaken to complete those of the Canterbury Tales which were wanting in Ogle's collection and the tale in question _not being in that collection_ I proceeded to supply it having never till very lately strange as it may seem _seen the volume of Dryden's Fables in which it may be found_!!"" It is diverting to hear the worthy who in 1795 had never seen Dryden's Fables offering to the public the first completed collection of the Canterbury Tales in a modern version ""under the reasonable confidence that the improved taste in poetry and the extended cultivation of that in common with all the other elegant arts which so strongly characterizes the present day will make the lovers of verse look up to the old bard the father of English poetry with a veneration proportioned to the improvements they have made in it."" It grieves him to think that the language in which Chaucer wrote ""has decayed from under him."" That reason alone he says can justify the attempt of exhibiting him in a modern dress; and he tells us that so faithfully has he adhered to the great original that they who have not given their time to the study of the old language ""must either find a true likeness of Chaucer exhibited in this version or they will find it nowhere else."" With great solemnity he says ""Thence I have imposed it on myself as a duty somewhat sacred to deviate from my original as little as possible in the sentiment and have often in the language adopted his own expressions the simplicity and effect of which have always forcibly struck me _wherever the terms he uses (and that happens not unfrequently) are intelligible to modern ears_."" Yes--Gulielme Lipscomb thou wert indeed a jewel. Happy would he have been to accompany his version of Chaucer with notes. ""But though the version itself has been an agreeable and easy rural occupation yet in a remote village near 250 miles from London the very books _trifling as they may seem_ to which it would be necessary to refer _to illustrate the manners of the 14th century_ were not to be procured; and parochial and other engagements would not admit of absence sufficient to consult them where they are to be found; it is not therefore for want of deference to the opinions of those who have recommended a body of notes that they do not accompany these Tales."" Yes--Gulielme thou wert a jewel. It is however but too manifest from his alleged versions that not only did Mr Lipscomb of necessity eschew the perusal of ""the books trifling as they may seem to which it would be necessary to refer to illustrate the manners of the 14th century "" but that he continued to his dying day almost as ignorant of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as of Dryden's Fables. In his preface he tells one very remarkable falsehood. ""The Life of Chaucer and the Introductory Discourse to the Canterbury Tales are taken from the valuable edition of his original works published by Mr Tyrwhitt."" The Introductory Discourse is so taken; but it is plain that poor dear fibbing Willy Lipscomb had not looked into it for it contradicts throughout all the statements in the life of Chaucer which is not from Tyrwhitt but clumsily cribbed piecemeal by Willy himself from that rambling and inaccurate one by a Mr Thomas in Urry's edition. Lipscomb is lying on our table and we had intended to quote a few specimens of him and his predecessor Ogle; but another volume that had fallen aside a year or two ago has of itself mysteriously reappeared--and a few words of it in preference to other ""haverers."" Mr Horne the author of ""The False Medium "" ""Orion "" the ""Spirit of the Age "" and some other clever brochures in prose and in verse in the laboured rather than elaborate introduction to ""The Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer modernized "" (1841 ) by Leigh Hunt Wordsworth Robert Bell Thomas Powell Elizabeth Barrett and Zachariah Azed gives us some threescore pages on Chaucer's versification; but though they have an imposing air at first sight on inspection they prove stark-naught. He seems to have a just enough general notion of the principle of the verse in the Canterbury Tales; but with the many ways of its working--the how the why and the wherefore--he is wholly unacquainted though he dogmatizes like a doctor. He soon makes his escape from the real difficulties with which the subject is beset and mouths away at immense length and width about what he calls ""the _secret_ of Chaucer's rhythm in his heroic verse which has been the baffling subject of so much discussion among scholars a trifling increase in the syllables occasionally introduced for variety and founded upon the same laws of contraction by apostrophe syncope &c. as those followed by all modern poets; but employed in a more free and varied manner all the words being fully written out the vowels sounded and not subjected to the disruption of inverted commas as used in after times."" This ""secret"" was patent to all the world before Mr Horne took pen in hand and his eternal blazon of it is too much now for ears of flesh and blood. The modernized versions however are respectably executed--Leigh Hunt's admirably; and we hope for another volume. But Mr Horne himself must be more careful in his future modernizations. The very opening of the Prologue is not happy. In Chaucer it runs thus:-- ""Whannè that April with his shourès sote The droughte of March hath perced to the rote And bathed every veine in swiche licour Of whiche vertue engendered is the flour; When Zephyrus eke with his sotè brethe Enspired hath in every holt and hethe The tendre croppès and the yongè sonne Hath in the Ram his halfè cours yronne And smalè foulès maken melodie That slepen allè night with open eye So priketh hem nature in hire corages; Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages And palmeres for to seken strangè strondes To servè halwes couthe in sondry londes "" &c. Thus modernized by Mr Home:-- ""When that sweet April showers with downward shoot The drought of March have pierc'd unto the root And bathed every vein with liquid power Whose virtue rare engendereth the flower; When Zephyrus also with his fragrant breath Inspirèd hath in every grove and heath The tender shoots of green and the young sun Hath in the Ram one half his journey run And small birds in the trees make melody That sleep and dream all night with open eye; So nature stirs all energies and ages That folk are bent to go on pilgrimages "" &c. Look back to Chaucer's own lines and you will see that Mr Horne's variations are all for the worse. How flat and tame ""sweet April showers "" in comparison with ""April with his shourès sote."" In Chaucer the month comes boldly on in his own person--in Mr Horne he is diluted into his own showers. 'Tis ominous thus to stumble on the threshold. ""Downward shoot"" is very bad indeed in itself and all unlike the natural strength of Chaucer. ""Liquid power"" is even worse and more unlike; and most tautological the ""virtue of power."" In Chaucer the virtue is in the ""licour."" ""Rare"" is poorly dropped in to fill up. Chaucer purposely uses ""sotè"" twice--and the repetition tells. Mr Horne must needs change it into ""fragrant."" ""In the trees"" is not in Chaucer--for he knew that ""smalè foulès"" shelter in the ""hethe"" as well as in the ""holt""--among broom and bracken and heath and rushes. Chaucer does not _say_ as Mr Horne does that the birds _dream_--he leaves you to think for yourself whether they do so or not while sleeping with open eye all night. Such conjectural emendations are injurious to Chaucer. We presume Mr Horne believes he has authority for applying ""so pricketh hem nature in hire corages"" to the folks that ""longen to go on pilgrimages""--and not to the ""smalè foulès."" Or is it intended for a happy innovation? To us it seems an unhappy blunder--taking away a fine touch of nature from Chaucer and hardening it into horn; while ""all energies and ages"" is indeed a free and affected version of ""corages."" ""For to wander thro' "" is a mistranslation of ""to seken;"" and to ""sing the holy mass "" is not the meaning of to ""servè halwes couthe "" _i.e._ to worship saints known &c. Turning over a couple of leaves we behold a modernization of the antique with a vengeance-- ""His son a young squire with him there I _saw_ A lover and a lusty bache_lor_! (aw) (ah!) With locks crisp curl'd as they'd been laid in press Of twenty year of age he was I guess."" Chaucer never once in all his writings thus rhymes off two consecutive couplets in one sentence so slovenly as with ""I saw "" and ""I guess."" But Mr Horne is so enamoured ""with the old familiar faces"" of pet cockneyisms that he must have his will of them. Of the same squire Chaucer says-- ""Of his stature he was of _even length_;"" and Mr Horne translates the words into-- ""He was in stature of the common length "" They mean ""well proportioned."" Of this young squire Chaucer saith-- ""So hote he loved that by nightertale He slep no more than doth the nightingale."" We all know how the nightingale employs the night--and here it is implied that so did the lover. Mr Horne spoils all by an affected prettiness suggested by a misapplied passage in Milton. ""His amorous ditties nightly fill'd the vale; He slept no more than doth the nightingale."" Chaucer says of the Prioresse-- ""Full well she sang the servicè divine Entunèd in hire nose ful swetèly."" Mr Horne must needs say-- ""Entuned in her nose with _accent_ sweet."" The accent to our ears is lost in the pious snivel--pardon the somewhat unclerical word. Chaucer says of her--- ""Ful semèly after hire meat she raught "" which Mr Horne improves into--- ""And for her meat Full seemly bent she forward on her seat."" Chaucer says-- ""_And peined hire_ to contrefeten chere Of court and been astatelich of manere And to be holden digne of reverence."" That is she took pains to imitate the manners of the Court &c.; whereas Mr Horne with inconceivable ignorance of the meaning of words that occur in Chaucer a hundred times writes ""_it gave her pain_ to counterfeit the ways of Court "" thereby reversing the whole picture. ""And French she spake full fayre and fetisly "" he translates ""full properly _and neat_!"" Dryden rightly calls her ""the mincing Prioress;"" Mr Horne wrongly says ""she was evidently one of the most high-bred and refined ladies of her time."" Chaucer says of that ""manly man "" the Monk-- ""Ne that a monk when he is rekkeless Is like to a fish that is waterless; This is to say a monk out of his cloistre. This ilkè text held he not worth an oistre."" Mr Horne here modernizeth thus-- ""Or that a monk beyond his bricks and _mortar_ Is like a fish without a drop of _water_ That is to say a monk out of his cloister."" There can be no mortar without water but the words do not rhyme except to Cockney ears though the blame lies at the door of the mouth. ""Bricks and mortar"" is an odd and somewhat vulgar version of ""rekkeless;"" and to say that a monk ""beyond his bricks and mortar"" is a monk ""out of his cloister "" is not in the manner of Chaucer or of any body else. Chaucer says slyly of the Frere that ""He hadde ymade ful mony a mariage Of yongè women at his owen coste;"" and Mister Horne brazen-facedly ""Full many a marriage had he brought to bear For women young and _paid the cost with sport_."" O fie Mister Horne! To hide our blushes will no maiden for a moment lend us her fan? We cover our face with our hands.--Of this same Frere Mr Horne in his introduction when exposing the faults of another translator says that ""Chaucer shows us the quaint begging rogue playing his harp among a crowd of admiring auditors and _turning up his eyes_ with an attempted expression of religious enthusiasm;"" but Chaucer does no such thing nor was the Frere given to any such practice. Of the Clerk of Oxenford Chaucer says he ""loked holwe and thereto soberly."" Mr Horne needlessly adds ""ill-fed."" Chaucer says-- ""Ful threadbare was his overest courtepy."" Mr Horne modernizes it into-- ""His uppermost short cloak _was a bare thread_."" Why exaggerate so? Chaucer says-- ""But all that he might of _his frendes hente_ On bokès and on lerning he it spente."" Mr Horne says-- ""But every farthing that his friends e'er _lent_."" They did not _lend_ they gave outright to the poor scholar. The Reve's Prologue opens thus in Chaucer-- ""Whan folk han laughed at this nicè cas Of Absalom and _hendy_ Nicholas."" Mr Horne says-- ""Of Absalom and _credulous_ Nicholas!"" He manifestly mistakes the sly scholar for the credulous carpenter whom on the tenderest point he outwitted! To those who know the nature of the story the blunder is extreme. What is to be thought of such rhymes as these? ""And for to drink strong wine as red as _blood_ Then would he jest and shout as he were _mad_."" ""Toward the mill the bay nag in his _hand_ The miller sitting by the fire they _found_."" ""And on she went till she the cradle _found_ While through the dark still groping with her _hand_."" These to our ears are not happy modernizations of Chaucer. Here come a few more Cockneyisms. ""Alas! our warden's palfrey it is _gone_. Allen at once forgot both meal and _corn_."" ""Allen stole back and thought ere that it _dawn_ I will creep in by John that lieth for_lorn_."" ""For from the town Arviragus was _gone_ But to herself she spoke thus all _forlorn_."" ""Aurelius thinking of his substance _gone_ Curseth the time that ever he was _born_."" ""An arm-brace wore he that was rich and _broad_ And by his side a buckler and a _sword_."" ""Now grant my ship that some smooth haven _win her_; I follow Statius first and then _Corinna_."" Alas! this worst of all is Elizabeth Barrett's! ""Well of English _undefiled_!"" In Chaucer we have-- ""A SERGEANT OF THE LAWÈ ware and wise That often hadde yben _at the Parvis_."" Mr Horne gives us-- ""A Sergeant of the Law wise wary _arch_! _Who oft had gossip'd long in the church porch._"" The word ""arch"" is here interpolated to give some colour to the charge of ""gossiping "" absurdly asserted of the learned Sergeant. The Parvis was the place of conference where suitors met with their counsel and legal advisers; and Chaucer merely intimates thereby the extent of the Sergeant's practice. In Chaucer we have-- ""In termès hadde he cas and domès alle That fro the time of _King Will._ weren falle."" Who does not see the propriety of the customary contraction _King Will._? Mr Horne does not; and substitutes ""since King William's reign."" Of the Frankelein Chaucer says he was ""An housholder and that a gret was he;"" the context plainly showing the meaning to be ""hospitable on a great scale."" Mr Horne ignorantly translates the words ""A householder of great extent was he."" In Chaucer we have-- ""His table dormant in his halle alway Stood ready covered all the longè day."" The meaning of that is that any person or party might sit down at any hour of the day and help himself to something comfortable as indeed is the case now in all country houses worth Visiting--such as Buchanan Lodge. Mr Horne stupidly exaggerates thus-- ""His table with repletion heavy lay Amidst his hall throughout the feast-long day."" In the prologue to the Reve's Tale the Reve nettled by the miller who had been satirical on his trade says he will ""_somdel set his howve_ For leful is with force force off to showve."" ""Howve"" is cap--and in the Miller's Prologue we had been told ""How that a clerk had set the wrightès cappe;"" that is ""made a fool"" of him--nay a cuckold. Mr. Horne ""Though my reply _should somewhat fret his nose_."" In Chaucer the Reve's tale begins with ""At Trumpington not far from Cantebrigge There goeth a brook and over that a brigge."" Mr Horne saith somewhat wilfully. ""At Trumpington near Cambridge _if you look_ There goeth a bridge and under that a brook."" Two Cantabs ask leave of their Warden ""To geve hem leve _but a litel stound_ To gon to mill and sen hire corn yground."" _i.e._ ""to give them leave for a short time."" Mr Horne translates it ""for a merry round."" In the course of the tale the miller's wife ""Came leping inward at a renne."" _i.e._ ""Came leaping into the room at a run."" Mr Horne translates it-- ""The miller's wife came _laughing inwardly_!"" Chaucer says-- ""This miller hath so _wisly_ bibbed ale."" And Mr Horne with incredible ignorance of the meaning of that word says-- ""The miller hath so _wisely_ bobbed of ale."" So wisely that he was ""for-drunken""--and ""as a horse he snorteth in his sleep."" In Chaucer the description of the miller's daughter ends with this line-- ""But right faire was _hire here_ I will not lie "" _i.e._ her hair. Mr Horne translates it ""was _she here_."" But there is no end to such blunders. In Chaucer as in all our old poets of every degree there occur

ver and over again such forms of natural expression as the following --and when they do occur let us have them; but what a feeble modernizer must he be who keeps adding to the number till he gives his readers the ear-ache. Not one of the following is in the original:-- ""At Algeziras in Granada he "" ""At many a noble fight of ships was he."" ""For certainly a prelate fair was he."" ""In songs and tales the prize o'er all bore he."" ""And a poor parson of a town was he."" ""Such had he often proved and loath was he."" ""In youth a good trade practised well had he."" ""Lordship and servitude at once hath he."" ""And die he must as echo did said he."" ""Madam this is impossible said he."" ""Save wretched Aurelius none was sad but he."" ""And said thus when this last request heard he."" In like manner in Chaucer as in all our old poets of every degree there occur over and over again such natural forms of expression as ""I wot "" ""I wis""--and where they do occur let us have them too and be thankful; but poverty-stricken in the article of rhymes must _be he_ who is perpetually driven to resort to such expedients as the following--all of which are Mr Horne's own:-- ""Of fees and robes he many had I ween."" ""And yet this manciple made them fools I wot."" ""This Reve upon stallion sat I wot."" ""Than the poor parson in two months I wot."" ""For certainly when I was born I trow."" ""A small stalk in mine eyes he sees I deem."" ""There were two scholars young and poor I trow."" ""John lieth still and not far off I trow."" ""Eastern astrologers and clerks I wis."" ""This woful heart found some reprieve I wis."" ""Unto his brother's bed he came I wis."" ""And now Aurelius ever as I ween."" ""That she could not sustain herself I ween."" Mr Horne in his Introduction unconscious of his own sins speaks with due contempt of the modernizations of Chaucer by Ogle and Lipscomb and their coadjutors and of the injury they may have done to the reputation of the old poet. But whatever injury they may have occasioned ""there can be doubt "" he says ""of the mischief done by Mr Pope's obscene specimen _placed at the head_ of his list of 'Imitations of English Poets.' It is an imitation of those passages which we should only regard as the rank offal of a great feast in the olden time. The better taste and feeling of Pope should have imitated the noble _poetry_ of Chaucer. He avoided this 'for sundry weighty reasons.' But if this so-called imitation by Pope was 'done in his youth' he should have burnt it in his age. Its publication at the present day among his elegant works is a disgrace to modern times and to his high reputation."" Not so fast and strong good Mister Horne. The six-and-twenty octosyllabic lines thus magisterially denounced by our stern moralist in the middle of the nineteenth century have had a place in Pope's works for a hundred years and it is too late now to seek to delete them. They were written by Pope in his fourteenth or fifteenth year and gross as they are are pardonable in a boy of precocious genius giving way for a laughing hour to his sense of the grotesque. Joe Warton (not Tom) pompously calls them ""a gross and _dull_ caricature of the Father of English Poetry."" And Mr Bowles says ""he might have added it is disgusting as it is dull and no more like Chaucer than a _Billingsgate_ is like an Oberea."" It is _not_ dull but exceedingly clever; and Father Geoffrey himself would have laughed at it--patted Pope on the head--and enjoined him for the future to be more discreet. Roscoe like a wise man regards it without horror--remarking of it and the boyish imitation of Spenser that ""why these sportive and characteristic sketches should be brought to so severe an ordeal and pointed out to the reprehension of the reader as gross and disagreeable dull and disgusting it is not easy to perceive."" Old Joe maunders when he says ""he that was unacquainted with Spenser and was to form his ideas of the turn and manner of his genius from this piece would undoubtedly suppose that he abounded in filthy images and excelled in describing the lower scenes of life."" Let all such blockheads suppose what they choose. Pope--says Roscoe--""was well aware as any one of the superlative beauties and merits of Spenser whose works he assiduously studied both in his early and riper years; but it was not his intention in these few lines to give a _serious_ imitation of him. All that he attempted was to show how exactly he could apply the language and manner of Spenser to low and burlesque subjects; and in this he has completely succeeded. To compare these lines as Dr Warton has done with those more extensive and highly-finished productions the _Castle of Indolence_ by Thomson and the _Minstrel_ by Beattie is manifestly unjust""--and stupidly absurd. What Mr Horne means by saying that Pope ""avoided imitating the noble poetry of Chaucer for sundry weighty reasons "" is not apparent at first sight. It means however that Pope _could_ not have done so--that the feat was beyond his power. The author of the _Messiah_ and the _Eloïse_ wrote tolerable poetry of his own; and he knew how to appreciate and to emulate too some of the finest of Chaucer's. Why did Mr Horne not mention his _Temple of Fame_? A more childish sentence never was written than ""its publication at the present day among his elegant works is a disgrace to modern times and to his high reputation."" Pope's reputation is above reproach enshrined in honour for evermore and modern times are not so Miss Mollyish as to sympathize with such sensitive censorship of an ingeniously versified peccadillo at which our _avi_ and _proavi_ could not choose but smile. But Mr Horne thinking that in this case ""the child is father of the man "" rates Pope as roundly for what he seems to suppose were the misdemeanours of his manhood. ""Of the highly-finished paraphrase by Mr Pope of the 'Wife of Bath's Prologue ' and 'The Merchant's Tale ' suffice it to say that the licentious humour of the original being divested of its _quaintness and obscurity_ (!) becomes yet more licentious in proportion to the fine touches of skill with which it is brought into the light. Spontaneous coarseness is made revolting by meretricious artifice. Instead of keeping in the distance that which was objectionable by such shades in the modernizing as should have answered to the _hazy appearance_ (!) of the original it receives a clear outline and is brought close to us. An ancient Briton with his long rough hair and painted body laughing and singing half-naked under a tree may be coarse yet innocent of all intention to offend; but if the imagination (absorbing the anachronism) can conceive him shorn of this falling hair his paint washed off and in this uncovered stated introduced into a drawing-room full of ladies in rouge and diamonds hoops and hair-powder no one can doubt the injury thus done to the ancient Briton. This is no unfair illustration of what was done in the time of Pope "" &c. It may be ""no unfair illustration "" and certainly is no unludicrous one. We must all of us allow that were an ancient Briton habited or rather unhabited as above to bounce into a modern drawing-room full of ladies whether in rouge and diamonds hoops and hair-powder or not the effect of such _entrée_ would be prodigious on the fair and fluttered Volscians. Our imagination ""absorbing the anachronism "" ensconces us professionally behind a sofa to witness and to record the scene. How different in nature Christopher North and R.H. Horne! While he would be commiserating ""the injury thus done to the ancient Briton "" we should be imploring our savage ancestor to spare the ladies. ""Innocent of all intention to offend"" might be Caractacus but to the terrified bevy he would seem the king of the Cannibal Islands at least. What protection against the assault of a savage almost _in puris naturalibus_ could be hoped for in their hoops! Yet who knows but that on looking round and about he might himself be frightened out of his senses? An ancient Briton with his long rough hair and painted body may laugh and sing by himself half-naked under a tree and in his own conceit be a match for any amount of women. But shorn of his falling hair and without a streak of paint on his cheeks verily his heart might be found to die within him before furies with faces fiery with rouge and heads horrent with pomatum--till instinctively he strove to roll himself up in the Persian carpet and there prayed for deliverance to his tutelary gods. Our imagination having thus ""absorbed the anachronism "" let us now leave Caractacus in the carpet--while our reason has recourse to the philosophy of criticism. Mr Horne asserts that in ""Mr Pope's"" highly-finished paraphrase of the ""Wife of Bath's Prologue "" and the ""Merchant's Tale "" ""the licentious humour of the original is divested of its quaintness and obscurity and becomes yet more licentious in proportion to the fine touches of skill with which it is brought into the light."" Quaintness and _obscurity_!! Why everything in those tales is as plain as a pike-staff and clearer than mud. ""The hazy appearance of the original"" indeed! What! of the couple in the Pear-Tree? Mr Horne spitefully and perversely misrepresents the character of Pope's translations. They are remarkably free from the vice he charges them withal--and have been admitted to be so by the most captious critics. Many of the very strong things in Chaucer which you may call coarse and gross if you will are omitted by Pope and many softened down; nor is there a single line in which the spirit is not the spirit of satire. The folly of senile dotage is throughout exposed as unsparingly though with a difference in the imitation as in the original. Even Joseph Warton and Bowles affectedly fastidious over-much as both too often are and culpably prompt to find fault acknowledge that Pope's versions are blameless. ""In the art of telling a story "" says Bowles ""Pope is peculiarly happy; we almost forget the grossness of the subject of this tale (the Merchant's ) while we are struck by the uncommon ease and readiness of the verse the suitableness of the expression and the spirit and happiness of the whole."" While Dr Warton sensibly remarking ""that the character of a fond old dotard betrayed into disgrace by an unsuitable match is supported in a lively manner "" refrains from making himself ridiculous by mealy-mouthed moralities which on such a subject every person of sense and honesty must despise. Mr Horne keeps foolishly carping at Pope or ""Mr Pope "" as he sometimes calls him throughout his interminable--no not interminable--his hundred-paged Introduction. He abominates Pope's Homer and groans to think how it has corrupted the English ear by its long domination in our schools. He takes up with leathern lungs the howl of the Lakers and his imitative bray is louder than the original ""in linked sweetness long drawn out."" Such sonorous strictures are innocent; but his false charge of licentiousness against Pope is most reprehensible--and it is insincere. For he has the sense to see Chaucer's broadest satire in its true light and its fearless expositions. Yet from his justification of pictures and all their colouring in the ancient poet that might well startle people by no means timid he turns with frowning forehead and reproving hand to corresponding delineations in the modern that stand less in need of it and spits his spite on Pope which we wipe off that it may not corrode. ""This translation was done at sixteen or seventeen "" says Pope in a note to his January and May--and there is not among the achievements of early genius to be found another such specimen of finished art and of perfect mastery. Mr. Horne has ventured to give in his volume the Reve's Tale. ""It has been thought "" he says ""that an idea of the extraordinary versatility of Chaucer's genius could not be adequately conveyed unless one of his matter-of-fact comic tales were attempted. The Reve's has accordingly been selected as presenting a graphic painting of character equal to those contained in the 'Prologue to the Canterbury Tales ' displayed in action by means of a story which may be designated _as a broad farce ending in a pantomime of absurd reality_. To those who are acquainted with the original an apology may not be considered inadmissible for certain necessary variations and omissions."" For our part we do not object to this tale though at the commencement of such a work its insertion was ill-judged and will endanger greatly the volume. But we do object to the hypocritical cant about the licentiousness of Pope's fine touches from the person who wrote the above words in italics. Omissions there must have been--but they sadly shear the tale of its vigour and indeed leave it not very intelligible to readers who know not the original. The variations are most unhappy--miserable indeed; and by putting the miller's daughter to lie in a closet at the end of a passage this moral modernizer has killed Chaucer. In the matchless original all the night's action goes on in one room--and that not a large one--miller miller's wife miller's daughter and the two strenuous Cantabs are within the same four narrow walls--their beds nearly touch--the jeopardized cradle has just space to rock in--yet this self-elected expositor of Chaucer is either so blind as not to see how essential such allocation of the parties is to the wicked comedy or such a blunderer as to believe that he can improve on the greatest master that ever dared and with perfect success to picture without our condemnation--so wide is the privilege of genius in sportive fancy--what but for the self-rectifying spirit of fiction would have been an outrage on nature and in the number not only of forbidden but unhallowed things. The passages interpolated by Mr Horne's own pen are as bad as possible--clownish and anti-Chaucerian to the last degree. For example he thus takes upon himself in the teeth of Chaucer to narrate Alein's night adventure-- ""And up he rose and crept along the floor Into the passage humming with their snore; As narrow was it as a drum or tub And like a beetle doth he grope and _grub_ Feeling his way _with darkness in his hands_. Till at the passage end he stooping stands."" Chaucer tells us without circumlocution why the Miller's Wife for while had left her husband's side; but Mr Horne is intolerant of the indelicate and thus elegantly paraphrases the one original word-- ""The wife her routing ceased soon after that: And woke and left her bed; _for she was pained_ _With nightmare dreams of skies that madly rained._ _Eastern astrologers and clerks I wis In time of Apis tell of storms like this_."" Such is modern refinement! In Chaucer the blind encounter between the Miller and one of the Cantabs who mistaking him for his comrade had whispered into his ear what had happened during the night to his daughter is thus comically described-- ""Ye falsè harlot quod the miller hast? A falsè traitour falsè clerk (quod he) Thou shalt be deaf by Goddès dignitee Who dorstè be so bold to disparage My daughter that is come of swiche lineage. And by the throtè-bolle he caught Alein And he him hente despiteously again And on the nose he smote him with his fist; Down ran the bloody streme upon his brest; And on the flore with nose and mouth to-broke They walwe as don two piggès in a poke. And up they gon and down again anon Till that the miller spurned at a stone And down he fell backward upon his wif That wistè nothing of this nicè strif For she was falle aslepe a litel wight with John the clerk "" and ... Here comes Mr Horne in his strength. ""Thou slanderous ribald! quoth the miller hast! A traitor false false lying clerk quoth he Thou shalt be slain by heaven's dignity Who rudely dar'st disparage with foul lie My daughter that is come of lineage high! And by the throat he Allan grasp'd amain And caught him yet more furiously again And on his nose he smote him with his fist! Down ran the bloody stream upon his breast And on the floor they tumble heel and crown And shake the house it seem'd all coming down. And up they rise and down again they roll: Till that the Miller stumbling o'er a coal Went plunging headlong like a bull at bait And met his wife and both fell flat as slate."" Mr Horne cannot read Chaucer. The Miller does not as he makes him do accuse the Cantab of falsely slandering his daughter's virtue. He does not doubt the truth of the unluckily blabbed secret; false harlot false traitor false clerk are all words that tell his belief; but Mr Horne not understanding ""disparage "" as it is here used by Chaucer wholly mistakes the cause of the father's fury. He does not even know that it is the Miller who gets the bloody nose not the Cantab. ""As don two piggès in a poke "" he leaves out preferring as more picturesque ""And on the floor they tumble _heel and crown_!"" ""And shake the house--it seemed all coming down "" is not in Chaucer nor could be; but the crowning stupidity is that of making the Miller meet his wife and upset her--she being all the while in bed and now startled out of sleep by the weight of her fallen superincumbent husband. And this is modernizing Chaucer! What then--after all we have written about him--we ask can at this day be done with Chaucer? The true answer is--READ HIM. The late Laureate dared to think that every one might; and in his collection or selection of English poets down to Habington inclusive he has given the prologue and half a dozen of the finest and most finished tales; believing that every earnest lover of English poetry would by degrees acquire courage and strength to devour and digest a moderately-spread banquet. Without doubt Southey did well. It was a challenge to poetical Young England to gird up his loins and fall to his work. If you will have the fruit said the Laureate you must climb the tree. He bowed some heavily-laden branches down to your eye to tempt you; but climb you must if you will eat. He displayed a generous trust in the growing desire and capacity of the country for her own time-shrouded poetical treasures. In the same full volume he gave the ""Faerie Queene"" from the first word to the last. Let us hope boldly as Southey hoped. But there are in the present world a host of excellent sensitive readers whose natural taste is perfectly susceptible of Chaucer if he spoke their language; yet who have not the courage or the leisure or the aptitude to master his. They must not be too hastily blamed if they do not readily reconcile themselves to a garb of thought which disturbs and distracts all their habitual associations. Consider the 'ingenious feeling ' the vital sensibility with which they apprehend their own English may place the insurmountable barrier which opposes their access to the father of our poetry. What can be done for them? In the first place what is it that so much removes the language from us? It is removed by the words and grammatical forms that we have lost--by its real antiquity; perhaps more by an accidental semblance of antiquity--the orthography. That last may seem a small matter; but it is not. There are three ways in which literary craftsmen have attempted to fill up or bridge over the gulf of time and bring the poet of Edward III. and Richard II. near to modern readers. Dryden and Pope are the representatives as they are the masters of the first method; for the others who have trodden in their footsteps are hardly to be named or thought of. Dryden and Pope hold in their own school of modernizing this undoubted distinction that under their treatment that which was poetry remains poetry. Their followers have written for the most part intelligible English but never poetry. They have told the story and not that always; but they have distilled lethargy on the tongue of the narrator.--This first method the most boldly departs from the type. It was probably the only way that the culture of Dryden's and Pope's time admitted of. We have since gradually returned more and more upon our own antiquity as all the nations of Europe have upon theirs. Then civilization seemed to herself to escape forwards out of barbarism. Now she finds herself safe; and she ventures to seek light for her mature years in the recollections of her own childhood. But now the altered spirit of the age has produced a new manner of modernization. The problem has been put thus. To retain of Chaucer whatever in him is our language or is most nearly our language--only making good always the measure; and for expression which time has left out of our speech to substitute such as is in use. And several followers of the muses as we have seen have lately tried their hand at this kind of conversion. It is hard to judge both the system and the specimens. For if the specimens be thought to have succeeded the system may upon them be favourably judged; but if the specimens have failed the system must not upon them be unfavourably judged but must in candour be looked upon as possibly carrying in itself means and powers that have not yet been unfolded. But unhappily a difficulty occurs which would not have occurred with a writer in prose--the law of the verse is imperious. Ten syllables must be kept and rhyme must be kept; and in the experiment it results generally that whilst the rehabiting of Chaucer is undertaken under a necessity which lies wholly in the obscurity of his dialect--the proposed ground or motive of modernization--far the greater part of the actual changes are made for the sake of that which beforehand you might not think of namely the Verse. This it is that puts the translators to the strangest shifts and fetches and besets the version in spite of their best skill with anti-Chaucerisms as thick as blackberries. It might at first sight seem as if there could be no remorse about dispersing the atmosphere of antiquity; and you might be disposed to say--a thought is a thought a feeling a feeling a fancy a fancy. Utter the thought the feeling the fancy with what words you will provided that they are native to the matter and the matter will hold its own worth. No. There is more in poetry than the definite separable matter of a fancy a feeling a thought. There is the indefinite inseparable spirit out of which they all arise which verifies them all harmonizes them all interprets them all. There is the spirit of the poet himself. But the spirit of the time in which a poet lives flows through the spirit of the poet. Therefore a poet cannot be taken out of his own time and rightly and wholly understood. It seems to follow that thought feeling fancy which he has expressed cannot be taken out of his own speech and his own style and rightly and wholly understood. Let us bring this home to Chaucer and our occasion. The air of antiquity hangs about him cleaves to him; therefore he is the venerable Chaucer. One word beyond any other expresses to us the difference betwixt his age and ours--Simplicity. To read him after his own spirit we must be made simple. That temper is called up in us by the simplicity of his speech and style. Touched by these and under their power we lose our false habituations and return to nature. But for this singular power exerted over us this dominion of an irresistible sympathy the hint of antiquity which lies in the language seems requisite. That summons us to put off our own and put on another mind. In a half modernization there lies the danger that we shall hang suspended between two minds--between two ages--taken out of one and not effectually transported into that other. Might a poet if it were worth while who had imbued himself with antiquity and with Chaucer depart more freely from him and yet more effectually reproduce him? Imitating not erasing the colours of the old time--untying the strict chain that binds you to the fourteenth century but impressing on you candour clearness shrewdness ingenuous susceptibility simplicity ANTIQUITY! A creative translator or imitator--Chaucer born again a century and a half later. Let us see how Wordsworth deals with Chaucer in the first seven stanzas of the Cuckoo and Nightingale. ""The god of love a benedicite! How mighty and how gret a lord is he For he can make of lowè hertès highe Of highè lowe and likè for to dye And hardè hertès he can maken fre. ""And he can make within a litel stounde Of sekè folkè holè freshe and sounde Of holè folkè he can maken seke And he can binden and unbinden eke That he wol have ybounden or unbounde. ""To telle his might my wit may not suffice For he can make of wisè folke ful nice For he may don al that he wol devise And lither folkè to destroien vice And proudè hertès he can make agrise. ""And shortly al that ever he wol he may Ayenès him dare no wight sayè nay: For he can glade and grevè whom he liketh: And whoso that he wol he lougheth or siketh And most his might he shedeth ever in May. ""For every truè gentle hertè fre That with him is or thinketh for to be Ayenès May shal have now som stering Other to joie or elles to som mourning; In no seson so moch as thinketh me. ""For whan they mayè here the briddès singe And se the flourès and the levès springe That bringeth into hire rememberaunce A maner esè medled with grevaunce And lusty thoughtès fulle of gret longinge. ""And of that longinge cometh hevinesse And therof groweth oft gret sekenesse Al for lackinge of that that they desire; And thus in May ben hertès sette on fire So that they brennen forth in gret distresse."" WORDSWORTH. ""The God of love! Ah benedicite How mighty and how great a lord is he For he of low hearts can make high of high He can make low and unto death bring nigh And hard hearts he can make them kind and free. ""Within a little time as hath been found He can make sick folk whole and fresh and sound. Them who are whole in body and in mind He can make sick bind can he and unbind All that he will have bound or have unbound. ""To tell his might my wit may not suffice Foolish men he can make them out of wise; For he may do all that he will devise Loose livers he can make abate their vice And proud hearts can make tremble in a trice. ""In brief the whole of what he will he may; Against him dare not any wight say nay; To humble or afflict whome'er he will To gladden or to grieve he hath like skill; But most his might he sheds on the eve of May. ""For every true heart gentle heart and free That with him is or thinketh so to be Now against May shall have some stirring--whether To joy or be it to some mourning; never At other time methinks in like degree. ""For now when they may hear the small birds' song And see the budding leaves the branches throng This unto their rememberance doth bring All kinds of pleasure mix'd with sorrowing And longing of sweet thoughts that ever long. ""And of that longing heaviness doth come Whence oft great sickness grows of heart and home; Sick are they all for lack of their desire; And thus in May their hearts are set on fire So that they burn forth in great martyrdom."" Here is the master of the art; and his work most of all therefore makes us doubt the practicability of the thing undertaken. He works reverently lovingly surely with full apprehension of Chaucer; and yet at every word where he leaves Chaucer the spirit of Chaucer leaves the verse. You see plainly that his rule is to change the least that can possibly be changed. Yet the gentle grace the lingering musical sweetness the taking simplicity of the wise old poet vanishes--brushed away like the down from the butterfly's wing by the lightest and most timorous touch. ""For he can make of lowè hertès highe."" There is the soul of the lover's poet of the poet himself a lover poured out and along in one fond verse gratefully consecrated to the mystery of love which he too has experienced when he--the shy the fearful the reserved--was yet by the touch of that all-powerful ray which ""Shoots invisible virtue even to the deep "" enkindled and to his own surprise made elate to hope and to dare. But now contract as Wordsworth does the dedicated verse into a half verse and bring together the two distinct and opposite mysteries under one enunciation--in short divide the one verse to two subjects-- ""For he of low hearts can make high--of high He can make low;"" and the fact vouched remains the same the simplicity of the words is kept for they are the very words and yet something is gone--and in that something every thing! There is no longer the dwelling upon the words no longer the dilated utterance of a heart that melts with its own thoughts no longer the consecration of the verse to its matter no longer the softness the light the fragrance the charm--no longer in a word the old manner. Here is in short the philosophical observation touching love ""the saw of might"" still; but the love itself here is not. A kindly and moved observer speaks not a lover. In one of the above-cited stanzas Urry seems to have misled Wordsworth. Stanza iv. verse 4 Chaucer says:-- ""And whoso that he wol he lougheth or siketh."" The sense undoubtedly is ""and whosoever HE""--namely the God of Love--""will HE""--namely the Lover--""laugheth or sigheth accordingly."" But Urry mistaking the construction--supposed that HE in both places meant the god only. He had therefore to find out in ""lougheth"" and ""siketh "" actions predicable of the love-god. The verse accordingly runs thus with him ""And who that he wol he loweth or siketh."" Now it is true that after all we do not exactly know how Urry understood his own reading; for he did not make his own glossary. But from his glossary we find that ""to lowe"" is to praise to allow to approve--furthermore that ""siketh"" in this place means ""maketh sick."" Wordsworth following as it would appear the lection of Urry but only half agreeing to the interpretation of Urry's glossarist has rendered the line ""To humble or afflict whome'er he will."" He has understood in his own way from an obvious suggestion ""loweth "" to mean maketh low humbleth; whilst ""afflict"" is a ready turn for ""maketh sick"" of the glossary. But here Wordsworth cannot be in the right. For Chaucer is now busied with magnifying the kingdom of love by accumulated antitheses--high low--sick whole--wise foolish--the wicked turns good the proud shrink and fear--the God at his pleasure gladdens or grieves. The phrase under question must conform to the manner of the place where it appears. An opposition of meanings is indispensable. ""Humble or afflict "" which are both on one side cannot be right. ""Approveth or maketh sick "" are on opposite sides but will hardly pick one another out for antagonists. ""Laugheth or sigheth "" has the vividness and simplicity of Chaucer the most exact contrariety matches them--and the two phenomena cannot be left out of a lover's enumeration. Chaucer says of his 'bosom's lord ' ""And most his might he sheddeth ever in May""-- renowning here as we saw that he does elsewhere the whole month as love's own segment of the zodiacal circle. The time of the poem itself is accordingly 'the thridde night of May.' Wordsworth has rendered ""But most his might he sheds _on the eve of May._"" Why so? Is the approaching visitation of the power more strongly felt than the power itself in presence? Chaucer says distinctly the contrary and why with a word lose or obscure or hazard the appropriation of the month entire so conspicuous a tenet in the old poetical mind? And is Eve here taken strictly--the night before May-day like the _Pervigilium Veneris_? Or loosely on the verge of May answerably to 'ayenes May' afterwards? To the former sense we might be inclined to propose on the contrary part ""But sheds his might most on the morrow of May "" _i.e._ in prose on May-day morning consonantly to all the testimonies. Chaucer says that the coming-on of the love-month produces in the heart of the lover ""A maner easè medled with grevaunce."" That is to say _a kind of_ joy or pleasure (Fr. _aise_ ) mixed with sadness. He insists by this expression upon the strangeness of the kind peculiar to the willing sufferers under this unique passion ""love's pleasing smart."" Did Wordsworth by intention or misapprehension leave out this turn of expression by which in an age less forward than ours in sentimental researches Chaucer drew notice to the contradictory nature of the internal state which he described? As if Chaucer had said ""_al_ maner esè "" Wordsworth says ""all kinds of pleasure mixed with sorrowing."" In the next line he adds to the intuitions of his master one of his own profound intuitions if we construe aright-- ""And

onging of sweet thoughts that ever long."" That ever long! The sweetest of thoughts are never satisfied with their own deliciousness. Earthly delight or heavenly delight upon earth penetrating the soul stirs in it the perception of its native illimitable capacity for delight. Bliss which should wholly possess the blest being plays traitor to itself turns into a sort of divine dissatisfaction and brings forth from its teeming and infinite bosom a brood of winged wishes bright with hues which memory has bestowed and restless with innate aspirations. Such is our commentary on the truly Wordsworthian line but it is not a line answerable to Chaucer's-- ""And lusty thoughtès full of gret longinge."" Is this hypercriticism? It is the only criticism that can be tolerated betwixt two such rivals as Chaucer and Wordsworth. The scales that weigh poetry should turn with a grain of dust with the weight of a sunbeam for they weigh spirit. Or is it saying that Wordsworth has not done his work as well as it was possible to be done? Rather it is inferring from the failure of the work in his hand that he and his colleagues have attempted that which was impossible to be done. We will not here hunt down line by line. We put before the reader the means of comparing verse with verse. We have with 'a thoughtful heart of love ' made the comparison and feel throughout that the modern will not cannot do justice to the old English. The quick sensibility which thrills through the antique strain deserts the most cautious version of it. In short we fall back upon the old conviction that verse is a sacred and song an inspired thing; that the feeling the thought the word and the musical breath spring together out of the soul in one creation; that a translation is a thing not given in _rerum natura_; consequently that there is nothing else to be done with a great poet saving to leave him in his glory. And our friend John Dryden? Oh he is safe enough; for the new translators all agree that his are no translations at all of Chaucer but original and excellent poems of his own. A language that is half Chaucer's and half that of his renderer is in great danger to be the language of nobody. But Chaucer's has its own energy and vivacity which attaches you and as soon as you have undergone the due transformation by sympathy carries you effectually with it. In the moderate versions that are best done you miss this indispensable force of attraction. But Dryden boldly and freely gives you himself and along you sweep or are swept rejoicingly along. ""The grand charge to which his translations are amenable "" says Mr Horne ""is that he acted upon an erroneous principle."" Be it so. Nevertheless they are among the glories of our poetical literature. Mr Horne's literal as he supposes them to be are unreadable. He too acts on an erroneous principle; and his execution betrays throughout the unskilful hand of a presumptuous apprentice. But he has ""every respect for the genius and for every thing that belongs to the memory of Dryden;"" and thus magniloquently eulogizes his most splendid achievement:--""The fact is Dryden's version of the 'Knight's Tale' would be most appropriately read by the towering shade of one of Virgil's heroes walking up and down a battlement and waving a long gleaming spear to the roll and sweep of his sonorous numbers."" * * * * * _Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes Paul's Work._ "

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generously made available by The Internet Library of Early Journals.) Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected and footnotes moved to the end of the relevant article. Greek transliterations are surrounded by ~tildes~. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCLVIII. AUGUST 1845. VOL. LVIII. CONTENTS. ON PUNISHMENT. 129 PÚSHKIN THE RUSSIAN POET. CONCLUDED. 140 MARSTON; OR THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART XVIII. 157 A LETTER FROM LONDON. BY A RAILWAY WITNESS 173 PRIESTS WOMEN AND FAMILIES 185 MY COLLEGE FRIENDS. NO. II.--HORACE LEICESTER 197 ZUMALACARREGUI 210 NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. NO. VII.--MAC-FLECNOE AND THE DUNCIAD 229 EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 45 GEORGE STREET; AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW LONDON. _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._ SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES EDINBURGH. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCLVIII. AUGUST 1845. VOL. LVIII. ON PUNISHMENT. How to punish crime and in so doing reform the criminal; how to uphold the man as a terror to evil-doers and yet at the same time be implanting in him the seeds of a future more happy and prosperous life--this is perhaps the most difficult problem of legislation. We are far from despairing of some approximation to a solution which is the utmost that can be looked for; but we are also convinced that even this approximation will not be presented to us by those who seem willing to blind themselves to the difficulties they have to contend with. Without therefore assuming the air of opposition to the schemes of philanthropic legislators we would correct so far as lies in our power some of those misconceptions and oversights which energetic reformers are liable to fall into whilst zealously bent on viewing punishment in its reformatory aspect. We have selected for our comments the pamphlets of Captain Maconochie not only because they illustrate the hasty and illogical reasonings the utter forgetfulness of elementary principles into which such reformers are apt to lapse; but also for the still better reason that they contain a suggestion of real value; a contribution towards an efficient prison-discipline which merits examination and an extensive trial. We have added to these pamphlets a brief work of Zschokke's the venerable historian of Switzerland on death-punishment in order that we might extend our observations over this topic also. It is evident that the question of capital punishment and the various questions relating to prison discipline embrace all that is either very interesting or very important in the prevailing discussions on penal legislation. Transportation forms no essentially distinct class of punishment as the transported convict differs from others in this only that he has to endure his sentence of personal restraint and compulsory labour in a foreign climate. Reformatory punishment! Alas there is an incurable contradiction in the very terms! Punishment is pain is deprivation despondency affliction. But would you reform you must apply kindness and a measure of prosperity and a greater measure still of hope. There is no genial influence in castigation. It may deter from the recommission of the identical offence it visits but no conversion no renewal of the heart waits on its hostile presence; the disposition will remain the same with the addition of those angry sentiments which pain endured is sure to generate. No philosopher or divine of these days would invent a purgatory for the purifying of corrupted souls. No--he would say--your purgatory may be a place of preparation if you will but _not_ for heaven. You may make devils there--nothing better; he must be already twice a saint whom the smoke of your torments would not blacken to a demon. We may rest assured of this that the actual infliction of the punishment must always be an evil as well to mind as body--as well to society at large as to the culprit. If the threat alone could be constantly efficacious--if the headlong obstinacy the passion and the obtuseness of men would not oblige from time to time the execution of the penalty for the very purpose of sustaining the efficacy of the threat--all would be well and penal laws might be in full harmony with the best educational institutions and the highest interests of humanity. But the moment the law from a threat becomes an act and the sentence goes forth and the torture begins a new but unavoidable train of evils encounters us. There is war implanted in the very bosom of society--hatred and the giving and the sufferance of pain. And here we presume is to be found the reason of the proverbially severe laws of Draco which being instituted by a man of virtue and humanity were yet said to have been written in blood: he desired that the threat should be effective and that thus the evils of punishment as well as of crime should be avoided. Whatever is to be effected towards the genuine reformation of the culprit must be the result not of the punishment itself but of some added ingredient not of the essence of the punishment; as when hopes are held out of reward or part remission of the penalty on the practice of industry and a continuance of good behaviour. And yet--some one may here object--we correct a child we punish it and we reform. The very word correction has the double meaning of penalty and amendment. If the plan succeeds so well with the infant that he who spares the rod is supposed to spoil the child why should it utterly fail with the adult? But mark the difference. You punish a child and a short while after you receive the little penitent back into your love; nay you caress it into penitence; and the reconcilement is so sweet that the infant culprit never perhaps has his affections so keenly awakened as in these tearful moments of sorrow and forgiveness. The heart is softer than ever and the sense of shame at having offended is kept sensitively alive. But if you withdrew your love--if after punishment inflicted you still kept an averted countenance--if no reconcilement were sought and fostered there would be no reformation in your chastisement. Between society and the adult culprit this is exactly the case. Here the hostile parent strikes but makes no after overture of kindness. The blow and the bitterness of the blow are left unhealed. Nothing is done to take away the sting of anger to keep the heart tender to reproof to prevent the growing callousness to shame and the rising rebellion of the spirit. And here reveals itself in all its force another notorious difficulty with which the reformer of penal codes has to contend. In drawing the picture of the helpless condition of the convicted and punished criminal how often and how justly does he allude to the circumstance that the reputation of the man is so damaged that honest people are loath to employ him--that his return to an untainted life is almost impossible--and that out of self-defence he is compelled to resort again to the same criminal enterprises for which he has already suffered. Struck with this view the reformer would institute a penitentiary of so effective a description that the having passed through it would be even a testimonial of good character. But who sees not that the infamy is of the very essence of the punishment? A good character is the appropriate reward of the good citizen; if the criminal does not pay the forfeit of his character--if only a certain amount of temporary inconvenience is to be sustained the terror of punishment is at an end. Here on the arena of public life between society and the culprit are they not manifestly incompatible--the tenderness that would reclaim and the vigour that must chastise? There is no question here we must observe of that delicate sense of shame which is the best preservative against every departure from rectitude. This has been worn out and almost ceased to operate on the majority of persons who expose themselves to the penal laws of their country. It is the value of character as a commercial commodity as a requisite for well-being that alone has weight with them. Benevolent projectors of reform more benevolent than logical are fond of comparing a prison to an hospital; they contend that the inmates of either place are sent there to be cured and that they should not be restored to society until they are restored the one to health of body the other to health of mind. Would they carry out the analogy to its fair completeness and maintain that the patient from either hospital should be remitted to society with a character equally free from stain? Is the man to be received by the community with the same compassionate welcome who has gone into prison to be cured of a propensity to theft as one who has entered an hospital to be relieved of a disease? An hospital is a word of no inviting sound--and physic no doubt is sufficiently nauseous to be not inaptly compared to flogging or any other punitive discipline: but nauseous drugs are not the only means of cure; good nursing vigilant attendance sometimes generous diet have a large share in the curative process. And in the hospital of the mind the lenitive and fostering measures have a still larger share in the work of a moral restoration. Were this principle of cure of perfect restoration to be adopted as the first principle of penal legislation it would come to this that a poor man would have no better way of recommending himself to the fatherly care of the state than by the commission of a crime and that none in the lower classes of society would be so well trained and disciplined for advancing their fortunes in the world as those who commenced their career by violating the laws of their country. Imprisonment with its various accompaniments and modifications is the great reformatory punishment. Indeed with the exception of death--confined almost entirely to the case of murder--it is the only punishment bestowed on serious offences. Imprisonment of some kind either at home or in the colonies is the penal safeguard of society; and we must be cautious that we do not so far diminish its terrors that it should cease to hold out any threat to a needy malefactor. But before we allude to the discipline of the prison we must take a glance at this great exception of death which it is the object of many of our zealous reformers entirely to erase from the penal code. That this extreme punishment should be reserved for the extreme crime of murder seems generally admitted; and the practice if not the letter of our law has conformed to this opinion. It would be useless therefore to argue on the propriety of inflicting this penalty on other and less enormous offences. The question is narrowed to this--shall death continue to be the punishment of the murderer? Those who contend for the entire abolition of this punishment are in the habit of enlarging much on the inadequate effect produced upon the multitude who witness the spectacle of an execution. This is their favourite and most frequent theme. They seem to overlook the much more powerful effect produced on the imagination of that far greater multitude who never behold or are likely to behold an execution. It is curious to observe how pertinaciously a certain class of reasoners will dwell on the picture which a crowd presents at a public execution;--much like a crowd we may be sure at any other public spectacle. Whatever the object which gathers together a mob of the lowest class they will soon begin to relieve the tedium of expectation by coarse jests drunkenness and brawling. Yet these descriptive logicians are never weary of painting to us the grotesque and disgusting scenes which the mass of spectators exhibit on these occasions as if this were quite decisive of the question. That ragged children who have never thought of death at all play their usual pranks at the foot of the gallows--that pickpockets ply their trade in this as in every other gaping crowd--what has all this to do with the impression produced on the mind of every man and woman throughout the kingdom by the knowledge that if he through sudden passion or the instigations of cupidity take the life of a fellow-creature he shall be--not a spectator at such an exhibition--but that solitary crawling wretch who after having spent his days and nights in agony and fear is thrust forward bound and pinioned to be hanged up there like a dog before the scoffing or yelling multitude? We willingly concede that a public execution is not an edifying spectacle. The coarse minds who can endure and who court it are the last to whom such a spectacle should be presented. And although the punishment might lose some portion of its terrors we should prefer that the execution should take place in a more private manner; in the court-yard for instance of the prison and before a selected number of witnesses partly consisting of official persons as the sheriffs and magistrates and partly of a certain number of persons who might be taken from the several jury lists--the option being given to them either to accept or decline this melancholy office. This would be a sufficient publicity to ensure an impartial administration of the laws. The only doubt that remains is whether it would be sufficient to prevent the spread of false rumours and absurd suspicions amongst the people. It is a prevailing tendency with the mob whenever any one at all above their own condition is executed to believe that he has been favoured and allowed to escape. Even in the face of the most public execution such rumours are circulated. We understand that Mr Tawell is confidently reported to be living at this moment in America. Such suspicions however ridiculous and absurd must be cautiously guarded against. After all the mode of execution is but of secondary importance; arrange it how you will it is a lamentable business. Like all other punishments and still more than all other punishments the actual infliction of it is an evil to society. When the law passes from the threat to the execution it is a social disaster. The main point is that we present to the imagination of every man a great threat--that of almost immediate extermination--if he lift his hand against his neighbour's life. That which renders the punishment of death peculiarly appropriate in our estimation in the crime of murder is not by any means its retaliative character; the sentiment that "blood must have blood " is one which we have no desire to foster; and if some less grievous penalty would have the same effect in deterring from the crime we should of course willingly adopt it. Our ground of approval is this that it presents to the mind an antagonist idea most fit to encounter the temptation to the crime. As this temptation must generally be great and often sudden that antagonist idea should be something capable of seizing upon the apprehension at once--of exercising at once all its restraining efficacy. Imprisonment for length of years--the mind must calculate and sum up the long list of pains and penalties included in this threat before its full import is perceived. But death! And then the after-death! For what makes the punishment of death so singularly applicable to the case of murder is this that it awakens whatever may exist of religious terror in the mind of him who contemplates the crime. On the one hand he is about to commit a deed on which there are not two opinions; it is not a crime made such by the laws; it is not even a robbery for which he may frame excuses out of his destitution and the harsh distinctions of society; it is murder which heaven and earth rich and poor equally denounce. On the other hand his guilt will bring him almost immediately before the tribunal of God as well as the judgment-seat of man. No long interval weakens the impression no long space holds out the vague prospect of repentance and amendment and compensatory acts of goodness; but if he will lift the knife if he will mingle the poison there is the earthly executioner at hand to transfer him to the still more dreadful sentence of the after-world! The same opinion which condemns the crime of murder here on earth as the most atrocious that can be committed follows him to that other tribunal; and all that his imagination has been accustomed to depict of the horrors of internal and eternal punishment rushes at once upon him. When the temptation comes in the shape of sudden anger and impetuous passion there is a threat as sudden to encounter it. When the crime is revolved in the secret and guilty recesses of the mind--as when some individual stands between the tempted man and the possession of a fortune or some other great object of desire--there is religious terror as stealthy as secret as unconquerable as the strongest desire that takes possession of the human heart to assist always at his deliberations. M. Zschokke's little treatise to which we have alluded contains the usual together with some unusual arguments against the punishment of death and contributes also a novel substitute for it. He begins in true German manner by explaining (_inter alia_) the difference between reason and understanding; the exact distinction between man and the rest of the animal creation; and some other metaphysical generalities which fortunately are not concerned with the business in hand. For as no two writers agree in their explanations and as none succeeds in perfectly satisfying either his reader or himself it would be impossible if such preliminaries were first to be adjusted ever to arrive at the discussion itself. The work is written in letters addressed to a young prince; and at the thirteenth letter--there are but sixteen in the whole--he approaches his main question--"Nun denn es sei zur sache!" "Now then to the matter." And first he protests that death is no punishment at all. The venerable historian absolutely flies to such aphorisms as were the delight of Seneca to prove that death is no evil and can consequently be no punishment; although there are some who under the dominion of mere instinct may deem it such. "The death " he writes "of the criminal is no punishment; but for him as for every other mortal only the end of earthly troubles cares and sufferings. In vain " he continues "does the multitude of suicides show us daily that death is no evil and therefore no punishment; for the men who thus abridge their days manifestly prefer death to the endurance of the evils of life." It has been said that "he who can look at death starts at no shadows." And certainly reason on the matter how you will and prove life to be as worthless as you please if a man can defy death and solicit it there is no other punishment that can be effective. It would be all but impossible to prevent a criminal if so resolved from laying violent hands upon himself; and altogether impossible to prevent him from contemplating suicide as his last resort in case of detection and so nullifying the threat of any other punishment. There is no hold whatever on the man in whom the love of life or the fear of death is really extinct. But we are far from thinking that Seneca and the Stoics have yet made so deep an impression on mankind that there is a very general indifference to death especially to a death inflicted by others--the ignominious sentence of the law. Again this author objects as some others have done to the punishment of death because it is incapable of an adjustment to the degrees of guilt. What punishment is? Or how can any tribunal determine on degrees of moral guilt? It is not a criminal it is a crime that the law punishes. To determine between two thieves which had the better motive which had the least _of thief in him_ is not the function of a judge nor could he perform it if imposed upon him. It has been remarked by those who have had wide opportunities of judging--and the annals of criminal jurisprudence support the observation--that murderers taken as a class are not as men the worst order of criminals. Some sudden impulse or some one obstinate desire got the better of their reason; or it might happen that the motive for committing a great crime was not of so dark a dye as that which often induces to one of less turpitude. And yet neither our author nor any one else would hesitate to accord to the crime of murder the very severest penalty that stands upon the code. But M. Zschokke's main argument against the reasonableness and justice of death-punishment is this that every man has an original imprescriptible right prior to and in the face of all society--_to be a man_--"mensch zu sein"--"to develope himself as man." Society may limit the exercise of this right but not annul it; may mutilate the man as it thinks fit but must leave so much of him behind as may bear the name of man. What is to be said of such metaphysical vagaries as these? If this pass for reasoning the unlawfulness of imprisonment may be proved in the same manner; one has but to assert that man has an _a priori_ indefeasible right to the use of the limbs which nature has given to him. But no man has any _right_ whatever but under the implied condition of performing corresponding _duties_. This individual whom the law will not any longer allow to develope his humanity should if he had wished to develope himself further have allowed the like liberty to others. But that which most remarkably distinguishes M. Zschokke's little performance is the substitute for the punishment of death which it suggests. We believe it was here that M. Sue derived an idea which occupies so conspicuous a place in his _Mysteries of Paris_. That substitute is _blindness_. "The blinded man " writes our author "is an eternal prisoner without need of prison walls. He must envy other culprits their chains--their darkest dungeons; for in the darkest dungeons hope may penetrate and _they_ may one day see the light again. He must envy the dead on whom the executioner has done his utmost; for to him life itself has become one endless punishment. He is bound without fetters--bound more securely than if he were locked to the oar or welded to the rock. Every step every movement tells him of his weakness and of his guilt. The living world around him--he has lost it all; he retains only its sources of pain and the unfading memory of his own crime. Scoffed at by the unfeeling pitied by some by all shunned--contempt and commiseration and scorn are the smarting scourges to which he stands defenceless for the residue of his days." A frightful punishment truly! But we are far from approving of it as a substitute for death. In the first place it is equally irrevocable; and it is one and perhaps the most cogent argument against death-punishment that it admits of no recall in case of error no remission or compensation in the event of sentence having been passed upon an innocent man. Our author indeed seems to think otherwise; for he reckons it amongst the advantages of this mode of punishment that it does admit of compensation if it has been unjustly inflicted. To us it seems very doubtful whether any pleasures addressed to the remaining senses of hearing of touch or of taste can be said to compensate for the loss of sight. Neither does blindness any more than death admit of degree or apportionment. In this respect _burning_ or the use of fire as a punishment which has been suggested though not absolutely advised by Bentham would have a decisive preference. "Fire " writes that voluminous jurist and legislator "may be employed as an instrument of punishment without occasioning death. This punishment is variable in its nature through all the degrees of severity of which there can be any need. It would be necessary carefully to determine on the test of the law the part of the body which ought to be exposed to the action of fire; the intensity of the fire; the time during which it ought to be applied; and the paraphernalia to be employed to increase the terror of the punishment. In order to render the description more striking a print might be annexed in which the operation should be represented."--(_Works_ vol. i. p. 407.) What is still more to the point the punishment of blinding is quite as repugnant to those sentiments of humanity which are said to be outraged by the depriving a fellow creature of his life. As we have before intimated the spectacle of pain inflicted is at all times an evil in itself. Even the presence of those gloomy buildings devoted to all the wretched purposes of incarceration is we should say a public calamity. The more men see of misery the more callous do they become to it; the less effort do they make to relieve; the more ready are they to inflict it. Punishments should be multiplied as little as possible. Very slight offences had better be left to the correction of public opinion and very grave offences should be severely visited as well to spare punishment as to prevent crime. We at once admit that it is an evil--the spectacle of putting a man to death. But this of putting out his eyes is in act scarce less revolting and the spectacle is perpetuated. The public execution lasts his lifetime. There is something too from which we recoil in associating what has hitherto been the most pitiful affliction of humanity with the idea of punishment of crime. A blind man walks amongst us the universally commiserated--and good need he has of our commiseration; it would be a sore addition to his calamity to make his condition one of suspected turpitude and expose him to the hazard of being classed with murderers. With respect to that greater _severity_ of the punishment on which our author eloquently enlarges the only severity which a legislature ought to seek is that which is available in the shape of _threat_; and no threat can be more effective than that of taking from a man his life since he can always in his own imagination commute any other punishment into that. If it be true on the one hand that death is a mere privation and not to be compared in real severity to very many of the positive afflictions of life; and if on the other it is still the greatest threat which society can hold out--these two facts together would go far to prove that it is the very best punishment which could be devised. Dismissing this exception of the punishment of death for the crime of murder _imprisonment_ at home or abroad accompanied with hard labour or periods of solitary confinement is the sole threat of any moment which the law holds out against offenders; and it becomes therefore of infinite importance to establish an effective prison discipline. We look upon this simplification of our penal operations as an advantage; and we are by no means disposed to favour those inventive gentlemen who would devise new punishments or revive old ones for the purpose it would seem of having a variety of inflictions corresponding to the variety of offences. A well-regulated prison where the severity of the taskwork the nature of the diet the duration and the strictness of the confinement all admit of apportionment to the offence seems to include all that is desirable in this matter of punishment. Here if any where can plans of reformation be combined with penal inflictions. Such plans ought by all means to be encouraged; but they are not--whatever Captain Maconochie and other zealous reformers say to the contrary--the first and peculiar object for which a prison is designed. Captain Maconochie was for some time superintendent of Norfolk Island. A rough experience. But prison discipline must be much the same in its elements in whatever part of the world it is carried on. We are not about to enter into the variety of questions connected with transportation or the management of penal colonies. Wherever imprisonment or compulsory labour are to be undergone the same class of difficulties and dilemmas must arise; and we shall deal only with Captain Maconochie's remarks as they apply generally to all convicts whether transported or not. It is quite curious to observe the unconscious pranks that men of sound understandings but not philosophically disciplined may be led into when from some favourite point of view they suddenly rush into generalities and proclaim as reasoning what is the dictate of a momentary sentiment. Captain Maconochie desirous of enlisting our sympathies in favour of his convicts assimilates their condition to that of the black slaves whom the philanthropic efforts of Wilberforce and others succeeded in emancipating. The parallel is--to say the best--very surprising and unexpected. Convicts in the colonies stand in the same predicament with regard to society as their fellow-culprits at home; and the gallant Captain would hardly preach a crusade for the liberation of all the prisoners in England--for all who are undergoing the discipline of our houses of correction. To be compelled to labour for another man's advantage and at another man's will because one is "guilty of a darker skin " and to be compelled to the like taskwork because one has committed burglary are two very different things. Full of this happy comparison however Captain Maconochie proceeds--"They (the blacks) were thus in the main merry virtuous and contented beings; they did not advance--this their condition as slaves forbade--but neither did they recede; and whatever the influence of their condition on their own character it ended nearly with themselves; they were subjects not agents and no one was made materially worse through their means. In every one of these respects convicts are differently and far more unfavourably circumstanced. True they have sinned which is often alleged as a reason for dealing with them more harshly; _but who has not sinned? Who will venture to say or would be right if he did say that similarly born educated and tempted_ as most of them have been he would have stood where they have fallen? They are our brothers in a much nearer sense than were the negroes." Now if language such as this means any thing the convict is a most maltreated person and should not have been punished at all. It is really the duty of sober sensible men to put their veto on such oratory as this; there is too much of the same kind abroad. We must all of us be ready to acknowledge that if we had been "born educated and tempted " as many of these felons we too might have been felons. Does it follow that we ought not to have received the punishment of felons? Is this sort of _argumentum ad hominem_ which makes the crime in imagination our own to bribe us into an utterly ruinous indulgence towards it? Crime is not punished on earth--as divines teach us it will be punished in heaven--on a principle of retributive justice and according to our moral deserts. To prove that this is not the principle of judicial punishment we have only to call to mind that whereas in a moral point of view the force of temptation diminishes the guilt men in framing their laws invariably increase the punishment in proportion to the temptation. The facility to commit a crime is one great element in the temptation to commit it; and this facility has been always considered (as in the case of forgery) to call for a counterbalance in the severity of the penalty. In matters of penal legislation there are two currents of thought which must be always kept distinct. The one relates to the natural and little cultivated feelings of mankind which demand retaliation for injuries committed--a vindictive or retributive justice. Here is found the rude motive power by and on which legislation has to work; sometimes shaping these feelings to its purposes sometimes shaping its purposes to them. The other current of ideas is purely legislative purely prospective having for its sole end the well-being of society and looking on punishment; not as retributive or vindictive or as morally due but as a sad necessity for the preservation of order. In reference to the latter and only legislative mode of thinking how extremely illogical does it appear this attempt to ward off the penal blow from a guilty party or to excite our commiseration for him on the ground that we all share the same passions and frailties of that guilty party! Why if such passions and frailties were not general there would be little need of punishment. It is because they are general that the legislature is compelled to be so watchful and energetic. If to take the object of desire from our neighbour were a rare propensity an extraordinary phenomenon we might let the prison sink into happy ruin and a most cheerful desolation. We have seen how the German in his metaphysical manner disposed of the right of society to put one of its members to death; the Captain though no metaphysician proves i

a manner quite as bold and singular that the state has really no right to inflict any punishment that is not of a reformatory character. It is true he admits of punishment--could a man of his experience do otherwise? But he admits it only as a part of his _curative process_. It is to induce ""submission and penitence."" He can so far blind himself by his love of theory or rather his tenacity to one point of view that he seems to suppose that _reform of the criminal being the direct object_ he would commence his treatment by penal inflictions. ""As already observed a fever must be reduced before its ravages are sought to be repaired; a wound must be probed and cleansed before it can be healed up."" And this surgical instance seems to have satisfied his mind that the exacerbations consequent on punishment are an indispensable preparation for a moral restoration. As to the old-fashioned notion that punishment has for its legitimate and primary object to deter others from offending he denounces this if pursued as an independent aim as a flagrant injustice; he regards such criminals who are punished for this end only as sacrifices cruelly offered up for the benefit of the public. ""In the infancy of society "" reasons Captain Maconochie ""and under every form of pure despotism the individual is nothing and the commonwealth or its chief every thing. But just as intelligence and true knowledge of state policy extend does this state of things become reversed; and in England already the maxim is become almost universal that private rights are never to be invaded without compensation. In two departments only is there still a systematic deviation from this rule in practice. Impressment in which the compensation made though it has increased much of late years must still be considered inadequate--for otherwise the act itself would be unnecessary; and the punishment of offenders with a view to _example_ only in which they have no concern and to which their individual interests are yet unhesitatingly sacrificed. In both cases the same plea of state necessity is offered in justification; but it will not do. As society advances and individuals become more sensible of their own worth their claims to regard above such abstractions become more and more evident.""--(_General Views_ &c. p. 11.) We would modestly suggest that before this curious analogy can be made complete government ought to press for hanging as well as the sea service. If the sheriff and his bailiffs sallied forth and seized upon some hapless wight thrust the king's money into his hand and thus enlisted him into the hanging corps for the benefit of the community the resemblance would be perfect. But no one not even the high-sheriff himself has the least desire to obtain a single recruit for this forlorn service; the members of which force themselves in a most unwelcome manner upon the state. Still less if possible does the government desire to be at the expense of erecting large buildings and maintaining numerous garrisons of all species of felons. ""Banishment of offenders with a view to example only _in which they have no concern_ and to which their individual interests are yet unhesitatingly sacrificed!"" Indeed but they have! He who is punished for theft has still his life to be preserved and may one day have his property also to be protected by the same law under which he is suffering. One can imagine the strange effect it would produce upon the ignoble army of martyrs which throng our jails to be told that they were sacrifices to society--victims whom the community was offering up most unjustifiably on the altar of its own interests! At first the idea would be a little dim and mysterious; but after a short time the flattering nature of the doctrine would doubtless be sufficient to insure its reception. They would thereupon call in the jailer and the chief spokesman of the party would thus address him:--""We perceive O jailer! that society is consulting its own interests in our punishment and not as it is bound to do our especial benefit and advantage. As we have learned that stripes and bondage are to be inflicted on no man but for his own good and as we are all agreed after considerable experience that we derive no benefit whatever from them and you O jailer! must be satisfied that as medical treatment they are worse than inefficacious we demand in the name of justice and human reason our immediate dismissal."" To those who value no information but such as assumes the shape of detail of facts or can be reduced to figures and exhibited in the shape of statistical tables we shall perhaps appear to be wasting time in examining the mere errors of _reasoning_ on this important subject of penal discipline. We think otherwise. We apprehend there is nothing more necessary than to keep active and zealous men steady to first principles in subjects of great general interest. We are not guilty of underrating the value of statistical tables; albeit we have seen figures arrayed against figures as if there were two arithmetics as if there were two churches in the doctrines of addition and multiplication; but the truth must be kept in view that to read statistical tables aright something more is required than a knowledge of the rules of arithmetic. A few sound principles based on a knowledge of human nature and the elementary bonds of human society may often preserve us from false deductions which seem to be the sure product of the array of figures that are presented to us. We intimated that Captain Maconochie's pamphlet contained what appeared to us a valuable contribution towards a good prison discipline. That contribution is simply--the commutation of _time_ of imprisonment for quantity of _labour_ to be performed. The amount of work done by the prisoner could be estimated by certain _marks_ awarded or reckoned to him and the duration of imprisonment measured by the number of those marks to be earned instead of a certain fixed number of months or years. This is a very simple idea and is all the better for its simplicity. The punishment would be probably rendered more effective as a threat and the moral effect of the punishment when inflicted would be much improved. A compulsion to labour (which becomes in fact a compulsion of moral motive as well as of sheer external control) may lead to a permanent habit of industry. There would be all the difference between the listless and disgustful labour of enforced time-work and a labour in part prompted by the hope of expediting the term of release. An idle vagabond might thus be disciplined and trained into an industrious workman. We have no doubt that this principle has already been partially applied in the management of our prisons and perhaps in more instances than we at all suspect; but that it has not yet been extensively applied or received the trial which it appears to merit is certain--because such an experiment must have been preceded by a very notorious and signal alteration in our laws. We should be doing an egregious injustice to Captain Maconochie if we were to judge of him only by the instances we have given of his powers of general reasoning. The perusal of his pamphlets has left in our mind a strong impression of the manly character and practical ability of their writer. If his abstract reasonings are sometimes perverse we are convinced that his practical good sense is such that in the management of any enterprise he would in reality so order his proceedings that whatever his pen might do his conduct would contradict no sound principle of expediency. If it were the object to reclaim a set of felons or vagabonds and fit them--say for the naval and military service--we are persuaded that the task could not be confided to better hands than those of the gallant Captain. During his residence at Norfolk island he seems to have obtained the esteem of even the worst of the sad crew he had to discipline; and this it is evident without sacrificing a jot of the duties of his station. He is plainly not the man to make any boast of such a matter or to feel too highly flattered by it. ""Instances of individual attachment to myself "" he says at the conclusion of his pamphlet _On the Management of Transported Convicts_ ""I could multiply without number; but these for obvious reasons I forbear to quote; and in truth they as often pained me as pleased me by being too deferential. It is a great and very common mistake in managing prisoners to be too much gratified by mere obedience and servility: duplicity is much encouraged by this; and of two opposite errors it is better rather to overlook a little occasional insubordination. I cannot refuse however to cite two traits whose character cannot be mistaken. I had a large garden within a few hundred yards of the ticket-of-leave village at Cascade where from 300 to 400 men lived four to six in a hut never locked up nor under other guard through the night than that of a police sentry one of their own number. The garden was by the road-side very imperfectly fenced with open paling and fully stocked with choice fruit and vegetables bananas pine-apples grapes melons and others which _to men on a salt ration_ must have offered a great temptation; these were constantly under view yet I scarcely ever lost any. And by a letter received a few weeks ago I learn that five men having picked up an old black silk handkerchief that had belonged to me have had their prayer books bound with it."" [1] The Captain's theoretical error is that he too much confounds the necessity of penal laws with the duty of public education. The duty of the state to educate its subjects is undeniable; but when criminals are brought before it this is not the duty which is then most prominent. This is a duty which ought to have been performed before--it is a duty which ought not to be forgotten then; but there is another function which comes into operation which is typified by the judge not by the schoolmaster. We observe that Captain Maconochie confirms from his own experience the opinion already expressed by many others upon the policy of solitary confinement. For a short period the effect is good; but if prolonged it leads either to stupid indifference or moroseness of temper if it does not conduct even to insanity. It is manifestly an expedient to be cautiously used. We should before any appeal to experience and judging only from the nature of the human mind have confidently predicted this result. And indeed has not the effect of solitary confinement been long ago understood and powerfully described? In that delightful tale of the Arabian Nights where the poor fisherman draws up a jar from the bottom of the sea and on opening it gives escape to a confined spirit or genie this monster of ingratitude immediately draws a huge sabre with the intention of decapitating his deliverer. Some parley ensues; and the genie explains that he is only about to fulfil a vow that he had made while incarcerated in the jar--that during the first thousand years of his imprisonment--and to an immortal genie a thousand years may reckon as about two calendar months with us--he promised to his deliverer all imaginable blessings; but during the second thousand years he vowed that he would _kill_ the man who should release him! Could there possibly be a better illustration of the effect of solitary confinement? But on the peculiar modifications of prison discipline it is not our purpose here to enlarge. This must be reserved to some future occasion. We must content ourselves with observing that we have little confidence in novelties and little wish to prompt the invention of our legislators in this direction. We are as little disposed to advocate the silent as the solitary system. Such a demeanour as any reflective man would naturally expect to find in a place of public correction is all that we should require to be preserved. All boisterous mirth all obstreperous laughter all loud talking would by every efficient governor of such an institution be systematically repressed. The labours of such an establishment should be conducted with stern military order. Every inmate should feel himself under an irresistible domination and that obedience and submission are the only parts he has to enact. How easily the strongest minds may be led astray when scope is given to invention in this matter of penal discipline may be seen in the example of Jeremy Bentham himself. This celebrated man whose cogitative faculty was assuredly of the most vigorous description but who had a mode of developing it the most insufferably and needlessly prolix would have filled our prisons with inextinguishable laughter by the introduction of certain ""tragic masks "" indicative of various crimes or passions in which the several offenders were to be occasionally paraded--a quaint device which would have given a carnival to our jails. Our main purpose in these somewhat fragmentary observations was to protest against the reasoning which would divest punishment of its proper and distinctive character which spreading about weak and effeminate scruples would paralyse the arm which bears the sword of justice. One writer would impugn the right of society to put its arch-criminals to death; another controverts its right to inflict any penalty whatever which has not for its direct object the reformation of the criminal. So then the offender who will not live with his fellow-men on the only terms on which human fellowship can be maintained is to stand out and bandy logic with the community--with mankind--and insist upon his individual imprescriptible rights. These _à priori_ gentry would find it very difficult to draw any advantage from their imprescriptible rights except in a state of tolerable civil government. Civil government is at all events the condition on which depends the enjoyment of all individual rights; without which they are but shadows and abstractions if even intelligible abstractions. Let us have no more therefore of an opposition between the rights of individuals and the stern imperative expediencies of society. There can be no such opposition. Is it not as if some particular wave of the sea should assert a law of motion of its own and think it injustice to submit to the great tidal movements of the ocean? * * * * * REFERENCES: ZSCHOKKE'S _Aehrenlese.--Part I. Pandora Civilization Demoralization and Death-punishment._ _On the Management of Transported Criminals._ By CAPTAIN MACONOCHIE R.N. K.H. late Superintendent at Norfolk Island. _General Views &c. &c._ By the SAME. * * * * * [Footnote 1: Amongst the anecdotes which are told in this concluding portion of the pamphlet we were struck with the following which affords a striking instance of that tendency to _run a-muck_ from time to time by which some men are unhappily afflicted:--""One of them at length showed strong indications of approaching insanity. He became moody and twice attempted to destroy himself. I thought that possibly change of occupation and diet might benefit him; and I brought him to my own garden in consequence and sought to feed him up. But he rather got worse. I remonstrated with him; and his answer was a striking one--'When I used to be in this way before I could get into trouble (commit an offence and incur a severe punishment ) and that took it out of me; but now that I try to behave myself I think that I am going mad altogether.'""] PÚSHKIN THE RUSSIAN POET. No. III. SPECIMENS OF HIS LYRICS. TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL RUSSIAN BY THOMAS B. SHAW B.A. OF CAMBRIDGE ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE IMPERIAL ALEXANDER LYCEUM TRANSLATOR OF ""THE HERETIC "" &C. &C. We trust our readers will not blame us for the slightness of construction and unimportant subjects of many of the minor pieces which we have admitted into our present selection from Púshkin's lyrical productions. It was our object to give the English reader as far as possible a fair and just notion of the poet's peculiar turn of thought and style of expression; and to do this completely it appeared to us indispensable to avoid confining our choice--however natural it might have seemed and however great the temptation to do so--to the more ambitious and elaborate efforts of his genius. The true principles of criticism have long ago established the doctrine that the composition of a beautiful song or even of a perfect epigram deserves to be considered as difficult a task and as rare an achievement as the production of an ode or of an elegy; and though it may be objected that for the purposes of _translation_ the song is generally much more ungrateful than the more imposing production yet we could not consider ourselves as fulfilling our promise (of holding up to our countrymen a faithful mirror of Púshkin's poetry ) had we omitted to attempt versions of the slighter and more delicate products of his poesy. It is true that in passing through the deteriorating process of translation into another language the lighter works suffer most and are more likely to lose that exquisite delicacy of expression and that transparent colouring of thought which is the more peculiar merit of the song or the fugitive poem--these tender blossoms run much more risk of losing in short their finer and more evanescent aroma than the more gorgeous flowers of the tropical regions of poetical imagining; but at the same time it must be remarked that the danger in such experiments is not on the side of the _author_ but wholly on that of the _translator_. That we have determined--rashly perhaps--to encounter this danger must be our apology for having introduced into our collection many of the shorter and slighter pieces which will be found in these pages and among them the specimen which we are now about to present. ""ALAS FOR HER! WHY IS SHE SHINING?"" Alas for her! why is she shining In soft and momentary bloom? Yet all the while in secret pining 'Mid youth's gay pride and first perfume ... She fades! To her it is not given Long o'er life's paths in joy to roam Or long to make an earthly heaven In the calm precincts of her home; Our daily converse to enlighten With playful sense with charming wile The sufferer's woe-worn brow to brighten With the reflection of her smile. Now that black thoughts around me darken I veil my grief with steady will To her sweet voice I haste to hearken -- To hearken: and to gaze my fill. I gaze I hearken yet and never Shall voice or form from me depart; Nought but our parting hour can ever Wake fear or anguish in my heart. * * * * * In the following spirited little piece Púshkin has commemorated an incident which occurred in the reign of Peter the Great and which is probably sufficiently familiar to the readers of Russian history to render unnecessary a more than passing allusion to the circumstance. Among the thousand traits of grandeur recorded of the Hero-Tsar there are few more affecting and sublime than that commemorated in the anecdote of his indulgence to Ménstchikoff who had betrayed his master's confidence and committed various acts of peculation and oppression. Peter pardoned his unfaithful but repentant minister and celebrated this act of generous clemency by a magnificent banquet at which he exhibited to his admiral every testimony of renewed confidence and affection. This banquet is the subject of the following lines in which all the allusions are probably familiar to our readers not excepting the mention made of the imposing ceremony spoken of in the third stanza; that is to say the grand review of the infant Russian fleet at which the Emperor assisted in person and in the rank of Vice-Admiral. The whole squadron--recently created by the genius and wisdom of the Prince and freshly covered with naval glory till then unknown in Russia--was anchored in the Neva and along its line slowly passed under a general salute of cannon and accompanied by the acclamations of the crews of the men-of-war the old pleasure-boat the ""baubling shallop "" which had first suggested to Peter's mind the idea and the possibility of giving Russia a navy. This small vessel still most religiously preserved in the fortress and affectionately called by the Russians the ""Grandfather"" of their navy had been constructed for the amusement of the Tsar Alexéi by Brandt a Dutch shipbuilder who had visited Moscow during the reign of that prince--the father of the great regenerator of Russia. The vessel a small sloop rigged in the Dutch manner had remained neglected on the lake of Peresláv-Zalévskii (in the province of Vladímir) till it was remarked by Peter who from seeing it not only conceived the idea of creating a navy but made it the means of acquiring for himself the first rudiments of practical seamanship. As _a ship_ in the Russian language is a _masculine_ substantive the familiar title given to this immortal little vessel is ""grandfather "" or ""grandsire "" a word of which we have thought it necessary to transpose the gender in obedience to that poetical and striking idiom in our tongue by which a ship always rigorously appertains to the gentler and lovelier sex. In our version therefore the ""grandsire"" becomes--we trust without any loss of dignity or interest--the ""grandame"" of the Russian navy:-- THE FEAST OF PETER THE FIRST. O'er the Neva gaily dancing Flag and pennant flutter fair; From the boats in line advancing Oars-men's chorus fills the air. Loud and joyous guests assembling Throng the palace of the Tsar; And to cannon-crash is trembling All the Neva from afar. Wherefore feasts our Tsar of Wonders? Why is Petersburg so gay? Why those shouts and cannon-thunders And the fleet in war array? Is new glory dawning o'er ye Russia's Eagle Russia's Sword? Has the stern Swede fled before ye? Has the foe for peace implored? Is it Brandt's slight boat appearing On the shore that _was_ the Swede's? Through our young fleet proudly steering Like a _grandame_ she proceeds. They her giant-brood seem kneeling 'Fore their grandame--black and grim; And to Science' name are pealing Cannon-crash and choral hymn. Is't Poltáva red and glorious That he feasts--the Lord of War? When his Empire's life victorious Saved from Charles the Russian Tsar? Greet they Catharine's saint those thunders? Hath she given a Prince to life? Of our Giant-Tsar of Wonders She the raven-tresséd wife? No! a Subject's crime remitting To the guilty guilt he sinks; By a Subject's side he's sitting From a Subject's cup he drinks: And his brow he kisses smiling Gay of heart and bright of eye; And he feasts a Reconciling Like some mighty Victory. Hence those shouts of joy and wonder; Hence is Petersburg so gay; Hence the songs and cannon-thunder And the fleet in war array; Hence the guests in joy assembling; Hence the full cup of the Tsar; Hence with cannon-crash is trembling All the Neva from afar. * * * * * The following lines (which are not without a kind of fantastic prettiness of their own) do not seen to need any remark or explanation unless it be the circumstance of the poet's qualifying the sky of St Petersburg with the epithet of _pale-green_. It may be observed that this peculiar tint (exactly enough expressed by the adjective) has struck almost all the strangers who have visited the northern capital and has been repeatedly noticed by travellers; as for instance Kohl Custine &c. &c. Our readers will find the singular colour of the St Petersburg atmosphere (particularly observable in the winter or at night) very well described in Sir George Lefevre's amusing ""Notes of a Travelling Physician."" This greenish tint is as peculiar to the banks of the Neva as is the reddish-black to the neighbourhood of Birmingham or the Potteries; or the yellowish-brown (in November--""let rude ears be absent!"") to the environs of the Thames:-- ""TOWN OF STARVING TOWN OF SPLENDOUR!"" Town of starving town of splendour Dulness pride and slavery; Skyey vault of pale-green tender Cold and granite and _ennui_! With a pang I say adieu t'ye With a pang though slight--for there Trips the foot of _one_ young beauty Waves _one_ tress of golden hair. * * * * * In the short and rapid sketch of Púshkin's life and writings which will be found prefixed to this selection we made particular mention of the strong impression produced upon the Russian public by the appearance of the noble lines addressed to the _Sea_. We beg to subjoin a translation of this short but vigorous poem which has become classical in the author's country; an honour it certainly deserves not only from the simple grace and energy of the language but from the weight dignity and verity of the thoughts. The lines were written by the poet on his quitting the shores of the Caspian where he had so long dwelt in solitude gathering inspiration from the sublime Nature by which he was surrounded; and the poem cannot but be considered as a worthy outpouring of the feelings which a long communion with that Nature was so capable of communicating to a mind like that of Púshkin. Of the two great men whose recent death was naturally recalled to the poet's recollection by the view of the ocean the name of one--Napoleon--is specifically mentioned; that of the other is--Byron. Seldom in the prosecution of his difficult but not ungrateful task has the translator felt the imperfection of his art or the arduous nature of its object more keenly than when attempting to give something like an adequate version of the eleventh and twelfth stanzas of this majestic composition. In order to give some idea of the fidelity of his imitation we will subjoin the literal English of these eight lines:-- He vanish'd wept by liberty Leaving to the world his crown. Roar swell with storm-weather; He was O sea thy bard! Thine image was stamp'd upon him He was created in thy spirit; Like thee mighty deep and gloomy Like thee untameable! TO THE SEA. Farewell free sky and thou O Ocean! For the last time before my sight Roll thy blue waves in ceaseless motion And shine with a triumphant light! Like friend's farewell in parting hour And mournful as his whisper'd word Thy solemn roar--that voice of power-- Now for the last time I have heard. Bound of my spirit's aspiration! How often on thy shore O Sea! I've roved in gloomy meditation Tired with my mighty ministry! Thine echoes--oh how I have loved them! Dread sounds--the voices of the Deep! Thy waves--or rock'd in sunset sleep Or when the tempest-blast had moved them! The fisher's peaceful sail may glide-- If such thy will--in safety gleaming Mid thy dark surges rolling wide; But thou awak'st in sportful seeming-- And navies perish in thy tide! How oft was mock'd my wild endeavour To leave the dull unmoving strand To hail thee Sea; to leave thee never And o'er thy foam to guide for ever My course with free poetic hand. Thou calledst ... but a chain was round me; In vain my soul its fetters tore; A mighty passion-spell had bound me And I remain'd upon thy shore. Wherever o'er thy billows lonely I might direct my careless prow Amid thy waste _one_ object only Would strike with awe my spirit now; One rock ... the sepulchre of glory ... There sleep the echoes that are gone The echoes of a mighty story; There pined and died Napoleon. There pined he lone and broken-hearted. And after like a storm-blast then _Another_ Mighty One departed Another Ruler among Men. He vanish'd from among us--leaving His laurels Freedom unto thee! Roar Ocean; swell-with tempest-grieving; He was thy chosen bard O sea! Thine echoes in his voice resounded Thy gloom upon his brow was shed Like thee his soul was deep unbounded Like thee 'twas mighty dark and dread. The earth is empty now * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Farewell then Sea! Before me gleaming Oft wilt thou float in sunny pride And often shall I hear in dreaming Thy resonance at evening-tide. And I shall bear to inland meadows To the still woods and silent caves Thy rocks thy cliffs thy lights thy shadows And all the language of the waves. * * * * * The following lines we think elegantly and prettily expressed. ECHO. To roar of beast in wild-wood still To thunder-roll to bugle-trill To maiden singing on the hill To every sound Thy voice responsive straight doth fill The air around. Thou hearkenest when the storm-blasts blow To thunder peal to billow's flow And shepherd's call from hamlet low Replying straight; But _thee_ nought answers ... Even so Poet thy fate! * * * * * There are few things more curious than to observe how universally the same legends are to be found in the popular traditions of very distant ages and nations under circumstances which render it extremely difficult for the most acute investigator to trace how when and where they were communicated or even to give any plausible account of the origin of the legend itself. So difficult indeed is this task that we are almost driven to account for so singular a phenomenon by attributing to the human mind an exceedingly small endowment of originality; and by supposing that however the details of these ancient traditions may have been modified and adapted to suit the peculiar nature the scenery of each particular country or the manners customs and character of its inhabitants--the fundamental idea and the leading incident remaining the same under the most dissimilar conditions of time and place must have a common and a single origin. This doctrine if carried to its legitimate consequences would lead us to consider the number of the original legends common to all times and many races as singularly limited; and that a very short list indeed might be made to embrace the _root-stories_--the _uhrsagen_ as a German might call them. And really when we reflect that many of the most threadbare jests which figure in the recondite tomes of Mr Joseph Miller are to be found crystallized in attic salt in the pages of Hierocles and represented as forming part of the ""Hundred merye Talis and Jeastis"" which delectated the citizens of ancient Greece; when we reflect we repeat that the same buffooneries still retailed by after-dinner cits in the Sunday shades of Clapham or Camden-Town may have raised the easy laugh of the merry Greek beneath the portico and in the Agora; it makes us entertain a very humble idea respecting the amount of creative power given to man even for the production of so small a matter as a pleasantry not to speak of pleasantries so very small as some of these mysterious and time-honoured jokes. If we remember still further that the pedigree of these trifling insects of the brain these children of the quip does not stop even in the venerable pages of Hierocles--that Greek ""Joe""--but loses itself like a Welsh genealogy in the darkest gloom of antiquity we ought not to be surprised that ancient legends being often shattered fragments and dim shadowings-forth of mystic and hierophantic philosophy should be found with many of their principal features unaltered in the popular traditions of different ages and countries. The tale embodied in the ""Lay of Olég the Wise "" is identical in all its essentials with the legend still extant upon the tomb of an ancient Kentish family in the church of (we believe) Minster in the Isle of Sheppey. The inimitable Ingoldsby has made the adventure the subject of one of his charming ""Legends "" and has shown how the Knight came by his death in consequence of wounding his foot in the act of contemptuously kicking the fatal horse's skull thus accomplishing the prophecy many years after the death of the faithful steed. The reader will perceive that in the Russian form of the legend the hero dies by the bite of a serpent and not by the less imposing consequences of mortification in the toe; but the identity of the leading idea in the two versions of the old tale is too striking not to be remarked. It is only necessary to observe that Olég is still one of the popular heroes of Russian legendary lore and that the feast to which allusion is made at the end of the poem is the funeral banquet customary among the ancient Slavons at the burial of their heroes; and resembling the funeral games of the heroic age in Greece. The Slavonians however had the habit on such occasions of sacrificing a horse over the tumulus or barrow of the departed brave. The _Perún_ mentioned in the stanzas was the War-God of this ancient people. THE LAY OF THE WISE OLÉG. Wise Olég to the war he hath bouned him again The Khozárs have awaken'd his ire; For rapine and raid hamlet city and plain Are devoted to falchion and fire. In mail of Byzance girt with many a good spear The Prince pricks along on his faithful destrere. From the darksome fir-forest to meet that array Forth paces a gray-haired magician: To none but Perún did t

at sorcerer pray Fulfilling the prophet's dread mission: His life he had wasted in penance and pain:-- And beside that enchanter Olég drew his rein. ""Now rede me enchanter beloved of Perún The good and the ill that's before me; Shall I soon give my neighbour-foes triumph and soon Shall the earth of the grave be piled o'er me? Unfold all the truth; fear me not; and for meed Choose among them--I give thee my best battle-steed."" ""O enchanters they care not for prince or for peer And gifts are but needlessly given; The wise tongue ne'er stumbleth for falsehood or fear 'Tis the friend of the councils of Heaven! The years of the future are clouded and dark Yet on thy fair forehead thy fate I can mark: ""Remember now firmly the words of my tongue; For the chief finds a rapture in glory: On the gate of Byzantium thy buckler is hung Thy name shall be deathless in story; Wild waves and broad kingdoms thy sceptre obey And the foe sees with envy so boundless a sway: ""And the blue sea uplifting its treacherous wave In its wrath--in the hurricane-hour-- And the knife of the coward the sword of the brave To slay thee shall never have power: Within thy strong harness no wound shalt thou know For a guardian unseen shall defend thee below. ""Thy steed fears not labour nor danger nor pain His lord's lightest accent he heareth Now still though the arrows fall round him like rain Now o'er the red field he careereth; He fears not the winter he fears not to bleed-- Yet thy death-wound shall come from thy good battle-steed!"" Olég smiled a moment but yet on his brow And lip thought and sorrow were blended: In silence he bent on his saddle and slow The Prince from his courser descended; And as though from a friend he were parting with pain He strokes his broad neck and his dark flowing mane. ""Farewell then my comrade fleet faithful and bold! We must part--such is Destiny's power: Now rest thee--I swear in thy stirrup of gold No foot shall e'er rest from this hour. Farewell! we've been comrades for many a long year-- My squires now I pray ye come take my destrere. ""The softest of carpets his horse-cloth shall be: And lead him away to the meadow; On the choicest of corn he shall feed daintilie He shall drink of the well in the shadow."" Then straightway departed the squires with the steed And to valiant Olég a fresh courser they lead. Olég and his comrades are feasting I trow; The mead-cups are merrily clashing: Their locks are as white as the dawn-lighted snow On the peak of the mountain-top flashing: They talk of old times of the days of their pride And the fights where together they struck side by side. ""But where "" quoth Olég ""is my good battle-horse? My mettlesome charger--how fares he? Is he playful as ever as fleet in the course; His age and his freedom how bears he?"" They answer and say: on the hill by the stream He has long slept the slumber that knows not a dream. Olég then grew thoughtful and bent down his brow: ""O man what can magic avail thee! A false lying dotard Enchanter art thou: Our rage and contempt should assail thee. My horse might have borne me till now but for thee Then the bones of his charger Olég went to see. Olég he rode forth with his spearmen beside; At his bridle Prince Igor he hurried: And they see on a hillock by Dniépr's swift tide Where the steed's noble bones lie unburied: They are wash'd by the rain the dust o'er them is cast And above them the feather-grass waves in the blast. Then the Prince set his foot on the courser's white skull; Saying: ""Sleep my old friend in thy glory! Thy lord hath outlived thee his days are nigh full: At his funeral feast red and gory 'Tis not thou 'neath the axe that shall redden the sod That my dust may be pleasured to quaff thy brave blood. ""And am I to find my destruction in _this_? My death in a skeleton seeking?"" From the skull of the courser a snake with a hiss Crept forth as the hero was speaking: Round his legs like a ribbon it twined its black ring; And the Prince shriek'd aloud as he felt the keen sting. The mead-cups are foaming they circle around; At Olég's mighty Death-Feast they're ringing; Prince Igor and Olga they sit on the mound; The war-men the death-song are singing: And they talk of old times of the days of their pride And the fights where together they struck side by side. * * * * * We know not whether our readers will be attracted or repelled by the somewhat exaggerated tone of thought and the strangeness and novelty of the metre in the following little piece. The gloom of the despondency expressed in the lines is certainly Byronian--and haply ""something more."" It is to be hoped however that they may find favour in the eyes of the English reader--always so ""novitatis avidus ""--if only on the score of the singularity of the versification:-- REMEMBRANCE. When for the sons of men is stilled the day's turmoil And on the dumb streets of the city With half-transparent shade sinks Night the friend of Toil-- And Sleep--calm as the tear of Pity; Oh then how drag they on how silent and how slow The lonely vigil-hours tormenting; How sear they then my soul those serpent fangs of woe Fangs of heart-serpents unrelenting! Then burn my dreams: in care my soul is drown'd and dead Black heavy thoughts come thronging o'er me; Remembrance then unfolds with finger slow and dread Her long and doomful scroll before me. Then reading those dark lines with shame remorse and fear I curse and tremble as I trace them Though bitter be my cry though bitter be my tear Those lines--I never shall efface them: * * * * * There is another little composition in the same key. ""I HAVE OUTLIVED THE HOPES THAT CHARM'D ME."" I have outlived the hopes that charm'd me The dreams that once my heart could bless! 'Gainst coming agonies I've arm'd me Fruits of the spirit's loneliness. My rosy wreath is rent and faded By cruel Fate's sirocco-breath! Lonely I live and sad and jaded And wait and wait--to welcome death! Thus in the chilly tempest shivering When Winter sings his song of grief Lone on the bough and feebly quivering Trembles the last belated leaf. * * * * * The following is a somewhat new version of the famous ""E pur si muove"" of Galileo. MOTION. ""There is "" once said the bearded sage ""no motion!"" The other straight 'gan move before his eyes: The contrary no stronglier could he prove. All praised the answerer's ingenious notion. Now Sirs; this story doth to me recall A new example of the fact surprising: We see each day the sun before us rising Yet right _was_ Galileo after all! In the spirited lines addressed to ""The Slanderers of Russia "" Púshkin has recorded a sufficiently conclusive reply to the hackneyed calumnies against his country repeated with such a nauseating uniformity and through so long a period of time in wretched verse or more wretched prose in the leading articles of obscure provincial newspapers and on the scaffolding of obscure provincial hustings. Whatever may be the merits or demerits in a moral point of view of the part played by Russia in the events alluded to by the poet events which form the stock subject of the scribblings and spoutings we speak of these tiresome tirades do not come with a very good grace from either England or France. There is a very excellent and venerable proverb which expresses the imprudence of the practice of throwing stones when indulged in by the inhabitant of an abode composed of a vitreous substance not to mention a still more greybearded and not less wise saw specifying in terms rather forcible than dignified the impolicy of the pot alluding in an opprobrious manner to the blackness which characterizes the sitting part of its fellow-utensil the kettle; and the ""wisdom of ages"" might in the present instance be very reasonably adduced to moderate the excessive moral susceptibilities of the aforesaid writers and declaimers and to restrain the feeble flood of words--the dirty torrent of shallow declamation so incessantly poured forth against Russia on the subject of Poland. ""Judge not that ye be not judged!"" is an excellent precept for the guidance of nations as well as of individuals; and we think a Russian wearied by the tiresome repetition of the same accusations against his native country can hardly be blamed for asking in language even more energetic than that here employed by Púshkin whether England or France have hands so clean or a conscience so clear as to justify them in their incessant and insolent attempt to sit in judgment upon their European sister. We certainly think that the recollection of the Affghan war the bombardment of Copenhagen of the splendid exploits of Whig policy and Whig non-intervention in Spain might make England a little more modest and a little less inclined to declaim against the wickedness of other nations--and as to France her whole history from the Republic to the present day is nothing but a succession of lessons which might teach _la grande nation_ to abstain from exhibiting herself in the character of a moral instructress to the world. TO THE SLANDERERS OF RUSSIA. Why rave ye babblers so--ye lords of popular wonder? Why such anathemas 'gainst Russia do ye thunder? What moves your idle rage? Is't Poland's fallen pride? 'Tis but Slavonic kin among themselves contending An ancient household strife oft judged but still unending A question which be sure _ye_ never can decide. For ages past have still contended These races though so near allied: And oft 'neath Victory's storm has bended Now Poland's and now Russia's side. Which shall stand fast in such commotion The haughty Liákh or faithful Russ? And shall Slavonic streams meet in a Russian ocean-- Or _that_ dry up? This is the point for us. Peace peace! your eyes are all unable To read our history's bloody table; Strange in your sight and dark must be Our springs of household enmity! To you the Kreml and Praga's tower Are voiceless all--you mark the fate And daring of the battle-hour-- And understand us not but hate ... What stirs ye? Is it that this nation On Moscow's flaming wall blood-slaked and ruin-quench'd Spurn'd back the insolent dictation Of Him before whose nod ye blench'd? Is it that into dust we shatter'd The Dagon that weigh'd down all earth so wearily? And our best blood so freely scatter'd To buy for Europe peace and liberty? Ye're bold of tongue--but hark would ye in _deed_ but try it Or is the hero now reclined in laurell'd quiet Too weak to fix once more Izmáil's red bayonet? Or hath the Russian Tsar ever in vain commanded? Or must we meet all Europe banded? Have we forgot to conquer yet? Or rather shall they not from Perm to Tauris' fountains From the hot Colchian steppes to Finland's icy mountains From the grey Kreml's half-shatter'd wall To far Kathay in dotage buried-- A steelly rampart close and serried Rise--Russia's warriors--one and all? Then send your numbers without number Your madden'd sons your goaded slaves In Russia's plains there's room to slumber And well they'll know their brethen's graves! * * * * * We are not sure whether we are right in yielding to the temptation of transcribing in these sheets so many of the smaller lyrics and fugitive pieces of our author; and whether that very charm of _form_ and _expression_ which attract so strongly our admiration to the originals should not have rather tended to deter us from so difficult an attempt as that of transposing them into another language. The chief grace and value of such productions certainly consists less in the quantity or weight of the gold employed in their composition than in the beauty and delicacy of the image stamped or graven upon the metal; and the critic may object against us if our critic be in a severe mood (quod Dii avertant boni!) the rashness of the numismatist who should hope in recasting the exquisite medals of antique art to retain--or even imperfectly imitate--the touches of the Ionic or the Corinthian chisel. True as is the above reasoning with respect to the slighter productions of poetry in all languages it is peculiarly true when applied to the smaller offspring of Púshkin's muse; and were we not sufficiently convinced of the danger and the arduousness of our attempt by our own experience and by analogy we should have found abundant reason for diffidence in the often repeated counsels of Russians who all unite in asserting that there is something so peculiarly delicate and inimitable in the diction and versification of these little pieces as to be almost beyond the reach of a foreigner's _appreciation_ and consequently that any attempt at _imitation_ must _à fortiori_ of necessity be a failure. Notwithstanding all this and despite many sinister presages we have obstinately persevered in our determination to clothe in an English dress those pieces great and small--gems or flowers productions perfumed by grace of diction or heavy with weight of thought--which struck us most forcibly among the poems of our author; and we hope that our boldness if not our success may be rewarded with the approbation of such of our countrymen as may be curious to know something of the tone and physiognomy of the Russian literature. PRESENTIMENT. Clouds anew have gather'd o'er me Sad and grim and dark and still; Black and menacing before me Glooms the Destiny of Ill ... In contempt with fate contending Shall I bring to meet her flood The enduring and unbending Spirit of my youthful blood? Worn with life-storm cold and dreary Calmly I await the blast Saved from wreck yet wet and weary I may find a port at last. See it comes--the hour thou fearest! Hour escapeless! We must part! Haply now I press thee dearest For the last time to my heart. Angel mild and unrepining Gently breathe a fond farewell-- Thy soft eyes through tear-drops shining Raised or lower'd--shall be my spell: And thy memory abiding To my spirit shall restore The hope the pride the strong confiding Of my youthful days once more. * * * * * Perhaps our readers would like to see a _Russian Sonnet_. To many the name of such a thing will seem a union of two contradictory terms; but nevertheless here is a sonnet and not a bad one either. THE MADONNA. With mighty pictures by the Great of Old Ne'er did I long to deck my cell intending That visitors should gape and peer commending In Connoisseurship's jargon quaint and cold. One picture only would I aye behold On these still walls 'mid these my toils unending; One and but one: From mists of cloudy gold The Virgin Mother o'er her Babe-God bending-- _Her_ eyes with grandeur _His_ with reason bright-- Should calm look down in glory and in light While Sion's palm beside should point to heaven. And God hath granted this fond prayer of mine: Thou my Madonna thou to me wert given Divinest form of beauty most divine! * * * * * The last production which we shall present in our present bundle of samples selected from Púshkin's lyrics is the irregular ode entitled _André Chénier_. This composition is founded upon one of the most well-known and tragic episodes of the first French Revolution: the execution of the young and gifted poet whose name forms the title of the lines. The story of Chénier's imprisonment and untimely death as well as the various allusions to the beautiful verses addressed by him to his fellow-prisoner La Jeune Captive to his calm bearing on the scaffold and to the memorable exclamation which was made in the last accents ever uttered by his lips; all these things are doubtless sufficiently familiar to our readers; or if not a single reference either to any of the thousand books describing that most bloody and yet powerfully attractive period of French history--nay the simple turning to the article _Chénier_ in any biographical dictionary will be amply sufficient to recall to the memory the principal facts of the sad story which Púshkin has made the subject of his noble elegy. It will be therefore unnecessary for us to detail the life and death of the hero of the poem and we shall only throw together in these short preliminary remarks the few quotations and notes appended by the Russian poet to his work. These will not be found of any very formidable extent; and as the poem itself is not of a considerable length we trust that the various passages which these quotations are adduced to illustrate will be sufficiently perceptible without our submitting to the necessity of appending them in the form of marginal annotations or foot-notes a necessity which would force us to load the text with those unsightly appendages to books in general and to poetry in particular--the asterisks and daggers of marginal reference. The supposed soliloquy of the martyred poet which forms the principal portion of Púshkin's elegiac ode is little else than an amplification or pathetic and dignified paraphrase of the exquisite composition actually written by Chénier on the eve of his execution; a composition become classical in the French literature:-- ""Comme un dernier rayon comme un dernier zephyr Anime le soir d'un beau jour Au pied de l'échafaud j'essaie encore ma lyre."" Of the few persons to whom allusion is made in the verses _Abel_ _Fanny_ and the _Captive Maid_ all that it is necessary to know is that the first was one of his friends the companion of his early happiness and the fellow-labourer of his early studies--""Abel doux confidant de mes jeunes mystères;"" the second one of his mistresses; and the third a young lady Mlle. de Coigny who was for some time his fellow-prisoner and the person to whom the poet addressed the touching verses which we have mentioned above. Mlle. de Coigny was the ""Jeune Captive."" In justification of the very emphatic tone in which Púshkin has recorded the noble generosity and self-sacrifice which conducted Chénier to the revolutionary scaffold it will be sufficient to quote the words of De la Touche and to refer the reader to Chénier's Iambics which drew down upon his head and with good cause the hatred and suspicion of Robespierre and his subordinate demons:--""Chénier avait mérité la haine des factieux. Il avait célébré Charlotte Corday flétri Collot d'Herbois attaqué Robespierre. On sait que le Roi avait demandé à l'Assemblée par une lettre pleine de calme et de dignité le droit d'appeler au peuple du jugement qui le condamnait. Cette lettre signée dans la nuit du 17 au 18 Janvier est d'André Chénier.""--H. DE LA TOUCHE. The unfortunate poet was executed on the 8th of Thermidor; _i.e._ the day before the fall of Robespierre. The fatal tumbril which bore Chénier to the guillotine conveyed also to the same scaffold the poet Roucher his friend:--""Ils parlèrent de la poesie à leurs derniers moments; pour eux après l'amitiè c'était la plus belle chose de la terre. Racine fût l'objet de leur entretien et de leur derrière admiration. Ils voulurent réciter ses vers; ils choisirent la prémière scène d'Andromaque.""--H. DE LA TOUCHE. At the place of execution Chénier struck his forehead with his hand and exclaimed--""Pourtant j'avais quelque chose là!"" ANDRÉ CHÉNIER. ""Ainsi triste et captif ma lyre toutefois S'éveillait."" While earth with wonderment and fear O'er Byron's urn is sadly bending And unto Europe's dirge its ear By Dante's side his shade is lending Another shade my voice doth crave Who erst unsung unwept unfriended In the grim Terror-days descended From the red scaffold to the grave. Love Peace the Woodlands did inspire That Poet's dreams sublime and free; And to that Bard a stranger's lyre Shall ring--shall ring to him and thee. The lifted axe--what! cannot slaughter tire?-- For a new victim calls again. The bard is ready; hark his pensive lyre Awakes its last its parting strain. At dawn he dies--a mob-feast hot and gory; But that young Poet's latest breath What doth it sing? Freedom it sings and glory 'Twas faithful even unto death. "" * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ""I shall not see ye days of bliss and freedom: The scaffold calls. My last hours wearily Drag on. At dawn I die. The headsman's hand defiling By the long hair will lift my head on high Above the crowd unmoved and smiling. Farewell! My homeless dust O friends! shall ne'er repose In that dear spot where erst we pass'd 'neath sunny bowers In science and in feasts our careless days and chose Beforehand for our urns a place among the flowers. And if my friends in after years With sadness my remembrance moves ye O grant my dying prayer!--the prayer of one who loves ye: Weep loved ones weep my lot with still and silent tears; Beware or by those drops suspicion ye may waken; In this bad age ye know e'en tears for crimes are taken: Brother for brother now alas! must weep no more. And yet another prayer: you've listen'd o'er and o'er Unto my idle rhymes my spirit's careless breathings Mournful and gay by turns traditions and bequeathings Of all my vanish'd youth. And hopes and joy and pain And tears and love my friends those burning leaves contain Yea they contain my life. From Abel and from Fanny Gather them all; for they are gifts of Muses many. Keep them. The stern cold world and fashion's gilded hall Shall never hear of them. Alas! my head must fall Untimely: my unripe and crude imagination To glory hath bequeath'd no grand and high creation; I shall die _all_. But ye who love my parting soul Keep for yourselves O friends! my true though simple scroll; And when the storm is past in a fond crowd assemble Sometimes to read my lines--to read to weep and tremble And weep and read again and say--Yes this is he; These are his words. And I from death's cold fetter free Will rise unseen and sit among ye in the bower; And drink your tears as drinks the desert-sand the shower-- In sweet oblivion.... Then shall haply be repaid All my love-woes and thou haply my _Captive Maid_ Will list my love-song then pale mournful but relenting...."" But for a while the Bard ceased here his sad lamenting Ceased for a moment's space and his pale head he bow'd. The spring-days of his youth loves woes a busy crowd Flitted before him. Girls with languid eyes and tender And feasts and songs and eyes of dark and burning splendour All all revived; and far to the dim past he flew Dream-wing'd. But soon stream'd forth his murmur-song anew:-- ""Why luredst thou me astray thou Genius evil-fated? For love for quiet arts and peace I was created; Why did I leave the shade and life's untroubled way And liberty and friends and peace more dear than they! Fate lull'd my golden youth and cast a glamour round me And joy with careless hand and happiness had crown'd me And the Muse shared my hours of leisure pure and free. In those so joyous nights lighted with friendly glee How rang that dear abode with rhyme and merry laughter-- Waking the household gods--how rang each shouting rafter! Then weary of the feast I from the wine-cup turn'd For a new sudden fire within my bosom burn'd And to my lady's bower I flew upon the morrow And found her half in wrath and half in girlish sorrow And with fond threats and tears bedimming her soft eyes She cursed my age still drown'd in ceaseless revelries She drove me from her wept forgave and pouting chided: How sweetly then my time like some bright river glided! Ah why from this calm life in youth's most golden prime Plunged I in this abyss this seething hell of crime Of passions fierce and fell black ignorance and madness Malice and lust of gold! O visionary Gladness! Where hast thou lured me where? And was it then for me A worshipper of love of peace and poesy To brawl with sworders vile wretches who stab for hire! Was it for me to tame the restive courser's fire To shake the rein or wield the mercenary blade! And yet what shall I leave?--A trace that soon shall fade Of blind and senseless zeal; of courage--idle merit!-- Be dumb my voice be dumb! And thou thou lying spirit Thou word thou empty sound....Oh no! Be still ye murmurings of weakness! And thou O Bard! with rapture glow: Thou hast not bent with slavish meekness Before our age's shame thy brow; The splendours of the wicked spurning Thou wav'dst a torch terrific burning Whose lurid lustre fiercely fell On that foul nest of vulture-rulers; Loud rang thy lash and reach'd them well. * * * * * Around them hiss'd thy winged verse; Thou did'st invoke upon them the avenger; Thou sang'st to Marat's worshippers The dagger and the Virgin-Nemesis! When that old holy man strove from the axe to tear With a chain-laden hand his master's crowned head Thou gav'st thy hand unto the noble pair; Before ye struck with horror fell That Areopagus of hell. Be proud O Bard! and thou fiend-wolf of blood and guile Sport with my head awhile; 'Tis in thy clutch. But hark! and know thou Godless one My shout shall follow thee my triumph-laugh of joy! Aye drink our blood live to destroy: Thou'rt but a pigmy still; thy race shall soon be run. An hour will come an hour thou can'st not flee-- Thou shalt fall Tyrant! Indignation Will Wake at last. The sobs and mournings of a nation Will waken weary destiny. But now I go.... 'Tis time.... But thou shalt follow me! I wait thy coming."" Thus rang the Bard's dying lay And all was still around. The dim lamp's quiet ray 'Gan pale before the gleam of morning Into that dungeon stream'd the dawn-light of the day Upon the grate he bends a glance unshrinking.... A noise. They come they call. There is no hope! 'Tis they! Locks bolts and bars and chains are clinking. They call.... Stay stay; one day but one day more And he shall live in liberty A mighty citizen when all is o'er Amid a nation great and free. The silent train moves on. There stands the headsman grim; But the Bard's path of death the ray of friendship lighteth Murmuring Glory's name he mounts--His brow he smiteth-- Weep Muse for him! MARSTON; OR THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART XVIII. ""Have I not in my time heard lions roar? Have I not heard the sea puft up with wind Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in the pitched battle heard Loud 'larums neighing steeds and trumpets clang?"" SHAKSPEARE. On returning to London I found the world in the ""transition state."" The spirit of the people was changed; the nature of the war was changed; the principle of the great parties in the legislature was changed. A new era of the contest had arrived; and in the midst of the general perplexity as to the nature of the approaching events every one exhibited a conviction that when they came their magnitude would turn all the struggles of the past into child's play. I too had my share in the change. I had now passed my public novitiate and had obtained my experience of statesmanship on a scale if too small for history yet sufficiently large to teach me the working of the machinery. National conspiracy the council-chamber popular ebullition and the tardy but powerful action of public justice had been my tutors; and I was now felt by the higher powers to be not unfit for trust in a larger field. A seat in the English House of Commons soon enabled me to give satisfactory evidence that I had not altogether overlooked the character of the crisis; and after some interviews with the premier his approval of my conduct in Ireland was followed by the proposal of office with a seat in the cabinet. I had thus attained in the vigour of life a distinction for which hundreds perhaps thousands had laboured through life in vain. But mine was no couch of rosy prosperity. The period was threatening. The old days of official repose were past never to return. The state of Europe was hourly assuming an aspect of the deepest peril. The war had hitherto been but the struggle of armies; it now threatened to be the struggle of nations. It had hitherto lived on the natural resources of public expenditure; it now began to prey upon the vitals of the kingdom. The ordinary finance of England was to be succeeded by demands pressing heavily on the existing generation and laying a hereditary burden on all that were to follow. The nature of our antagonist deepened the difficulty. All the common casualties of nations were so far from breaking the enemy down that they only gave him renewed power. Poverty swelled his ranks; confiscation swelled his coffers; bankruptcy gave him strength; faction invigorated his government; and insubordination made him invincible. In the midst of this confusion even a new terror arose. The democracy of France after startling Europe had seemed to be sinking into feebleness and apathy when a new wonder appeared in the political hemisphere too glaring and too ominous to suffer our eyes to turn from it for a moment. The Consulate assumed the rule of France. Combining the fiery vigour of republicanism with the perseverance of monarchy it now carried the whole force of the country into foreign fields. Every foreign capital began to tremble. The whole European system shook before a power which smote it with the force of a cannon-ball against a crumbling bastion. The extraordinary man who now took the lead in France had touched the string which vibrated in the heart of every native of the soil. He had found them weary of the crimes of the democracy; he told them that a career of universal supremacy was open before them. He had found them degraded by the consciousness of riot and regicide; he told them that they were the chevaliers of the new age and destined to eclipse the chevaliers of all the ages past. His Italian campaigns by their rapidity their fine combinations and their astonishing success had created a new art of war. He had brought them romantic triumphs from the land of romance. Day by day the populace of the capital were summoned to see pageants of Italian standards cannon and prisoners. Every courier that galloped through the streets brought tidings of some new conquest; and every meeting of the Councils was employed in announcing the addition of some classic province the overthrow of some hostile diadem or the arrival of some convoy of those most magnificent of all the spoils of war the treasures of the Italian arts. France began to dream of the conquest of the world. The contrast between her past calamities and her present splendour powerfully heightened the illusion. France loves illusion; she has always rejoiced in glittering deceptions even with the perfect knowledge that they were deceptions; and here stood the most dazzling of political charlatans the great wonder-worker raising phantoms of national glory even out of the charnel. The wrecks of faction the remnants of the monarchy and the corpses lying headless in the shadow of the guillotine gave all semblance to the conception--France _was_ a charnel. Her people by nature rushing into extremes wild and fierce yet gallant and generous had become at length conscious of the national fall in the eyes of Europe. They had been scandalized by the rudeness the baseness and the brutishness of rabble supremacy. They gazed upon their own crimsoned hands and tarnished weapons with intolerable disgust; and it was in this moment of depression that they saw a sudden beam of military renown shot across the national darkness. After so long defeat that it had extinguished all but the memory of her old triumphs France was a conqueror; after a century of helpless exhaustion she had risen into almost supernatural vigour; after a hundred years scarcely marked by a single victory her capital rang with the daily sound of successful battles against the veterans of Frederick and Maria Theresa; after lingering for generations in the obscurity so bitter to the popular heart France had been suddenly thrown into the broadest lustre of European sovereignty. The world _was_ changed; and the limits of that change offered only a more resistless lure to the popular passion for their being still indistinct to the keenest eye of man. But our chief struggle was at home and the reaction of our foreign disasters came with terrible weight upon a cabinet already tottering. We saw its fate. Days and nights of the most anxious consultation could not relieve us from the hourly increasing evidence that the Continent was on the verge of ruin. The voice of Opposition reinforced by the roar of the multitude could no longer be shut out by the curtains of the council-chamber. Fox always formidable was never more confident and more popular than when he made the House ring with prophecies of national downfall. His attacks were now incessant. He flung his hand-grenades night after night into our camp and constantly with still greater damage. We still fought but it was the fight of despair. Pitt was imperturbable; but there was not one among his colleagues who did no

feel the hopelessness of calling for public reliance when in every successive debate we heard the leader of Opposition contemptuously asking what answer we had to the Gazette crowded with bankruptcy? to the resolutions of great bodies of the people denouncing the war? or to the deadly evidence of its effects in the bulletin which he held in his hand announcing some new defeat of our allies; some new treaty of submission; some new barter of provinces for the precarious existence of foreign thrones? In all my recollections of public life this was the period of the deepest perplexity. The name of the great minister has been humiliated by those who judge of the past only by the present. But then all was new. The general eye of statesmanship had been deceived by the formal grandeur of the continential sovereignties. They had lain untouched like the bodies of their kings with all their armour on and with every feature unchanged; and such they might have remained for ages to come had not a new force broken open their gilded and sculptured shrines torn off their cerements and exposed them to the light and air. Then a touch extinguished them; the armour dropped into dust; the royal robes dissolved; the royal features disappeared; and the whole illusion left nothing but its moral behind. It can be no dishonour to the memory of the first of statesmen to acknowledge that he had not the gift of prophecy. Europe had never before seen a war of the people. The burning passions rude vigour and remorseless daring of the multitude were phenomena of which man knows no more than he knows of the materials of destruction which lie hid in the central caverns of the globe and which some new era may be suffered to develope for the new havoc of posterity. Even to this hour I think that the true source of revolutionary triumph has been mistaken. It was not in the furious energy of its factions nor in the wild revenge of the people nor even in the dazzling view of national conquest. These were but gusts of the popular tempest currents of the great popular tide. But the mighty mover of all was the sudden change from the disgusts and depressions of serfdom into a sense that all the world of possession lay before the bold heart and the ruthless hand. Every form of wealth and enjoyment was offered to the man who had begun life in the condition of one chained to the ground and who could never have hoped to change his toil but for the grave. But the barrier was now cast down and all were free to rush in. The treasury of national honours was suddenly flung open and all might share the spoil. This was the true secret of the astonishing power of the Revolution. The man who was nothing to-day might be everything to-morrow. The conscript might be a captain a colonel a general before the Austrian or Prussian soldier could be a corporal. Who can wonder at the march of France or the flight of her enemies? Although every night now produced a debate and the demand on the activity and vigilance of ministers was incessant and exhausting the real debates in both Houses were few in comparison with those of later times. In those pitched battles of the great parties their whole strength was mustered from every quarter; the question was long announced; and its decision was regarded as giving the most complete measure of the strength of the Cabinet and Opposition. One of these nights came unfortunately for ministers on the very day in which the bulletin arrived announcing the signature of the first Austrian armistice. The passage of the Tyrol had stripped Austria of its mountain barrier. Terror had done the rest; and the armistice was signed within three marches of Vienna! The courier who had been sent to the Austrian ambassador and had been permitted to pass through France reported the whole nation to be in a frenzy of triumph. He had every where seen civic processions military displays and illuminations in the cities. The exultation of the people had risen to the utmost height of national enthusiasm; and Europe was pronounced by every Frenchman from the Directory to the postilion to be at their feet. This intelligence was all but fatal. If a shower of cannon-balls had been poured in upon the ministerial benches it could scarcely have produced a more sweeping effect. It was clear that the sagacity of the ""independent members""--only another name for the most flexible portion of the House--was fully awake to the contingency; the ""waiters upon Providence "" as they were called with no very reverent allusion were evidently on the point of deciding for themselves; and the ""King's friends""--a party unknown to the constitution but perfectly knowing and known by the treasury--began to move away by small sections; and crowded as the clubs were during the day I never saw the minister rise with so few of his customary troops behind him. But the Opposition bench was crowded to repletion; and their leader sat looking round with good-humoured astonishment and sometimes with equally good-humoured burlesque on the sudden increase of his recruits. The motion was in answer to a royal message on continental subsidies. Nothing could have been more difficult than the topic at that juncture. But I never listened to Pitt with more genuine admiration. Fox in his declamatory bursts was superior to every speaker whom I have ever heard. His appearance of feeling was irresistible. It seemed that if one could have stripped his heart it could scarcely have shown its pulsations more vividly to the eye than they transpired from his fluent and most eloquent tongue. But if Fox was the most powerful of declaimers Pitt was the mightiest master of the language of national council. He too could be occasionally glowing and imaginative. He could even launch the lighter weapons of sarcasm with singular dexterity; but his true rank was as the ruler of Empire and his true talent was never developed but when he spoke for the interests of Empire. On this night he was more earnest and more impressive than ever; the true description would have been more _imperial_. He spoke less like a debater than like one who held the sceptre in his hand; and one who also felt that he was transmitting his wisdom as a parting legacy to a great people. A portion of that speech which ought never to be forgotten by the leaders of public affairs in England was singularly full and powerful. Referring to the calumniated Revolution of 1688--""We now stand "" said he ""almost in the same position with respect to France and Europe in which the government of William III. stood a century ago. We have only to substitute the democracy of France for the monarchy; and Europe enfeebled by the shocks of war as it is now for Europe untouched and intrepid awake to the ambition of the French king and determined to meet him sword in hand. But the King of England was even then the guiding mind of Europe. I now demand what was the redeeming policy of that pre-eminent sovereign? It was never to despair of the triumph of principle; never to doubt of the ultimate fortunes of good in a contest with evil; and never to hesitate in calling upon a great and free people for the defence of that constitution which had made them great and free."" Those high-toned sentiments were received with loud cheers. Even Opposition felt the natural force of the appeal and the cheering was universal; party was forgotten for the time and the name of England and the revived glory of those illustrious days bowed the whole House at the will of the great orator. In the midst of their enthusiasm he took from the table a volume of the records and read the final address of William to his Parliament; the bequest of a dying king to the people whom he had rescued from slavery. This royal speech had evidently formed his manual of government and certainly a nobler declaration never came from the throne. ""My Lords and Gentlemen--I promise myself that you are met together with that just sense of the common danger of Europe and that resentment of the late proceedings of the French king which have been so fully and universally expressed in the loyal and seasonable addresses of my people."" In allusion to the French plan of universal monarchy in the reign of Louis XIV. the speech pronounced that the alliance of Spain was the commencement of a system for subjugating Europe. ""It is fit "" said the King ""that I should tell you that the eyes of all Europe are upon this Parliament--all matters are at a stand until your resolutions are known; and therefore no time ought to be lost. ""You have yet an opportunity by God's blessing to secure to yourselves and your posterity the quiet enjoyment of your religion and liberties if you are not _wanting to yourselves_ but will exert the utmost vigour of the English nation. But I tell you plainly that if you do not lay hold of this occasion you have no reason to hope for another."" One of the measures proposed was for the maintenance of the public good faith. ""I cannot but press upon you "" said the King ""to take care of the public credit which cannot be preserved but by keeping sacred the maxim that _they shall never be losers_ who trust to parliamentary security. ""Let me conjure you to disappoint the only hopes of your enemies by your unanimity. I have shown and will always show how desirous I am to be the common father of all my people: do you in like manner lay aside parties and divisions; let there be no other distinction heard of amongst us but of those who are for the Protestant religion and the present establishment; and of those who mean a Popish prince and a French government. ""I shall only add this; that if you do in good earnest desire to see England hold the balance of Europe and to be indeed at the head of the Protestant interest it will appear by the present opportunity."" Daylight shone on the windows of St Stephen's before the debate closed. The minister had retired immediately after his exhausting speech and left his friends to sustain the combat. It was long and fierce; but Opposition was again baffled and the division gave us a lingering majority. It was now too late or too early to go to rest; and I had returned to my official apartments to look over some returns required for the next council when my friend the secretary tapped at my door. His countenance looked care-worn; and for a few moments after he had sat down he remained in total silence with his forehead resting on his hands. This was so unlike the cheerful spirit of former times--times in which he had seemed to defy or almost to enjoy the struggles of public life--that I began to express alarm for his health. But he interrupted me by a look of the deepest distress and the words ""Pitt is dying."" No words could be fuller of ill omen and my anxiety was equal to his own. ""My meaning "" said he ""is not that he must die to-day or to-morrow nor in six months nor perhaps in a year but that the statesman is dead. He must speak no more act no more and even think no more or he must go to his grave. This night has finished the long supremacy of the noblest mind that ever ruled the councils of this country. William Pitt may live but the minister has finished his days."" ""Yet "" I remarked ""I never heard him more animated or more impressive than on this night. He absolutely broke down all resistance. His mind seemed richer than ever and his combination of facts and reasoning appeared to me unequalled by even his greatest previous efforts. I should have almost pronounced him to be inspired by the increased difficulties of the time."" ""True--yet I conveyed him from the House fainting;--I have sate along with his physician at his bedside ever since applying restoratives to him with scarcely a hope of recovery. It is plain that another night of such effort would be too much for his frame; and the question on which I have now come to summon an immediate meeting of our friends turns on the means of calming public opinion until he shall be able to appear in his place once more. His career is unquestionably at an end but his name is powerful still; and though another trial of his powers in Parliament would cost him his life still as the head of the cabinet he might effect for a while all the principal purposes of an administration."" I doubted the possibility of encountering the present strength of Opposition reinforced as it was by calamity abroad and asked ""Whether any expedient was contemplated to restore the public fortunes on the Continent?"" ""Every point of that kind has been long since considered "" was the answer. ""Our alliances have all failed; and we are now reproached not simply with the folly of paying for inefficient help but with the cruelty of dragging the states of Europe into a contest where to be crushed was inevitable."" I still urged an enquiry into the strength of states which had never been sharers in the war. ""If the minor German powers have been absorbed; if Prussia has abandoned the cause; if Austria has fought in vain--is the _world_ included in Germany?"" I threw the map of Europe on the table. ""See what a narrow circle comprehends the whole space to which we have hitherto limited the defence of society against the enemy of all social order. Our cause is broader than Austria and Prussia; it is broader than Europe; it is the cause of civilization itself; and why not summon all civilization to its defence? Russia alone has an army of half a million yet she has never fired a shot."" Still I found it difficult to convince my fellow minister. ""Russia--jealous ambitious and Asiatic; Russia with the Eastern world for her natural field--what object can she have in relieving the broken powers of the Continent? Must she not rather rejoice in the defeats and convulsions which leave them at her mercy?"" I still continued to urge him. ""Rely upon it; it is in the North that we must look for the reinforcement. If the councils of Catharine were crafty the councils of her successor may be sincere. Catharine thought only of the seizure of Turkey; Paul may think only of the profits of commerce. Yet is it altogether justifiable to suppose that monarchs may not feel the same sympathies the same principles of honour--nay the same abhorrence of a sanguinary republicanism--which a private individual might feel in any other instance of oppression?"" ""Still Marston I am at a loss to know by what influence a British government could urge a Russian despotism into a contest a thousand miles from its frontier; in which it can gain no accession of territory and but little accession of military fame; and all this while it is itself perfectly secure from all aggression."" ""All true; but remember the striking commencement of Voltaire's Memoir of Peter--'Who could have pretended to say in the year 1700 that a magnificent and polished court would be formed at the extremity of the Gulf of Finland; that the inhabitants of Cazan and the banks of the Wolga would be ranked among disciplined warriors and after beating the Turk and the Swede gain victories in Germany? That a desert of two thousand leagues in length should in the space of fifty years extend its influence to all the European courts; and that in 1759 the most zealous patron of literature in Europe should be a Russian sovereign? The man who had said this would have been regarded as the most chimerical mortal on earth.' But all this has been done and the career is not closed. More will be done still. It may even be our most essential policy to bring Russia into full collision with France. She is now the only rival: and I shall scarcely regret the fall of the German sovereignties if it clears the field to bring face to face the two great powers which hold at their sword's point the fate of the Continent."" A month passed of perpetual difficulty in the cabinet of ill news from abroad and of violent discontents among the people. A deficient harvest had come to increase the national murmurs; a season of peculiar inclemency had added its share to the public vexations; and I fully experienced the insufficiency of office and of the showy honours of courts to constitute happiness. But a new scene was reserved for me. Casual as my conversation with the secretary of state had been it was not forgotten: it had been related to the minister; and it had so far coincided with the conceptions of a mind which seemed to comprehend every chance of human things that I was shortly sent for to enter into the necessary explanations. The result was the offer of a mission to St Petersburg. The proposal was so unexpected that I required time for my answer. I must abandon high employment at home for a temporary distinction abroad; my knowledge of Russia was slight; the character of the Czar was eccentric; and the success of an embassy dependent on the most capricious of mankind was so uncertain that the result might strip me of whatever credit I already possessed. But there was one authority to which I always appealed. I placed the proposal in the hands of Clotilde; and she settled all my doubts at once by declaring ""that it was the appointment which if she had been suffered to choose she would have selected in preference to all others for its honour and its services."" I had no power to resist such pleadings--seconded as they were by the rosiest smiles and the most beaming eyes. But Clotilde was still the woman and I only valued her the more for it.--Her sincerity had not a thought to hide; and she acknowledged her delight at the prospect of once more treading on the soil of the Continent; at gazing even on the borders of her native land excluded as she might be from its entrance; at the enjoyment of seeing continental life in the brilliant animation of its greatest court; and at mingling with the scene in a rank which entitled her to its first distinctions. ""But Clotilde how will you reconcile your tastes to the wild habits of Russia and even to the solemn formalities of a northern court?"" ""They both present themselves to me "" was her answer ""with the charm at once of novelty and recollection. From my nursery days the names of Peter Catharine and their marvellous city rang in the ears of all Paris. Romance had taken refuge at the pole; Voltaire Buffon D'Alembert--all the wit and all the philosophy of France--satirized the French court under the disguise of Russian panegyric; and St Petersburg was to us the modern Babylon--a something compounded of the wildness of a Scythian desert and the lustre of a Turkish tale."" The ministerial note had been headed ""most secret and confidential "" and as such I had regarded it. But I soon saw the difficulty of keeping ""a state secret."" I had scarcely sent in my acceptance of the appointment when I found a letter on my table from my old Israelite friend Mordecai congratulating me on ""my decision."" It was in his usual abrupt style:-- ""I was aware of the minister's offer to you within twelve hours after it was made. I should have written to you urging its acceptance; but I preferred leaving your own judgment to settle the question. Still I can give you some personal knowledge on the subject of Russia. I have been there for the last six months. My daughter--for what purpose I have never been able to ascertain--took a sudden whim of hating Switzerland and loving the snows and deserts of the North. But I have known the sex too long ever to think of combating their wills by argument.--The only chance of success is to give way to them. Mariamne sick of hills and valleys and unable to breathe in the purest air of the globe determined to try the exhalations from the marshes of the Neva. But she is my child after all--the only being for whom I live--and I was peculiarly grateful that she had not fixed on Siberia or taken a resolution to live and die at Pekin. I do not regret my journey. It has thrown a new light on me. I must acknowledge to you that I was astonished at Russia. I had known it in early life and thought that I knew it well. But it is singularly changed. The spirit of the people--the country--the throne itself--have undergone the most remarkable of silent revolutions and the most effective of all. Russia is now Russia no longer; she is Greece Germany France--and she will yet be England. Her politics and her faculties alike embrace the civilized world. She is Greece in her subtlety Germany in her intelligence and France in her ambition. St Petersburg is less the capital of her empire though of all capitals the most magnificent than an emblem of her mind. I often stood on the banks of the Neva and looking round me on their mass of palaces involuntarily asked myself--Could all this have been the work of a single mind? Other capitals have been the work of necessity of chance of national defence of the mere happiness of location. But this was founded in ambition alone--founded by the sovereign will of one who felt that in it he was erecting an empire of conquest; and that from this spot in after ages was to pour forth the force that was to absorb every other dominion of the world. Peter fixed on the site of his city to tell this to the world. I see in its framer and in its site the living words--'I fix my future capital in a wilderness--in a swamp--in a region of tempests--on the shores of an inhospitable sea--in a climate of nine months' winter--to show that I am able to conquer all the obstacles of nature. I might have fixed it on the shores of the Euxine--in the most fertile regions of Asia--in the superb plains of central Russia--or on the banks of the Danube; but I preferred fixing it in the extremity of the North to show that the mind and power of Russia dreaded no impediments of either man or nature.' ""I am now in London for a week. You will find me in my den."" I visited him ""in his den;"" and it deserved the name as much as ever. Not a pane had been cleared of its dinginess; not a cobweb had been swept from its ceiling; nothing had been removed except the pair of living skeletons who once acted as his attendants. They had been removed by the Remover of all things; and were succeeded by a pair so similar in meagreness and oddity of appearance that I could not have known the change except for its mention by their master congratulating himself on being so ""fortunate"" in finding substitutes. I found Mordecai immersed in day-books and ledgers and calculating the exchanges with as much anxiety as if he were not worth a shilling. But his look was more languid than before and his powerful eye seemed to have sunk deeper beneath his brow. ""You are probably surprised at seeing me here;"" said he ""but I have more reason than ever to be here. There is a time for all things but not if we throw it away. My last excursion to Poland has revived my zeal in behalf of my nation; and as years advance on me like the rest of the world I find that I must only exert myself the more."" ""But Mordecai you are opulent; you can have no necessity for abandoning the natural indulgences of life. You will only shorten your days by this toil. At least why do you linger in this dungeon?"" He smiled grimly. ""It _is_ a dungeon and I only value it the more. To this dungeon as you call it come day by day some of the haughtiest names of the land. If I lived in some west-end Square with my drawing-room filled with _Louis Quatorze_ gew-gaws and half-a-dozen idle fellows in livery to announce my visitors I should not feel the hundredth part of the sense of superiority the contemptuous triumph the cool consciousness of the tyranny of gold which I feel when I see my shrinking supplicants sitting down among my dusty boxes and everlasting cobwebs. I shall not suffer a grain of dust to be cleared away. It is my pride--it is my power--it is my revenge."" His visage assumed so completely the expression which I had always imagined for Shylock that I should scarcely have been surprised if I had seen him produce the knife and the scales. ""You are surprised at all this "" said he after a pause in which he fixed his searching eyes on me. ""I see by your countenance that you think me a Goth a monster a savage.--I think myself none of those things. I am a man; and if I am not much deceived I am also a philosopher. My life has been a perpetual struggle through a world where every one worships self. My nation are scorned and they struggle too. The Jew has been injured not by the individual alone but by all mankind; and has he not a right to his revenge? He has at last found the means. He is now absorbing the wealth of all nations. With the wealth he will have the power; and another half century will not elapse before all the grand questions of public council--nay of national existence--must depend on the will of the persecuted sons of Abraham. Who shall rise or who shall fall; who shall make war or who shall obtain peace; what republic shall be created or what monarchy shall be rent in pieces--will henceforth be the questions not of cabinets but of the 'Change. There are correspondences within this escritoire worth all the wisdom of all the ministers of earth. There are commands at the point of this pen which the proudest statesmanship dares not controvert. There is in the chests round you a ruler more powerful than ever before held the sceptre--the dictator of the globe; the true Despot is Gold."" After this wild burst he sank into silence; until to change the fever of his thoughts I enquired for the health of his daughter. The father's heart overcame him again. ""My world threatens to be a lonely one Mr Marston "" said he in a feeble voice. ""You see a heartbroken man. Forgive the bitterness with which I have spoken. Mariamne I fear is dying; and what is wealth now to me? I have left her in Poland among my people. She seemed to feel some slight enjoyment in wandering from place to place; but her last letter tells me that she is wearied of travelling and has made up her mind to live and die where she may be surrounded by her unhappy nation. I remain here only to wind up my affairs and in a week I quit England--and for ever."" But a new object caught my glance. Mordecai--who while he was thus speaking in paroxysms of alternate indignation and sorrow had never for a moment ceased to turn over his books and boxes--had accidentally shaken a pile of tin cases from its pinnacle and the whole rolled down at my feet. On one of them I saw with no very strong surprise the words--""Mortgage--Mortimer Castle."" The eyes of both glanced in the same direction. ""There "" said the Israelite ""you have your paternal acres in your hand--your Plantagenet forests and your Tudor castle all in a cubic foot. On the chair where you are now sitting your lordly brother sat yesterday gathering up his skirts from the touch of every thing round him and evidently suffering all the torture of a man of fashion forced to smile on the holder of his last mortgage. He is ruined--not worth a sixpence; Melton and Newmarket have settled that question for him. But do you recognise that hand?"" He drew a letter from his portfolio. I knew the writing: it was from my mother--on whom now old and feeble this accomplished _roué_ had been urging the sale of her jointure. Helpless and alone she had consented to this fatal measure; and my noble brother's visit to the Israelite had been for the purpose of inducing him to make the purchase. I started up in indignation; declared that the result must reduce my unfortunate parent to beggary; and demanded by what means I could possibly prevent what was ""neither more nor less than an act of plunder."" ""I see no means "" said Mordecai coolly ""except your making the purchase yourself and thus securing the jointure to her ladyship. It is only ten thousand pounds."" ""_I_ make the purchase! I have not the tenth part of the money upon earth. I ask you what _is_ to be done?"" ""Your brother has here the power of selling--and will sell if the starvation of fifty mothers stood in his way. Newmarket suffers no qualms of that kind; and when his matters there are settled his coachmaker's bill for landaulets and britchskas will make him a pedestrian for the rest of his life. But _I_ have refused the purchase; and it was chiefly on this subject that I was induced to invite you to my 'dungeon ' as you not unjustly term it."" The picture of a mother of whom I had always thought with the tenderness of a child cast out in her old age to poverty with the added bitterness of being thus cast out by her reliance on the honour of a cruel and treacherous son rose before my eyes with such pain that I absolutely lost all power of speech and could only look the distress which I felt. Mordecai gazed on me with an enquiring countenance. ""You love this mother Mr Marston. You are a good son. We Israelites with all our faults respect the feelings which 'honour the father and the mother.' It is a holy love and well earned by the cares and sorrows of parentage."" He paused and covered his forehead with his gigantic hands. I could hear him murmur the name of his daughter. The striking of a neighbouring church clock startled him from his reverie. Suddenly again bustling among his papers he said--""Within this half hour your brother is to call again for my definitive answer. Now listen to me. The jointure shall be purchased."" I bit my lip; but he did not leave me long in suspense--""And _you_ shall be the purchaser."" He wrote a cheque for the amount and placed it in my hand. ""Mordecai you are a noble fellow! But how am I to act upon this? I am worth nothing. I might as well attempt to repay millions."" ""Well so be it Mr Marston. You are a man of honor and a good son. You will repay it when you can. I exact but one condition: that you will come and visit Mariamne and me in Poland."" A loud knock at the hall-door put an end to our interview. ""That is your brother "" said he. ""You must not see him as I choose to keep the name of the purchaser to myself. Take your mother's letter with you; and give her my best advice to write no more--at least to such correspondents as his lordship."" I rose to take my leave. He followed me hastily; and taking me by the hand said--""Another condition I have to make. It is that not a syllable of all that has passed between us on this subject shall be suffered to transpire. I should make but a bad figure on 'Change if I were suspected of transactions in that style. Remember it must be a profound secret to all the world."" ""Even to my wife?"" I asked. ""Is _she_ included?"" ""No no "" he replied with a faint laugh; ""I look upon you as a mere mortal still. All vows are void in their nature which require impossibilities in their execution."" We parted. I told my little city tale to Clotilde. She wept and smiled alternately as I told it. Mordecai received all his due praise; and we pledged ourselves to find out his Mariamne in whatever corner of the Lithuanian wilderness she might have hidden her fantastic heart and head. But I had now another duty. Within a few hours we were on our way to the jointure-house. It was a picturesque old building the residence of the Father Abbot in the times before the insatiable hand of Somerset had fallen upon the monasteries. We reached it in the twilight of a gentle day when all its shrubs and flowers were filling the air with freshness and fragrance. I found my mother less enfeebled than I had expected; and still affectionate and tender as she had always been to her long-absent son. She was still fully susceptible of the honours which had now opened before me. Clotilde almost knelt before her noble air and venerable beauty. My mother could not grow weary with gazing on the expressive countenance of my beautiful wife. I had secured my parent's comfort for life; and I too was happy. * * * * * My embassy like all other embassies had its vexations; but on the whole I had reason to congratulate myself on its acceptance. My reception at St Petersburg was most distinguished; I had arrived at a fortunate period. The French expedition to Egypt had alarmed the Russian councils for Constantinople; a possession to which every Russian looks in due time as naturally as to the right of his copecks and caftan. But the victory of Aboukir which had destroyed the French fleet again raised the popular exultation and English heroism was the topic of every tongue. The incomparable campaign of the Russian army in Italy; the recovery in three months of all which it had cost the power of France and the genius of her greatest general in two years of pitched battles sanguinary sieges artful negotiation and incessant intrigue to obtain excited the nation to the highest degree of enthusiasm and the embassy basked in the broadest sunshine of popul

rity. Fête now succeeded fête; the standards taken in Suwarrow's battles the proudest trophies ever won by Russian arms were carried in procession to the cathedral; illuminations of the capital balls in the palaces and public sports on the waters and banks of the Neva kept St Petersburg in a perpetual tumult of joy. But all was not sunshine: the character of the sovereign in a despotism demands perpetual study; and Paul was freakish and headstrong beyond all human calculation. No man was more misunderstood at a distance nor less capable of being understood near. He had some striking qualities. He was generous bold and high-principled; but the simplest accident would turn all those qualities into their reverse. To-day he was ready to devote himself to the cause of Europe; every soldier of Russia must march: but when the morrow came he revoked the order for his troops and cashiered the secretaries who had been rash enough to take him at his word. The secret was in his brain; disease was gathering on his intellect and he was daily becoming dangerous to those nearest him. The result was long foreseen. In Spain Gil Blas recommends that no man who wishes for long life should quarrel with his cook. In Russia let no Czar rouse the suspicions of his courtiers. As the Pagans hung chaplets on the statues of their gods in victory and flogged them in defeat the Russians in every casualty of their arms turned a scowling eye upon their liege lord: and the retreat of Suwarrow the greatest of Russian soldiers from Switzerland at once stripped the Emperor of all his popularity. My position now became doubly anxious. Even despots love popularity and the Czar was alternately furious and frightened at its loss. Guards were planted in every part of the city with orders to disperse all groups. Every man who looked at the Imperial equipage as it passed through the streets was in danger of being arrested as an assassin. Nobles were suddenly exiled--none knew why or where. The cloud was thickening round the palace. It is a perilous thing to be the one object on which every eye involuntary turns as the cause of public evil. Rumours of conspiracy rose and died and were heard again. In free governments public discontents have room to escape and they escape. In despotisms they have no room to evaporate and they condense until they explode. St Petersburg at length became a place of silence and solitude by day and of murmurs and meetings by night. It reminded one of Rome in the days of Nero; and I looked with perpetual alarm for the catastrophe of Nero. The Russian is a submissive man and even capable of strong attachment to the throne: but there is no spot of the earth where national injury is more deeply resented; and Paul had been regarded as tarnishing the fame of Russia. His abandonment of Suwarrow--a warrior of whom the annals of the Russian army will bear record to the end of time--had stung all classes. More than a soldier Suwarrow was a great military genius. He gained battles without tactics and in defiance of them. He had astonished the Austrian generals by the fierce rapidity of his movements; he had annihilated the French armies in Italy by the desperate daring of his attacks. Wherever Suwarrow came he was conqueror. In his whole career he had never been beaten. The soldiery told numberless tales of his eccentricity--laughed at mimicked and adored him. The nation honoured him as the national warrior. But the failure of some of his detached corps in Switzerland had embarrassed the campaign; and Paul capricious as the winds hastily recalled him. The popular indignation now burst out in every form of anger. Placards fixed at night on the palace walls; gipsy ballads sung in the streets; maskers at the countless balls of the nobles; satires in quaint verse and national proverbs showed the public resentment to be universal. Every incident furnished some contemptuous comment. The Czar had built a wing to one of the palaces of Catharine. The addition wanted the stateliness of the original fabric. This epigram was posted on the building in angry Slavonic:-- ""One built a palace one a stall. One marble; one a plaster wall. One sure to stand; one sure to fall. So much for Catharine--and for Paul!"" In the midst of this growing perplexity the English messenger arrived. His tidings had been long anticipated yet they came with the effect of a thunderclap. The cabinet had resigned! I of course now waited only for my order to return. But in the mean time this event formidably increased the difficulties of my position. Foreigners will never allow themselves to comprehend the nature of any English transaction whatever. They deal with them all as if they were scenes on a stage. In the incorrigible absurdity of their theatrical souls they imagine a parliamentary defeat to be a revolution and the change of a ministry the fall of an empire. Paul instantly cast off all his old partialities. He pronounced England undone. The star of France was to be the light of the west; he himself to be the luminary of the east. The bold ambition of Catharine was to be realized; however without the system or the sagacity of her imperial genius. But Paul was to learn the terrible lesson of a despotic government. The throne separated from the people is the more in peril the more widely it is separated. The people _would_ not be carried along with their master to the feet of his new political idol. The substantial virtues of the national character resisted that French alliance which must be begun at once by prostration and ingratitude. France was their new taunter. England was their old ally. They hated France for its republican insolence; they honoured England for its resolute determination to fight out the battle not for its own sake alone but for the cause of all nations. Paul in the attempt to partition the globe was narrowing his supremacy to his own sepulchre. Yet this time of national gloom was the most splendid period of the court. With the double purpose of recovering his popularity and concealing his negotiations Paul plunged into the most extraordinary festivity. Balls masquerades and fêtes succeeded each other with restless extravagance. But the contrast of the saturnine Emperor with the sudden change of his court was too powerful. It bore the look of desperation; though for what purpose was still a mystery to the million. I heard many a whisper among the diplomatic circle that this whirl of life this hot and fierce dissipation was in all Russian reigns the sure precursor of a catastrophe; though none could yet venture to predict its nature. It was like the furious and frenzied indulgence of a crew in a condemned ship breaking up the chests and drinking the liquors in the conviction that none would survive the voyage. Even I with all my English disregard of the speculative frivolities which to the foreigner are substance and facts was startled by the increasing glare of those hurried and feverish festivities. More than once as I entered the imperial saloon crowded with the civil and military uniforms of every court of Europe and exhibiting at once European taste and Asiatic magnificence I could scarcely suppress the feeling that I was only entering the most stately of theatres; where with all the temporary glitter of the stage the sounds of the orchestra and the passion and poetry of the characters--the fifth act was preparing and the curtain was to fall on the death of nobles and kings. The impression that evil was to come already seemed to be universal. Rumours of popular conspiracy fresh discoveries by the police and new tales of imperial eccentricity kept the public mind in constant fitfulness. At length I received the formal communication of a ""challenge"" from the Czar to my sovereign along with all the other crowned heads of Europe to meet him in a _champ-clos_ and sword in hand decide the quarrels of nations. With this despatch came an invitation for the whole diplomatic body to a masquerade! in which all were commanded to appear as knights in armour--the Czar as grand-master of the Order of Malta exhibiting himself in the panoply in which he was to settle the disputes of mankind. Perplexities like those form a large share of the trials of the foreign ambassador. To attend the fête was embarrassing; but to decline the invitation would have been equivalent to demanding my passports. And I must acknowledge that if the eye was to be gratified by the most superb and the most curious of all displays never was there an occasion more fitted for its indulgence. All the armouries of Europe and of Asia seemed to have been searched for the arms and ornaments of this assemblage. The Kremlin had given up its barbaric shields and caps of bronze; the plate-mail of the Crusader; the gold-inlaid morions and cuirasses of France; the silver chain-mail of the Circassian; the steel corslet of the German chivalry; and a whole host of the various and rich equipments of the Greek the Hungarian the Moresco and the Turkoman made the Winter palace a blaze of knighthood. Yet to me after the first excitement the whole conveyed a deep impression of melancholy. It irresistibly reminded me of the last ceremonial of dead sovereigns the ""Chapelle Ardente."" Even the curtains which fell round the throne fringed with jewels as they were to me looked funereal. The immense golden candelabra were to me the lights round a bier. I almost imagined that I could see the sword and sceptre laid across the coffin and all of the Lord of Empire that remained a corpse within. I was roused from my reluctant reverie by the approach of a group of masks who came dancing towards the recess where I had retired wearied with the general noise and the exhaustion of the fête. One of the casements opened into the famous Conservatory; and I was enjoying the scents of the thousand flowers and shrubs of perhaps the finest collection in the world. But in the shade the group had evidently overlooked me; for they began to speak of matters which they could not have designed for a stranger's ear. The conduct of the Czar the wrongs of Russia and the ""necessity of coming to a decision "" were the topics. Suddenly as if to avert suspicion one of the group struck up a popular air on the little three-stringed guitar which throws the Russian crowd into such ecstasies; and they began a dance accompanying it by a murmuring chorus which soon convinced me of the dangerous neighbourhood into which I had fallen. The words became well known afterwards. No language excels the Russian in energy; but I must give them in the weakness of a translation. The Neva may rush To its fountain again; The bill of a bird Lake Ladoga may drain; The blast from the Pole May be held in a chain; But the cry of a Nation Was never in vain! When the bones of our chiefs Feed the wolf and the kite; When the spurs of our squadrons Are bloody with flight; When the Black Eagle's banner Is torn from its height; Then dark-hearted dreamer! Beware of the _night_! I hear in the darkness The tread of the bold; They stop not for iron They stop not for gold; But the Sword has an edge And the Scarf has a fold. Proud master of millions Thy tale has been told! Now the chambers are hush'd And the strangers are gone And the sire is no sire And the son is no son And the mightiest of Earth Sleeps for ever alone The worm for his brother The clay for his throne! My conviction was complete when in the whirl of the dance a small roll of paper dropped from the robe of one of the maskers and fell at my feet. In taking it up to return it to him I saw that it was a list of names and at the head a name which from private information I knew to be involved in dark political purposes. The thought flashed across me in connexion with the chorus which I had just heard that the paper was of too much importance to be suffered to leave my possession.--The life of the sovereign might be involved. The group who had been evidently startled by my sudden appearance among them now surrounded me and the loser of the paper insisted on its instant surrender. The violence of his demand only confirmed my resolution. He grew more agitated still and the group seized me. I laid my hand upon my sword. This measure stopped them for the moment. But in the next I saw a knife brandished in the air and felt myself wounded in the arm. My attempt to grasp the weapon had alone saved me from its being buried in my heart. But the fracas now attracted notice; a crowd rushed towards us and the group suddenly scattered away leaving me still in possession of the paper. My wound bled and I felt faint and desired to be led into the open air. My mask was taken off; and this was scarcely done when I heard my name pronounced and saw the welcome countenance of my friend Guiscard by my side. He had arrived but on that day on a mission from his court; had with his usual eagerness of friendship gone to enquire for me at the hotel of the embassy; and thus followed me to the fête at the critical time. As he supported me to my equipage I communicated the circumstances of the rencontre to his clear head and generous heart; and he fully agreed with me on the duty of instantly apprising the Czar of his probable danger. As I was unable to move through pain and feebleness he offered to take the roll with him and demand an interview with the sovereign himself if possible; or if not with the governor of the palace. The paper contained not only names of individuals all long before objects of public suspicion but a sketch of the imperial apartments and at the bottom the words--""three hours after midnight."" I looked at my watch it was already half-past two. This might or might not be the appointed night for this dreadful business; but if it were there was but one half hour between the throne and the grave. Guiscard hurried off leaving me in the deepest anxiety but promising to return as speedily as in his power. But he came not. My anxiety grew intolerable; hour after hour passed away while I reckoned minute after minute as if they were so much drained from my own existence. Even if I had been able to move it was impossible to know where to follow him. His steps might have been watched. Doubtless the conspirators were on the alert to prevent any approach to the palace. He might have fallen by the pistol of some of those men who had not scrupled to conspire against their monarch. The most miserable of nights at length wore away; but it was only to be succeeded by the most fearful of mornings. The career of Paul was closed! On the entrance of the chamberlains into his sleeping apartment the unhappy Czar was found dead. There could be no doubt that he had perished by treason. He was strangled. The intelligence no sooner spread through the capital than it produced a burst of national sorrow. All his errors were forgotten. All his good qualities were remembered. But where was my gallant and excellent friend--Guiscard?--Of him I heard nothing. Another week of suspense and he appeared. His history was of the most singular kind. On the night when I had last seen him he had made his way through all obstacles into the palace and been promised a private interview with the Czar. But while he urged that no time should be lost he had sufficient proof that there could be no chance of an interview. A succession of apologies was made: the 'Czar was at supper'--'he was engaged with the minister'--'he had gone to rest.' In total hopelessness of communicating his pressing intelligence in person he at length consented to seal the roll and place it in the hands of one of the officers of rank in the household. But that officer himself was in the conspiracy. The paper was immediately destroyed; and the bearer of it was considered to be too dangerous to be sent back. He was put under arrest in an apartment of the palace and told that his life depended on his silence. He urged his diplomatic character in vain. The only answer was the sword of the conspirator turned to his throat. But within the week the revolution was complete and he was set at liberty. A new monarch a new government a new feeling followed this dangerous act. But the character of the young monarch was made to be popular; the reign of caprice was at an end. The empire felt relieved; and Russia began the most glorious period of her national history. My mission was now accomplished for I refused to hold the embassy under a rival cabinet; but I carried with me from St Petersburg two trophies:--the former was the treaty concluded by Paul with France for the march of an army in conjunction with a French column of 300 000 men to invade India--a document which had hitherto baffled all diplomatic research; the other was the pathetic and noble letter of Alexander to the British sovereign proposing a restoration of the national friendship. I took my leave of the Russian court with a most gracious audience of its new monarch. I saw him long afterwards under different circumstances struggling with a tremendous war pressed by every difficulty which could beset the throne and throwing the last melancholy and doubtful cast for the independence of Europe. But both now and then I saw him what nature had made him--a noble being. His stature was tall and commanding; and he was one of the most striking figures of his court when in the uniform of his guards. But his manner was still superior--it was at once affable and dignified; he spoke of European interests with intelligence of his own intentions with candour and of England with a rational respect for its spirit and institutions. Of his own country he expressed himself with candour. ""I feel "" said he ""that I have a great trust laid on me and I am determined to fulfil it. I shall not make the throne a bed of roses. There is still much to be done and I shall do what I can. I have the advantage of a fine material in the people. No being is at once more susceptible of improvement and more grateful for it than the Russian. He has quick faculties and an honest heart. If the common hazards of empire should come I know that he will not desert me. In the last extremity of human fortunes I shall not desert him."" Those generous declarations were gallantly realized on both sides within a few years. I was not then aware that the Imperial prediction would be soon brought to the test. But it was gloriously fulfilled at Moscow and proudly registered in the fragments of the throne of Napoleon. Impatient as I was to reach England I left St Petersburg with regret. Clotilde left it with those feelings which belong to the finer fancy of woman. She remembered it as the scene where she had enjoyed the most dazzling portion of her life; where every countenance had met her with smiles and every tongue was prodigal of praise; where the day rose on the promise of new enjoyments and the night descended in royal festivity. As we drove along the banks of the Neva she more than once stopped the carriage to give herself a parting glance at the long vista of stately buildings which she was then to look upon perhaps for the last time. The scene was certainly of the most striking order; for we had commenced our journey on the evening of one of the national festivals; and we thus had the whole population in all their holiday dresses to give animation to the general aspect of the massive and gigantic architecture. The Neva was covered with barges of the most graceful form; the fronts of the citizens' houses were hung with decorations; music sounded from a vast orchestra in front of the palace; and the air re-echoed with the voices of thousands and tens of thousands all evidently determined to be happy for the time. We both gazed in silence and admiration. The carriage had accidentally drawn up in view of the little hut which is preserved in the Neva as the dwelling of Peter. I saw a tear glistening on the long eyelash of my lovely fellow traveller. ""If I wanted a proof "" said she ""of the intellectual greatness of man I should find it in this spot. I may see in that hut the emblem of his mind. That a Russian two centuries ago--almost before the name of Russia was known in Europe--while its court had scarcely emerged from the feuds of barbarous factions and its throne had been but just rescued from the hands of the Tartar--should have conceived the design of such an empire and should have crowned his design with such a capital is to me the most memorable effort of a ruling mind within all human recollection."" ""Clotilde I was not aware that you were inclined to give the great Czar so tender a tribute "" I said laughingly at her embarrassment in the discovery of a tear stealing down her cheek. Truth was in her reply. ""I agree in the common censure of the darker portions of his course. But I can now judge of him only by what I see. Who is to know the truth of his private history? What can be more unsafe than to judge of the secret actions of princes from the interested or ignorant narratives of a giddy court or foreign enemies? But the evidence round us allows of no deception. These piles of marble are unanswerable;--these are the vindications of kings. The man who sitting in that hut in the midst of the howling wilderness imagined the existence of such a city rising round him and his line--at once bringing his country into contact with Europe and erecting a monument of national greatness to which Europe itself in its thousand years of progress has no equal--must have had a nature made for the highest tasks of human advancement. Of all the panegyrics of an Imperial life St Petersburg is the most Imperial."" * * * * * We passed rapidly through the Russian provinces and intending to embark in one of our frigates cruising the Baltic felt all the delight of having at length left the damp and dreary forests of Livonia far down in the horizon and again feeling the breezes blowing from that ocean which the Englishman instinctively regards as a portion of his home. But as we drove along the smooth sands which line so many leagues of the Baltic and enjoyed with the full sense of novelty the various contrast of sea and shore we were startled by the roar of guns from the ramparts of Riga followed by the peal of bells. What victory what defeat what great event did those announce? The intelligence at length broke on us at the gates; and it was well worth all our interest. ""Peace with France."" The English ambassador had arrived in Paris. ""War was at end and the world was to be at rest once more."" I changed my route immediately and flew on the road to Paris. My life was destined to be a succession of scenes. It had been thrown into a whirl of memorable incidents any one of which would have served for the tumult of fifty years and for the meditation of the fifty after. But this was the period of powerful sometimes of terrible vicissitudes. All ranks of men were reached by them. Kings and statesmen only felt them first: they penetrated to the peasant; and the Continent underwent a moral convulsion--an outpouring of the general elements of society--like that of some vast inundation sweeping away the landmarks and uprooting the produce of the soil; until it subsided leaving the soil in some places irreparably stripped--in others filled with a new fertility. I found France in a state of the highest exultation. The national cry was ""that she had covered herself with glory;"" and to earn that cry probably no Frenchman who ever existed would hesitate to march to Timbuctoo or swim across the Atlantic. The name of ""conquest"" is a spell which no brain from Calais to Bayonne has ever thought of resisting. The same spell lives masters domineers over the national mind to this hour; and will last long after Paris has dropped into the depths of its own catacombs and its fifteen fortresses are calcined under the cannon of some Austrian or Russian invader. It will be impossible to tell future ages the scene which France then presented to the mind. If objects are capable of record impressions are beyond the power of the pen. No image can be conveyed to posterity by the sensations which crowded on Europe in the course of the French Revolution--the rapidity the startling lustre and the deep despair; as it went forth crushing all that the earth had of solid or sacred. It was now only in its midway. The pause had come; but it was only the pause in the hurricane--the still heavier trial was at hand. Even as a stranger I could see that it was but a lull. Every thing that met the eye in Paris was a preparative for war. The soldier was every thing and every where. I looked in vain for the Republican costumes which I so fearfully remembered. They had been flung aside for the uniform of the Imperial Guard; or were to be seen only on a few haggard and desolate men who came out in the twilight and sat in silence and gloomy dreams of revenge in some suburb _café_. Where were the deadly tribunals with their drunken judges their half-naked assassins and the eternal clank of the guillotines?--all vanished; the whole sullen furniture of the Republican drama flung behind the scenes and the stage filled with the song and the dance--the pageant and the feast--with all France gazing and delighted at the spectacle. But my still stronger curiosity was fixed on the one man who had been the soul of the transformation. I have before my eye at this moment his slender and _spirituel_ figure; his calm but most subtle glance; and the incomparable expression of his smile. His face was classic--the _ideal_ of thought; and when Canova afterwards transferred it to marble he could not have made it less like flesh and blood. It was intensely pale--pure profound Italian. A LETTER FROM LONDON. BY A RAILWAY WITNESS. MY DEAR BOGLE --It is ten thousand pities that you are not here. Why the deuce can't you make yourself useful to the commonwealth by calculating a gradient laying down a curve or preparing a table of traffic in order to obtain the proper qualification for a railway witness? Nothing in this world is easier. You have only to sit at your window for a given amount of hours once a-week and note down the number of the cabs and carts which jolt and jingle to the Broomielaw; or if you like that better to ascertain the quality of the soil three feet beneath your own wine-cellar; and you are booked for a month's residence in London free quarters in a first-rate hotel five guineas a-day and all expenses paid. I confess that this regimen seems to me both profitable and pleasant. I have been here for six weeks feeding on the fat of the land drinking claret which even a Leith man would scarcely venture to anathematize white-baiting at Blackwall and varying these sensual qualifications with an occasional trip to Richmond and Ascot races. I have moreover mark you a bunch of as pretty bank paper in my pocket as ever was paid into the Exchequer; and the whole equivalent I have given for this kind and liberal treatment was certain evidence touching the iron-trade of Ayrshire which I poured into the drowsy ears of five worthy gentlemen about as familiar with that subject as you are with the mythology of the Chinese. Long life to the railway mania say I! It has been treasure-trove to some of us. The only thing I regret is my inability to carry the war into the enemy's country and make my fortune out of the English companies. I have the appetite but not the power; and after all it would hardly make up for Flodden. I like this sort of life much better than assorting cargoes and superintending the arrival of sugar casks. There is no want of society for I find myself here surrounded by the old familiar faces. I do not think there is a soul in this hotel except townsmen of our own. You meet in the committee rooms the same excellent fellows whom you have daily encountered for the last ten years on the Exchange and they are all getting fatter upon their work. Edinburgh too has furnished her quota. We have Writers to the Signet by the score and a sprinkling of the young Advocates whom we are accustomed to meet upon circuit. Poor lads! it does one good to see them thriving. This must be a very different sort of business from the weariful Parliament House and the two square yards of processes with a fee of three guineas for many an interminable condescendence. I believe they would have no objection if the Session of Parliament were declared perpetual; and for that matter no more would I. Certainly of all tribunals ever invented by the ingenuity of man a Parliamentary Committee is the most extraordinary. It is a court of enquiry consisting of five members whose principal qualification is absolute previous ignorance of the localities and conflicting interests with regard to which they must decide. Of their impartiality therefore there can be no doubt. You or I might just as well sit down at a moment's notice and adjudicate upon the merits of three competing lines between Pekin and Canton with an equal chance of arriving at a satisfactory conclusion. Of course they must be guided entirely by evidence and have plenty of materials laid before them from which they may pick and choose. It is the richest thing in the world to see two crack engineers pitted against each other. The first who appears on behalf of the line does not know and cannot conceive the slightest engineering difficulty. If a mountain stands in his way he plunges fearlessly into its bowels finds in the interior strata of surpassing mineral wealth yet marvellously adapted for the purposes of a four-mile tunnel and brings you out sound and safe at the opposite side as though he had been perforating a gigantic cheese instead of hammering his path through whinstone coeval with the creation. If a lake stands in the way he will undertake to drain it with immense advantage to the neighbouring proprietors. If a valley intervenes he will bridge it with a viaduct which shall put to shame the grandest relics of antiquity. He has no knowledge of such bugbears as steep gradients or dangerous curves; a little hocus-pocus with the compasses transforms all these into gentle undulations and sweeps of the most graceful description. He will run you his rails right through the heart of the most populous city --yea even Glasgow herself --and across the streets without the slightest interruption to the traffic. He will contrive so that the hissing of the locomotive shall be as graceful a sound as the plashing of a fountain in the midst of our bisected squares; and he is indignant at the supposition that any human being can be besotted enough to prefer the prospect of a budding garden to a clean double pair of rails beneath his bedroom window with a jolly train steaming it along at the rate of some fifty miles per hour. The opposing engineer has a contrary story to tell. He has the utmost confidence in the general ability of his scientific friend but on this occasion he has the misfortune to differ in opinion. Very carefully has he gone over the whole of the line surveyed. He is sorry to say that the gradients are utterly impossible and the curves approaching to a circle. Tunnelling is out of the question. How are two miles of quicksand and two of basaltic rock to be gone through? The first is deeper than the Serbonian bog and would swallow up the whole British army. The second could not be pierced in a shorter time than Pharaoh took to construct the pyramids of Egypt. He considers a railway in the heart of a town to be an absolute and intolerable nuisance; and on the whole looking at the plan before him he has come to the conclusion that a more dangerous and impracticable line was never yet laid before a committee of the United Parliament of Great Britain. So much for the engineering Hector and Achilles. Out of these two opinions of necessity must the five respectable members on the bench form their judgment; for of themselves they know nothing having been purposely selected on account of their superior ignorance. Cross-examination makes the matter still worse. A cantankerous waspish counsel with the voice of an exasperated cockatoo endeavours to make the opposing engineer contradict himself. He might as well try to overturn Ailsa Crag. He of the impossible gradients is the hero of a hundred committees quite accustomed to legal artifice cool wary and self-collected. He receives every thrust with a pleasant smile and sometimes returns them with damaging effect. If close pressed he is conscious that behind him is a thicket of algebra into which neither counsel nor judges will dare to follow; and so fortified by the mysteries of his calling he is ready to defy the universe. Then come the hordes of subordinate witnesses the gentlemen who are to gi

e evidence for and against the bill. One side represents the country as abounding in mineral produce and agricultural wealth: the other likens it unto Patmos or the stony Arabia. Tims swears that the people of his district are mad insane rabid in favour of the line. Jenkins his next-door neighbour on the contrary protests that if the rails were laid down to-morrow they would be torn up by an insurrection of the populace _en masse_. John thinks the Dreep-daily Extension is the only one at all suited to supply the wants of the country; Sandy opines that the Powhead's Junction is the true and genuine potato; and both John and Sandy Tims and Jenkins are backed by a host of corroborators. Then come the speeches of the counsel and rare specimens they are of unadulterated oratory. I swear to you Bogle that no later than a week ago I listened to such a picture of Glasgow and the Clyde from the lips of a gentleman eminent alike in law and letters as would have thrown a diorama of Damascus into the shade. He had it all sir from the orchards of Clydesdale to the banks of Bothwell the pastoral slopes of Ruglen and the emerald solitudes of the Green. The river flowed down towards the sea in translucent waves of crystal. From the parapets of the bridge you watched the salmon cleaving their way upwards in vivid lines of light. Never did Phoebus beam upon a lovelier object than the fair suburb of the Gorbals as seen from the Broomielaw reposing upon its shadow in perfect stillness. Then came the forest of masts the activity of the dockyards and ""The impress of shipwrights whose hard toil Doth scarce divide the Sunday from the week."" Further down the villas of the merchant princes burst upon your view each of them a perfect Sirmio--then Port-Glasgow half spanned by the arch of a dissolving rainbow--Dumbarton grand and solemn as became the death-place of the Bruce--Ben Lomond with its hoary head swathed in impenetrable clouds--and lo! the ocean and the isles. Not a Glasgow man in the committee-room but yearned with love and admiration towards the gifted speaker who certainly did make out a case for the Queen of the West such as no matter-of-fact person could possibly have believed. And all this was done by merely substituting a Claude Lorraine glass for our ordinary dingy atmosphere. The outline was most correct and graphic but the secret lay in the handling and distribution of the colours. I shall not wonder if the whole committee clerk included come down this autumn to catch a glimpse of that terrestrial paradise. Such is a brief and unexaggerated abstract of the transactions of these railway committees; and you may judge for yourself how far the members are likely to understand the true circumstances of the case from evidence so singularly conflicting. Sometimes three or four days are wasted before they can even comprehend the precise position of the lines which they are required to consider and after all these impressions must be of the haziest description. For my own part I think the legislature has made a most palpable mistake in not intrusting such important functions to parties who possess competent local knowledge; and I am satisfied that the result of the present session has proved the insufficiency of the system. I demur altogether to the propriety of devolving upon Members of Parliament the duties of a civil jury. They have surely enough to do in weighing and determining the larger questions of policy without entering into the minute details necessarily involved in the consideration of railways roads bridges and canals. These should be transferred to parties conversant with such subjects and responsible to the public for their decisions. Besides this the direct pecuniary loss to Scotland by the present system of sending witnesses to London--though personally I have no reason to complain--is quite enormous and demands attention in a national point of view. It is calculated that not less than a million and a half sterling has been expended in the course of last year in carrying the Scottish bills through Parliament and by far the greater part of this sum has been absorbed by plethoric London and cannot by possibility return. Now the whole annual value of the lands and houses in Scotland does not exceed ten millions (in 1843 it was little more than nine)--an amount which is totally inadequate to afford so prodigious a deduction as this for the mere purpose of procuring authority to carry our own schemes into execution. That the seventh part of the rental of a country should be drawn away from it and expended beyond its boundaries in the course of simple preliminary investigations is not only an exorbitant abuse but to my mind a clear demonstration of the total falsity of the system. It may have worked tolerably when there was less work to do; but the amazing increase of private bills during the last few years must render a new arrangement necessary. I wish our countrymen would be a little more alive to the vast benefit of local institutions in a pecuniary point of view. Can there be any doubt that if the details connected with all the private bills applicable to Scotland were referred to a paid board of commissioners sitting permanently in Edinburgh whose judgment of course would be subject to the review of Parliament the business would be got through not only more cheaply but with greater satisfaction and dispatch? I cannot see why London should be entitled to this exclusive monopoly or the principle of centralization pushed so far as to injure the extremities of the empire. The private committee business has already become an absolute nuisance to the whole bulk of the members. It is a function for which few of them have been educated which is in itself highly distasteful and moreover interferes most materially with their public duties. Let them then be freed from this thraldom and Scotland will have no reason to complain. We don't ask for any power of legislation; we only require that within and among ourselves the necessary investigations shall be made. This can be done in Edinburgh quite as well as in London; and very sorely does our poor Metropolis stand in need of such indigenous support. Dublin has its viceregal court and therefore can make some stand against centralization. Edinburgh has nothing left her except the courts of law which have been pared down by ignorant experimentalists to the smallest possible substance. All that could be taken from her has been transferred to London. Her local boards her officers of state have vanished one by one; and scarce any remonstrance has been made against these useless and unjustifiable aggressions. I find myself getting into the Malagrowther vein so I had better pull up in time without hinting at the existence of claymores. Only this should there ever be a decent agitation in Scotland you will find the old Tories at the head of it demanding the restitution of certain ancient rights which Whiggery has subverted and Conservatism trodden under foot. Undoubtedly at no very distant period the great questions of centralization and uniformity will be gravely and considerately discussed both within and without the walls of the British Parliament. Next year it is probable that the transit between Edinburgh and London will be effected in fourteen hours. That of itself will go far to bring matters to a crisis. If we are to be centralized let the work be thoroughly done; if not let us get back at least a reasonable portion of our own. But to the committees. You can have no idea Bogle of the excitement caused by any of their decisions. At the close of the evidence counsel agents and spectators are unceremoniously hustled out of the room to give leisure for the selected senators to make up their minds on the propriety of passing or rejecting the preamble of the bill. In the lobby all is confusion. Near the door stand five-and-twenty speculators all of them heavy holders of stock some flushed in the face like peonies some pale and trembling with excitement. The barristers for the most part have a devil-may-care look as if it mattered little to them whether the Dreep-daily or Powhead's gentry shall carry the day. And in truth it is of little consequence. The sittings of this committee cannot by possibility be prolonged and as most of the legal gentlemen have other briefs-- ""To-morrow to fresh fields and pastures new."" The magistrates of Camlachie though sorely agitated for the integrity of that important borough threatened by the Dreep-daily Extension with immediate intersection yet preserve a becoming decorum of feature. The senior bailie bows a dignified assent to the protestations of the Parliamentary solicitor that it is quite impossible the bill can pass--such an interference with vested rights never can be sanctioned by a British House of Commons &c. &c.; and then with a shrewd eye to future proceedings the wily Machiavel hints that at all events the House of Lords will be sure to put the matter right. What in the name of torture can make the committee deliberate so long? Two hours have elapsed since we were excluded and yet there is no indication of a judgment. The chairman of the Powhead's line which on the whole has had the worst of it in evidence begins to gain confidence from the delay. Whispers arise and circulate that the committee are two to two the chairman not being able to make up his mind either way; but as his wife is a third cousin of a Powheads director there may yet be balm in Gilead. Hark! the tinkling of a bell--there is a buzz as of a hive overturned the doors are opened and the whole crowd rush elbowing in. How provokingly calm are the countenances of the five legislators! Not a twinkle in the eye of any of them to betray the nature of their decision--nay with a refinement of cruelty positively appalling the chairman is elaborating a quill into a toothpick until order shall be partially restored. Now for the dictum--""The Committee having heard evidence are of opinion that the preamble of the Dreep-daily Extension Bill has not been proved and further that the preamble of the Powheads Junction Bill has been satisfactorily proved and they intend to report accordingly."" One second's pause and a triumphant cheer bursts from the dignitaries of Camlachie. The five-and-twenty speculators darting at once to the door choke up the entrance for a time--divers coat-tails give way and hats disappear in the scuffle--at last they break out from the Cloisters like so many demoniacs fling themselves into four-and-twenty cabs and offer triple fares for immediate transmission to the City. One more knowing than the rest sneaks down to Westminster Bridge finds a steamer just starting makes his way by water to the Exchange; and five minutes before the earliest cab obstructed by a covey of coal-carts in the Strand can fetch its agitated inmate to his broker his speedier rival has sold several thousand Dreep-dailys to unwitting and unfortunate purchasers and has become the coveted possessor of every Powhead scrip then negotiable in the London market. If there is any caricature in this sketch I shall submit to do penance in the pillory. I think I have now bored you sufficiently with railway matters: being a literary character you may like to know how I otherwise employ my time. _Imprimis_ I have not attended a single debate in the House of Commons. It is quite enough to spell one's way through the dreary columns of the _Times_ after the matutinal muffin without exposing the mind to the cruelties of a Maynooth debate or the body to the tender mercies of the novel mode of ventilation. I find the theatres much more amusing not from the excellence of the dramatic performances but from their sheer and gross absurdity which without actual experience is almost too monstrous for belief. The fact is that a new Cockney school has arisen ten times more twaddling and impotent than the ancient academy of that name. The old professors for whom I always had a sneaking kindness affected a sort of solitary grandeur deported themselves with the conscious swagger of genius read Tooke's Pantheon and prated of the Heathen gods. This was very harmless and innocent pastime; tiresome to be sure yet laughable withal; nor did it call for any further rebuke than an occasional tap upon the cranium of some blockhead who forsook his legitimate sphere thrust himself in your way and became unsufferably blatant. Now the spirit of the times has changed. The literary youth of London are all in the facetious line. They have regular clubs at which they meet to collate the gathered slang and pilfered witticisms of the week; periodical compotations to work these materials into something like a readable shape; and hebdomadal journals by means of which their choice productions are issued to a wondering world. Now though a single gnat can give you very little annoyance in the course of a summer's night the evil becomes serious when you are surrounded with whole scores of these diminutive vermin singing in your ears buzzing in your hair and lighting incessantly on your face. In vain you turn aside in hopes to get rid of the nuisance. Go where you will a perfect cloud of midges keeps hovering round your head each tiny bloodsucker sounding his diminutive horn in the full and perfect belief that he discourses most excellent music. Even so in London are you surrounded with these philosophers of the Cider-cellar. Their works stare you every where in the face; the magazines abound with their wit; their songs consisting for the most part of prurient parodies are resonant throughout the purlieus of Covent Garden. What is worse than all they have wriggled themselves into a sort of monopoly of the theatres persuaded the public to cashier Shakespeare who is now utterly out of date and to instal in his place a certain Mr J.R. Planché as the leading swan of the Thames. In giving him this prominent place I merely echo the opinions of his compeers who with much modesty but at the same time with praiseworthy candour have acknowledged his pre-eminence in the modern walk of the drama and with him they decline competition. The new Beaumont and Fletcher J. Taylor and Albert Smith Esquires thus bear testimony to his merits in one of their inimitable prologues: ""'Fair One with Golden Locks:' no you won't do-- PLANCHÉ has taken the shine out of you: Who runs with HIM it may be safely reckon'd Whate'er the odds must come in 'a bad second.'"" Ben Jonson never penned a more delicate or classical compliment albeit it halteth a little. Let us then submit to the better judgment of our brethren and bow down promiscuously before any brazen calf which their eager idolatry may rear. Let London promulgate the law of letters as well as the statutes of the land. Therefore say I away with Romeo and give us Cinderella; banish Hamlet and welcome Sleeping Beauty; let the Tempest make room for Fortunio; and Venice Preserved for the gentle Graciosa and Percinet! Do you Bogle disencumber your study as fast as you can of these absurd busts of the older dramatists now fit for nothing but targets in a shooting-gallery. Fling the effigies one and all into the area; and let us see in their stead each on its appropriate pedestal with some culinary garland round the head new stucco casts of J. R. Planché Albert Smith and Gilbert à-Beckett Esquires. After all is it to be wondered at if the public lacketh novelty? Shakespeare has had possession of the stage for nearly two centuries--quite enough one would think to pacify his unconscionable _Manes_. We have been dosed with his dramas from our youth upwards. Two generations of the race of Kean have in our own day perished after a series of air-stabs upon Bosworth field. We have seen twenty different Hamlets appear upon the damp chill platform of Elsinore and fully as many Romeos in the sunny streets of Verona. The nightingale in the pomegranate-tree was beginning to sing hoarsely and out of tune; therefore it was full time that our ears should be dieted with other sounds. Well no sooner was the wish expressed than we were presented with ""Nina Sforza "" the ""Legend of Florence "" and several other dramas of the highest class. Sheridan Knowles and Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton professed themselves ready to administer any amount of food to the craving appetite of the age--but all in vain. Tragedy was not what we wanted--nor comedy--no nor even passable melodrama. We sighed for something of a more ethereal sort and--laud we the gods!--the manna has descended in showers. Go into any of the London theatres now and the following is your bill of fare. Fairies you have by scores in flesh-coloured tights spangles and paucity of petticoats; gnomes of every description from the gigantic glittering diamond beetle to the grotesque and dusky tadpole. Epicene princes whose taper limbs and swelling busts are well worth the scrutiny of the opera-glass--dragons vomiting at once red flames and witticisms about the fountains in Trafalgar Square--Dan O'Connell figuring in the feathers of a Milesian owl--and the Seven Champions of Christendom smoking cigars upon the parapets of Hungerford Bridge! All these things have I seen Bogle yea and cheered them to the echo in company with some thousand Cockneys all agape at the glitter of tinselled pasteboard and the glories of the Catharine-wheel. Such is the intellectual banquet which London queen of literature presents to her fastidious children! The form of dramatic composition now most in vogue is the burlesque; or in the language of the great Planché ""the original grand comic romantic operatic melo-dramatic fairy extravaganza!"" There is a title for you that would have put Polonius to the blush. I have invested some three shillings in the purchase of several of these works in order that I might study at leisure the bold and brilliant wit the elegant language and the ingenious metaphors which had entranced me when I heard them uttered from the stage. I am now tolerably master of the subject and therefore beg leave before condescending upon details to hand you a recipe for the concoction of one of these delectable dishes. Take my advice and make the experiment yourself. Red Riding-Hood I think is still a virgin story; but unless you make haste she will be snapped up for they are rapidly exhausting the stores of the ""_Contes des Fées_."" Alexander will probably give you something for it or you can try our old friend Miller at the Green. The process is shortly this. Select a fairy tale or a chapter from the Arabian Nights; write out the _dramatis personæ_ taking care that you have plenty of supernaturals genii elves gnomes ghouls or vampires to make up a competent _corps de ballet_; work out your dialogue in slipshod verse with as much slang repartee as you possibly can cram in and let every couplet contain either a pun or some innuendo upon the passing events of the day. This in London is considered as the highest species of wit and seldom fails to bring down three distinct rounds of applause from the galleries. I fear you may be trammelled a little by the scantiness of local allusions. Hungerford Bridge and Trafalgar Square as I have already hinted have kept the Cockneys in roars of laughter for years and are dragged forward with unrelenting perseverance but still undiminished effect in each successive extravaganza. I suspect you will find that the populace of Glasgow are less easy to be tickled and somewhat jealous of quips at their familiar haunts. However don't be down-hearted. Go boldly at the Gorbals the Goosedubs and the great chimney-stalk of St Rollox; it is impossible to predict how boldly the municipal pulse may bound beneath the pressure of a dexterous finger. Next you must compose some stanzas as vapid as you please to be sung by the leading virgin in pantaloons; or what is better still a few parodies adapted to the most popular airs. I see a fine field for your ingenuity in the Jacobite relics; they are entwined with our most sacred national recollections and therefore may be desecrated at will. Never lose sight for a moment of the manifold advantages derivable from a free use of the trap-door and the flying-wires; throw in a transparency an Elysian field a dissolving view and a miniature Vesuvius and ""My basnet to a 'prentice cap Lord Surrey's o'er the Till "" you will take all Glasgow by storm and stand henceforward crowned as the young Euripides of the West. You and I in the course of our early German studies lighted as I can well remember upon the Phantasus of Ludwig Tieck. I attribute your loss of the first prize in the Moral Philosophy class to the enthusiasm with which you threw yourself into his glorious Bluebeard and Fortunatus. In truth it was like hearing the tales of childhood told anew only with a manlier tone and a clearer and more dignified purpose. How lucidly the early half-forgotten images were restored under the touch of that inimitable artist! What a luxury it was to revel with the first favourites of our childhood now developed into full life and strength and stately beauty! With these before us how could we dare be infidels and recreants to our earlier faith or smile in scorn at the fanciful loves and cherished dreams of infancy? Such were our feelings nor could it well be otherwise; for Tieck was and is a poet of the highest grade--not a playwright and systematic jest-hunter; and would as soon have put forth his hand in impious challenge against the Ark as have stooped to become a buffooning pander to the idle follies of the million. It remained for England--great and classic England--no by heavens! I will not do her that wrong--but for London and London _artists_!--I believe that is the proper phrase--after having exhausted every other subject of parody sacred and profane to invade the sanctuary of childhood and vulgarize the very earliest impressions which are conveyed to the infant. Are not the men who sit down deliberately to such a task more culpable than even the nursery jade who administers gin and opium to her charge in order that she may steal to the back-door undisturbed and there indulge in surreptitious dalliance with the dustman? Far better had they stuck to their old trade of twisting travesties from Shakespeare for the amusement of elderly idiots than attempted to people Fairyland with the palpable denizens of St Giles. The Seven Champions of Christendom indeed! They may well lay claim to the title of Champions of Cockneydom incarnate setting forth on their heroic quest from the rendezvous in the Seven Dials. Let us look a little into their individual feats although I must needs say that the whole of these productions bear a marvellous resemblance to each other. There is no more variety in any of them than can be found in the copious advertisements of the Messrs Doudney. Still it cannot but be that some gems shall scintillate more than others or at all events be of coarser and duller water. With conscious impartiality and without imputing the palm of slang to any particular individual I shall give the precedence to Gemini and their last approved duodecimo. Messrs Taylor and Smith have bestowed upon the public three dramas--to wit Valentine and Orson Whittington and his Cat and Cinderella. I have not been fortunate enough to meet with the earlier portions of this trilogy; but I have got by me Cinderella of which title the authors with characteristic purity confess ""'Twould be proper _er_ To say 'La Cenerentola ' from the opera."" You shall have a specimen Bogle of this extremely racy production which I strongly recommend you to keep in view as model. You cannot have forgotten the tale of the poor deserted maiden whose loneliness is thus touchingly described-- ""From poker tongs and kitchen stove To the neglected cellar Is all the change I ever know-- Oh hapless Cinderella!"" But dear Cinderella_r_ is not doomed to mourn in dust and ashes for ever. A prince is coming to her rescue but in disguise having changed suits with his own valet. Let us mark the manner of his introduction to the interesting family of the Baron:-- _Baron._--The Baron Soldoff Baroness and Misses! I thought the Prince was here! (_To_ CINDERELLA.) Tell me who this is. _Rodo._--(_Bowing._) I'm but a humble servant of his Highness. _Baron._--Where is he? _Rodo._--Sir he waits down-stairs from shyness. _Baron._--Give him the Baron's compliments who begs To this poor hall he'll stir his princely pegs. [C. _Exit_ RODOLOPH _bowing_. (_To musicians._) Now change your costumes quick as you are able And be in readiness to wait at table; Here are the pantry keys (_throws them up_ ) and there the cellar's. Now try and look _distingué_--that's good fellows. [L. _Exeunt musicians._ _Baroness._--What will the Browns say when this visit's told of? 'Tis a new era for the house of Soldoff! QUARTETTE.--The BARON BARONESS CINDERELLA and PATCHOULIA. AIR.--'_The Campbells are coming._' The Prince is a-coming oh dear oh dear The prince is a-coming oh dear! The Prince is a-coming with piping and drumming The Prince is a-coming oh dear oh dear! [C. _A grand march. Some hunters appear marching in at the door when_ CAPILLAIRE _in the ducal cap puts his head in at the entrance and shouts._ _Capil._--Hold hard! (_music and procession stop._) Come back you muffs that's not correct You're spoiling a magnificent effect. Down those two staircases you've got to go' A la 'The Daughter of St Mark ' you know. [C. _They retire._ _Baron._--That was the Prince who show'd his face just now. _Baroness._--What a fine voice! _Ronde._--What eyes! _Patch._--And what a brow! _Cin._--(_aside._) To my mind as a casual spectator If that's the Prince he's very like a waiter. [_March begins again. A grand procession enters the gallery and deploying in the centre proceeds down the two staircases simultaneously. Pages with hawks on their wrists. Hunters with dead game deer herons wild-ducks &c. Men-at-Arms. Banners with the Prince's Arms &c. Ladies and Cavaliers. Flowergirls strewing flowers._ RODOLPE _with wand._ CAPILLAIRE _as the Prince. His train held up by two diminutive pages._ _Capil._--(_as soon as he reaches the stage advancing to the front is almost tripped up by the pages mismanaging his train. He turns round sharply._) If you do that again you'll get a whipping; It won't do for a Duke to be caught tripping. Let our train go. [_Some of the procession are moving off._ R. What are you at? Dear dear! We don't mean that train there but this train here. (_Pointing to the train of his robe the pages leave their hold of it._) _Baron._--This princely visit is a condescension-- _Capil._--Now don't-- _Baroness._--(_curtsies_) A grace to which we've no pretension _Capil._--Bless me! _Patch._--(_curtseying_) An honour not to be believed. _Capil._--Oh Lord! _Patch._--(_curtseying_) A favour thankfully received. _Baron._--(_bowing again_) This princely visit-- _Capil._--(_impatiently_) You've said that before. Gammon! We know we're a tremendous bore. We're a plain man and don't like all this fuss; Accept our game but don't make game of us. (_Looking about him._) Well Baron these are comfortable quarters (_Examining Rondeletia and Patchoulia._) And you hang out two very 'plummy' daughters. _Ronde._--What wit! _Patch._--What humour! _Cin._--(_aside_) And what language--'plummy!' _Capil._--We like your wife too. Tho' not young she's 'crummy.' _Cin._--(_aside_) And 'crummy ' too. Well these are odd words very! I'm sure they're not in Johnson's Dictionary. (_Attendant throws open door._ L.) _Atten._--Wittles is on the table. _Baron._--(_interrupting him_) Hush you lout. He means you grace the banquet waits without. If at our humble board you'll deign to sit? _Capil._--Oh I'm not proud. I'll peck a little bit. _Baron._--For your attendants-- _Capil._--Don't mind them at all. Stick the low fellows in the servants' hall. _Baron._--(_presenting the Baroness for Capillaire to take to dinner._) My wife. _Capil._--No no old chap you take the mother. Young 'uns for me (_takes Patchoulia under one arm._) Here's one (_takes Rondeletia _) And here's another. [_As they are going out_ ( L.) _the_ PRINCE _forgetting himself passes before_ CAPILLAIRE. Capil.--Halloa! where are you shoving to you scrub? Now for pot-luck and woe betide the grub."" Match me that Bogle if you can! There is wit genius and polish for you! No wonder that the ""School for Scandal"" has been driven off the field. But we must positively indulge ourselves with a love scene were it merely to qualify the convulsions into which we have been thrown by the humour of these funny fellows. Mark learn and understand how ladies are to be wooed and won-- ""[(_Enter_ PRINCE RODOLPH.) L. _Rodo._--How's this--what tears!--Enough to float a frigate! _Patch._--Sir! _Ronde._--Sir! _Rodo._--Oh it's the valet they look big at! Come what's the row?--peace-maker's my capacity. _Ronde._--Low wretch! _Patch._--I shudder man at your audacity! How dare you interfere 'twixt your superiors? _Rodo._--'Twas pity! _Ronde._--Gracious! pity from inferiors! _Rodo._--Nay dry your eyes your quarrel's cause I've found (_sings_) Oh 'tis love 'tis love 'tis love that makes the world go round The Prince is a sad dog he'll pop away And bag you ten and twenty hearts a-day; Knocks ladies down like nine-pins with a look And worst of all can not be brought to book. He sha'n't dim those eyes long my darlings shall he? _Patch._--_Why you mad flunky!_ _Ronde._--Why you maniac valet! _Patch._--Why you impertinent piece of pretension! _Ronde._--To call him man would be a condescension. A valet paugh! (_going._) _Prince._--A clear case of cold shoulder. _Patch._--We'll have you trounced e'er you're a minute older! [_Exeunt_ RONDELETIA _and_ PATCHOULIA. ( R.) _Prince_--(R.) But listen for a moment. No they're gone Well this is Cocker's old rule 'set down one.' I had no notion while I was genteel How very small indeed a man may feel. I've made what Capillaire calls a 'diskivery.' I wonder what's my value out of livery! But here comes humble little Cinderella ( R.); I feel I love her--let's see shall I tell her? [_Enter_ CINDERELLA. _Cin._--I've taken up the coffee not too soon And made all tidy for the afternoon. I think-- _Prince_--What do you think you little gipsy? _Cin._--I think the Prince and Pa are getting tipsy. _Prince_--Well darling here I am again you see. _Cin._--You don't mean you were waiting here for me? _Prince_--Yes but I was though; and can't you guess why? _Cin._--You thought that I popp'd out upon the sly? _Prince_--I have a secret for you--I'm in love! _Cin._--(_dolefully_) Who with? _Prince._--With you--fact! There's my hand and glove-- Do you return my passion and forgive me? _Cin._--I never do return what people give me. _Prince._--Then keep my heart! _Cin._--Mine kicks up such a bobbery I'll give it you; exchange you know 's no robbery. _Prince_--We'll wed next week--a house I'll see about. _Cin._--I'd go with you--but I've no Sunday out."" Beaumont and Fletcher did I say? Rather Ovid and Tibullus. What a beautiful picture of innocence is conveyed in that suggestive line-- ""You thought that I popp'd out upon the sly!"" It is too natural for fiction. It must be a reminiscence of departed bliss--a sigh wafted from the street-door of a furnished lodging-house in Bloomsbury when our authors plied the bistoury at Guy's. Bogle if you ever should be in love take a lesson from these great masters and your suit is sure to prosper. Not a serving-maid in the Saltmarket but must yield to such fervid and impassioned eloquence. Talking of songs I shall just give you the interesting ditty with which this excellent extravaganza concludes. There is fine moral in it which will do well to lay to heart. ""CINDERELLA _sings_. When lords shall fall before my throne And dare not call their souls their own On my slippery path lest I should fall I'll think on the COAL-HOLE and sing so small-- With my slipper so fine. Tra-la Tra-la! GORGEOUS TABLEAU. [_Curtain falls._"" Yes! there can be little doubt that after all the Coal-hole _is_ their genuine Aganippe. Would you like to have a slight specimen of Planché by way of change? It is not fair to give an entire monopoly to Messrs Taylor and Smith however eminent their deserts so let us dedicate a moment to the substitute for Shakespeare. From six fairy dramas composed by the Witty Wizard I shall select ""Graciosa and Percinet."" A very short sample will I opine convince you that his popularity is as deserved as it assuredly is extensive. Hasten we then to the glorious tournament of the Cockneys. ""_Enter_ (C.) _the_ KING _Heralds Nobles and Ladies of the Court the Six Knights viz._:--SIR REGE

T CIRCUS _Knight of the Bull and Mouth;_ SIR LAD LANE _Knight of the Swan with Two Necks;_ SIR SNOW HILL _Knight of the Saracen's Head;_ SIR LUDGATE HILL _Knight of the Belle Sauvage;_ SIR FLEET STREET _Knight of the Bolt-in-Tun; and_ SIR CHARING CROSS _Knight of the Golden Cross._ CHORUS ('_To the Gay Tournament._') To the gay tournament The Queen of Beauty goes; He shall gain a prize from her Who most his courage shows-- Singing singing 'Though others fair may be Nobody nobody can be compare to thee!' _Grog._--Soon will the conqueror With trophy and with wreath Kneel on his bended knee My throne low beneath-- Singing singing 'Though others fair may be Nobody nobody can be compared with me.' _King Lord Nimroddy and Graciosa _ (_aside _) Bold must the champion be Who can that boast maintain; He for audacity The prize must surely gain. Swinging hanging on the highest tree For such a lie such a lie he deserves to be. _Cho._--To the gay tournament &c. [_Exeunt._ (R.) SCENE IV. TILT-YARD OF THE PALACE. _The Lists set out for a Tournament. Throne for the_ QUEEN OF BEAUTY; _another for the_ KING; _a Chair of State for the_ PRINCESS. _Pavilions of the Knights-Challengers &c._ GROGNON KING GRACIOSA _Knights Courtiers Guards Heralds &c. discovered_. _Herald._--O yes! O yes! O yes! take notice pray Here are six noble knights in arms to-day; Who swear that never yet was lady seen So lovely as our new-elected Queen! Against all comers they will prove 'tis so. Oh yes! oh yes! oh yes! _Enter_ PERCINET ( L.) _in Green Armour._ _Per._--I say oh no! _Grog._--Who's this Jack in the green? _Gra._ [_aside_] Sure _I_ know who! _King._--Do you know what you say? _Per._--And mean it too! _King._--How! come to court and say just what you mean! You're a Green Knight indeed! _Per._--Sir Turnham Green! Of Brentford's royal house a princely scion Knight of its ancient order the Red Lion; Baron of Hammersmith a Count of Kew Marquis of Kensington and Lord knows who. But all these titles willingly I waive For one more dear--Fair Graciosa's slave! I'll prove it on the crest of great or small She's Beauty's Queen who holds my heart in thrall And Grognon is a foul and ugly witch! _King._--If you're a gentleman behave as _sich_! _Per._--Come one come all! here I throw down my gage! _King._--A green gage seemingly! _Grog._--I choke with rage! To arms! my knights! [_The Knights enter their Pavilions._ _Gra._--I'll bet a crown he mills 'em! _King._--Laissez Aller! That's go it if it kills 'em!"" I have no patience for such pitiful slaver! And yet this is the sort of trash which half London is flocking nightly to see and for which the glorious English drama has been discarded and disdained! I lay down my pen in utter weariness of the flesh. The jingle of that last jargon is still ringing in my ears; and in order to get rid of it--for if I do not speedily I am booked as a Bauldie for life--I shall step down to Astley's and refresh my British feelings by beholding Mr Gomersal overthrown (for the twentieth time this season) upon the field of Waterloo. PRIESTS WOMEN AND FAMILIES. This remarkable book contains a denunciation by an angry and an able man of some of the most pressing practical evils of the Roman Catholic system. The celibacy of the priesthood the mysteries of the confessional the usurpations of priestly direction in the economy of families in the control of women and in the education of children--these are the objects against which the historian of France now directs the arrows of his indignation and which he seeks to drive from among his countrymen by his earnest and energetic attacks. His hostility has probably been prompted in part by the strong feelings of jealousy at present existing in France between the Universities and the Church. But his work is not professedly nor principally directed to that subject of controversy. It embraces a larger question affecting the various relations of private life and not confined to one form or phasis of fanaticism. It deserves the anxious consideration of all who are interested in the progress of European civilization and may teach a valuable lesson to many who may at first sight seem to be far removed from the mischief which it seeks to remedy. For centuries past it may be said that the great disease of France has been the disorder in its domestic relations. That amidst the general surrender of its upper classes in former times to levity ""and something more "" there were many exceptions of family happiness and purity is as certain as that human nature in its worst state of depravity will ever assert its better tendencies and give indications of the ethereal source from which it has sprung. But that the prevailing tone of those who ought to have given the tone to others was long of the most lax or licentious character admits of little doubt; nor is it wonderful that public corruption and anarchy should have followed fast upon the dissolution of private restraints. The same form of the evil may not now exist; but the book before us exhibits proofs that there is still a want of that harmony in conjugal life that is essential as the foundation of solid virtue and social prosperity. The husband and the wife are still separated from each other; not it may be by a lover but by a priest. There is the same want of sympathy as ever the same mutual alienation of hearts the same absence of that kindly agency of mind on mind which is needed to strengthen the intellect of the woman and to purify the spirit of the man. It is this state of things that has roused the energies of a writer not remarkable for his prejudices against the Catholic church in her earlier constitution but who thinks he sees her now at his own door undermining household authority and stealing from every man the affections of those who are united to him by the tenderest ties and whom he cannot cease to love even when his love has ceased to be returned. Michelet's book is divided into three parts. The first treats of ""Direction "" or spiritual superintendence in the seventeenth century; containing a historical view of clerical influence during that period; and more particularly of the policy and power of the Jesuits. The second discusses the character of ""Direction"" in general and particularly in the nineteenth century. The third is specially devoted to the subject ""Of the Family "" and winds up the work by showing the operation of the poison in the most vital part of the frame. The preface to the first edition contains powerful passages. We extract some of the best of them from the English translation by Mr Cocks which is sufficiently respectable for our present purpose. ""The question is about our family:--that sacred asylum in which we all desire to seek the repose of the heart when our endeavours have proved fruitless and our illusions are no more. We return exhausted to the domestic hearth; but do we find there the repose we sigh for? ""Let us not dissemble but acknowledge to ourselves how things are: there is in our family a sad difference of sentiment and the most serious of all. ""We may speak to our mothers wives and daughters on any of the subjects which form the topics of our conversation with indifferent persons such as business or the news of the day but never on subjects that affect the heart and moral life such as eternity religion the soul and God. ""Choose for instance the moment when we naturally feel disposed to meditate with our family in common thought some quiet evening at the family-table; venture even there in your own house at your own fireside to say one word about these things; your mother sadly shakes her head your wife contradicts you your daughter by her very silence shows her disapprobation. They are on one side of the table and you on the other--and alone. ""One would think that in the midst of them and opposite you was seated an invisible personage to contradict _whatever you may say_. ""But how can we be astonished at this state of our family? Our wives and daughters are brought up and governed by _our enemies!_ * * * * * ""_Our enemies_ I repeat it in a more direct sense as they are naturally envious of marriage and family life. This I know full well is rather their misfortune than their fault. An old lifeless system of mechanical functions can want but lifeless partisans. Nature however reclaims her rights: they feel painfully that family is denied them and they console themselves _only by troubling ours_. * * * * * ""This lifeless spirit let us call it by its real name Jesuitism formerly neutralized by the different manners of living of the orders corporations and religious parties is now the common spirit which the clergy imbibes through a special education and which its chiefs make no difficulty in confessing. A bishop has said 'We are Jesuits all Jesuits;' and nobody has contradicted him. ""The greater part however are less frank: Jesuitism acts powerfully through the medium of those who are supposed to be strangers to it; namely the Sulpicians who educate the clergy the Ignorantins who instruct the people and the Lazarists who direct six thousand Sisters of Charity and have in their hands the hospitals schools charity-offices &c. ""So many establishments so much money so many pulpits for preaching aloud so many confessionals for whispering the education of two hundred thousand boys and six hundred thousand girls the management of several millions of women form together a powerful machine. The unity it possesses in our days might one would suppose alarm the state. This is so far from being the case that whilst the state prohibits association among the laity it has encouraged it among the ecclesiastics. It has allowed them to form a most dangerous footing among the poorer classes the union of workmen apprentice-houses association of servants who are accountable to priests &c. &c. ""Unity of action and the monopoly of association are certainly two powerful levers. * * * * * ""That which constitutes the gravity of this age I may even say its holiness is conscientious work which promotes attentively the common work of humanity and facilitates at its own expense the work of the future. Our forefathers dreamed much and disputed much. But we are labourers and this is the reason why our furrow has been blessed. The soil which the middle ages left us still covered with brambles has produced by our efforts so plentiful a harvest that it already envelopes and will presently hide the old inanimate post that expected to stop the plough. ""And it is because we are workmen and return home fatigued every evening that we need more than others the repose of the heart. Our board and fireside must again become our own; we must no longer find instead of repose at home the old dispute which has been settled by science and the world; nor hear from our wife or child on our pillow a lesson learnt by heart and the words of another man. ""Women follow willingly the strong. How comes it then that in this case they have followed the weak? ""It must be that there is an art which gives strength to the weak. This dark art which consists in surprising fascinating lulling and annihilating the will has been investigated by me in this volume. The seventeenth century had the theory of it and ours continues the practice."" We shall not follow the writer in his review of Jesuitical influences in the seventeenth century though it contains much that might excite remark and deserve attention. We hasten to the more urgent question--the state of matters as they exist at the present hour. The root of the evil as Michelet thinks lies in the position of the priesthood. We are far from adopting all his views and would decline any indiscriminate condemnation of a body of men who under any form of Christianity must do good in many quarters and must contain numerous examples of faithful and fervent piety. But in so far as the system of the Romish church is vicious and injurious it is of vital moment that we should trace the effect to its cause. Much evil we think is ascribable to the doctrines of that church and of every other that too highly exalts the powers and functions of the priest as compared with the people. But dismissing these for the present the peculiar discipline of the Romish system deserves our immediate consideration; and here our attention is first attracted by a striking characteristic the CELIBACY of the clergy. Let us hear how so important a peculiarity is thought to operate by this acute observer:-- ""We think without enumerating the too well-known inconveniences of their present state that if the priest is to advise the family it is good for him to know what a family is; that as a married man (or a widower which would be still better ) of a mature age and experience one who has loved and suffered and whom domestic affections have enlightened upon the mysteries of moral life which are not to be learned by guessing he would possess at the same time more affection and more wisdom. * * * * * ""Why torment a blind man by speaking to him of colours? He answers vaguely; occasionally he may guess pretty nearly; but how can it be helped? he cannot see. ""And do not think that the feelings of the heart can be guessed at more easily. A man without wife or child might study the mysterious working of a family in books and the world for ten thousand years without ever knowing one word about them. Look at these men: it is neither time opportunity nor facility that they lack to acquire knowledge; they pass their lives with women who tell them more than they tell their husbands; they know and yet they are ignorant; they know all a woman's acts and thoughts but they are ignorant precisely of what is the best and most intimate part of her character and the very essence of her being. They hardly understand her as a lover (of God or man ) still less as a wife and not at all as a mother. Nothing is more painful than to see them sitting down awkwardly by the side of a woman to caress her child; their manner towards it is that of flatterers or courtiers--anything but that of a father. ""What I pity the most in the man condemned to celibacy is not only the privation of the sweetest joys of the heart but that a thousand objects of the natural and moral world are and ever will be a dead letter to him. Many have thought by living apart to dedicate their lives to science; but the reverse is the case. In such a morose and crippled life science is never fathomed; it may be varied and superficially immense; but it escapes--for it will not reside there. Celibacy gives a restless activity to researches intrigues and business--a sort of huntsman's eagerness--a sharpness in the subtilties of school-divinity and disputation: this is at least the effect it had in its prime. If it makes the senses keen and liable to temptation certainly it does not soften the heart. Our terrorists in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were monks. Monastic prisons were always the most cruel. A life systematically negative--a life without its functions--developes in man instincts that are hostile to life; he who suffers is willing to make others suffer. The harmonious and fertile parts of our nature which on the one hand incline to goodness and on the other to genius and high invention can hardly ever withstand this partial suicide. * * * * * ""I have never been insensible either to the humiliation of the church or to the sufferings of the priest. I have them all present both before my imagination and in my heart. I have followed this unfortunate man in the career of privations and in the miserable life into which he is dragged by the hand of a hypocritical authority. And in his loneliness on his cold and melancholy hearth where he sometimes weeps at night let him remember that a man has often wept with him and that I am that man."" We partly know the object and origin of the middle age institution of celibacy among the clergy. It was intended to check the tendency to secularize benefices. It was adapted to the condition of a church militant. It might do good or at least it could do little harm where aged and self-mortified men were the occupants of the office. But a youthful priesthood established in all the comforts or the luxuries of a state endowment moving and officiating in a sphere where leisure and refinement give an impulse to the heart and fancy and yet condemned to a renunciation of all the charities of family union of all the affections of a lover a husband a father--how unnatural a position is this how detrimental to usefulness how dangerous to virtue! Supposing even that the vow is kept in its spirit and perhaps its violation is not the greatest imaginable mischief what must be the effect of such solitary seclusion on ordinary minds! What power shall protect the mass of the profession on an envious sourness of heart at the sight of that happiness in others which in a moment it may be of rashness they have relinquished for themselves. ""Croire qu'un voeu quelques prières une robe noire sur le dos vont vous delivrer de la chair et vous faire un pur esprit n'est-ce pas chose puerile?"" We hope and are sure it is not often so; but can we say that sometimes the dark and deserted spirit of the priest may not look on the happiness of families with an approach to the feelings of the Evil One when gazing at our First Parents in their state of innocence?-- ""Sight hateful! sight tormenting! thus these two Emparadised in one another's arms--While I--"" But this is not all. Thus doomed to the dreary isolation of a _manqué_ and mutilated life yet in the midst of his privations retaining his natural passions his longings of the heart and affections the Romish priest is employed in no ordinary task of clerical occupation or superintendence--in preaching merely or in prayer--in the visitation of the sick and afflicted. The CONFESSIONAL is added to his duties as if on purpose to enhance the misery of his condition and the mischief of his influence. And with whom is the confessional chiefly conversant? The male penitent we presume is content with a very general acknowledgment of his errors and seldom indulges in great outpourings of the spirit or would submit to any stretch of authority over his conscience or conduct. But the softer sex whose own tenderness of heart and whose power over the hearts of others make all converse with them so potent for good or for harm--maidens and wives in the prime of life and in the pride of beauty opening their souls to a confessor revealing all their secret emotions their hopes their disappointments their fears their failings submitting to his questions and hanging upon his words of acquittal or condemnation; surely this is a subject of contemplation full of awful interest and on which it is impossible to be at ease where the mysterious intercourse is without a witness and without a check--but the consciences of two frail and fallible human beings. Well may we say with Michelet that under such a system the priest ought to be truly a ~presbyteros~ ""a man who has seen learned and suffered much."" A young priest as a father-confessor is not merely ""a nonsensical contradiction "" but a snare and a source of peril both to himself and his penitents. The pomp of Popery gives its clergy sufficient aids to their influence by other means. ""The priest takes advantage of every thing that is calculated to make him be considered as a man apart--of his dress his position his mysterious church that invests the most vulgar with a poetical gleam. * * * * * ""What an immense place is this church and what an immense host must inhabit this wonderful dwelling! Optical delusion adds still more to the effect. Every proportion changes. The eye is deceived and deceives itself at the same time with these sublime lights and deepening shades all calculated to increase the illusion. The man whom in the street you judged by his surly look to be a village schoolmaster is here a prophet. He is transformed by this majestic framework; his heaviness becomes strength and majesty; his voice has formidable echoes. Women and children tremble and are afraid. * * * * * ""Do you see that solemn figure adorned with all the gold and purple of his pontifical dress ascending with the thought the prayer of a multitude of ten thousand men the triumphal steps in the choir of St Denis? Do you see him still above all that kneeling mass hovering as high as the vaulted roofs his head reaching the capitals and lost among the winged heads of the angels whence he hurls his thunder? Well it is the same man this terrible archangel himself who presently descends for her and now mild and gentle goes yonder into that dark chapel to listen to her in the languid hours of the afternoon! Delightful hour of tumultuous but tender sensations! (Why does the heart palpitate so strongly here?) How dark the church becomes! Yet it is not late. The great rose-window over the portal glitters with the setting sun. But it is quite another thing in the choir; dark shadows envelope it and beyond is obscurity. One thing astounds and almost frightens us however far we may be which is the mysterious old painted glass at the farthest end of the church on which the design is no longer distinguishable twinkling in the shade like an illegible magic scroll of unknown characters. The chapel is not less dark on that account; you can no longer discern the ornaments and delicate moulding entwined in the vaulted roof; the shadow deepening blends and confounds the outlines. But as if this chapel were not dark enough it contains in a retired corner a narrow recess of dark oak where that man all emotion and that trembling woman so close to each other are whispering together about the love of God."" The details of a priest's education for the confessional office are necessarily deplorable. We blame not so much the men as the system. Yet books apparently are continued among the preparations for this duty which might well be dispensed with as wholly unsuited to the age. We believe that Sanchez was a man of holy life though his purity after the analogy of one of Swift's paradoxes left him a man of impure ideas; and no one was ever forced by dire necessity to read his book without disgust and dismay. It may be good for the students of medicine to penetrate into every form in which bodily disease can show itself; but the pathology of the mind thus hideously represented is degrading even to the observer. ""A worthy parish priest has often told me that the sore part of his profession that which filled him with despair and his life with torment was the confession. ""The studies with which they prepare for it in the seminaries are such as entirely ruin the disposition weaken the body and enervate and defile the soul. ""Lay education without making any pretension to an extraordinary degree of purity and though the pupils it forms will one day enjoy public life takes however especial care to keep from the eyes of youth the glowing descriptions that excite the passions. ""Ecclesiastical education on the contrary which pretends to form men superior to man pure virgin minds angels fixes precisely the attention of its pupils upon things that are to be for ever forbidden them and gives them for subjects of study terrible temptations such as would make all the saints run the risk of damnation. Their printed books have been quoted but not so their copy-books by which they complete the two last years of seminary education: these copy-books contain things that the most audacious have never dared to publish. * * * * * ""This surprising imprudence proceeded originally from the very scholastic supposition that the body and soul could be perfectly well kept apart."" What is the influence by which the power of the confessor is converted into that of the director? It is done in the usual way--by the continual repetition of the same process for a length of time. Habit is the insidious enemy that ere it seems to assail has already conquered and led captive. ""Stand at this window every day at a certain hour in the afternoon. You will see a pale man pass down the street with his eyes cast on the ground and always following the same line of pavement next the houses. Where he set his foot yesterday there he does to-day and there he will to-morrow; he would wear out the pavement if it was never renewed. And by this same street he goes to the same house ascends to the same story and in the same cabinet speaks to the same person. He speaks of the same things and his manner seems the same. The person who listens to him sees no difference between yesterday and to-day; gentle uniformity as serene as an infant's sleep whose breathing raises its chest at equal intervals with the same soft sounds. ""You think that nothing changes in this monotonous equality; that all these days are the same. You are mistaken; you have _perceived_ nothing yet every day there is a change slight it is true and imperceptible which the person himself changed by little and little does not remark. ""It is like a dream in a bark. What distance have you come whilst you were dreaming? Who can tell? Thus you go on without seeming to move--still and yet rapidly. Once out of the river or canal you soon find yourself at sea; the uniform immensity in which you now are will inform you still less of the distance you go. Time and place are equally uncertain; no sure point to occupy attention; and attention itself is gone. The reverie is profound and becomes more and more so--an ocean of dreams upon the smooth ocean of waters. ""A pleasant state in which every thing becomes insensible even gentleness itself. Is it death or is it life? To distinguish we require attention and we should awake from our dream.--No let it go on whatever it may be that carried me along with it whether it lead me to life or death. ""Alas! 'tis habit! that gently-sloping formidable abyss into which we slide so easily! we may say every thing that is bad of it and also every thing that is good and it will be always true."" It would be painful and repulsive to follow out the acts which the acquisition of such spiritual ascendancy may suggest to wicked or even a weak spirit. The result in general is the complete possession of the whole mind of the subdued victim which lives and moves and has its being in the will and wishes of its omnipotent tyrant. This change is of itself destructive of moral independence; but we must not conceal what the writer before us represents as an ulterior effect and which even as a possibility must be contemplated with fear and horror. ""To be able to have all and then abstain is a slippery situation! who will keep his footing on this declivity? * * * * * ""Are you sure you possess the heart entirely if you have not the body? Will not physical possession give up corners of the soul which otherwise would remain inaccessible? Is spiritual dominion complete if it does not comprehend the other? The great popes seem to have settled the question; they thought popedom implied empire; and the pope himself besides his sway over consciences was king in temporal matters. * * * * * ""Afterwards comes the vile refinement of the Quietists:--'If the inferior part be without sin the superior grows proud and pride is the greatest sin; consequently the flesh ought to sin in order that the soul may remain humble; sin producing humility becomes a ladder to ascend to heaven.' ""Sin!--But is it sin? (depraved devotion finds here the ancient sophism:) _The holy by its essence_ being holiness itself _always sanctifies_. In the spiritual man every thing is spirit even what in another is matter. If in its superior flight the holy should meet with any obstacle that might draw it again towards the earth let the inferior part get rid of it; it does a meritorious work and is sanctified for it. ""Diabolical subtilty! which few avow clearly but which many brood over and cherish in their most secret thoughts."" We feel assured that as Michelet himself has said this last act of the dreadful drama is but seldom represented. But enough may be done without actual or conscious guilt to pervert the feelings and above all to destroy the peace and the unity of the family. ""Six hundred and twenty thousand girls are brought up by nuns under the direction of the priests. These girls will soon be women and mothers who in their turn will hand over to the priests as far as they are able both their sons and their daughters. ""The mother has already succeeded as far as concerns the daughter; by her persevering importunity she has at length overcome the father's repugnance. A man who every evening after the troubles of business and the warfare of the world finds strife also at home may certainly resist for a time but he must necessarily give in at last; or he will be allowed neither truce cessation rest nor refuge. His own house becomes uninhabitable. His wife having nothing to expect at the confessional but harsh treatment as long as she does not succeed will wage against him every day and every hour the war they make against her; a more gentle one perhaps; politely bitter implacable and obstinate. ""She grumbles at the fireside is low-spirited at table and never opens her mouth either to speak or eat; then at bed-time the inevitable repetition of the lesson she has learned even on the pillow. The same sound of the same bell for ever and ever: who could withstand it? What is to be done? Give in or become mad! * * * * * ""What is very singular the father generally is aware that they are bringing up his child against him. Man you surprise me; what do you expect then? 'Oh! she will forget it; time marriage and the world will wear away all that'. Yes for a time but only to reappear; at the first disappointment in the world it will all return. As soon as she grows somewhat in years she will return to the habits of the child; the master she now has will be her master then whether for your contradiction good man or for the despair and daily damnation of her father and husband. Then will you taste the fruit of this education. ""Education! a mere trifle a weak power no doubt which the father may without danger allow his enemies to take possession of! ""To possess the mind with all the advantage of the first possessor! To write in this book of blank paper whatever they will! and to write what will last for ever! And remember well it will be in vain for you to write upon it hereafter; what has once been indited cannot be erased. Is the mystery of her young memory to be as weak in receiving impressions as it is strong in keeping them. The early tracing that seemed to be effaced at twenty reappears at forty or sixty. It is the last and the clearest perhaps that old age will retain. * * * * * ""This is true in speaking of the school but how much more so as regards the church! especially in the case of the daughter who is more docile and timid and certainly retains more faithfully her early impressions. What she heard the first time in that grand church under those resounding roofs and the words pronounced with a solemn voice by that man in black which then frightened her so being addressed to _herself_;--ah! be not afraid of her ever forgetting them. But even if she could forget them she would be reminded of them every week: woman is all her life at school finding in the confessional her school-bench her schoolmaster the only man she fears and the only one as we have said who in the present state of our manners can threaten a woman. ""What an advantage has he in being able to take her quite young in the convent where they have placed her to be the first to take in hand her young soul and to be the first to exercise upon her the earliest severity and also the earliest indulgence which is so akin to affectionate tenderness to be the father and friend of a child taken so soon from her mother's arms. The confidant of her first thoughts will long be associated with her private reveries. He has had an especial and singular privilege which the husband may envy: what--why the virginity of the soul and the first-fruits of the will. ""This is the man of whom young bachelors you must ask the girl in marriage before you speak to her parents."" The subject is resumed in his preface to the third edition. ""It had been generally believed that two persons were sufficient for matrimony: but this is all altered; and we have the new system as set forth by themselves composed of three elements: 1st _man_ the strong the violent; 2dly _woman_ a being naturally weak; 3dly _the priest_ born a man and strong but who is kind enough to become weak and resemble woman; and who participating thus in both natures may int

rpose between them. ""Interpose! interfere between two persons who were to be henceforth but one! This changes wonderfully the idea which from the beginning of the world has been entertained of marriage. ""But this is not all; they avow that they do not pretend to make an impartial interference that might favour each of the parties according to reason. No they address themselves exclusively to the wife: she it is whom they undertake to protect against her natural protector. They offer to league with her in order to transform the husband. If it was once firmly established that marriage instead of being unity in two persons is a league of one of them with a stranger it would become exceedingly scarce."" It would be unjust to assume that a book written under the influence of strong feelings contains an impartial account of actual facts; but even the rage with which it has been received by the party attacked is a proof that it is true to most damaging extent. That its pictures are exaggerated is more than possible. But it is not possible that it should be destitute of a broad and deep foundation of melancholy reality. What now is the remedy which this physician would prescribe for the disease he has thus exposed? His words on this subject are well deserving of attention. ""Marriage gives the husband a single and momentary opportunity to become in reality the master of his wife to withdraw her from the influence of another and make her his own for ever. Does he profit by it? very rarely. He ought in the very beginning when he has much influence over her to let her participate in the activity of his mind his business and ideas initiate her in his projects and create an activity in her by means of his own. ""To wish and think as he does both acting with him and suffering with him--this is marriage. The worst that may happen is not that she may suffer but that she may languish and pine away living apart and like a widow. How can we wonder then if her affection for him be lessened? Ah if in the beginning he made her his own by making her share his ambition troubles and uneasiness:--if they had watched whole nights together and been troubled with the same thoughts he would have retained her affections. Attachment may be strengthened by grief itself; and mutual sufferings may maintain mutual love. * * * * * ""Unfortunately this is not the way of the world. I have sought every where but in vain for this fine exchange of thought which alone realizes marriage. They certainly try for a moment in the beginning to communicate together but they are soon discouraged; the husband grows dumb his heart dried up with the arid influence of interests and business can no longer find words. At first she is astonished and uneasy: she questions him. But questions annoy him and she no longer dares to speak to him. Let him be easy; the time is coming when his wife sitting thoughtful by the fireside absent in her turn and framing her imaginary plans will leave him in quiet possession of his taciturnity. * * * * * ""Let us not accuse the Jesuits who carry on their jesuitical trade nor the priests who are dangerous restless and violent only because they are unhappy. ""No we ought rather to accuse ourselves. ""If dead men return in broad daylight if these Gothic phantoms haunt our streets at noonday it is because the living have let the spirit of life grow weak within them. How is it that these men reappear among us after having been buried by history with all funereal rites and laid by the side of other ancient orders? The very sight of them is a solemn token and a serious warning. * * * * * ""Modern strength appears in the powerful liberty with which you go on disengaging the reality from the forms and the spirit on the dead letter. But why do you not reveal yourself to the companion of your life in that which is for you your life itself? She passes away days and years by your side without seeing or knowing the grandeur that is within you. If she saw you walk free strong and prosperous in action and in science she would not remain chained down to material idolatry and bound to the sterile letter; she would rise to a faith far more free and pure and you would be as one in faith. She would preserve for you this common treasure of religious life where you might seek for comfort when your mind is languid; and when your various toils studies and business have weakened the vital unity within you she would bring back your thoughts and life to God the true the only unity. ""I shall not attempt to crowd a large volume into a small preface. I shall only add one word which at once expresses and completes my thought. ""Man ought to nourish woman. He ought to feed spiritually (and materially if he can) her who nourishes him with her love her milk and her very life. ""Our adversaries give women bad food; but we give them none at all. ""To the women of the richer class those who seem to be so gently protected by their family those brilliant ones whom people suppose so happy to these we give no spiritual food. ""And to the women of the poorer class solitary industrious and destitute who try hard to gain their bread we do not even give our assistance to help them to find their material food. ""These women who are or will be mothers are left by us to fast (either in soul or in body ) and we are punished especially by the generation that issues from them for our neglecting to give them the staff of life. ""I like to believe that good-will generally is not wanting--only time and attention. People live in a hurry and can hardly be said to live: they follow with a huntsman's eagerness this or that petty object and neglect what is important. ""You man of business or study who are so energetic and indefatigable you have no time say you to associate your wife with your daily progress; you leave her to her _ennui_ idle conversations empty sermons and silly books; so that falling below herself less than woman even less than a child she will have neither moral action influence nor maternal authority over her own offspring. Well! you will have the time as old age advances to try in vain to do all over again what is not done twice to follow in the steps of a son who from college to the schools and from thence into the world hardly knows his family; and who if he travels a little and meets you on his return will ask you your name. The mother alone could have made you a son; but to do so you ought to have made her what a woman ought to be strengthened her with your sentiments and ideas and nourished her with your life."" True O most subtle and sapient Frenchman the remedy lies in the direction you have pointed out; but we have doubts if you have fully discovered its nature or are prepared to apply it in its necessary extent. The husband must make the wife the companion of his heart and thoughts of his hopes and exertions. Too long has this sympathy and confidence been unknown in France where your women have been but the toys and playthings of your lighter or looser hours and where often to their own husbands they have not even been so much. But as you partly see this is not all that is needed to be corrected. In order to be the fitting guide and guardian of the mother of his family the husband must share in those higher feelings which he seeks to regulate and reclaim. You do not hope or wish to see your wife and children devoid of religion. But if you would not surrender them to the guidance of others in those momentous concerns you must care for them and conduct their course yourself and must learn to travel the road along which they are to be led. The husband must become himself the priest and the director: not by inculcating a vague theism or a cold morality but by establishing in his household the purity and the practice of a Christian faith. If the domestic throne is to be upheld on its rightful foundation the altar must be reared by its side. The philosopher and historian must stoop to learn from his own children that simplicity of which they are such powerful teachers and which will amply repay him for all the lessons of a more mature wisdom that his learning and experience can impart. Openly and earnestly sympathizing with their devout impressions he will strengthen and support by his intellectual energies the soft and more susceptible natures of those placed under his charge and will thus shield them from the attempts to mislead and inflame to which they must inevitably be exposed if left to find their only sympathy in extraneous influences. This re-establishment of a patriarchal piety is one of the great boons which the true spirit of Protestantism purchased for its followers and which alone can protect the weaker members of the household from becoming a prey to priestly interference and false enthusiasm. The book contains a touching tribute such as able men have often paid to the maternal affection that formed their minds:-- ""Whilst writing all this I have had in my mind a woman whose strong and serious mind would not have failed to support me in these contentions; I lost her thirty years ago (I was a child then;) nevertheless ever living in my memory she follows me from age to age. ""She suffered with me in my poverty and was not allowed to share in my better fortune. When young I made her sad and now I cannot console her. I know not even where her bones are: I was too poor then to buy earth to bury her! ""And yet I owe her much. I feel deeply that I am the son of woman. Every instant in my ideas and words (not to mention my features and gestures ) I find again my mother in myself. It is my mother's blood that gives me the sympathy I feel for bygone ages and the tender remembrance of all those who are now no more. ""What return then could I who am myself advancing towards old age make her for the many things I owe her? One for which she would have thanked me--this protest in favour of women and mothers; and I place it at the head of a book believed by some to be a work of controversy. They are wrong. The longer it lives if it should live the plainer will it be seen that in spite of polemical emotion it was a work of history a work of faith of truth and of sincerity;--on what then could I have set my heart more?"" In a spirit worthy of these feelings the author contends strongly for the benefits of maternal education on the character of sons. We shall give the passage in the original as it contains a good deal that is French and a great deal that is beautiful:-- ""Quand on songe que la vie moyenne est si courte qu'un si grand nombre d'hommes meurent tout jeunes on hésite d'abréger cette première cette meilleure époque de la vie où l'enfant libre sous la mère vit dans la grâce et non dans la loi. Mais s'il est vrai comme je pense que ce temps qu'on croit perdu est justement l'époque unique précieuse irréparable où parmi les jeux puérils le genius sacré essaye son premier essor la saison où les ailes poussent où l'aiglon s'essaye à voler ... Ah! de grâce ne l'abrégez pas. Ne chassez pas avant le temps cet homme nouveau du paradis maternel; encore un jour; demain à la bonne heure mon Dieu! il sera bien temps; demain il se courbera au travail il rampera sur son sillon.... Aujourd'hui laissez-le encore qu'il prenne largement la force et la vie qu'il aspire d'un grand coeur l'air vitale de la liberté. ""Une éducation trop exigeante trop zélée inquiète est un danger pour les enfants. On augmente toujours la masse d'étude et de science les acquisitions extérieures; l'interieur succombe. Celui-ci n'est que latin tel autre n'est que mathématiques. Où est l'homme je vous prie? Et c'était l'homme justement qu'aimait et ménageait la mère. C'est lui qu'elle respectait dans les écarts de l'enfant. Elle semblait retirer son action sa surveillance même afin qu'il agît qu'il fût libre et fort. Mais en même temps elle l'entourait toujours comme d'un invisible embrassement. ""Il y a un péril je le sais bien dans cette éducation de l'amour. Ce que l'amour veut et désire par-dessus tout c'est de s'immoler de sacrifier tout--intérêts convenances habitudes la vie s'il le faut. ""L'objet de cette immolation peut dans son égoïsme enfantin recevoir comme chose due tous les sacrifices se laisser traiter en idole inerte immobile et devenir d'autant plus incapable d'action qu'on agira plus pour lui. ""Danger réel mais balancé par l'ambition ardente du coeur maternel qui presque toujours place sur l'enfant une espérance infinie et brûle de la réaliser. Toute mère de quelque valeur a une ferme foi c'est que son fils doit être un héros--dans l'action ou dans la science il n'importe. Tout ce qui lui a fait défaut dans sa triste expérience de ce monde il va lui ce petite enfant le réaliser. Les misères du présent sont rachetées d'avance par ce splendide avenir: tout est misérable aujourd'hui; qu'il grandisse et tout sera grand. O poésie! O espérance! où sont les limites de la pensée maternelle? Moi je ne suis qu'une femme; mais voici un homme. J'ai donné un homme au monde. Une seule chose l'embarrasse--l'enfant sera-t-il un Bonaparte un Voltaire ou un Newton? ""S'il faut absolument pour cela qu'il la quitte eh bien! qu'il aille qu'il s'éloigne elle y consent; s'il faut qu'elle s'arrache le coeur elle s'arrachera le coeur. L'amour est capable de tout et d'immoler l'amour même. Oui qu'il parte qu'il suive sa grande destinée qu'il accomplisse le beau rêve qu'elle fit quand elle le portait dans son sein ou sur ses genoux. Et alors chose incroyable cette femme craintive qui tout-à-l'heure n'osait le voir marcher seul sans craindre qu'il ne tombât elle est devenue si brave qu'elle l'envoie dans les carrières; les plus hasardeuses sur mer ou bien encore dans cette rude guerre d'Afrique. Elle tremble elle meurt d'inquiétude et pourtant elle persiste. Qui peut la soutenir?--sa foi. L'enfant ne peut pas périr puis-qu'il doit être un héros. ""Il revient. Qu'il est changé! Moi! ce fier soldat c'est mon fils! Parté enfant il revient homme. Il a hâte de se marier. Voilà un autre sacrifice et qui n'est pas le moins grand. Il faut qu'il en aime une autre; il faut que la mère pour qui il est et sera toujours le premier n'ait en lui désormais que la seconde place--une place bien petite hélas! aux moments de passion. Alors elle se cherche et se choisit sa rivale elle l'aime à cause de lui elle la pare elle se met à la suite et les conduit à l'autel et tout ce qu'elle y demande c'est de ne pas être oubliée."" A word now as to the application to our own case of the leading views already suggested. It may be thought that the moral they most clearly inculcate would point to our fellow countrymen in Ireland. But we own we have a different reading of the lesson and consider that the peculiar perils here described must as yet have been scarcely felt among the priesthood of a peasantry. It is in circles where there is less physical privation and more sentimental excitement that the evils of spiritual fascination and domestic division are likely to arise. Michelet has shown that ""Direction "" in its worst forms did not terminate with the seventeenth century but has revived in his own times. We may be allowed to follow out his opinions and suggest that Jesuits and Directors are not confined to the Romish faith. It behoves even a Protestant people to be on their guard against the recurrence of Popery and its Practices under a new aspect. The same erroneous position may be reached from opposite directions. The same constitutional malady may show itself in different diseases. Cæsar was inaccessible to all flattery except that which told him he hated flatterers. And many are most in danger of Popish error when it approaches under an ultra-Protestant disguise. We are saved indeed from the evils of a celibatary clergy. We are not exposed to that ignorance or that envy of family life which such a institution involves. But ambition and interest will supply the place of most other vices; and we shall be wise to watch whether the same battle is not now being fought among ourselves and for the same immediate object--the occupancy of the female heart. The pictures that have been sometimes drawn of our own doings may have only a limited resemblance. Methodist preachers and evangelical vicars may be exaggerated delineations or mere individual portraits. But still is it not true that the minds of our women particularly those that are unmarried or childless are here as well as in France sought to be engrossed and alienated from their natural attachments through priestly influences and for priestly purposes? Look at any new sect springing up among us--Look at the last example of the kind where a peculiar religious body is forcing or feeling its way towards an ascendency. Powerful as it seems to be in numbers and in wealth in what does its main strength consist? It was frankly avowed by one of its apostles that the female mind alone seemed properly fitted to appreciate its tenets. A strange confession! We doubt if Luther Calvin or Knox would have boasted of such a fact as characterizing the religious movements to which they gave an impulse. In the purity of female feelings we may have a security that any system that recommends itself to women must have a fair semblance of goodness as it appears in their eyes: but it does not follow that their approbation is a test of its genuine excellence or of its actual conformity with the type which it professes to represent. It is no novelty in the history of human nature that evil makes its first attempts on the weakness of woman. Whatever is calculated strongly to excite the affections will gain the hearts of the more susceptible sex; and without the aid of stronger intellects they will run a risk of following after delusive lights and may be found as often to be the votaries of an amiable and attractive error as the assertors of a severe and sober truth. We would take leave to affirm that a religious creed or constitution among whose supporters a vast preponderance of females was to be found stood in a dubious position and was open to the suspicion that its principles cannot stand examination by the standards of reason and argument. Certain it is that this severance of the sexes by religious distinctions is an unnatural state of society and a serious evil. It is accompanied too and aggravated by another source of danger. The system of hanging the faith and feelings on the lips of a man as if he were a special messenger from heaven is nothing else than Popery and goes to put a pope in every pulpit. Incessant sermons itinerant speeches public meetings devotional assemblies form a round of excitement of a dangerous and deceptive kind and are little else than a species of decent dissipation. The constant intervention of a favorite or fashionable minister in all the exercises of religion identifies too much the sacred subject itself with the individual who presides over it; while theatrical exhibitions of extemporaneous oratory and flights of fancy make the ordinary ritual of public worship or the quiet practice of private devotion seem tame and trivial. The tendency of the evil is that the direct access to a communion with above is barred against the deluded and dependent devotee much in the same manner as the votaries of Romanism are driven for aid to the intermediate intercession of the Virgin and the Saints. If the devotion of women is to be maintained mainly by the presence and personal influences of a spiritual guide and prompter the selection ought to be made in accordance with other principles. The substitution of the priest or preacher in the place of the husband or guardian presupposes or foreshows a subversion more or less of the most essential relations of family life. The necessity of resorting to this means of gaining or maintaining power must degrade the clergy who depend on it by tempting them to arts of flattery and excitement and by corrupting their style of instruction to suit the tastes merely of the more sensitive section of our species at the sacrifice of that due proportion of more solid and intellectual grounds of thought and principle which are needed to influence thoroughly the understandings of men. The remedy here also is to be found in a similar course of conduct to what has been formerly suggested. Let the heads of every house do every thing in their power to call into exercise the good sense and natural feeling of the females who are dependent upon them at the same time that they give its due place to that all-important subject which is the occasion of the error. By a judicious mixture of sympathy and sober feeling they may counteract the extraneous influences that are now at work and restore peace to the family by uniting its members in the practice of a calm and rational piety of which out-of-doors the best assistance and safeguard are to be found in the time-tried doctrines and discipline of our PROTESTANT ESTABLISHMENTS. REFERENCE: MICHELET (J.) _Du Prêtre de la Femme de la Famille._ 1845. _Priests Women and Families._ By J. MICHELET. Translated by G. COCKS. London: Longmans. MY COLLEGE FRIENDS. No. II. HORACE LEICESTER. Oxford! Alma Mater! not to love thee were indeed the ingratitude of a degenerate son. Let the whiners of the Conventicle rail at thee for a mother of heretics and the Joseph Humes of domestic economy propose to adapt the scale of thy expenses to their own narrow notions--I uphold thee to be the queen of all human institutions--the incarnated union of Church and State--royal in thy revenues as in thy expenditure--thy doctrine as orthodox as thy dinners thy politics as sound as thy port. Oxford! who are they that rail at her? who dare to lift their voice against that seat of high and holy memories? The man who boasts a private education (so private that his most intimate friends have never found it out ) who innocent himself of all academic experiences and associations grudges to others that superiority which they never boast indeed but to which his secret soul bears envious witness. Or the rich nonconformist risen perhaps from obscurity to a rank in society indulging either his spleen or his pride--either to send his eldest son as a gentleman-commoner to Christ-Church to swallow the Thirty-nine Articles with his champagne; or to have his fling at the Church through her universities--accusing Churchmen of bigotry and exclusiveness and illiberality because Dissenters do not found colleges.[2] Or worse than all the unworthy disciple who (like the noxious plant that has grown up beneath the shade of some goodly tree) has drawn no nobility of soul from the associations which surrounded his ungrateful youth: for whom all the reality and romance of academic education were alike in vain: sneering at the honours which he could not obtain denying the existence of opportunities which he neglected; the basest of approvers he quotes to his own eternal infamy the scenes of riot and dissipation the alternations of idleness and extravagance which make up his sole recollections of the university: and looking without one glance of affection upon the face of his fair and graceful mother makes the chance mole or the early wrinkle which he traces there the subject of his irreverent jest forgets the kindness of which he was unworthy and remembers for evil the wholesome discipline which was irksome only to such as him. ""Non hæc jocosæ conveniunt lyræ;"" I admit mine is not the tongue or pen for such a subject; and Oxford has I hope no lack of abler champions. But it was geese you know who once saved the Capitol; and I must have my hiss at the iniquitous quackeries which people seek to perpetrate under the taking title of University Reform. And when I loving Oxford as I do see some of her own sons arrayed against her I can only remember this much of my philosophy--that there are cases when to be angry becomes a duty. Men who knowing nothing of the universities from experience think proper to run them down succeed at all events in exposing one crying evil--the absurdity of meddling with what one does not understand. We who know better may afford to smile at once at their spite and their ignorance. But he who lifts his voice against the mother that bore him can fix no darker blot upon her fame than the disgrace of having given birth to him. Show me the man who did not like Oxford and I will show you either a sulky misanthrope or an affected ass. Many many indeed are the unpleasant recollections which in the case of nearly all of us will mingle with the joy with which we recall our college days. More than the ghosts of duns departed perhaps unpaid; more than the heart-burnings of that visionary fellowship for which we were beaten (we verily believe unfairly) by a neck; more than that loved and lost ideal of first class which we deserved but did not get (the opinions of our examiners not coinciding in that point with our own;) yes more than all these come forcibly to many minds the self-accusing silent voice that whispers of time wasted and talents misapplied--kind advice which the heat of youth misconstrued or neglected--jewels of price that once lay strewed upon the golden sands of life then wantonly disregarded or picked up but to be flung away and which the tide of advancing years has covered from our view for ever--blessed opportunities of acquiring wisdom human and divine which never can return. Yet in spite of all this if there be any man who can say that Oxford is not to him a land of pleasant memories ~""Mêt' hemoi parhestios ghenoito""~--which is being freely translated ""May he never put his legs under my mahogany""--that's all. I never knew him yet and have no wish to make his acquaintance. He may have carried off every possible university honour for what I care; he is more hopelessly stupid in my view of things than if he had been plucked fifteen times. If he was fond of reading or of talking about reading; fond of hunting or talking about hunting; fond of walking riding rowing leaping or any possible exercise besides dancing; if he loved pleasant gardens or solemn cloisters; learned retirement or unlearned jollification--in a word if he had any imaginable human sympathies and cared for any thing besides himself he would have liked Oxford. Men's tastes differ no doubt; but to have spent four years of the spring of one's life in one of the most magnificent cities and best societies in the world and not to have enjoyed it--this is not a variety of taste but its privation. I fancy there is a mistaken opinion very prevalent that young and foolish older and wiser are synonymous terms. Stout gentlemen of a certain age brimful of proprieties shake their heads alarmingly and talk of the folly of boys; as if they were the only fools. And if at any time in the fulness of their hearts they refer to some freak of their own youth they appear to do it with a sort of apology to themselves that such wise individuals as they are now should ever have done such things! And as the world stands at present it is the old story of the Lion and the Painter; the elderly gentlemen are likely to have it their own way; they say what they like while the young ones are content to do what they like. And the more absurdity a man displays in his teens (and some it must be confessed are absurd enough) the more insupportable an air of wisdom does he put on when he gets settled. And as there is no hope of these sedate gentry being sent to College again to teach the rising generation of under-graduates the art of precocious gravity and still less hope of their arriving at it of themselves perhaps there is no harm in mooting the question on neutral ground whether such a consummation as that of putting old heads upon young shoulders is altogether desirable. Wherefore I Frank Hawthorne--being of the age of nine-and-twenty or thereabouts and of sound mind and about to renounce for ever all claim and title to be considered a young man; having married a wife and left sack and all other bad habits; having no longer any fellowship with under-graduates or army subs or medical students or young men about town or any other class of the heterogeneous irregulars who make up ""Young England""--being a perfectly disinterested party in the question inasmuch as having lost my reputation for youth I have never acquired one for wisdom--hereby raise my voice against the intolerable cant which assumes every man to be a hare-brained scapegrace at twenty and Solomon at forty-five. Youth sows wild oats it may be; too many men in more advanced life seem to me to sow no crop of any kind. There are empty fools at all ages; but ""an old fool "" &c. (musty as the proverb is it is rather from neglect than over-application.) I have known men by the dozen who in their youth were either empty-headed coxcombs or noisy sots; does my reader think that any given number of additional years has made them able statesmen sound lawyers or erudite divines? that because they have become honourable by a seat in Parliament learned by courtesy reverend by office they are therefore really more useful members of society than when they lounged the High Street or woke the midnight echoes of the quadrangle? Nay life is too short for the leopard to change his spots or the Ethiopian his skin; one can but pare the claws of the first and put a suit of the last European fashion upon the other. Let any man run over in his own mind the list of those school and college companions with whom after the lapse of ten years or so he has still an opportunity of occasionally renewing his acquaintance and judging of the effect which time has had upon their habits and characters. In how many cases can he trace any material alteration beyond what results from the mere accidents of time and place? He finds it is to be hoped good principles developed warm impulses ripened into active habits exaggerations softened down (for I am giving him credit for not choosing his companions even in youth among the vicious in heart and principle;) but if he finds in any what he can call a _change_ at all then I ask in how many instances is it a change for the better? or does he not find it rather where there was no sterling value in the metal which as the gloss of youth wears off loses its only charm? Thirty is the turning-point of a man's life; when marrying becomes a now-or-never sort of business and dinners begin to delight him more than dancing. As I said just now then I stand just at the corner; and looking round before I turn it I own somewhat of a shyness for the company of those ""grave and reverend seniors"" who are to be my fellow-travellers hereafter through life. There are certain points on which I fear we are scarce prepared to agree. I must have one window open for the first few miles of the journey at all events--that I may look behind me. Life's a fast train and one can't expect to be allowed to get out at the stations; still less to ask the engineer to put back because we have left our youth behind us. Yet there are some things in which I hope always to be a boy; I hope ever to prefer thoughtlessness to heartlessness imprudence to selfishness impulse to calculation. It is hard enough to part with all the fiery spirits the glowing imaginations the elasticity of mind and body which we lose as age creeps on; but if with the bright summer weather and cloudless skies of youth to which we are content to bid farewell we must lose too the ""sunshine of the breast""--the ""bloom of heart""--then well might the poet count him happy who died in early spring--who knew nothing of life but its fair promises and passed away in happy scepticism of the winter which was to come. Talk of putting old heads upon young shoulders! Heaven forbid! It would but be making them stoop prematurely. If indeed we could put young hearts into old bodies occasionally we might do some good; or if there could ever be combined in some fortunate individual throughout his life the good qualities peculiar to each successive climacteric; if we could mix just enough of the acid and the bitter which are apt to predominate so unhappily after a long rubbing through the world to qualify the fiery spirit of youth and prevent its sweetness from cloying the compound would undoubtedly be a very pleasant one. But this it is to be feared like many other desiderata is too good to be attainable; and the experience which we undoubtedly want in early life we acquire too often at the cost of that freshness of heart which nature intended as a gift still more valuable. Nowhere does the old Stagyrite display a more consummate knowledge of what men are made

f than in his contrasted characters of youth and age. I wonder how many of the old gentlemen who call themselves philosophers in this degenerate age ever read or remember what he says on the subject. It is a great comfort when one is arguing against so much collective wisdom to feel that one has such authority to fall back upon; and I have the less hesitation in bringing my old friend Aristotle forward to help me because I can assure my unlearned readers ladies and others that I am not going to quote any thing nearly so grave and sensible as modern philosophy. ""Stingy ill-natured suspicious selfish narrow-minded""--these with scarce a redeeming quality are some of the choice epithets which he strings together as the characteristics of the respectable old governors and dowagers of his day; while the young although as he confesses somewhat too much the creatures of impulse and indebted to it for some of their virtues as well as vices are trustful towards others honest in themselves open-handed and open-hearted warm friends and brave enemies. It is true he observes they have in a large degree the fault common to all honest men they are ""easily humbugged;"" a failing which perhaps may let us into the secret of their sitting down so quietly under the imputation of a hundred others. He urges too elsewhere a fact I am not disposed to battle about that young men do not make good philosophers; but this is in a book which he wrote for the use of his own son wherein he probably thought it his duty to take the conceit out of his heir-apparent; but if he ever allowed the young philosopher to get a sight of the other book containing the two characters aforesaid it may be doubted whether he found him as ""easily humbugged"" afterwards. Remember reader as I said before I claim to occupy neutral ground. If I essay to defend youth from some injustice which it suffers at the hands of partial judges it is as an amateur advocate rather than an accredited champion--for I am young no longer. If I am rash enough to couch a lance against that venerable phantom which under the name of Wisdom hovers round grey hairs I am but preparing a rod for my own back--for I feel myself growing old. I admit it with a sigh; but the sigh is not for the past only but even more for the present. I mourn not so much for that which Time has taken away as for the insufficiency of that which it brings instead. I would rejoice to be relieved from the dominion of the hot follies of youth if I could escape at the same time the degrading yoke of the cooler vices of maturity. I do not find men grow better as they grow older; wiser they may grow but it is the wisdom of the serpent. We scarce grow less sensual less vain less eager after what we think pleasure; I would we continued as generous and as warm. We gain the cunning to veil our passions to regulate even our vices according to the scale (and that no parsimonious one) which what we call ""society"" allows; we lose the enthusiasm which in some degree excused our follies with the light-heartedness which made them delightful. Few men among us are they who can look back upon the years gone by and not feel that if these may be justly charged with folly the writing of the accusation that stands against their riper age is of a graver sort. It is melancholy rather than amusing to hear men of a certain age rail against the faults and extravagance of their juniors. Angry that they themselves are no longer young they visit with a rod of iron such an intolerable offence in others. Even newspapers have of late been eloquent against the disgusting immoralities of breaking knockers and bonneting policemen. The _Times_ turns censor upon such an ""ungentlemanly outrage;"" the _Weekly Despatch_ has its propriety shocked by such ""freaks of the aristocracy;"" and both in their zeal to reprobate offences so dangerous to the best interests of society sacrifice somewhat of that ""valuable space"" which should have been devoted to the bulletin of the health or the history of the travels of the ""gallant officer"" who last deliberately shot his friend in a duel; or the piquant details of the last _crim. con._ with the extraordinary disclosures expected to be made by the ""noble defendant."" Society has no sympathy with vices to which it has no temptation; it might have done foolish things in its day but has long ago seen the folly of them. So we make a graceful acknowledgment of having been wrong once for the sake of congratulating ourselves upon being so very right now. Let me then for some few moments recall those scenes which on the stage of life have passed away for ever; and forgetting as memory loves to do the evil that was in them let it be not idle repining to lament the good. Oh! dark yet pleasant quadrangle round whose wide area I might wander now a stranger among strangers where are they who once gave life and mirth to cheer those ancient walls? There were full a score of rooms congenial _lares_ in which no hour of day or night would have found me other than a welcome guest. I had friends yea friends within those prison-like windows--warm hearts walled in by thy cold grey stones--friends that had thoughts and feelings and pursuits in common--who were not hospitable in words alone suffering each other's presence with well-concealed _ennui_--but friends in something more than in the name. In vain among the cold conventionalities of life shall I look for the warm and kindly welcome the sympathy of feeling the unrestrained yet courteous familiarity of intercourse which was part and parcel of a college life; and if for this only I should say of Oxford that I shall not look upon its like again--if for this only I doubt whether the years of my youthful pilgrimage were altogether evil who shall gainsay me? Where or in what society of wise and orderly and respectable ""grown-up children "" shall I find the sincerity and warm-heartedness that once were the atmosphere of my daily life? Where is the friend of my maturer choosing into whose house I can walk at any time and feel sure I am no intruder? Where is the man among those with whom I am by hard fate compelled to associate who does not measure his regard his hospitality his very smiles by my income my station in society--any thing but myself? Older and wiser!--oh yes!--youthful friendship is very foolish in such matters. But I suppose I must put up as I best may with the accumulating weight of years and wisdom. It won't do to give up one's degree and begin again at the university even if they leave us a university worth going to. At all events one could not go back and find there those ""old familiar faces"" that made it what it was; and it is more pleasant to look upon it all--the place and its old occupants--as still existing in some dream-land or other than to return to find an old acquaintance in every stick and stone while every human face and voice is strange to us. Yet one does meet friends in old scenes sometimes when the meeting is as unexpected as delightful. And just so in my last visit to Oxford did I stumble upon Horace Leicester. We met in the quadrangle where we had parted some six years back just as we might if we had supped together the night before; whereas we had been all the time hundreds of miles asunder: and we met as unrestrainedly only far more cordially. Neither of us had much time to spare in Oxford but we dined together of course; talked over old friends and told old stories. As to the first it was strange enough to moralize upon the after-fortunes of some of our contemporaries. One--of whom for habitual absence from lectures and other misdemeanours many and various the tutors had prophesied all manner of evil and who had been dismissed by the Principal at his final leave-taking with the remark that he was the luckiest man he had ever known inasmuch as having been perseveringly idle without being plucked and mixed up in every row without being rusticated--was now working hard day and night as a barrister engaged as a junior on committee business the whole Session and never taking a holiday except on the Derby day. The ugliest little rascal of our acquaintance and as stupid as a post was married to a pretty girl with a fortune of thirty thousand. Another and one of the best of us--Charley White--who united the business habits of a man with the frolic of a schoolboy and who ought to have been added to the roll of the College benefactors as having been the founder of the Cricket and the Whist Club and restored to its old place on the river at much cost and pains the boat which had been withdrawn for the last five years and reduced the sundry desultory idlenesses of the under-graduates into something like method and order--Charley White was now rector of a poor and populous parish in Yorkshire busily engaged in building a new church and schools opening Provident Societies and shutting up beer-shops and instructing the rising generation of his parishioners in catechism and cricket alternately. While the steadiest (I was very near saying the only steady man) among our mutual acquaintance who looked at every sixpence before he spent it checked his own washing-lists went to bed at ten o'clock and was in short an exemplary character (he was held out to me; on my first entrance as a valuable acquaintance for any young man but I soon despaired of successfully imitating so bright a model)--well this gentleman having been taken into partnership somewhat prematurely perhaps on the strength of the aforesaid reputation by his father's firm--they were Liverpool merchants of high standing--had thought proper disgusted probably with the dissipations and immoralities of trade to retire to America in search of purity and independence without going through the form of closing his accounts with the house. The Liverpudleians indeed according to Horace's account gave a somewhat ugly name to the transaction; he had been cashier to the firm they said who were minus some tens of thousands thereby; but as the senior partner was known to have smoked cigars at a preparatory school (thereby showing what he _would_ have done had he been sent to Oxford ) whereas our friend was always ""a steady man "" I leave the reader to judge which party is entitled to the most credit. It was after we had separated that a friend of mine not an Oxford man who had dined with us and appeared much amused by some of Horace's reminiscences asked me the very puzzling question ""Was your friend Leicester what they call a 'rowing man' at College?"" Now I protest altogether against the division of under-graduates into reading men and rowing men as arbitrary and most illogical; there being a great many who have no claim to be reckoned either in one class or the other and a great many who hover between both. And this imaginary distinction existing as it notoriously does at Oxford and fostered and impressed upon men by the tutors (often unintentionally or with the very best intentions ) is productive in many cases of a great deal of harm. A man (or _boy_ if you please) is taught to believe upon his very first entrance that one of these characters will infallibly cling to him and that he has only to choose between the two. For the imaginary division creates a real one; in many colleges a man who joins a boat's crew or a cricket club or goes out now and then with the harriers is looked upon with suspicion by the authorities at once; and by a very natural consequence a man who wants to read his five or six hours a-day quietly finds that some of his pleasantest companions look upon him as a slow coach. So probably before the end of his first term he is hopelessly committed at nineteen to a consistency of character rarely met with at fifty. If he lays claim to the reputation of a reading man and has an eye to the loaves and fishes in the way of scholarships and fellowships he is compelled by the laws of his _caste_ to renounce some of the most sensible and healthful amusements which a university life offers. He must lead a very humdrum sort of life indeed. It is not enough that he should be free from the stains of vice and immorality; that his principles and habits should be those of a gentleman; that he should avoid excesses and be observant of discipline; this the university would have a right to expect from all who are candidates for her honours and emoluments. But there is a conventional character which he must put on besides this. I say ""put on;"" because however natural it may be to some men it cannot possibly be so to all. His exercise must be taken at stated times and places: it must consist principally of walking whether he be fond of it or not varied occasionally by a solitary skiffing expedition down the river or a game of billiards with some very steady friend on the sly. His dress must exhibit either the negligence of a sloven (in case he be an aspirant for very high honours indeed ) or the grave precision of a respectable gentleman of forty. He must eschew all such vanities as white trousers and well-cut boots. He must be profoundly ignorant of all university intelligence that does not bear in some way on the schools; must be utterly indifferent what boat is at the head of the river or whether Drake's hounds are fox or harriers. He must never be seen out of his rooms except at lecture before two o'clock and never return to a wine-party after chapel. His judgment of the merits of port and sherry must be confined principally to the fact of one being red and the other white and the compounding of punch must be to him a mystery unfathomable. Now if he can be or assume to be all this then he will be admitted into the most orthodox and steady set in his college; and if he have besides an ordinary amount of scholarship and tact enough to talk judiciously about his books and his reading he may get up a very fair reputation indeed. And when at his final examination he makes as nine-tenths of such men do make a grand crash and his name comes out in the third or fourth class or he get ""gulfed"" altogether--it is two to one but his friends and his tutor look upon him and talk of him as rather an ill-used individual. He was ""unlucky in his examination""--""the essay did not suit him""--they were ""quite surprised at his failure""--""his health was not good the last term or two""--""he was too nervous."" These are cases which have occurred in every man's experience: men read ten hours a-day with a watch by their side cramming in stuff that they do not understand are talked about as ""sure firsts"" till one gets sick of their very names assume all the airs which really able men seldom do assume and take at last an equal degree with others who have been acquiring the same amount of knowledge with infinitely less pretension and who without moping the best part of their lives in an artificial existence will make more useful members of society in the end. ""How was it "" said an old lady in the country to me one day ""that young Mr C---- did not get a first class? I understand he read very hard and I know he refused every invitation to dinner when he was down here in the summer vacation?"" ""That was the very reason my dear madam "" said I; ""you may depend upon it."" She stared of course; but I believe I was not far out. Let men read as much as they will and as hard as they will on any subjects for which they have the ability and inclination; but never let them suppose they are to lay down one code of practice to suit all tempers and constitutions. Cannot a man be a scholar and a gentleman and a good fellow at the same time? And after all where is the broad moral distinction between these _soi-disant_ steady men and those whom they are pleased to consider as ""rowing"" characters? it has always seemed to me rather apocryphal. If a man thinks proper to amuse himself with a chorus in his own rooms at one o'clock in the morning it seems hardly material whether it be Greek or English--Sophocles or Tom Moore. It's a matter of taste and tastes differ. Nor do I think the morality of Horace or Aristophanes or the theology of Lucretius so peculiarly admirable as to render them _per se_ fitter subjects for the exclusive exercise of a young man's faculties than ""the Pickwick Papers "" or ""The Rod and the Gun."" I have heard--(I never saw nor will I believe it)--of the profanity of certain sporting under-graduates who took into chapel the racing calendar bound in red morocco instead of a prayer-book; I hold it to have been the malicious fiction of some would-be university reformer; but even if true I am not sure that I much prefer that provident piety which I have noticed getting up its Greek within the same walls by means of a Septuagint and Greek liturgy. Religion is one thing classical learning another and sporting information another; all totally distinct and totally different: the first immeasurably above the other two but standing equidistant from both. It does not make a man one whit the better to know that Coræbus won the cup at Olympia B.C. 776 than it does to know that Priam did _not_ win the St Leger at Doncaster A.D. 1830; from all I can make out the Greeks on the turf at present are not much worse than their old namesakes; I dare say there was a fair amount of black-legism on both occasions. Men injure their moral and physical health by reading as much as by other things; it takes quite as much out of a man and puts as little in him to any good purpose to get up his logic as to pull in an eight-oar. Besides if one is to read and enter into the spirit of a dozen different authors one dull monotonous round of physical existence seems ill fitted to call out the requisite variety of mental powers. I hold that there are divers and sundry fit times and places and states of mind suited to different lines of reading. If a man is at work upon history by all means let him sport oak rigidly against all visitors; let him pile up his authorities and references on every vacant chair all round him and get a clear notion of it by five or six hours' uninterrupted and careful study. Or if he has a system of philosophy to get up let him sit down with his head cool his window open (not the one looking into quad. ) let him banish from his mind all minor matters and not break off in the chain of argument so long as he can keep his brain clear and his eyes open. Even then a good gallop afterwards or a cigar and a glass of punch with some lively fellow who is no philosopher will do him far more good than a fagging walk of so many measured miles with the studious companion whose head is stuffed as full of such matter as his own and whose talk will be of disputed passages and dispiriting anticipations of a ""dead floorer"" in the schools. But if a man wants to make acquaintance with such books as Juvenal or Horace or Aristophanes he may surely do it to quite as good purpose and with far more relish basking under a tree in summer or with a friend over a bottle in winter. The false tone of society of which I have been speaking had its influence upon Horace Leicester. Coming up to the university from a public school with a high character a fair amount of scholarship and a host of acquaintances he won the good-will at once of dons and of under-graduates and bid fair to be as universal a favourite at college as he had been at Harrow. Never did a man enter upon an academic life under happier auspices nor I believe with a more thorough determination to enjoy it in every way. He did not look upon his emancipation from school discipline as a license for idleness nor intend to read the less because he could now read what he pleased and when he pleased. For not to mention that Horace was ambitious and had at one time an eye to the class list--he had a taste for reading and a strong natural talent to appreciate what he read. But if he had a taste for reading he had other tastes as well and as he thought not incompatible; much as he admired his Roman namesake he could not devote his evenings exclusively to his society but preferred carrying out his precepts occasionally with more modern companions; and he had no notion that during the next four years of his life he was to take an interest in no sports but those of the old Greeks and Romans and mount no horse but Pegasus. For a term or two Leicester got on very well attended lectures read steadily till one or two o'clock when there was nothing particular going on kept a horse hired an alarm and seldom cut morning chapel or missed a meet if within reasonable distance. It was a course of life which in after days he often referred to with a sigh as having been most exemplary; and I doubt whether he was far wrong. But it did not last. For a time his gentlemanly manners good humour and good taste carried it off with all parties; but it was against the ordinary routine and could not hold up against the popular prejudice. The reading men eyed his top-boots with suspicion; the rowing men complained he was growing a regular _sap_ always sporting oak when they wanted him. Then his wine-parties were a source of endless tribulation to him. First of all he asked all those with whom he was most intimate among his old schoolfellows to meet each other adding one or two of his new acquaintances: and a pretty mess he made of it. Men who had sat on the same form with him and with each other at Harrow and had betrayed no such marked differences in their tastes as to prevent their associating very pleasantly there at Oxford he found had been separated wide as the poles by this invisible but impassable line of demarcation: to such a degree indeed that although all had called upon Horace as they had upon each other before it seemed decided on which side they were to settle yet when they now met at his rooms they had become strangers beyond a mere civil recognition and had not a single subject to converse upon in common. In fact they were rather surprised than pleased to meet at all; and it was in vain their host tried to get them to amalgamate. Many seemed to take a pleasure in showing how decidedly they belonged to one set or the other. One would talk of nothing on earth besides hunting and sat silent and sulky when Horace turned the conversation; another affected an utter ignorance of all that was going on in the university that was not connected with class-lists scholarships &c. What provoked him most was that some of those who gave themselves the most pedantic airs and would have been double-first class men undeniably if talking could have done it were those whose heads he well knew were as empty as the last bottle and which made him think that some men must take to reading at Oxford simply because they had faculties for nothing else. At all events Horace found the mixed system would not answer for entertaining his friends. So the next time he asked a few of the reading men some of whom he knew used to be good fellows together; and as he really had a kindred taste with them on many subjects he found an hour or so pass away very pleasantly: when just as he was passing the wine about the third round and his own brilliancy and good-humour were beginning to infect some of his guests--so that one grave genius of twenty had actually so far forgotten himself as to fill a bumper by mistake--up jumped the senior man of the party and declaring that he had an engagement to walk with a friend at seven politely took his leave. This was the signal for a general dispersion; in vain did Horace assure them they should have some coffee in the course of an hour and entreat some one or two to return. Off they all went with sundry smiles and shakes of the head and left their unfortunate host sitting alone in his glory over the first glass of a newly opened bottle of claret. I happened to be crossing the quadrangle from chapel in company with Savile at the moment when Leicester put his head out of his window as if to enquire of the world in general what on earth he was to do with himself for the next hour or two. Savile he hailed at once and begged him to come up; and though I knew but little of him and had never been in his rooms before still as I was one or two terms his senior there was nothing contrary even to Oxford etiquette in my accompanying Savile. We laughed heartily when he explained his disappointment. Savile tried to comfort him by the assurance that as he had an hour to spare he would sit down and help him to finish a bottle or two of claret with a great deal of pleasure; and was inclined to attribute the failure of the evening in a great measure to his name not having been included in the list of invitations--an omission by which he declared all parties had been the losers; Horace's reading friends standing very much in need of some one to put a little life into them and himself as a candidate for a degree having missed a fair opportunity of meeting among so many choice fellows some one to ""put him up to the examiners' dodges."" But Leicester was irrecoverably disgusted. Nothing he declared would ever induce him to ask a party of reading men to his rooms again; and from that hour he seemed to eschew fellowship with the whole fraternity. Not that he became idle all at once; on the contrary I believe for some time he worked on steadily or at least tried to work; but he was naturally fond of society and having failed to find what he wanted was reduced to make the best of such as he could find. So he gradually became acquainted with a set of men who whatever their good qualities might be had certainly no claim whatever to be considered hard readers and who would have considered a symposium which broke up at seven o'clock as unsatisfactory as a tale without a conclusion. Amongst these his gentlemanly manners and kindness of heart made him beloved while his talents gave him a kind of influence; and though he must have felt occasionally that he was not altogether in his right place and that besides his popular qualities he had higher tastes and endowments with which the majority of his companions could hardly sympathise he was too light-hearted to philosophise much on the subject and contented himself with enjoying his popularity occasionally falling back upon his own resources and keeping up in a desultory kind of way his acquaintance with scholarship and literature. The reading men of course looked upon him as a lost sheep; the tutors shook their heads about him; if he did well it was set down as the result of accident; while all his misdoings were labouring in his vocation. For agreeably to the grand division aforesaid Horace was now set down as a ""rowing-man;"" and he soon made the discovery and did more thereupon to deserve the character than he ever would have done otherwise. He was very willing to go on in his own way if all parties would but let him alone; he was not going to be made a proselyte to long walks and toast and water nor had he any conscientious abhorrence of supper-parties; and as his prospects in life were in no way dependent upon a class or a scholarship and he seemed to be tacitly repudiated by the _literati_ of his college young and old on account of some of his aforesaid heterodox notions on the subject of study he accustomed himself gradually to set their opinions at defiance; while the moderate reading which encouragement and emulation had made easy at school became every day more and more distasteful. Horace's tottering reputation was at last completely overset in the eyes of the authorities by a little affair which was absurd enough but in which he himself was as innocent as they were. It happened that a youthful cousin of his whose sole occupation for the last twelve months of his life had been the not over-profitable one of waiting for a commission had come up to Oxford for two or three days pursuant to invitation to see a little of the manners and customs of the inhabitants. I think he had some slight acquaintance with our then vice-principal--a good-natured easy man--and Horace had got leave for him to occupy a set of very small dark rooms which as the college was not very full had been suffered to remain vacant for the last two or three terms; they were so very unattractive a domicile that the last Freshman to whom they were offered as a Hobson's choice was currently reported in the plenitude of his disgust to have take his name off the books _instanter_. It is not usual to allow strangers to sleep within college walls at all; but our discipline was somewhat lax in those days. So Mr Carey had a bed put up for him in the aforesaid quarters. He was of course duly _fêted_ and made much of by Horace and his friends; and a dozen of us sat down to a capital dinner in the rooms of the former on the strength of having to entertain a ""stranger from the country;"" the hospitality of Oxford relaxing its rules even in favour of under-graduates upon such occasions. It must have been somewhere towards the next morning when two or three of us accompanied young Carey down to No. 8; and after chatting with him till he was half undressed left him as we thought safe and quiet. However soon after we had retired some noisy individual in the same staircase thought proper to give a view-hollo out of his window for the purpose of wishing the public good-night. Now there was one of the Fellows a choleric little old gentleman always in residence holding some office in which there was as little to do and as much to get as might be and who seldom troubled himself much about college discipline and looked upon under-graduates with a sort of silent contempt; never interfering with them as he declared himself so long as they did not interfere with him. But one point there was in which they did interfere with his personal comfort occasionally and whereby his peace of mind and rest of body were equally disturbed. Mr Perkins always took a tumbler of negus at ten precisely and turned in as the college clock struck the quarter past; by the half-hour he was generally asleep for his digestion was good and his cares few. But his slumbers were not heavy and any thing like a row in the quadrangle infallibly awoke him and then he was like a lion roused. He was wont to jump up throw up his window thrust out a red face and a white nightcap and after listening a few seconds for the chance of the odious sounds being repeated would put the very pertinent question usual in such circumstances to which one so seldom gets an equally pertinent reply--""Who's that?"" In case this intimation of Mr Perkins being wide awake proved sufficient as it often did to restore quiet then after the lapse of a few more seconds the head and the nightcap disappeared and the window was shut down again. But if the noise was continued as occasionally it was out of pure mischief than in a minute or two the said nightcap would be seen to emerge hastily from the staircase below in company with a dressing-gown and slippers and Mr Perkins in this disguise would proceed to the scene of disturbance as fast as his short legs could carry him. He seldom succeeded in effecting a capture; but if he had that luck or if he could distinguish the tone of any individual voice so as to be able to identify the performer he had him up before the ""seniority"" next morning where his influence as one of the senior fellows ensured a heavy sentence. But he had been engaged in so many unsuccessful chases of the kind and his short orations from his window so often elicited only a laugh though including sometimes brief but explicit threats of rustication against the noisy unknown strengthened by little expletives which when quoted by under-graduates were made to sound somewhat doubtfully--that at last he altered his tactics and began to act in silence. And so he did when upon opening his window he saw a light in the ground-floor rooms of the staircase whence the sounds proceeded on the evening in question. Carey by his own account was proceeding quietly in his preparations for bed singing to himself an occasional stanza of some classical ditty which he had picked up in the course of the evening and admiring the power of the man's lungs in the room above him when he heard a short quick step and then a double rap at his door. He was quite sufficiently acquainted by this time with the ways of the place not to be much surprised at the late visit and at the same time to consider it prudent to learn the name and _status_ of his visitor before admitting him; so he retorted upon Mr Perkins quite unconsciously his own favourite query--""Who's that?"" his first and obvious impression being that it was one of the party he had just quitted coming probably in the plenitude of good fellowship to bring him an invitati

n to wine or breakfast next day. ""It's me sir--open the door "" was the reply from a deep baritone which the initiated would never have mistaken. ""Who are you?"" said Carey again. ""My name is Perkins sir: have the goodness to let me in."" He was getting more angry and consequently more polite. ""Perkins?"" said Carey pausing in his operations in the vain endeavour to recall the name among the score or two to whom he had been introduced. ""I'm just in bed--were you up at Leicester's?"" ""Open the door sir if you please immediately "" and then came what our friend took for a smothered laugh but was really a sort of shiver for there was a draft in the passage playing all manner of pranks with the dressing-gown and Mr Perkins was getting cold. An indistinct notion came into Carey's mind that some one who had met him in College might have taken him for a Freshman and had some practical joke in view; so he contented himself with repeating that he was going to bed and could let no one in. ""I tell you sir I'm Mr Perkins; don't you know me?"" ""I wish you a very good night Mr Perkins."" ""What's your name sir? eh? You impudent young puppy what's your infernal name? I'll have you rusticated you dog--do you hear me sir?"" On a sudden it struck Carey that this might possibly be a domiciliary visit from one of the authorities and that his best plan was to open the door at once though what had procured him such an honour he was at a loss to imagine. He drew back the spring lock therefore and the next moment stood face to face with the irate Mr Perkins. His first impulse was to laugh at the curious figure before him; but when demands for his name and threats of unknown penalties were thundered forth upon him with no pause for a reply then he began to think that he had made a mistake in opening the door at all--that he might get Leicester into a scrape if not himself--and as his person was as unknown to Mr Perkins as that gentleman's to him it struck him that if he could give him the slip once it would be all right. In a moment he blew out his solitary candle bolted through the open door all but upsetting his new acquaintance whom he left storming in the most unconnected manner alone and in total darkness. Up to Leicester's rooms he rushed related his adventure and was rather surprised that his cousin did not applaud it as a very clever thing. What Mr Perkins thought or said to himself what degree of patience he exhibited in such trying circumstances or in what terms he apostrophised his flying enemy must ever remain a secret with himself. Five minutes after Solomon the porter summoned from his bed just as he had made himself snug once more after letting out Horace's out-college friends confronted Mr Perkins in about as sweet a temper as that worthy individual himself with this difference that one was sulky and the other furious. ""Who lives in the ground-floor on the left in No. 8?"" ""What in 'Coventry?' Why nobody sir."" ""Nobody! you stupid old sinner you're asleep."" ""No sir I ain't "" and Solomon flashed his lantern in Mr Perkins's face as if to ascertain whether _his_ eyes were open. Mr Perkins started back and Solomon turned half round as if to disappear again. ""Who lives there Solomon I ask you? Do you mean to tell me you don't know? You are not fit--"" ""I knows every gentleman's rooms well enough: nobody hasn't lived in them as you means not these four terms. Mr Pears kept his fox in 'em one time till the vice-principal got wind of him. There may be some varmint in 'em for all I knows--they a'n't fit for much else."" ""There's some confounded puppy of a Freshman in them now--at least there was--and he lives there too."" ""I know there _be'n't_ "" said the persevering Solomon. And without deigning a word more he set off with his lantern towards the place in dispute followed by Mr Perkins who contented himself with an angry ""Now you'll see."" ""Ay now we shall see "" replied Solomon as somewhat to Mr Perkins's astonishment they found the oak sported. Having made a selection from a huge bunch of keys the porter succeeded after some fumbling in getting the door open. The room bore no traces of recent occupation. Three or four broken chairs and a rickety table were the only furniture: as far as the light of Solomon's lantern could penetrate it looked the very picture of desolation. Solomon chuckled. ""There _is_ a man living here. I'll swear there is. He was undressing when I came. Look in the bedroom."" They opened the door and saw a bare feather-bed and bolster the usual _matériel_ in an unoccupied college chamber. ""Seeing's believing "" said the porter. But with Mr Perkins seeing was not believing. He saw Solomon and he saw the empty room but he did not believe either. But he had evidently the worst side of the argument as it stood so he wished the porter a sulky good-night and retreated. The fact was that the noisy gentleman in the rooms above as soon as he caught the tones of Mr Perkins's voice at Carey's door had entered into the joke with exceeding gusto well aware that the visit was really intended as a compliment to his own vocal powers. Carey's sudden bolt puzzled him rather; but as soon as he heard Mr Perkins's footsteps take the direction of the porter's lodge he walked softly down-stairs to the field of action and anticipating in some degree what would follow bundled up together sheets blankets pillow dressing apparatus and all other signs and tokens of occupation and made off with them to his own rooms; sporting the oak behind him and thus completing the mystification. As the facts of the case were pretty sure to transpire in course of time Horace took the safe course of getting his cousin out of college next morning and calling on Mr Perkins with a full explanation of the circumstances and apologies for Carey as a stranger unacquainted with the police regulations of their learned body and the respect due thereto. Of course the man in authority was obliged to be gracious as Leicester could not well be answerable for all the faults of his family; but there never from that time forth happened a row of any kind with which he did not in his own mind probably unconsciously associate poor Horace. Whether my readers will set down Horace Leicester as a rowing man or not is a point which I leave to their merciful consideration: a reading man was a title which he never aspired to. He took a very creditable degree in due season and was placed in the fourth class with a man who took up a very long list of books and was supposed to have read himself stupid. ""He ought to have done a good deal more "" said one of the tutors; ""he had it in him."" ""I think he was lucky not to have been plucked myself "" said Mr Perkins; ""he was a very noisy man."" HAWTHORNE. [Footnote 2: Why do not these universal rational religionists found colleges for themselves and get an university established on a scale of splendour commensurate with their liberality so as to cut out Oxford with its antiquated notions altogether? How very funny it would be! It must be the absurdity of the idea that prevents them--it cannot be stinginess as to the means. Fancy Oxford in the hands of the three denominations! the under-graduates hauled up for cutting meeting!--a Wesleyan proctor delighting in black gowns stopping by mistake a Quaker Freshman with a reproof for being in broad-brim instead of academicals and being answered with ""Friend I am not of thy persuasion!"" Then the dissenting D.D.s flocking to the university sermon at Mount Pisgah Chapel (late St. Mary's ) wherein all denominational topics were to be carefully avoided and the sharp look-out that would be kept upon any preacher whose harangues savoured of bigotry! Then the boat-races; fancy the Independents' boat bumping the Particular Baptists' and the Quakers' colours--drab-and-all-drab--floating at the head of the flag-staff! And as to ""tufts""--that vile distinction which independent M.P.s are so indignant at--why if a dissenting nobleman--even the seventh son of an Irish peer--were to be had for love or money what a price he would fetch in such an Utopia of nonconformity! Nay if they could get even a Nova Scotia baronet--a Sir Anybody Anything--we know pretty well what a fuss they would make about him. There is no such fawner on the aristocracy if he has but a chance of getting any thing out of them as a _parvenu_ by birth a liberal in politics and an Independent by ""_religious persuasion_."" The great danger I suppose would be lest some more than usually nonconforming under-graduate should start a ""connexion"" of his own and proceed to argue that all the university authorities heads of houses and all were under an awful delusion and that it was a necessary consequence of civil and religious liberty that under-graduates should elect their own tutors and proctors and be governed on the voluntary principle.] ZUMALACARREGUI. On a dull damp October morning of the year 1833--concerning the more exact date of which it can only be ascertained that it was subsequently to the twentieth day of the month--a man rather above the middle height wrapped in a military cloak of dark grey cloth and wearing an oilskin schako upon his head was seen proceeding through the streets of Pampeluna in the direction of the gate known as the Puerta del Cármen. Although the cloak and schako which were all that could at first be distinguished of his dress indicated their wearer to be an officer it was observed that on passing the guard-house at the gate he took some pains to conceal his face as though fearful of being recognised. Once outside the walls he crossed the river Arga by the Puente Nuevo and continued his progress along the Irurzun road. He had arrived at about cannon-shot distance from the fortress of Pampeluna when a man leading a small horse by the bridle suddenly emerged from a place of concealment by the roadside. The officer hastily fastened on a spur which he had brought with him put foot in stirrup and mounted. For a few moments he remained motionless gazing at Pampeluna as though bidding a silent adieu to the friends he left behind him; then striking his single spur into his horse's flank he rapidly disappeared. Two hours later he entered at full trot the village of Huarte Araquil five leagues from Pampeluna. The officer alighted at the house of a friend where there presently came to meet him a respectable inhabitant of Pampeluna by name Don Luis Mongelos and the vicar or parish priest of Huarte Don Pedro Miguel Irañeta. The latter as well by his sacred character as by reason of the services that at a former period he had rendered to the cause of the Spanish monarchy enjoyed some influence in his district. The conference that Mongelos and Irañeta held with the unknown officer lasted till a late hour of the night when they separated to take a few hours' repose. At early dawn they reassembled and set out for the valley of Berrueza where they were told that they would find the chief of the Navarrese Carlists Don Francisco Iturralde whom they were desirous of seeing. They were fortunate enough to meet with him that same day at the village of Piedramillera. In those early days of the Royalist insurrection and in the state of anxiety and fermentation in which men's minds then were the appearance in the Carlist camp of an officer of rank could not do less than excite in the highest degree the curiosity and interest of the inhabitants especially of those who had taken up arms for Don Carlos. Accordingly whilst the three strangers were with Iturralde there was rapidly formed at the door of the latter's quarters a large group composed of volunteers and peasants and even of women and children. All were eager to know who the person in the colonel's uniform might be; but nevertheless when he at last came out and the crowd pressed forward to examine him not one of the numerous assemblage could tell his name. The disappointed gazers were dispersing when a party of officers came up; and no sooner did these behold the stranger than they exclaimed simultaneously and in a tone of mingled surprise and enthusiasm--""ZUMALACARREGUI!"" Rarely has the axiom that circumstances and opportunity make the man been more fully exemplified than in the person of the chief whose name we have just written. For forty-five years he lived unknown and unnoticed beyond a very limited circle remarked only by his own comrades and by the generals under whom he served as a good drill and an efficient regimental officer. After twenty-five years' service he occupied the undistinguished post of colonel of a Spanish line regiment. The probabilities were that he would end his life with the embroidered cuff of a brigadier-general and be forgotten as soon as the earth had closed over him. One man died leaving a disputed crown; and spurred on as some say by injustice done to him as others maintain by an enthusiastic devotion to a principle Zumalacarregui in the twenty months of life that were still accorded to him raised and organized by his own unaided energies a numerous and efficient army outmanoeuvred the practised leaders and defeated the veteran troops that were sent against him and made himself a name that has been repeated with respect and admiration by some of the highest military authorities in Europe. Don Tomas Zumalacarregui a native of Guipuzcoa was twenty years of age when he first saw fire at Saragossa in 1808. When the French raised the siege he returned home and remained there till Guipuzcoa following the example of the other Spanish provinces declared against the usurpation of Napoleon. He then immediately joined Jauregui better known as El Pastor or the Shepherd on account of his having like another Viriatus--but without becoming a bandit--exchanged the crook for the sabre. In spite of the youth of his new follower El Pastor found him of great assistance; and it is even said that Zumalacarregui ashamed of having for leader a man who could not write undertook to teach him and succeeded in so doing. The war of independence at an end Areizaga captain-general of the Basque provinces appointed Zumalacarregui his aide-de-camp; and finally by his interest and recommendation procured him a captain's commission in the line. In this new position the young officer made himself remarked for two things--an inflexible firmness of character and an enthusiastic love of his profession. All his leisure was passed in the study of tactics and he rarely opened a book that treated of any other subject. In 1822 under the constitutional _regime_ Zumalacarregui being of known Royalist opinions was deprived of his company. He joined Quesada who was at the head of the _realistas_ in Navarre and from him received command of a battalion which he kept till at the end of the war it was disbanded in common with all the Navarrese corps. Whilst holding this command his skill and merit and a certain air of superiority which was natural to him excited the envy and dislike of some of his brother officers; but to the intrigues and artifices employed to injure him he only opposed a redoubled zeal in the execution of his duty. Subsequently he commanded a regiment with the rank of lieutenant-colonel and was at last made full colonel of the 3d light infantry. The excellent state into which he brought this corps caused it to be sent from Valencia to Madrid to form part of the military pageant by which Queen Christina's first arrival at the capital of Spain was celebrated. This piece of duty it was expected would have procured Zumalacarregui his brigadier's rank; but the only thing he got by it was a fall from his horse from the effects of which he afterwards suffered. Zumalacarregui's last command in the service of Ferdinand was that of the 14th of the line. A curious narrative of the circumstances that occurred whilst he had this regiment is to be found in a letter from the Carlist general Don Carlos Vargas who was at that time aide-de-camp to Eguia captain-general of Galicia in which province the 14th was quartered. ""From time immemorial "" says Vargas ""there had existed in the district of the Ferrol a society of robbers regularly sworn in and organized having branches all over the country and so well directed in their operations that it was found impossible to make an end of them or to discover who they were. When any one of the associates was seen to falter or was suspected of an intention to betray his companions he was immediately assassinated and almost always in some horrible manner. Persons of every class and description belonged to this association--even women old men and government functionaries of high grade. From 1826 to 1832 a merchant of the name of C---- was at the head of it--a very wealthy man with respect to whom no one could explain how it was that in so few years he had accumulated such great riches. The public authorities whose duty it was to discover and suppress so infamous a society had been drawn into it by bribery or intimidation or both; so that instead of preventing the robberies they protected the robbers and gave them all the opportunities in their power. In spite of his known zeal energy and activity General Eguia had been unable to destroy or even discover this numerous band. He had been deceived by the apparent zeal of the _alcalde mayor_ of the Ferrol Don V.G. D---- and of an _escribano_ named R---- a captain of royalist volunteers. These two men denounced and prosecuted sundry small offenders who formed no part of the grand association; and by the good understanding between them baffled all the efforts of the captain-general."" Eguia finding that the robberies continued to as great an extent as before and that the temporary governor of the Ferrol did not aid him efficaciously in detecting their perpetrators removed him from his post and conferred it on Zumalacarregui with whose character he was well acquainted. The latter in a very few days obtained a clue to the whole confederacy and arrested C---- and other rich accomplices. Various anonymous offers of large sums of money were now made to Zumalacarregui and repeated threats of assassination held out to him; but he was neither to be bribed nor frightened and the wealthy and influential confederates set every engine at work to bring about his dismissal and ruin. Being known as a Royalist the events that occurred at La Granja in 1832 facilitated the designs of his enemies. At the same time Brigadier-General Chacon then commanding the royal corps of marines at the Ferrol and who has since been political chief of Madrid and one of the cabinet was also manoeuvring against Zumalacarregui whose character it appears awed him considerably. Under a pretext that a Carlist _pronunciamento_ was contemplated Chacon shut himself up in the arsenal with his marines and persisted in remaining there in spite of the assurances of safety given to him by the governor. At last having had an interview at Santiago with the Captain-General Eguia the latter succeeded in tranquillizing his fears and the marines came out of their stronghold looking very like a parcel of children whose nurse has threatened them with a bugbear. Notwithstanding the absurdity of Chacon's demonstration it attracted the attention of the Christino party then in power; and as at that period all the officers of rank known to entertain Royalist opinions were deprived one after the other of their commands there was nothing surprising in the same measure being adopted with regard to Zumalacarregui although nothing could be alleged against him whether as a man of honour or in a military or political point of view. As soon as he left the Ferrol the proceedings against the robbers became paralysed; those of them who had been taken were set at liberty and resumed with impunity their course of crime. In July 1833 Zumalacarregui took up his residence at Pampeluna where three months later he learned the death of Ferdinand VII. and the declaration of General Santos Ladron in favour of Don Carlos. He would probably have immediately departed to join the insurgents had not the authorities of Pampeluna had their eyes upon him. General Solá then governor of that fortress hearing that he had been negotiating the purchase of a horse sent for him and enquired if such were really the case. Zumalacarregui replied that even if it were so it need not surprise any body for all his life he had been accustomed to keep a horse. ""Nevertheless "" returned Solá ""for the present your Señoria must be pleased to do without one."" And this was the motive of the clandestine manner in which Zumalacarregui left Pampeluna. It has been already shown that although from earliest manhood Zumalacarregui employed himself diligently in cultivating those qualities and acquiring that knowledge by the judicious application of which he afterwards gained such celebrity his really public and important life extended over a period of little more than a year and a half. But within that short space how much was comprised! What hardship and exertion--what efforts both mental and bodily--what an amount of activity excitement peril and success were accumulated in those few months of existence! From the peculiar circumstances under which Zumalacarregui's achievements occurred an historian was very difficult to be found for them. Those who surrounded him were generally speaking men of action less skilled in handling the pen than the sabre; and moreover during the six years' struggle in which most of those who survived its sanguinary contest took part to its close the succession of events was so rapid the changes were so constant that the incidents of to-day might well cause those of yesterday to be imperfectly remembered. Even the newspaper emissaries who hovered about the scene of the contest striving to collect intelligence were foiled in so doing by the constant movements of the Carlist general by the wild country and inclement season in which he carried on his operations. In the year 1836 a young Englishman whom a love of adventure and zeal for the cause had induced to draw his sword in behalf of Charles V. published a narrative of twelve months' service with Zumalacarregui. There is much in his book to amuse and interest and Captain Henningsen as we have reason to know from other sources than the internal evidence of his writings is a gallant and accomplished officer. His descriptions are graceful and agreeable the sketches and anecdotes he gives are the very romance of civil warfare--not that as we believe he either did or had any occasion to embellish his account of a campaign which abounded in the picturesque and the dramatic. He was only with Zumalacarregui however during the latter half of his career when the forces of the Carlists had already assumed a certain numerical importance and their resources were on the increase. Of its earlier portion he could speak but from hearsay; and it was during that earlier period that Zumalacarregui had the greatest difficulties to contend with--difficulties in overcoming which he displayed extraordinary talent and perseverance. Besides this we have always looked upon Captain Henningsen's book rather as a slight though interesting and truthful narrative of personal adventure than as a record of Zumalacarregui's career; nor does he claim for it a higher character than the one we are disposed to concede to it. ""I have merely "" he says ""drawn a rough sketch with charcoal on a guard-house wall--neither memoir travels nor history--but which may have the merit of being a sketch from the life."" This is a correct definition. But the character and exploits of Zumalacarregui were worthy of a chronicler who should treat the subject more seriously--and such a one has lately been found. A personal friend who followed him from the first day that he took up arms for Don Carlos a native of the province in which the war was chiefly carried on fully acquainted with its state and the feelings of its inhabitants as well as with the incalculable disadvantages under which Zumalacarregui laboured and the few advantages he enjoyed has undertaken the task. Ten years after Zumalacarregui's death the Carlist general Don Juan Antonio Zaratiegui has written from the country of his exile the memoirs of his former leader. Although the arrival of Zumalacarregui was hailed with the most lively joy by the insurgents and notwithstanding that he was senior in rank to any officer then with the Navarrese Carlists there were still difficulties in the way of his taking the command. The whole force in Navarre consisted but of nine hundred men--peasants for the most part many without arms others with old and unserviceable ones; yet was the colonelcy of this ragged and badly equipped regiment an object of competition. Iturralde who held it refused to give it up although--with the exception of Juan Echevarria the priest of Los Arcos who afterwards made his name infamous for his crimes and excesses--all the officers and influential persons there assembled were desirous he should resign it in favour of Zumalacarregui. Captain Henningsen relates that Iturralde sent two companies of infantry to arrest his rival who ""reversing the game sternly commanded them to arrest Iturralde and was obeyed."" Of this we see no mention in the book before us where we are told on the contrary that Zumalacarregui finding Iturralde obstinate in retaining the command was mounting his horse with the intention of departing and offering his services to the Alavese Carlists when he was prevented on so doing by the mass of officers and persons of distinction in the camp who compelled him to return to his quarters promising that they would find means of arranging matters satisfactorily. The captains formed up their companies and marched them to the parade-ground. When all were assembled Major Juan Sarasa who was looked upon by the soldiers as second in command drew his sword and exclaimed in a loud voice ""Volunteers! In the name of King Charles the Fifth Colonel Don Tomas Zumalacarregui is recognised as Commandant-General of Navarre!"" It is certain that as Don Carlos was then far away from Navarre and ignorant even of what was going on there he could not make this nomination; but neither had he appointed Iturralde nor any of the other chiefs who commanded in the various provinces. Under such circumstances this was perhaps the most proper and solemn way of conferring the command especially when the choice fell upon the officer of the highest rank there present. Before sheathing his sword Sarasa ordered the guard of honour at Iturralde's quarters to be relieved and that Iturralde himself should be kept under arrest until further orders from the new chief. All this having taken place without opposition or disturbance Zumalacarregui made his appearance upon the parade passed the troops in review and then causing them to form a circle round him he addressed them at some length. From the first formation of a Carlist force in Navarre the men had been in the habit of receiving two reals about fivepence sterling a-day. This rate of pay had been established by General Santos Ladron and continued by Iturralde with the view of attracting volunteers. The necessary funds had hitherto been supplied from certain moneys that had been found at the beginning of the war in the hands of various subordinate administrations. These funds however were now nearly exhausted and Zumalacarregui's first announcement to the soldiery was that he should reduce their pay one-half till times were better. Considering the circumstances under which he had assumed the command this was a bold step. Most generals would have sought rather to conciliate their men by an increase than to risk exciting discontent by a reduction. Nevertheless owing to Zumalacarregui's tone of mingled firmness and conciliation this alteration was made without exciting a murmur. Releasing Iturralde from his arrest Zumalacarregui appointed him second in command whilst Sarasa cheerfully descended to the third place--thereby proving that in what he had done in favour of Zumalacarregui the good of the cause he had espoused was his only motive. The command in chief however was merely _ad interim_. On the arrival of Colonel Eraso who was then detained in France it was to be given up to him. But when Eraso made his appearance so convinced was he of Zumalacarregui's superiority of talent that he insisted in spite of the latter's urgent entreaties in taking only the second post. Upon assuming the command Zumalacarregui at once determined on adopting a defensive system of warfare--the only one indeed that was practicable with his wretched resources and handful of men. Just at that time General Sarsfield was marching with a strong column to the scene of the insurrection; and at his approach the Castilian Carlists under Merino and Cuevillas fled and dispersed to their homes. Sarsfield moved on and occupied Vittoria with little opposition. Soon afterwards Zumalacarregui who had betaken himself to the banks of the Ebro in hopes of seizing some arms and horses received an urgent summons to repair to Bilboa then held by the Royalists and which Sarsfield was advancing to attack. He hastened to obey the call but only arrived at that extremity of Navarre nearest to Biscay in time to meet the remnant of the Biscayan Carlists flying before the triumphant Christinos. The troops in the Basque provinces which the evening before had amounted to five or six thousand men were now reduced to as many hundreds. Their arms ammunition and artillery the latter consisting of four guns had been abandoned and were in the power of the conquerors; and so complete was the dissolution of the Carlist forces that a vast number of persons who were compromised by their conduct or opinions seeing themselves without defence crossed the frontier into France. Zumalacarregui with three scanty ill-armed battalions which he had formed out of the handful of Navarrese peasants before alluded to was now the only hope of the cause. The war was to all appearance at an end; and so it undoubtedly would have been but for Zumalacarregui's extraordinary qualities. When he left Pampeluna the three Basque provinces and the greater part of the Rioja or plains of the Ebro were held by the Carlists. Merino had just issued a proclamation announcing himself to be at the head of twenty thousand Castilian volunteers. In all there were nearly forty thousand men under arms for Don Carlos and ready to support the Navarrese rising. Suddenly this brilliant perspective had disappeared like a scene in a play and the twelve or fifteen hundred men half-naked without uniform and badly armed who were assembled in the valley of the Borunda found themselves alone and unprotected in front of a formidable and well-provided foe. All was confusion and panic when Zumalacarregui opposed his zeal and energy to the contagion of alarm that was rapidly spreading amongst his men. His precautions his decided and inflexible character gave life to a cause apparently at the last gasp. Encouraging some rousing others from the lethargy into which they were sinking he proceeded resolutely with the organization of his three battalions introduced strict discipline and subordination and procured five hundred muskets and a supply of cartridges from Biscay and Guipuzcoa. General Villareal who had saved one battalion from the wreck of the Alavese troops joined him; and the juntas and deputations of the various provinces named Zumalacarregui commander-in-chief of all the Carlist forces. Meanwhile Sarsfield's movements appearing too dilatory to the Christino government he was replaced by General Valdes and appointed Viceroy of Navarre. The arrival of winter however and a heavy fall of snow in some degree paralyzed the operations of the Christinos whilst this occasioned incredible sufferings to the Carlists. One battalion of the latter in passing from Navarre to Guipuzcoa across the mountains of Aralár lost 460 men out of 620 of which it consisted. Numbed by cold and worn out by fatigue they remained to die upon the road or dragged themselves for shelter to lonely hamlets and isolated farmhouses where many of them were discovered and taken by Christino detachments sent to hunt them down. ""Truly "" says Zaratiegui ""it was a lamentable sight to behold these unfortunate men who were unable to move hand or foot thus persecuted. But even in this state of impotence and peril not one of them chose to avail himself of the pardon which the Christino generals at that time freely offered to those who should renounce Don Carlos. Doubtless a great proof of how noble and constant was their first

resolution."" In order not to inconvenience the inhabitants Zumalacarregui was in the habit of distributing his troops over large districts himself frequently remaining with only a handful of men about him. On one of these occasions an incident occurred which is related at considerable length by General Zaratiegui who evidently attaches the greatest importance to his late chief's most trifling actions and in the course of his book compares him to or sets him above various renowned heroes of ancient and modern times. The anecdote however is curious as showing the constant state of vigilance and anxiety in which the Carlists were kept during these early days of their uprising. ""Zumalacarregui had taken up his quarters in the hamlet of Zabal which consisted of only four houses; and as the season was unfavourable for a bivouac he had scattered the troops through various small villages in the neighbourhood. With himself there remained only a guard of fifteen or twenty men and a few aides-de-camp. It was in the middle of December when the nights are at the longest and consequently the most favourable time of the year for an enemy to accomplish a surprise. The Carlist general lay awake in his bed watching for the dawn which seemed to him longer than usual in appearing; till at last his own restlessness and impatience made him fancy that the Christinos were coming to surprise him. A distant noise which he heard and which resembled the trot of horses confirmed the hallucination. He sprang from his bed and nearly naked as he was descended the stairs opened the door of the house and tried to snatch away the musket of the sentinel posted there in order to defend himself against the approaching enemy. The sentry at once recognising him kept him off with his hand and said firmly--'General leave me my arms; when needful I shall know how to use them.' The man had only joined the Carlists three days before and excepting his musket bore no mark or sign of his new profession not even a cartouch-box; and to complete the singularity of the scene he was mounting guard bareheaded. The horses of which Zumalacarregui with extraordinary fineness of ear had detected the approach at a very great distance soon afterwards made their appearance. They were mounted by the men whose duty it was to go from one village to another during the night collecting rations. Things returned to their previous state of tranquillity and the sentinel was rewarded for his steadiness and presence of mind. ""This incident "" concludes Zaratiegui ""recalls to my recollection an anecdote told by a Spanish author of the great Captain Gonzalo de Cordova. When that hero was laying siege to a fortress on the island of Cephalonia which was defended by the Turks he was many times seen to get up in his sleep and to cry out to his soldiers to come and repel the enemy; and it is also said that owing to these alarms the Spaniards more than once escaped a surprise."" Without reference to a map it would be difficult for our readers to appreciate a description of the extraordinary marches and countermarches by which Zumalacarregui avoided his enemy until such time as he was able to fight him. Sarsfield had no sooner established himself in his vice-royalty at Pampeluna that he collected all the troops he had at his disposal and began running after the Carlist chief. He displayed great activity made forced and rapid marches and on arriving one evening at the town of Puente la Reyna found himself by the result of a well-planned movement within an hour and a half's march of Artajona where Zumalacarregui had halted. Sarsfield made sure of coming to blows the next morning; but he had forgotten to take into consideration the insensibility to fatigue and capacity of exertion of the Navarrese mountaineers. In the middle of the night Zumalacarregui turned out his men in dead silence without sound of drum or trumpet and began retracing his steps along the road which he had that day followed. The next morning before Sarsfield arrived at Artajona Zumalacarregui was at Dicastillo a long day's march off and precisely at the same distance from the Christino general at which he had been when the latter commenced his pursuit. Sarsfield found matter for reflection in this and perceiving doubtless that a war in such a country as Navarre and against such a man as Zumalacarregui was likely to prove a shoal upon which more than one military reputation would be wrecked he confided the direction of operations to Generals Lorenzo and Oraa and returned to Pampeluna whence he no more issued forth. The first encounter between Zumalacarregui and the Christinos took place on the 29th of December near the village of Asarta. The Carlist force consisted of seven small battalions or corps together about 2500 men knowing for the most part little or nothing of a soldier's duty. Many of the muskets were useless and the ammunition so scarce that ten cartridges formed the allowance with which these troops went for the first time under fire. In the combat that ensued the Christinos suffered considerable loss; and although the Carlists who had most of them expended their ammunition finally retreated in haste and disorder the mere fact of having sustained for some time the assault of an enemy so far superior to them in discipline and equipments inspired these raw recruits with fresh courage and confidence. The resistance that had been made contrasted advantageously with the facility with which at the first commencement of the war far larger bodies of the insurgents had been put to flight. Several Christino officers came over to the Carlists after this trifling action of which the moral effect was altogether highly favourable to the cause of Don Carlos. Dividing his forces into three detachments Zumalacarregui sent two of these to draw off the attention of Lorenzo and Oraa whilst he himself suddenly appeared before the royal manufactory of shot and shell at Orbaiceta near the French frontier. The garrison consisting of two hundred men capitulated although it might very well have held out the place against an enemy without artillery until the arrival of assistance which would have been certain to come in two or three days. Here were found two hundred excellent muskets a brass four-pounder and more than 50 000 cartridges; besides an immense quantity of round-shot and other projectiles which at that time were useless to the Carlists as they had no artillery. When instead of the news which they had been expecting to receive of the extermination of the royalist faction the Pampelonese learned that Orbaiceta was captured; and that Lorenzo and Oraa had succeeded in nothing except in knocking up their horses and fagging their men; they sent to Valdes the general-in-chief of the army of the North who was then in Biscay imploring him to come and make an end of the Carlists. Valdes hastened to Pampeluna and on arriving there at once made a sortie with five or six thousand men. Zumalacarregui posted himself in a narrow pass on the road along which the Christinos were advancing and awaited their arrival. Having done this he sent out a number of officers and soldiers who were well acquainted with the country to observe the movements of the Queen's troops and give notice of their approach. The evening was drawing in when a peasant came up in all haste laden with a large stone of a thin flat form nearly a foot and a half long. On reaching the presence of Zumalacarregui he laid it down and requested the general to read what was written on it. One of the scouts having no writing materials and thinking the peasant incapable of bearing a verbal message correctly had taken this novel means of conveying intelligence to his chief. In danger of being outflanked Zumalacarregui was compelled to abandon his advantageous position. The following day a skirmish took place without result; and at last Valdes finding that he only fatigued his men uselessly by pursuing an adversary whom it was impossible to overtake remained for some days inactive. A week had elapsed which Zumalacarregui had passed at Navascues busied in organizing his troops and making various important administrative arrangements when the approach of Oraa compelled him to a change of place. On the evening of the 17th of February the Christino general having put up his infantry in the hamlets of Zubiri and Urdaniz and the detachments of cavalry that accompanied him at a large _venta_ or inn between those two places Zumalacarregui resolved upon a nocturnal attack. It was at midnight that by the light of a dozen trees which had been set on fire and served for gigantic torches the Carlist leader formed up five companies in a thick wood and after communicating to them his project directed them how to proceed. The post of honour was assigned to a student of the name of Amezqueta who by his feats of courage subsequently rose from the rank of a simple volunteer to that of colonel and died in consequence of wounds received in action. One company was sent to open a fire upon Zubiri in which Oraa himself was lodged; another was to attack the venta where the cavalry were quartered; and the remaining three were to penetrate into the streets and houses of Urdaniz which were occupied by five or six hundred Christinos. The night had at first been bright and moonlit but was now cloudy and dark; and Zumalacarregui in order to avoid the terrible consequences that might ensue if his soldiers mistook one another for the enemy ordered them to put on their shirts over their other garments. It happened to be Carnival time and the men not at once understanding the reason of this order took it as a sort of masquerade proceeding and made themselves exceedingly merry about it. The result showed how necessary a precaution it was. After various difficulties occasioned by the bad roads and extreme darkness the three detachments reached their respective destinations at about half-past two in the morning and the fire against Zubiri and Urdaniz commenced almost at the same moment. In the first-named place the Christinos kept themselves shut up in the houses from the windows of which they returned the fire guided in their aim by the flashes of their assailants' muskets. The sole object of the Carlists was to keep them employed in order that they might not interfere with what was going on at the two other points of attack. The cavalry at the venta having neglected all precautions and possessing no effective means of defence soon fell into the power of the Carlists; but at Urdaniz which was held by infantry and against which the expedition was more particularly directed a hard-contested fight took place. The first picket which the Carlists encountered was cut to pieces to a man; the fire of a second outpost spread the alarm; but nevertheless the attacking party penetrated into the ground-floor of most of the houses and a desperate contest ensued upon the stairs. The horses in the stables were either carried off or killed; and nothing would have been easier than to have set fire to the houses and so ensured the destruction of all the Christinos. From this latter sanguinary measure which a Cabrera or a Valmaseda would probably not have hesitated to adopt Zumalacarregui abstained. ""It did not agree "" says his biographer ""with the principles of equity and justice which he observed relatively to the villages and their inhabitants;"" from which we are left to infer that the burning alive of five hundred Christino soldiers could it have been done without injuring houses or peasants would have been rather an acceptable holocaust to the Carlist chief. When all the advantages calculated upon from this expedition had been obtained the retreat was sounded and forming up his men with the greatest celerity Zumalacarregui marched rapidly away carrying off the arms horses and prisoners that had been taken. With all his haste however early upon the following day Lorenzo and Oraa were close upon his heels; but the wary Carlist had omitted no precaution and in anticipation of a hot pursuit had ordered four battalions to meet him at the neighbouring pass of Lizarraga where he accordingly found them waiting his arrival and immediately prepared to give the Christinos a warm reception. The latter on arriving in front of the position probably considered it too formidable a one to attack; for they forthwith retreated leaving Zumalacarregui in the peaceable enjoyment of a triumph which greatly increased his reputation and the confidence of his followers. Quesada who succeeded Valdes in the command of the Queen's army was the first to introduce the horrible system of reprisals or it should rather be said to occasion it by cruelty towards his prisoners. Valdes if he had done little towards terminating the war had at least not envenomed it or rendered its character more ferocious than he had found it. Although it was impossible to suspect him of any leaning towards his opponents he always showed great moderation and humanity and caused the wounded Carlists who fell into his hands to be treated with as much care as if they had been his own men. Quesada on the contrary irritated at the failure of certain attempts he had made to seduce Zumalacarregui and subsequently other Carlist leaders from their allegiance to him they called their King and acting under the influence of a disposition which many events in his life sufficiently proved to be cruel and bloodthirsty had scarcely assumed the command when he gave the signal for reprisals by shooting at Pampeluna the Carlist officer Don Juan Hugalde although Zumalacarregui had offered to give a Christino officer and two sergeants in exchange for him. This was followed by numerous similar acts of cruelty which at last were cause that Villareal by order of Zumalacarregui shot more than a hundred prisoners who had been taken a short time previously at a village near Vittoria. Fortunately at that particular period the prisoners on neither side were very numerous. In an action near Segura Leopold O'Donnell cousin of the present governor of the Havannah and son of the well-known Count of Abisbal fell into the hands of the Carlists with four other officers and a number of rank and file. The five officers were shot in retaliation for some recent execution of Carlist prisoners; but Zumalacarregui willing to make another effort for the establishment of a more humane system spared the lives of the men and ordered that seven amongst them who were wounded should be taken care of and when cured sent back to Pampeluna. In return for this act of mercy Quesada shot every prisoner he had wounded or not. Amongst others a Captain Bayona who had received two desperate wounds and was at the point of death was dragged from his bed and shot on the public square of the village of Lacunza. Zumalacarregui might have repaid this atrocity by the slaughter of the Christino prisoners who were still in his power but having promised them their lives he would not recall his word. A few days after this four officers were made prisoners by Iturralde who entered the town of Los Arcos with a battalion and captured them before they had time to retreat to the fort. Quesada feeling very sure of the fate reserved for them hit upon a stratagem by which he hoped to save their lives. He caused to be arrested at Pampeluna the parents of several Carlist officers of rank shut them up in the citadel and sent confessors to them. They were to be shot he said the very moment he should learn the death of the officers whom Iturralde had taken. The unfortunate captives begged permission to write to their sons and relatives in the Carlist army and this request which was what Quesada had reckoned upon was granted. Those to whom the letters were sent presented themselves before Zumalacarregui in the most profound affliction and implored him to show mercy to the four men on whose lives depended the existence of persons so dear to them. But Zumalacarregui who saw at once that such a precedent would be in the highest degree dangerous inasmuch as most of the Carlists had friends and near relatives in the Christino country was firm in his refusal. The officers were shot but Quesada did not dare to incur the odium which reprisals of the nature he had threatened would have heaped upon his head. It was remarked also that he was greatly discouraged by the proof he on this occasion obtained of his opponent's firmness and energy and of the unlimited authority and influence he enjoyed over those under his command. The shooting of prisoners of war continued without intermission till the Eliot convention took place. The month of April had arrived without any one of the Carlist leaders having received a communication either verbal or written from the prince for whom they had now been six months under arms. At last on the 11th of April Zumalacarregui who was then in the valley of the Berrueza received the much wished-for letter from the hands of a native of Burgos who in the disguise of a muleteer managed to reach his camp. In this letter which was dated the 18th of March 1834 Don Carlos declared that his ""royal heart and soul were sweetly affected by the contemplation of the heroical efforts that were being made in the cause of religion and his legitimate rights."" He promised to maintain the _fueros_ of the provinces approved all that had been done and gave various and extensive powers to Zumalacarregui whom he styled Mariscal de Campo of the royal armies. The enthusiasm which this document occasioned amongst the troops and the people of the provinces was so great that Zumalacarregui declared it to be worth a reinforcement of twenty thousand men. It is probable also although no express mention is made of it that about or rather before this time some small supplies of money had been received from the friends of Don Carlos in Spain or other countries; for we find the junta of Navarre busied in providing new clothing for a part of the troops. The taxes levied in the districts in which the Carlists operated and those duties on goods passing the frontier which they were able to collect must at that period have been of very trifling amount and insufficient to meet the expenses even of Zumalacarregui's small army. During three months that Quesada had held the command which he assumed with a force that he himself admitted to consist of 23 000 infantry and 1400 horse he had accomplished literally nothing. On the other hand the Carlists had had several partial successes against himself and his subordinates; he had lost a vast number of men; and finally at the action of Gulinas near Pampeluna Linares one of his generals was so ill-treated by Zumalacarregui that all the carts and vehicles in Pampeluna including the bishop's carriage were insufficient to carry the wounded into the town. After this last disaster the Spanish government resolved to give Quesada a successor; and General Rodil who had just returned from his expedition into Portugal upon which he had gone in the vain hope of seizing the person of Don Carlos was ordered to repair to the northern provinces with the troops under his command. After being detained some days at Madrid by Queen Christina who had a fancy to review the division Rodil whose activity was his best quality continued his march and soon reached the Ebro with ten thousand infantry a proportionate number of cavalry and a prodigious train of baggage and artillery. It is said that more than a thousand carts and a still greater number of baggage animals followed his army. Generals Cordova Figueras Carandolet and others of note formed part of his brilliant staff and at Logroño he was joined by Lorenzo and Oraa with their divisions. The imposing force thus got together was sufficient it might well have been thought to crush ten times over the few companies of raw guerillas under Zumalacarregui's command. The clash of arms and note of war-like preparation that now resounded along the right bank of the Ebro crossed the stream and penetrated into the valleys of Navarre. The eyes of the Carlists both soldiers and civilians were fixed upon their chief who far from trying to conceal the approaching danger rather exaggerated its magnitude. There was nothing he dreaded more than that his followers should think he was trying to deceive them. That he knew would destroy their confidence in him. He issued a proclamation to the troops in which after talking of the formidable preparations of the enemy he put a question to them. ""Volunteers!"" he said ""shall you quail at the sight of this numerous array?"" When the officer who read the proclamation in front of the assembled Navarrese battalions came to this question a unanimous ""No!"" unpremeditated and heartfelt burst from the lips of every man present. Upon learning this indication of the temper of the troops Zumalacarregui resolved upon a movement of unparalleled audacity. He had information that on the following day Lorenzo and Oraa were to leave Logroño for Pampeluna followed twenty-four hours later by Rodil with the troops he had brought from Portugal. Zumalacarregui determined to advance rapidly from the mountains amongst which he then found himself and to fall upon Rodil's left flank trusting that troops unaccustomed to that description of warfare would resist but feebly a sudden and unexpected attack. However this daring plan might have succeeded it would certainly have been attempted had not a totally unlooked-for and to the Carlists a most important event occurred to prevent it. At midnight on the 11th of July the Carlist troops were about to commence their march when Legarra the abbot of Lecumberri suddenly appeared before Zumalacarregui and placed in his hands a sealed letter of very small dimensions. The handwriting was unknown to the general and the sole address consisting of the two words ""_For Zumalacarregui _"" he asked Legarra previously to opening the letter whence and from whom it came. The sole information the abbot could give was that he had received it from the junta of Navarre and had been desired to use all haste in its delivery. The general then opened and read the missive; and as he did so all those who were present were able to note upon his countenance the great satisfaction with which the few words it contained inspired him. He immediately countermanded the march ordered the horses to be unsaddled and the troops to take up their quarters for the night. The contents of the note which caused all these changes were as follows:-- ""Zumalacarregui: I am very near Spain and to-morrow I trust by God's help to reach Urdax. Take the necessary measures and communicate this to no one. ""CARLOS."" In spite of this last injunction Zumalacarregui calculating that Don Carlos must by this time be on Spanish ground could not refuse himself the pleasure of telling such good news to his personal friends. They repeated to others and it soon became known throughout the camp that the King was coming. At daybreak the next morning Zumalacarregui set out and at eleven at night reached the frontier town of Elizondo where he found Don Carlos who tired with his journey had already gone to bed but nevertheless immediately received his faithful adherent. On the following day he had several conferences with Zumalacarregui on whom he conferred the rank of Lieutenant-general and Chief of his Staff. The same afternoon the bells were set ringing and a _Te Deum_ was sung for the happy arrival of the royal fugitive. It was attended by Don Carlos Zumalacarregui the Baron de los Valles and various other notabilities. His partizans as yet possessing no fortified town or stronghold in which he could remain with security Don Carlos was compelled as soon as he arrived in Spain to seek safety in constant change of place. Zumalacarregui on the other hand with Valdes and his formidable army menacing him on all sides could spare but little time to play the courtier. After conducting Don Carlos through the valleys of Araquil the Borunda and the two Amezcoas in all of which that prince was received we are informed with the most lively demonstrations of joy he confided him to the care of General Eraso who marched him off to the Basque provinces to show him to the people and keep him out of harm's way. The Christino government and generals had at first affected to disbelieve the arrival of Don Carlos and had spread reports that a person who resembled him had been chosen by the Carlist leaders to personate the prince and deceive the people. Soon however the fact was placed beyond a doubt; and Rodil sending several of his generals to find Zumalacarregui set out with twelve thousand men in pursuit of Don Carlos who was then in Biscay with a retinue of only twelve persons. The small number of the Prince's attendants proved his best safeguard. The Christinos advanced displaying a vast front and confident of catching him; but favoured by the intricacies of the mountains the extensive forests and deep barrancas of Biscay having moreover the peasantry in his favour and persons perfectly acquainted with the country for guides Don Carlos had little difficulty in eluding pursuit. All Rodil's front and flank marches and countermarches served but to send a vast number of his men into hospital and to immortalize his name in that province by the devastations and incendiarism that the soldiery committed. Whilst this was going on Zumalacarregui was buzzing like an enraged hornet round the divisions of Oraa Carandolet Lorenzo and other generals cutting off outposts surprising detachments and doing them a vast deal of mischief with little or no loss to his own troops. General Carandolet was particularly unfortunate; twice did Zumalacarregui surprise him; first in the pass of San Fausto where his column was nearly destroyed; and a second time in the town of Viana on the Ebro. On this last occasion the affair was decided by the Carlist cavalry which for the first time had an opportunity of distinguishing itself. It consisted of 250 ill-equipped and undrilled lancers at the head of which Zumalacarregui put himself and charging the Christino horsemen who were nearly twice as numerous broke them and put them to flight. It is unnecessary and would be monotonous to follow Zumalacarregui step by step through the summer campaign of 1834 which was a most important one for the cause he defended. With the increase of numerical force which his successes and the arrival of Don Carlos brought to his standard the lack of arms money and ammunition began to make themselves nearly as sensibly felt as at the commencement of the war. When Don Carlos arrived in Spain and formed a ministry Zumalacarregui hoped and expected that the men composing the latter would possess some influence abroad and would be able to procure assistance of various kinds. In this however he found himself mistaken; and to make matters worse he appears to have been already thwarted in his plans and arrangements by the persons about Don Carlos. The division of counsels which subsequently ruined the Carlist cause was already beginning to be felt. At the arrival of Don Carlos the army was composed entirely of volunteers but a levy was now ordered of all the men capable of bearing arms. Zumalacarregui opposed this strenuously but was finally compelled to give way and four new battalions were formed although there was scarcely a musket in store to give to them. By this ill-advised measure the agricultural interests of the country were materially compromised and new and heavy charges imposed upon the military chest for the maintenance of troops which being unarmed were of course useless. This was a source of great vexation to Zumalacarregui who certainly had enough to do to make head against the enemy opposed to him without being compelled at the same time to procure supplies arms and ammunition for his troops and to attend in great measure to the administrative arrangements which usually fall to the charge of the civil authorities. At the commencement of the war fifty thousand cartridges were all he possessed and those were soon consumed as well as some that were taken from the Christinos. It was very difficult and costly to get powder from France which could only be introduced in quantities of three or four pounds or little more. Unable to support the delay and expense of this Zumalacarregui established manufactories in secluded corners of Navarre and the Basque provinces; and then with infinite risk caused saltpetre to be brought from the very heart of Arragon and subsequently from France. The powder that was at first produced was very weak and bad and the manufacturers worked day and night till they found means of improving it. The rules introduced into the battalions in order to economize this precious commodity were singular enough. The soldiers were forbidden to load their muskets till the very moment of commencing an action; and then were only to fire when the enemy was very near and fully exposed. Even the guards and pickets in view of the Christinos had but a single musket loaded which the sentinels passed from one to another when relieved. Zumalacarregui himself made frequent inspections of the men's ammunition and would often stop soldiers whom he met in the street or on the road to ascertain that they had not lost or wasted their cartridges. The security of the Carlist army did not so much depend on the vigilance of outposts and advanced guards as on the system of transmitting information that was established amongst the village alcaldes and on the zeal and fidelity of the _confidentes_ or spies. Without reckoning those persons who acted in the latter capacity in the vicinity of their own homes Zumalacarregui always had about him eighteen or twenty regularly paid spies; and to these even in the moments of his greatest poverty and difficulty he showed himself liberal to prodigality. Notwithstanding that it was out of his power to recompense sufficiently the risks they ran and the important services they rendered these men performed their arduous duties with admirable fidelity. Zaratiegui relates an anecdote of one of them who having been guilty of some neglect received by order of Zumalacarregui two hundred blows with a stick and was then turned out of the camp. The evening of the same day on which this took place when the general called as usual for his _confidentes_ the man who had been beaten made his appearance with the others. Although Zumalacarregui was acquainted with the characteristic fidelity of these men he could not help being struck with this instance of it. His natural generosity of character prevented him from hesitating a moment in restoring his confidence to the offender. ""Rest yourself to-night "" he said to him; ""to-morrow you will have to go upon a service of the greatest importance and which you alone are able to perform."" And the man left the room perfectly consoled for the pain and humiliation of his beating by these few kind words addressed to him in presence of his comrades. Another anecdote will illustrate the affection of the Carlist soldiers for their leader and their sympathy with his difficulties. The troops all wore _alpargatas_--a species of sandal of which the sole is of plaited hemp. These are admirably adapted for long marches in dry weather but the wet destroys them and they go to pieces directly. Of these sandals as of every other description of equipment there was sometimes great difficulty in obtaining a sufficient supply. One day that it rained heavily Zumalacarregui was going to pass with several battalions from the Ulzama to the valley of Ollo. The soil was clay and there was sure to be a great destruction of the hempen shoes. Zumalacarregui who at that time had no others wherewith to replace them rode along the line of march and spoke to man here and there. ""A peseta "" said he (about tenpence sterling ) ""for every man who presents himself this evening with a sound pair of alpargatas."" The word was passed from mouth to mouth; the soldiers understood the difficulty in which their general was took off their shoes and performed a long and toilsome march barefoot. The next day when Zumalacarregui ordered the promised recompense to be distributed the commandants of battalions said that it was unnecessary for that none of the men claimed it. About this time Zumalacarregui made an expedition beyond the Ebro with the view of carrying off a quantity of woollen cloth from the manufactories at Escaray. He was unsuccessful in the immediate object of the expedition; but at a short distance from Logroño he fell in with a convoy escorted by two companies of infantry and three st

ong squadrons of dragoons. The latter charged the Carlist cavalry which was of much inferior force and threw it into complete disorder. Zumalacarregui who was a short way behind saw the disgraceful flight of his lancers set spurs to his horse came up with the fugitives and rallied them. As soon as he had got together fifty men he charged the Christinos regardless of the great disparity of force. The charge took place on the high-road where there was no room to form front by troops or squadrons. Six or eight Christino dragoons of gigantic stature _tiradores_ or pioneers as they were called occupied the whole width of the road whilst the convoy made all haste to gain the town. Zumalacarregui with six of his men attacked them and scarcely had their lances crossed the Christino sabres when the dragoons were all killed or wounded. The Carlists charged onwards; the whole of the Christino cavalry was cut to pieces or forced to run and the convoy remained in the hands of the conquerors. It consisted of two thousand muskets and came very opportunely to arm the four new battalions which had been more than three months in idleness waiting for weapons. On the 27th and 28th of October just one year after Zumalacarregui had taken command of the Carlist army occurred the two famous actions in the plains of Vittoria when General O'Doyle and two thousand Christinos fell into the hands of the victors and nearly as many more were left dead upon the field. O'Doyle and some of the officers taken were shot; but the lives of the men were spared and soon afterwards at their own request their arms were restored to them and they were incorporated in the Carlist battalions. This and other disasters which about this time befell Rodil's army occasioned his recall by the Queen's government and the celebrated Mina was appointed in his stead. The increase of Zumalacarregui's forces and the advantages he had gained inspired him with the idea of capturing some of the Christino forts in Navarre and the Basque provinces; the said forts being exceedingly prejudicial to his operations. The great obstacle to his wishes was the weakness of his artillery. This consisted only of three small field-pieces such as are carried on the backs of mules and could be of little service in attacking fortifications. Of shot and shell he had a large supply which had been taken at the manufactory of Orbaiceta. For seven or eight months these stores had been lying there neglected none of the Queen's generals having had the foresight to remove them to a place of safety. Zumalacarregui now caused them to be taken away and concealed in the most intricate recesses of the mountains. But these projectiles were of little use without guns; and to procure the latter the ingenuity of the Carlists was taxed to the very utmost. Zumalacarregui remembered that upon a sandy spot on the Biscayan coast an old iron twelve-pounder was lying neglected and forgotten. This he ordered to be brought to Navarre. A rude carriage was constructed on which it was mounted and it was then dragged by six pair of oxen over mountains and through ravines to the Sierra of Urbasa where it was buried. Soldiers are very ingenious in inventing appropriate names; and as soon as the Carlist volunteers saw this unwieldy old-fashioned piece of ordnance full of moss and sand and covered with rust they christened it the Abuelo or the Grandfather by which appellation it was ever afterwards known. The only artillery officer at that time with Zumalacarregui was Don Tomas Reina who now in conjunction with one Balda a professor of chemistry began to devise means for founding some guns. In the villages and hamlets within a certain circumference a requisition was made for all articles composed of copper and brass such as brasiers stew-pans chocolate pots warming-pans &c.; but as it was found impossible to get sufficient of these the three field-pieces were added and the whole melted together. In the midst of a forest this strange foundery was established and after numerous failures occasioned by want of experience and of the proper tools Reina succeeded in making a couple of howitzers which although of uncouth appearance it was thought might answer the purpose for which they were intended. Never were the Christinos more confident of a speedy termination to the war than when Mina took the command. The well-earned reputation of that chief his peculiar aptitude for mountain warfare and intimate acquaintance with the country of Navarre which had been the scene of his triumphs during the war against Napoleon certainly pointed him out as the most fitting man to oppose to Zumalacarregui. Forgetting that similar hopes had been founded on the skill of Quesada and Rodil and on the imposing forces they commanded hopes which had been so signally frustrated the Queen's partizans now set up a premature song of triumph soon to be turned into notes of lamentation. The Mina of 1834 old and bed-ridden with his energies mental perhaps as well as physical impaired by long inaction was a very different man from the Mina of 1810. When fighting against the French the sympathies of the Navarrese were with him; now they were against him and in a war of this description that difference was of immense importance. In spite of the wintry season and of the badness of his health one of the first things he did on assuming the command was to make an excursion to Puente la Reyna Mañeru and other places where in days gone by he had had his headquarters and which he had then never entered without being greeted as a hero and patriot and welcomed with enthusiastic _vivas_. He flattered himself that this enthusiasm would be again awakened by his appearance; and was so much the more shocked when he found himself received with the utmost coldness and indifference. His illness was aggravated by disappointment and he returned angry and disgusted to Pampeluna. Thence incapacitated by his infirmities from exerting himself in the field he directed from his cabinet the operations of his lieutenants and issued orders the cruelty of some of which soon caused his name to be as much execrated in Navarre as it had there once been venerated. At no period of the war was less mercy shown to each other by the contending parties than during Mina's command. Besides shooting all prisoners taken with arms in their hands he caused the wounded whom he found in the Carlist hospitals to be slain upon their beds and _garroted_ or strangled a gentleman of Pampeluna for no reason that could be discovered except that he had two sons with the Carlists. Several forts having about this time being taken or battered by Zumalacarregui Mina determined to get possession of the guns with which this had been done. He was aware of the difficulty the Carlists had in obtaining artillery; and knowing that it could not easily be transported from one place to another in that rugged and mountainous country he conjectured that they were in the habit of burying it which was actually the case. In order to obtain information as to the whereabout of the mortars with which the enemy had been shelling Elizondo he decimated the male inhabitants of Lecaros and then burnt the village itself to the ground. Such atrocities as these far from advancing the cause of Queen Isabel materially injured it offering as they did a strong contrast with the conduct of Zumalacarregui who at the taking of Los Arcos Echarri-Eranaz and other places had shown mercy and even great kindness to the wounded and prisoners he took. At last Mina having ventured out in person with a division of the troops carried in a litter because he too ill to sit his horse was signally beaten by Zumalacarregui at a place called Siete Fuentes or the Seven Fountains and himself narrowly escaped being taken prisoner. Soon after this disaster he was deprived of the command having done nothing whilst he held it but lose men and forts and exasperate the Navarrese peasantry to an unparalleled extent. An attempt that was made about this time to assassinate Espartero who then commanded a moveable column in Biscay is thus narrated by General Zaratiegui:-- ""The constant passage of Espartero between Bilboa and Orduna inspired a peasant who occupied a farmhouse near Luyando with the idea of attempting that general's life. It was said that the man had been robbed or ill-treated by the soldiers of Espartero's division; but it is quite as probable that the peasant fancied in his simplicity that if he could kill the Christino general the war and the evils it inflicted on his country would be at an end. Taking a large tree trunk he fashioned it into a sort of cannon fixed it at a spot where it commanded the high-road and loaded it to the very mouth. The next time Espartero passed that way the peasant watched his moment set fire to the fuse of this singular piece of artillery and then ran away. The Christino soldiers hurried to the spot whence the explosion had proceeded and found the wooden cannon burst into fifty pieces. It was evidently the act of an individual; but nevertheless the unlucky village of Luyando being the nearest to the scene of the event was immediately set on fire. Out of the sixty houses composing it more than one half were consumed; and if the others escaped it was merely because the Christinos happened to want them at the moment for their own occupation."" Valdes was the last Christino general opposed to Zumalacarregui. Being minister of war at the time of Mina's dismissal from the command he ordered all the troops that could possibly be spared to march to Navarre and himself followed to direct their operations. Upon his appearance the war assumed a more humane character; and soon afterwards the arrival of the British commissioner and his successful intervention put an end to the system of reprisals although after Zumalacarregui's death it was again more than once resorted to by the most ferocious of the leaders on either side. In honour of Lord Eliot Zumalacarregui set at liberty the prisoners he had made in the recent action of the Amezcoas in which Valdes had been roughly handled. Lord Eliot having expressed a wish for an autograph of the Carlist leader Zumalacarregui took a pen and wrote in Spanish as follows:-- ""At Asarta a village of the valley of Berrueza celebrated for the various combats which have occurred there in the course of the present century the honour of receiving his Excellency Lord Eliot was enjoyed on the 25th April 1835 by Tomas Zumalacarregui."" Colonel Gurwood made the Carlist chief a present of an excellent field glass which had been used by the Duke of Wellington on some occasion during the Peninsular war. ""This telescope was so esteemed by Zumalacarregui "" says his biographer ""that as long as he lived he always carried it with him; and at the present day in spite of its trifling intrinsic value it is treasured by his family as the most precious heir-loom they possess."" The non-success of Valdes's expedition to the valleys of the Amezcoas and the fatigues and losses sustained there by his troops had greatly discouraged the latter. On all sides the Carlists were obtaining advantages and their adversaries began to entertain a panic terror of Zumalacarregui who availed himself of this discouragement and temporary inaction of the foe to attack several fortified places. Amongst others the town of Treviño situated between Vittoria and the Ebro and at only three or four hours' march from the cantonments of Valdes's army fell into the hands of the Carlists. Assembling thirteen battalions at the Venta of Armentia Zumalacarregui brought up his artillery consisting of one cannon and one howitzer with which in two days he forced the place to capitulate. Although Valdes from where he was could hear the sound of the guns he did not venture to show himself till the Carlists had destroyed the fortifications and effected their retreat with prisoners and artillery. It was after this successful expedition and at what may be considered the most fortunate period of Zumalacarregui's career that Don Carlos conceived the idea of conferring a title on him. He caused this to be intimated to the general and also that he was only waiting to know what title it would be the most agreeable to him to receive. ""We will talk about it "" replied Zumalacarregui ""after entering Cadiz. As yet we are not safe even in the Pyrenees and a title of any kind would be but a step towards the ridiculous."" It was not till eleven months after his death that Don Carlos issued a decree making him grandee of Spain by the titles of Duke of Victory and Count of Zumalacarregui. The garrisons of Estella and of various other fortified towns in the interior of Navarre and the Basque provinces were now withdrawn by order of Valdes; other strong places were taken or capitulated the garrisons remaining for the most part prisoners of war. Within two months after the Eliot convention the Carlists had got 300 Christino officers and 2000 rank and file prisoners in their various depôts without reckoning those who on being captured took up arms for Don Carlos. To exchange against these the Queen's generals had not a single prisoner. About this time Espartero was beaten at Descarga by Eraso; whilst Oraa met the same fate in the valley of the Baztan at the hands of Sagastibelza. Jauregui abandoned Tolosa leaving behind him a quantity of ammunition and stores and shut himself up in St Sebastian. The intrigues and manoeuvres of certain individuals who surrounded Don Carlos pandered to his weaknesses and worked upon his superstitious bigotry began to occasion Zumalacarregui serious annoyance and to interfere in some instances with his plans. During a short visit to Segura where the Carlist court then was he experienced much disgust and vexation. His health moreover began to fail him; and a week later from the town of Vergara which he had just taken with its garrison of 2000 men he sent in his resignation. The following day Don Carlos himself came to Vergara and had a short conference with Zumalacarregui after which the latter marched upon Durango and Ochandiano towns on the Bilboa road and took the latter whilst the former was abandoned by its garrison. It was now his wish to attack Vittoria which was the nearest large town and the easiest to take; but just at this time Don Carlos it appears had been disappointed of a loan and his flatterers and advisers had been consoling him for it by holding out a prospect of taking Bilboa which opulent commercial city contained they said enough riches to get him out of all his difficulties. Zumalacarregui opposed this plan but his deference for Don Carlos finally caused him to yield; and with a heavy heart and a train of artillery totally inadequate to the reduction of so strong a town he sat down before Bilboa. Two twelve-pounders and one six-pounder two brass fours two howitzers and a mortar were all that he had to oppose to the strong defences and forty or fifty guns with which the capital of Biscay was provided. There was also a great lack of certain descriptions of ammunition. For the mortar there were only six-and-thirty shells; and to add to the misfortunes of the attacking party their two largest guns the twelve-pounders burst on the very first day of the siege. During the whole of that day and night Zumalacarregui neither ate nor slept; and on the morrow which was the 15th of June he wrote a letter to the headquarters of Don Carlos then at Durango informing the ministers that owing to the immense disproportion between his means of attack and the enemy's powers of defence he expected it would be necessary to raise tire siege. After sending off this despatch a great weight seemed removed from the mind of Zumalacarregui and he went down to the batteries. With the view of observing whether the Bilbainos had made any repairs or thrown up works in the course of the night he ascended to the first floor of a house situated near the sanctuary of Our Lady of Begoña and from the balcony began to examine the enemy's line. Whilst standing there a bullet struck him on the right leg about two inches from the knee. Nine days afterwards he was dead--killed there can be little doubt less by the wound or its effects than by the gross ignorance of his medical attendants. Three Spanish doctors a young English surgeon and a _curandero_ or quack named Petriquillo whom Zumalacarregui had known from his youth and in whose skill he had great confidence were called in. The Englishman however returned after two days to the squadron to which he was attached giving as his opinion which agreed with that of Don Carlos's own surgeon one Gelos that in a fortnight Zumalacarregui would be on horseback again. Whilst Petriquillo was applying ointments and frictions and a doctor of medicine cramming the patient with drugs Gelos and another surgeon kept tormenting the wound with their probes. The wounded man's general health already affected by the various annoyances he had recently experienced began to give way; and at last within three or four hours after the extraction of the ball an operation that appears to have been performed in the most butcherlike manner Zumalacarregui breathed his last. He was forty-six years of age and left a wife and three daughters. All his worldly possessions consisted of three horses and a mule some arms the telescope given him by Colonel Gurwood and fourteen ounces of gold. If that weak and incapable prince Don Carlos de Borbon had allowed Zumalacarregui to follow up his own plans of campaign instead of dictating to him unfeasible ones there can be little doubt that in less than another year he would have entered Madrid. The immense importance of the _prestige_ attached to a general is well known. That of Zumalacarregui was fully established both with his own men and the Queen's troops. The latter trembled at his very name; the former at his command were ready to attack ten times their number. ""Are there only two battalions yonder?"" enquired Captain Henningsen of a Carlist soldier pointing to a position which was menaced by a large body of the enemy. ""That is all Señor "" was the reply; ""but the general is there."" The man was as confident of the safety of the position as though there had been twenty battalions instead of two. And such was the feeling throughout the Carlist army. The only one of the Carlist or Christino leaders who united all the qualities essential to success was Zumalacarregui. Some were honest a few were perhaps good tacticians others were not deficient in energy but none were all three. The Christino generals were generally conspicuous for their indecision and for their want of zeal for the cause they defended. Many of them would have been sorry to see an end put to a war which gave them occupation rapid promotion decorations titles and money. When Zumalacarregui began his campaign with a handful of men no one could catch him; when he got stronger and showed fight no one could stand against him. As soon as he died his system of warfare was abandoned and victory ceased to be faithful to the Carlist standard. The battle of Mendigorria which occurred within a month after his death and in which the Carlists were signally defeated by Cordova taught the former that their previous successes had been owing at least as much to their general's skill as to their own invincibility. The most salient points in Zumalacarregui's character were his generosity and energy. The former was carried almost to an excess. He could not see persons in want without relieving them; and as his sole income whilst commanding the Carlist army consisted of 2500 reals or twenty-five pounds sterling a-month which he took for his pay he frequently found himself without a maravedi in his pocket. It is related of him amongst many other anecdotes of the same kind that once in winter the weather being very cold he had ordered a coat having only one and that much worn. The tailor had just brought it home and been paid for it when Zumalacarregui happening to look out of the window saw one of his officers passing in a very ragged condition. He called him up made him try on his new coat and finding that it fitted him sent him away with it himself remaining in the same state as before. For the charges of cruelty of disposition which have been brought against Zumalacarregui we are inclined to believe there was very insufficient ground. He was a severe disciplinarian shot his own men when they deserved it and his prisoners when the Christinos set him the example; but if he had not done so he had better have sheathed his sword at once and left Don Carlos to fight his own battles in which case they would very soon have been over. His present biographer who writes coolly and dispassionately and appears as sparing of indiscriminate praise of his friends as of exaggerated blame of his foes gives numerous instances of Zumalacarregui's goodness of heart and humane feeling. Of a bilious habit and a hasty temper he could ill bear contradiction and at times would say or do things for which he was afterwards sorry. In such cases he was not ashamed to acknowledge and if possible repair his fault. The death of Zumalacarregui was the subject of unbounded exultation to the Christinos; and for long afterwards there might be seen upon the walls of their towns and villages the remains of a proclamation announcing it and predicting a speedy annihilation of the faction. Although this prophecy was not made good and the war was protracted for upwards of four years longer it soon became evident that the loss sustained was irreparable and that the hopes of Carlism in the Peninsula lay buried in the grave of Tomas Zumalacarregui. REFERENCE: _Vida y Hechos de Don Tomas Zumalacarregui Duque de la Victoria Conde de Zumalacarregui y Capitan-General del Ejercito de S.M. Don Carlos V. por el Général del mismo Ejercito_ DON J.A. ZARATIEGUI. NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. No. VII. MAC-FLECNOE AND THE DUNCIAD. The field which we have invaded is one obviously of a vast comprehension. Taking it up as we have rightly done from Dryden more than a century and a half of our literature lies immediately and necessarily within it. For the fountain of criticism once opened and flowing the criticism of a country continually reflects its literature as a river the banks which yield it a channel and through which it winds. But the image falls short of the thing signified; for criticism is retrospective without limit as well as contemporaneous. Heaven only knows whether it may not be endowed with a gift of prophecy; and for its horizon--is this narrower than the world? We have undertaken a field which seems limited only because it stretches beyond sight. Let us hope however that we shall find some art of striking our own road through it without being obliged to study both in the reflection and in the original all the books of all nations and ages criticising as we go along both originals and criticisms. Every subject said Burke--we remember his remark though not the very words--branches out into infinitude. The point of view draws a horizon--the goal determines a track. ""The British Critics"" themselves are a host ""Innumerable as the stars of night Or stars of morning; dewdrops which the sun Impearls on every leaf and every flower."" But discreet conscientious Oblivion has infolded under his loving pinions nine hundred and ninety-nine in every thousand; while we think of concerning ourselves with those only whose names occupy some notable niche pedestal or other position in the august house of the great goddess Fame. We desire to show the spirit and power of British criticism to display the characteristic working of the British intellect in this department of intellectual activity. Therefore among known names we shall dwell the most upon those writers whose works the mind of the nation has the most frankly cordially and unreservedly taken to itself recognising them as it were for its own productions--those writers whose reputation the country has the most distinctly identified with her own renown. We have taken hold upon two such names Dryden and Pope. And tens of thousands have experienced with us the pleasures that arise from a renewed or new intimacy with powerful spirits. The acquaintance is not speedily exhausted. It grows and unfolds itself. When you think to have done with them and lift up your bonnet with a courteous gesture of leave-taking your host draws your arm within his and leads you out into his garden and threading some labyrinthine involution of paths conducts you to some hidden parterre of his choicest flowers or to the aërial watch-tower of his most magnificent prospect. The omnipotent setter of limits Death freezes the tuneful tongue unnerves the critical hand from which the terrible pen drops into dust. Shakspeare has written his last play--Dryden his last tale. You may dream--if you like--of what projected and unwritten--what unprojected but possible comedies histories tragedies went into the tomb in the church of Stratford upon Avon! In the meanwhile you will find that what is written is not so soon read. Read for the first time it soon is--not for the last. For what is ""to read?"" ""_Legere_"" is ""to gather."" Shakspeare is not soon gathered--nor is Dryden. Walk through a splendid region. Do you think that you have seen it? You have begun seeing it. Live in it fifty years and by degrees you may have come to know something worth telling of Windermere! Our vocation now gentles all is not simply the knowing--it is the showing too; and here too the same remark holds good. For we think ten times and more that now surely we have shown poet or critic. But not so. Some other attitude some other phasis presents itself; and all at once you feel that without it your exposition of the power or your picture of the man is incomplete. You have seen how the critics lead us a dance. Dryden and Pope criticise Shakspeare. We have been obliged to criticise Shakspeare and this criticism of him. Dryden measures himself with Juvenal Lucretius and Virgil. We somewhat violently perhaps--with a gentle violence--construe a translation into a criticism and prate too of those immortals. Glorious John modernizes Father Geoffrey; and to try what capacity of palate you have for the enjoyment of English poetry some four or five centuries old we spread our board with a feast of veritable Chaucer. Yet not a word all the while of the Wife of Bath's Tale of Chivalry and Faëry which is given with fine spirit by Dryden--nor of the Cock and the Fox told by the Nun's priest which is renewed with infinite life and gaiety and sometimes we are half-inclined to say with fidelity in the departure by the same matchless pen. Good old father Chaucer! Can it be true that century rolling after century thickens the dust upon Adam Scrivener's vellum! Can it be true that proceeding time widens the gulf yawning betwixt thee and ourselves thy compatriots of another day thy poetical posterity! The supposition is unnatural--un-English--un-Scottish. Thou hast been the one popular poet of England. Shakspeare alone has unseated thee. Thou hast been taken to the heart of Scottish poets as though there were not even a dialectical shadow of difference distinguishing thine and their languages. A dim time an eclipsing of light and warmth fell upon the island and to read thee was a feat of strange scholarship a study of the more learned. But happier years shall succeed. As Antæus the giant acquired life and strength by dropping back upon the bosom of his mother earth--she the universal parent was you know in a more private and domestic meaning his mother--so giants of our brood dropping back upon they bosom O Father Chaucer! shall from that infusive touch renew vitality and vigour and go forth exultingly to scale not Olympus but Parnassus. And now in illustration of the ruling spirit--known and felt in its full power only by ourselves--of this series--NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS--we invite unexpectedly--(for who can foresee the ensuing segment of our orbit?)--the people of these realms to admire with us the critical genius of Dryden and of Pope displayed in their matchless satires--MAC-FLECNOE and the DUNCIAD. In regard to these poems shall we seek to conciliate our countrymen by admitting at the outset that there is something in both to be confessed and forgiven? That there is something about them that places them upon a peculiar footing--that is not quite right? They must be distinguished from the legitimate poems in which the poet and the servant of the Muses merely exercises his ministry. He then furnishes to the needs of humanity and is the acknowledged benefactor of his kind. But these are _wilful_ productions. They are from the _personal_ self of the poet. They are arbitrary acts of mighty despots. They kill because they choose and can. And we alas!--we are bribed by the idolatry of power to justify the excesses of power. Let not our maligners--our foes--hear of it for it is one of our vulnerable points. Yet as long as men and women are weak and mortal genius will possess a privilege of committing certain peccadilloes that will be winked at and hushed up. We proclaim poetry for an organ of the highest profoundest truth. But every now and then when we are in difficulties we shroud the poet and ourselves under the undeniable fact that poetry is fiction; and under that pretext wildly and wickedly would throw off all responsibility from him and from ourselves his retainers and abettors; and yet something after all is to be conceded to the mask of the poet. All nations and times have agreed in not judging him by the prosaic laws to which we who write and speak prose are amenable. His is a playful part and he has a knack of slipping from under the hand of serious judgment. He is a Proteus and feels himself bound to speak the bare truth only when he is reduced to his proper person not whilst he is exercising his preternatural powers of illusion. He holds in his grasp the rod of the Enchanter Pleasure and with a touch he unnerves the joints that would seize and drag him before the seat of an ordinary police. But we must remember that we are now scrawling unprivileged prose; and beware that we do not like other officious and uncautious partizans bring down upon our own defenceless heads the sword which the delinquency of them mightier far has roused from the scabbard. Let us see then how stands the case of such satirists. War enters into the kingdom of the Muses. Rival wits assail one another--Dryden and Shadwell. _Nec dis nec viribus æquis._ This is a duel--_impar congressus Achillei_. But when Pope undertakes to hunt down the vermin of literature this is no distraction of the Parnassian realm by civil war. This is the lawful magistrate going forth armed perhaps with extraordinary powers to clear an infested district of vulgar malefactors and notorious bad characters. Vile publishers vile critics vile scribblers of every denomination in prose and verse--all those who turn the press that organ of light for the world into an engine of darkness--who may blame the poet for clothing them in such curses as shall make them for all time at once loathsome and laughable in Christian lands? Letters! sent by heaven for accomplishing the gift of speech. The individual thinker by turning his thoughts into words advances himself in the art and power of thought--unravels clears up and establishes the movements of ""the shadowy tribes of mind."" And so the federal republic of nations by turning the spoken word into the written advance their faculty of thinking and their acquisition of thought. The thought has gained perpetuity when it is worded--the word has gained perpetuity when it is written. Reason waits her completed triumph from the written work which converts and alone can convert the thought of the individual mind into that of the universal mind; thus constituting the fine act of one aspiring intelligence the common possession of the species and collecting the produce of all wits into the public treasury of knowledge. The misusers of letters are therefore the foes of the race. The licentious thinker and writer prejudices the liberty of thinking and writing. Those who excel in letters and in the right use of letters are sensitive to their misapplication. Hence arises a species of satire or if you will satirist--THE SCRIBLERO-MASTIX. He must attack individuals. A heavily-resounding lash should scourge the immoral and the profane. Light stripes may suffice for quelling the less nocent dunces. In commonplace prose criticism whatever form it may ta

e this can be done without supposed personal ill-will; for the Mastix is then only doing a duty plainly prescribed. The theologian must censure and trample as mire the railing assailant of the truths which in his eyes contain salvation. The reviewer must review. But what it may be asked moves any follower of the Muses to satirise a scribbler? He seems to go _out of his way_ to do so; for verse has naturally better associations. But the personal aggression on the wit by the dunce may fairly instigate the wit to flay the dunce. Now he finds the object of his satire _in the way_. The fact is that Dryden's poem and Pope's were both moved in this way. The grew out of personal quarrels. Are they on that account to be blamed? Not if the dunces by them ""damned to everlasting fame "" were the unhappy aggressors. Dryden's times and possibly something in his own character trained his muse to polemics. His pen was active in literary controversies which were never without a full infusion of personalities. More thoroughly moved at one time against one offender--though the history of the feud is in some parts imperfectly traceable--he compelled the clouds and hurled the lightning in verse on the doomed head of Thomas Shadwell. The invention of the poem entitled MAC-FLECNOE is very simple. Richard Flecnoe was a voluminous writer and exceedingly bad poet--a name of scorn already in the kingdom of letters. Dryden supposes him to be the King of Dulness who advanced in years will abdicate his well-possessed throne. He selects Shadwell from amongst his numerous offspring all the Dunces as the son or Dunce the most nearly resembling himself--hence the name of the poem--and appoints him his successor. That is the whole plan. The verse flows unstinted from the full urn of Dryden. The perfect ease and the tone of mastery characteristic of him are felt throughout. He amuses himself with laughing at his rival and the amusement remains to all time; for all who having felt the pleasure of wit are the foes of the Dunces. It is not a laboured poem--it is a freak of wit. You cannot imagine him attaching much importance to the scarcely two hundred lines thrown off in a few gleeful outpourings. To _us_ Shadwell is _nothing_. He is a phantom an impersonation. His Duncehood is exaggerated for he was a writer of some talent in one walk; but being selected for the throne it was imperative to make him Dunce all through. To us there he is merely a Type; and we judge the strokes of Dryden in their universality not asking if they were truly applicable to his victim but whether they express pointedly and poignantly the repulsion entertained by Wit for Dulness. In this enlarged sense and power we feel it as poetry. When the father encouraging his heir says-- ""And when false flowers of ret'ric thou wouldst cull Trust Nature; do not labour to be dull; But write they best and top""---- Nothing can be happier. The quiet assumption of Dulness for the highest point of desirable human attainment--the good-nature and indulgent parental concern of the wish to save the younger emulator of his own glory from spending superfluous pains on a consummation sure to come of itself--the confidence of the veteran Dullard in the blood of the race and in the tried and undegenerate worth of his successor--the sufficient direction of a life and reign comprehended summed up concentrated in the one master-precept--""do not labour to be dull""--are inimitable. You feel the high artist whom experience has made bold; and you feel your own imagination roused to conceive the universe of Dunces each yielding to the attraction of his genius fluttering his pinions with an exquisite grace and all without labour or purpose arriving at the goal predestined by nature and fate. We know of no good reason why for the delectation of myriads in their minority Maga should not give MAC-FLECNOE entire; but lest old and elderly gentlemen should think it too much extract she gives all she can and lets you dream the rest. ""Now Empress Fame had publish'd the renown Of Shadwell's coronation though the Town. Rouz'd by report of fame the nations meet From near Bunhill and distant Watling-street. No Persian carpets spread th' imperial way But scatter'd limbs of mangled poets lay; From dusty shops neglected authors come Martyrs of pies and reliques of the bum. Much Heywood Shirley Ogleby there lay But loads of Shadwell almost chok'd the way. Bilk'd stationers for yeomen stood prepar'd And Herringman was captain of the guard. The hoary prince in majesty appear'd High on a throne of his own labours rear'd; At his right hand our young Ascanius sate Rome's other hope and pillar of the state: His brows thick fogs instead of glories grace And lambent Dulness play'd around his face. As Hannibal did to the altars come Sworn by his sire a mortal foe to Rome; So Shadwell swore nor should his vow be vain That he till death true Dulness would maintain; And in his father's right and realm's defence Ne'er to have peace with wit nor truce with sense. The king himself the sacred unction made As king by office and as priest by trade. In his sinister hand instead of ball He plac'd a mighty mug of potent ale; Love's kingdom to his right he did convey At once his sceptre and his rule of sway; Whose righteous lore the Prince had practis'd young And from whose loins recorded Psychè sprung. His temples last with poppies were o'erspread That nodding seem'd to consecrate his head. Just at the point of time if Fame not lie On his left hand twelve rev'rend owls did fly. So Romulus 'tis sung by Tiber's brook Presage of sway from twice six vultures took. Th' admiring throng loud acclamations make And omens of his future empire take. The sire then shook the honours of his head And from his brows damps of oblivion shed Full on the filial Dulness: long he stood Repelling from his breast the raging god; At length burst out in the prophetic mood. 'Heav'ns bless my son from Ireland let him reign To fair Barbadoes on the western main; Of his dominion may no end be known And greater than his father's be his throne; Beyond Love's kingdom let him stretch his pen!' He paus'd and all the people cry'd 'Amen.' Then thus continu'd he: 'My son advance Still in new impudence new ignorance. Success let others teach; learn thou from me Pangs without birth and fruitless industry. Let virtuosos in five years be writ;-- Yet not one thought accuse thy toil--of wit. Let gentle George in triumph tread the stage Make Dorimant betray and Loveit rage; Let Cully Cockwood Fopling charm the pit And in their folly show the writer's wit: Yet still thy fools shall stand in thy defence And justify their author's want of sense. Let them be all by thy own model made Of dulness and desire no foreign aid; That they to future ages may be known Not copies drawn but issue of thy own. Nay let thy men of wit too be the same All full of thee and diff'ring but in name. But let no alien Sedley interpose To lard with wit thy hungry Epsom prose. And when false flowers of rhet'ric thou wouldst cull Trust Nature; do not labour to be dull; But write thy best and top; and in each line Sir Formal's oratory will be thine: Sir Formal though unsought attends thy quill And does thy northern dedications fill. Nor let false friends seduce thy mind to fame By arrogating Johnson's hostile name. Let father Flecnoe fire thy mind with praise And uncle Ogleby thy envy raise. Thou art my blood where Johnson has no part: What share have we--in nature or in art? Where did his wit on learning fix a brand And rail at arts he did not understand? Where made he love in Prince Nicander's vein Or swept the dust in Psychè's humble strain? Where sold he bargains Whip-stitch Kiss me ---- Promis'd a play and dwindled to a farce? When did his muse from Fletcher scenes purloin As thou whole Eth'rege dost transfuse to thine? But so transfus'd as oil and waters flow; His always floats above thine sinks below. This is thy province this thy wondrous way. New humours to invent for each new play; This is that bloated bias of thy mind By which one way to dulness 'tis inclin'd: Which makes thy writings lean on one side still; And in all changes _that_ way bends thy will. Not let thy mountain-belly make pretence Of likeness; thine's a tympany of sense. A tun of man in thy large bulk is writ But sure thou art but a kilderkin of wit. Like mine thy gentle numbers feebly creep; Thy Tragic Muse gives smiles thy Comic sleep. With whate'er gall thou sett'st thyself to write Thy inoffensive satires never bite. In thy felonious heart though venom lies It does but touch thy Irish pen and dies. Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame In keen Iambics but mild Anagram. Leave writing Plays and chuse for thy command Some peaceful province in Acrostic land: There thou may'st wings display and altars raise And torture one poor word ten thousand ways: Or if thou would'st thy diff'rent talents suit Set thy own songs and sing them to thy lute.' He said; but his last words were scarcely heard; } For Bruce and Longvil has a trap prepar'd } And down they sent the yet-declaiming bard. } Sinking he left his drugget robe behind Borne upwards by a subterranean wing: The mantle fell to the young prophet's part With double portion of his father's art."" The _Mac-Flecnoe_ of Dryden suggested--no more--the _Dunciad_ of Pope. There is nothing of transcript. Flecnoe who ""In prose and verse was own'd without dispute THROUGH ALL THE REALMS OF NONSENSE ABSOLUTE "" settles the succession of the state on Shadwell. That idea Pope adopts; but the Kingdom of Dulness is re-modelled. It is no longer an aged monarch who tired out with years and the toils of empire gladly transfers the sceptre to younger and more efficient hands but the GODDESS OF DULNESS who is concerned for her dominion and elects her new vice-regent on the demise of the Crown. The scale is immeasurably aggrandized--multitudes of dunces are comprehended--the composition is elaborate--the mock-heroic admirable in Dryden is carried to perfection and we have _sui generis_ a regular epic poem. In the year 1727 amongst the works first given to the public in the Miscellancies of Pope and Swift was the treatise of Martinus Scriblerus ~Peri Bathous~ or the _Art of Sinking in Poetry_. The exquisite wit and humour of this piece which was almost wholly Pope's enraged the Dunces to madness; and the mongrel pack opened in full cry with barbarous dissonance against their supposed whipper-in. Never was there such a senseless yell: for the philosophical treatise ""On the Profund"" overflows with amenity and good-nature. Pope is all the while at play--diverting himself in innocent recreation; and of all the satires that ever were indited it is in spirit the most inoffensive to man woman and child. The Dunces however swore that its wickedness went beyond the Devil's and besought the world to pay particular attention to the sixth chapter as supra-Satanic. Therein Martinus ranges ""the confined and less copious geniuses under proper classes and the better to give their pictures to the reader under the name of animals."" The animals are Flying Fishes Swallows Ostriches Parrots Didappers Porpoises Frogs Eels and Tortoises. Each animal is characterized in a few words that prove Pope to have been a most observant zoologist; and some profundists classified according to that arrangement are indicated by the initial letters of their names. The chapter is short and the style concise--consisting of but four pages. Some of the initial letters had been set down at random; but profundists rose up with loud vociferation to claim them for their own; and _gli animali parlanti_ on foot wing fin ""or belly prone "" peopled the booksellers' shops. C. G. ""perplexed in the extreme "" was the cause of perplexity to others figuring now as a flying-fish and now as a porpoise. While J. W. was not less problematical--now an Eel and now a Didapper. ""Threats of vengeance "" says Roscoe ""resounded from all quarters and the press groaned under the various attempts at retaliation to which this production gave rise. Before the publication of the _Dunciad_ upwards of sixty different libels books papers and copies of verses had been published against Pope."" The allied forces--_væ victis!_--published _a Popiad_. Threats of personal violence were frequently held out--a story was circulated of his having been whipped naked with rods; and to extent the ridicule an advertisement with his initials was inserted in the _Daily Post_ giving the lie to the scandal. Were such brutalities to be let pass unpunished? Dr Johnson says that ""Pope was by his own confession the aggressor""--and so say Dr Warton and Mr Bowles. The aggressor! Why the Dunces had been maligning him all their days long before the treatise on the _Profund_. And that is bad law indeed that recognises a natural right in blockheads to be blackguards and gives unlimited license of brutality towards any man of genius who may have been ironical on the tribe. But then quoth some hypocritical wiseacre is not satire wicked? Pope was a Christian; and should have learned to forgive. Stop a bit. We talk of poets and books as if we who occupy the tribunal were during that moment at least miracles of clear-sighted incorruptible justice and of all the virtues generally. Conscience reasserts her whole sway in our minds as soon as we sit on other men's merits and demerits; almost the innocence of Eden re-establishes itself in our breasts. Self-delusion! Men we are at the guilty bar--Men on the blameless bench. There is a disorderly spirit in every one of us--a spice of iniquity. Human nature forgives a crime for a jest. Not that crimes and jests are commensurable or approximable; but they are before the same judge. He dislikes or professes to dislike the crime. Indubitably and without a pretence he likes the jest. Here then is an opportunity given of balancing the liking against the disliking; and under that form the jest against the crime. If he likes the jest more than he dislikes the crime the old saw holds good-- ""Solvuntur risu tabulæ tu missus abibis."" Well then the wit of Dryden and Pope is irresistible. What follows? For having contented our liking we let them do any thing that they like. Poor Og! poor Shadwell! poor Bayes poor Cibber! He sprawls and kicks in the gripe of the giant and we--as if we had sat at bull-fights and the shows of gladiators--when the blood trickles we are tickled and--oh shame!--we laugh. The DUNCIAD suffers under the law of compensations. As the renown of the actor is intense whilst he lives and languishes with following generations so is it with poems that embrace with ardour the Present. When the Present has become the Past they are or at least their liveliest edge is past too. No commentary can restore the fiery hates of Dante--nor the repellent scorn of Hudibras--nor the glow of laughter to MAC-FLECNOE and the DUNCIAD. Eternal things are eternal--transitory things are transitory. The transitory have lost their zest--the eternal have their revenge. Yet a hundred years and more after the DUNCIAD a critic may wish that the matter had been a little more diligently moulded with more consideration of readers to come--that there had been less of mere names--that every Gyas and Cloanthus had somewhat unfolded his own individuality upon the stage--had been his own commentary--had by a word or two painted himself to everlasting posterity in hue shape and gesture as he stood before the contemporary eye. 'Tis an idle speculation! The thing by its inspiring passion personal anger and offence belonged to the day. The poet gives it up to the day. He uses his poetical machinery to grace and point a ridicule that is to tell home to the breasts of living men--that is to be felt tingling by living flesh--that is to tinge living cheeks if they can still redden with blushes. Yet for all that the Dunciad still lives; ay in spite of seeming inconsistency we declare it to be immortal. For build with what materials she may the works of genius that stand in the world of thought survive all time's mutations cemented by a spirit she alone can interfuse. It must not be said that a poem shelved is dead and buried. Open it at midnight and the morning is in your chamber. We love to commune with the rising and new-risen generations; elderly people we do not much affect; and for that we are old ourselves we are averse from the old. Now of our well-beloved rising and new-risen generations how many thousands may there be in these islands who have read the Dunciad? Not so many as to make needless in our pages a few explanatory sentences respecting its first appearance and the not inconsiderable changes of form it was afterwards made to assume. At the head of the Dunces at first stood one Theobald who with some of the requisite knowledge and aptitude for a reviser of the text of Shakspeare was a poor creature and a dishonest one but too feeble and too obscure for the place. Fifteen years afterwards (1742 ) at the instigation of Warburton Pope added to the Dunciad a Fourth Book. In it there was _one line and one line only_ about Colley Cibber. ""She mounts the throne: her head a cloud conceal'd In broad effulgence all below reveal'd ('Tis thus aspiring Dulness ever shines ) _Soft on her lap her Laureate Son reclines._"" Dr Johnson calls that an acrimonious attack! ""to which the provocation is not easily discoverable;"" and says ""that the severity of this satire left Cibber no longer any patience."" The Doctor speaks too of the ""incessant and unappeasable malignity"" of Pope towards Cibber and takes the part of that worthy in the quarrel. Colley was absolutely poet-laureate of England; and having no longer any patience in his pride ""gave the town"" an abusive pamphlet in which he swore that he would no longer tamely submit to such insults but fight Pope with his own weapons. Dr Johnson says--""Pope had now been enough acquainted with human life to know _if his passion had not been too powerful for his understanding_ that from a contention like his with Cibber the world seeks nothing but diversion which is given at the expense of the higher character."" Pope had no contention with Cibber. Two or three times he had dropped him a blistering word of contempt--once a word of praise to the _Careless Husband_. But now Pope eyed the brazen bully and saw in him the proper hero of the Dunciad. Theobald vacated the throne and retired into private life. Cibber was made to reign in his stead--and in the lines written by Pope on the coronation the monarch's character is drawn if we mistake not in a style that sufficiently vindicates the Poet from the Doctor's charge ""that his passion had been too powerful for his understanding."" True ""the world seeks diversion "" and she had it here to her heart's content; but not from any undignified ""contention"" with Cibber which Pope disdained but from matchless poetry that ""damned to everlasting fame."" ""Cibber "" says Johnson ""had nothing to lose. When Pope had exhausted all his malignity upon him he would rise in the esteem both of his friends and his enemies."" Cibber then in the Dunciad had a triumph over Pope!! Good. But how you ask did Pope contrive to place Cibber in Theobald's shoes without injury to the rest of the poem? Why he did not place Cibber in Theobald's shoes. Theobald walked off in his shoes into the shades. Samuel says that by the substitution Pope has ""depraved his poem""--inasmuch as he has given to Cibber the ""old books the cold pedantry and sluggish pertinacity of Theobald."" That is not true. Compare the places in the original Dunciad in which Theobald figures at large with that now filled by Cibber and you will admire by what wizard power the transformation is effected. Many lines far too good to be lost are retained--and among them there may be a few more characteristic of the old Dunce than the new. But Cibber is Cibber all over--notwithstanding; nor needed Joseph Warton who was as ready to indulge in a nap as any one we have known to object that ""to slumber in the goddess's lap was adapted to Theobald's stupidity not to the vivacity of his successor."" Pope knew better-- ""Dulness with transport eyes the lively Dunce Remember she herself was Pertness once."" Here he comes. ""In each she marks her image full exprest But chief in Bayes's monster-breeding breast; Bayes form'd by Nature's Stage and Town to bless And act and be a coxcomb with success. Dulness with transport eyes the lively Dunce Remembering she herself was Pertness once. Now (Shame to Fortune!) an ill run at play Blank'd his bold visage and a thin third day; Swearing and supperless the hero sate Blasphem'd his gods the dice and damn'd his fate; Then gnaw'd his pen then dasht it on the ground Sinking from thought to thought a vast profound! Plung'd for his sense but found no bottom there Yet wrote and flounder'd on in mere despair. Round him much embryo much abortion lay Much future ode and abdicated play; Nonsense precipitate like running lead That slipt through cracks and zigzags of the head; All that on Folly Frenzy could beget Fruits of dull heat and sooterkins of wit. Next o'er his books his eyes began to roll In pleasing memory of all he stole; How here he sip'd how there he plunder'd snug And suck'd all o'er like an industrious bug. Here lay poor Fletcher's half-eat scenes and here The frippery of crucify'd Molière; There hapless Shakspeare yet of Tibbald sore Wish'd he had blotted for himself before. The rest on outside merit but presume Or serve (like other fools) to fill a room; Such with their shelves as due proportion hold Or their fond parents dress'd in red and gold; Or where the pictures for the page atone And Quarles is saved by beauties not his own. Here swells the shelf with Ogilby the Great; There stamp'd with arms Newcastle shines complete; Here all his suff'ring brotherhood retire And 'scape the martyrdom of jakes and fire: A Gothic library! of Greece and Rome Well purg'd and worthy Settle Banks and Broome. ""But high above more solid learning shone The Classics of an age that heard of none; There Caxton slept with Wynkyn at his side One clasp'd in wood and one in strong cow-hide; There sav'd by spice like mummies many a year Dry bodies of divinity appear; De Lyra there a dreadful front extends And here the groaning shelves Philemon bends. ""Of these twelve volumes twelve of amplest size Redeem'd from tapers and defrauded pies Inspir'd he seizes: these an altar raise; An hecatomb of pure unsully'd lays That altar crowns; a folio common-place Founds the whole pile of all his works the base: Quartos Octavos shape the less'ning pyre A twisted birth-day ode completes the spire. ""Then he great tamer of all human art! First in my care and ever at my heart; Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend With whom my Muse began with whom shall end Ere since Sir Fopling's periwig was praise To the last honours of the Butt and Bays: O thou! of bus'ness the directing soul! To this our head like bias to the bowl Which as more pond'rous made its aim more true Obliquely waddling to the mark in view: O! ever gracious to perplex'd mankind Still spread a healing mist before the mind; And lest we err by Wit's wild dancing light Secure us kindly in our native night. Or if to wit a coxcomb make pretence Guard the sure barrier between that and sense; Or quite unravel all the reas'ning thread And hang some curious cobweb in its stead! As forc'd from wind-guns lead itself can fly And pond'rous slugs cut swiftly through the sky; As clocks to weight their nimble motion owe The wheels above urg'd by the load below; Me Emptiness and Dulness could inspire And were my elasticity and fire. Some dæmon stole my pen (forgive th' offence) And once betray'd me into common sense: Else all my prose and verse were much the same; This prose on stilts that poetry fall'n lame. Did on the stage my fops appear confin'd? My life gave ampler lessons to mankind. Did the dead letter unsuccessful prove? The brisk example never fail'd to move. Yet sure had Heav'n decreed to save the state Heav'n had decreed these works a longer date. Could Troy be sav'd by any single hand This gray goose weapon must have made her stand. What can I now? my Fletcher cast aside Take up the Bible once my better guide? Or tread the path by vent'rous heroes trod This box my thunder this right hand my God? Or chair'd at White's amidst the doctors sit Teach oaths to gamesters and to nobles wit? Or bidst thou rather party to embrace? (A friend to Party thou and all her race; 'Tis the same rope at diff'rent ends they twist; To Dulness Ridpath is as dear as Mist.) Shall I like Curtius desperate in my zeal O'er head and ears plunge for the commonweal? Or rob Rome's ancient geese of all their glories And cackling save the monarchy of Tories? Hold--to the minister I more incline; To serve his cause O Queen! is serving thine. And see! the very Gazetteers give o'er Ev'n Ralph repents and Henley writes no more. What then remains? Ourself. Still still remain Cibberian forehead and Cibberian brain. This brazen brightness to the 'squire so dear; This polish'd hardness that reflects the peer: This arch absurd that wit and fool delights This mess toss'd up of Hockley-hole and White's; Where dukes and butchers join to wreathe my crown At once the Bear and Fiddle of the Town. ""O born in sin and forth in folly brought! Works damn'd or to be damn'd; (your father's fault.) Go purify'd by flames ascend the sky My better and more Christian progeny! Unstain'd untouch'd and yet in maiden sheets While all your smutty sisters walk the streets. Ye shall not beg like gratis-given Bland Sent with a pass and vagrant through the land; Nor sail with Ward to Ape-and-monkey climes Where vile Mundungus trucks for viler rhymes. Not sulphur-tipt emblaze an ale-house fire! Not wrap up oranges to pelt your sire! O! pass more innocent in infant state To the mild limbo of our father Tate: Or peaceably forgot at once be blest In Shadwell's bosom with eternal rest! Soon to that mass of nonsense to return Where things destroy'd are swept to things unborn."" The eyes of the goddess have been fixed with sleepy fondness more than maternal upon him her chosen instrument during all his address; and we can imagine the frowsy Frow weeping big fat tears with him as he weeps. Pope's ""passion had _not_ been too powerful for his understanding "" nor for his imagination neither when he was inditing the following pathetic and picturesque lines:-- ""With that a tear (portentous sign of grace!) Stole from the master of the seven-fold face And thrice he lifted high the Birth-day brand And thrice he dropt it from his quivering hand; Then lights the structure with averted eyes; The rolling smoke involves the sacrifice. The opening clouds disclose each work by turns; Now flames the Cid and now Perolla burns; Great Cæsar roars and hisses in the fires; King John in silence modestly expires; No merit now the dear Nonjuror claims; Molière's old stubble in a moment flames. Tears gush'd again as from pale Priam's eyes When the last blaze sent Ilion to the skies. Roused by the light old Dulness heav'd the head Then snatch'd a sheet of Thulè from her bed; Sudden she flies and whelms it o'er the pyre Down sink the flames and with a hiss expire."" What next? The compact Argument informs us _she_ forthwith reveals herself to him transports him to her Temple unfolds her arts and initiates him into her mysteries; then announcing the death of Eusden the poet-laureate anoints him carries him to court and proclaims him successor. The close of the Book was as much improved as the opening by the changes consequent on the substitution of Cibber for Theobald. In 1727 when the poem was composed Eusden ""a drunken parson "" wore the laurel; but now Cibber had been for years one of the successors of Spenser and of the predecessors of Wordsworth--though indeed that last fact could not be known to Pope--and well he deserved this still higher elevation. And here again we must dissent from Dr Johnson's judgment ""that by transferring the same ridicule (_not the same_) from one to another he destroyed its efficacy; for by showing that what he said of one he was ready to say of another he reduced himself to the insignificance of his own magpye who from his cage calls cuckold at a venture."" We love and honour the sage but here he is a Sumph. Oh! do read the Second Book for we can afford but a few extracts; and to whet you up shall prate to you a few minutes about it. The two ancient kings of heroic song have left us exemplars of Games. The occasions are similar and mournful although the contests are inspired by and inspire a jocund mood. At the funeral of Patroclus Achilles appoints eight games. He gives prizes for a chariot-race a cestus-fight a wrestling-match a foot-race a lance-fight a disk-hurling a strife of archery and of darters. Æneas on the first anniversary of his father's funeral proposes five trials of skill--for the chariot-race of Homer suitably to the posture of the Trojan affairs a sailing-match; then the foot-race the terrible cestus archery and lastly the beautiful equestrian tournament of Young Troy. The English Homer of the Dunces treads in the footsteps of his august predecessors and celebrates with imitated solemnities a joyous day--that which elevates the arch-Dunce to the throne. Here too we have games but with a dissimilitude in similitude. He adopts an intermediate number six. The first is exceedingly fanciful and whimsical. The goddess creates the phantom of a poet. It has the shape of a contemptible swindler in literature a plagiarist without bounds named More. He is pursued by two booksellers and vanishes from the grasp of him who has first clutched the fluttering shade. ""Gentle Dulness ever loves a joke;"" and the aforesaid admirable jest having kindled inextinguishable laughter in heaven Gentle Dulness repeats it (she loves to repeat herself ) and starts three phantoms in the likenesses respectively of Congreve Addison Prior. Three booksellers give chase and catch Heaven knows what three foolish forgotten names. For the second exertion of talent confined to the booksellers Osborne and Curl the prize is the fair Eliza and Curl is Victor. Osborne too is suitably rewarded; but as this game borders on the indelicate it shall be nameless. Hitherto after the simplicity of ancient manners there have been contentions of bodily powers. But the games of the Dunces belong to an advanced age of the world and a part of them are accordingly spiritual. The third falls under this category. A patron is proposed as the prize. He who can best tickle shall carry him off. The dedicators fall to their task with great zeal and adroitness. Alas! there steps in a young thief of a competitor unknown to Phoebus but deep in the counsels of Venus! He aided by the goddess and a votaress of her order whom the goddess deputes avails himself of the noble prize's most susceptible side ""And marches off his Grace's secretary."" The fourth game sets up a desirable rivalry with monkeys and asses. Who shall chatter the fastest? Who the loudest shall bray? ----""Three cat-calls be the bribe Of him whose chatt'ring shames the monkey tribe: And his this drum whose hoarse heroic base Drowns the loud clarion of the braying ass."" So numerous are the monkey-mimics that the claims of the chatterers cannot be adjusted-- ""Hold (cried the Queen) a cat-call each shall win; Equal your merits! equal is your din! But that this well-disputed game may end Sound forth my Brayers and the welkin rend."" Sir Richard Blackmore with his six epics and sundry other poems brays louder and longer than the most leathern or brazen of the other throats; Chancery Lane and Westminster Hall taking prominent part in the reverberating orchestra. The place is to be ranked amongst the famous echo-descriptions and beats Drayton's and Wordsworth's hollow. The fifth game is DIVING. ""This labor past by Bridewell all descend (As morning pray'r and flagellation end) To where Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames The king of dykes! than whom no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver flood. 'Here strip my children! here at once leap in Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin And who the most in love of dirt excel Or dark dexterity of groping well: Who flings most filth and wide pollutes around The stream be his the Weekly Journals bound; A pig of lead to him who dives the best; A peck of coals a-piece shall glad the rest.' ""In naked majesty Oldmixon stands And Milo-like surveys his arms and h

nds; Then sighing thus 'And am I now threescore? Ah why ye Gods! should two and two make four?' He said and climb'd a stranded lighter's height Shot to the black abyss and plung'd downright: The senior's judgment all the crowd admire Who but to sink the deeper rose the higher. ""Next Smedley div'd; slow circles dimpled o'er The quaking mud that clos'd and op'd no more. All look all sigh and call on Smedley lost; Smedley in vain resounds through all the coast. ""Then ** essay'd; scarce vanish'd out of sight He buoys up instant and returns to light; He bears no tokens of the sabler streams And mounts far off among the swans of Thames. ""True to the bottom see Concanen creep A cold long-winded native of the deep; If perseverance gain the diver's prize Not everlasting Blackmore this denies: No noise no stir no motion canst thou make Th' unconscious stream sleeps o'er thee like a lake. ""Next plung'd a feeble but a desperate pack With each a sickly brother at his back: Sons of a day! just buoyant on the flood Then number'd with the puppies in the mud. Ask ye their names? I could as soon disclose The names of these blind puppies as of those. Fast by like Niobe (her children gone ) Sits Mother Osborne stupify'd to stone! And monumental brass this record bears 'These _are_ ah no! these _were_ the Gazetteers!' ""Not so bold Arnall; with a weight of scull Furious he drives precipitately dull. Whirlpools and storms in circling arm invest With all the might of gravitation blest. No crab more active in the dirty dance Downward to climb and backward to advance He brings up half the bottom on his head And loudly claims the Journal and the Lead. ""The plunging Prelate and his pond'rous Grace With holy envy gave one layman place. When lo! a burst of thunder shook the flood Slow rose a form in majesty of Mud; Shaking the horrors of his sable brows And each ferocious feature grim with ooze. Greater he looks and more than mortal stares; Then thus the wonders of the deep declares. ""First he relates how sinking to the chin Smit with his mien the mud-nymphs suck'd him in; How young Lutetia softer than the down Nigrina black and Merdamente brown Vy'd for his love in jetty bow'rs below As Hylas fair was ravish'd long ago. Then sung how shown him by the Nut-brown maids A branch of Styx here rises from the shades That tinctured as it runs with Lethe's streams And wafting vapors from the land of dreams (As under seas Alpheus' secret sluice Bears Pisa's offering to his Arethuse) Pours into Thames; and hence the mingled wave Intoxicates the pert and lulls the grave: Here brisker vapours o'er the Temple creep; There all from Paul's to Aldgate drink and sleep. ""Thence to the banks where rev'rend bards repose They led him soft; each rev'rend bard arose; And Milbourn chief deputed by the rest Gave him the cassock surcingle and vest. 'Receive (he said) these robes which once were mine Dulness is sacred in a sound divine.' He ceas'd and spread the robe; the crowd confess The rev'rend flamen in his lengthen'd dress. Around him wide a sable army stand A low-born cell-bred selfish servile band Prompt or to guard or stab to saint or damn Heav'n's Swiss who fight for any god or man. ""Through Lud's fam'd gates along the well-known Fleet Rolls the black troop and overshades the street Till show'rs of sermons characters essays In circling fleeces whiten all the ways: So clouds replenish'd from some bog below Mount in dark volumes and descend in snow."" The last of the contests offers one or two difficulties. The goddess will appoint her Supreme Judge in the Court of Criticism and she ordains a trial of qualifications. This is the manner of ordeal. A dull piece in prose and a dull piece in verse is to be read aloud. The auditor who remains the longest awake carries the election. The two preparations of Morphine exhibited are a sermon of H--ley's (Henley or Hoadley?) and Blackmore's Prince Arthur. Six candidate heroes present themselves three from the University and three from the Inns of Court. Some explanation seems to be required of an arrangement which allots extraordinarily high promotion in the State of Dulness to a real and prodigious effort of mental energy. What explanation can be given? Are the affairs of Dulness conducted in some respects by the same rules which obtain in the Commonwealth of Wit? Is it held there as here that the first step to be taken in order to forming a judgment of any book is to read it? Was it prudently considered that the dullest of critics can read only as long as his eyes are open? and that the function of judge must incessantly bring under his cognisance papaverous volumes with which only a super-human endowment of vigilance could hope successfully to contend? so that the goddess is driven by the necessity of the game to admit within the circuit of her somnolent sway a virtue to which she is naturally and peculiarly hostile? Or are we mistaken in supposing that vigour of mind really qualifies for hearing a dull book through? Is it dulness itself that the most ably listens to dulness? We are out of our element we presume for we arrive at no satisfactory solution. Be all this as it may the method of competition fails of accomplishing its end; and the chair after all is left vacant. Not that the divinity has in the least misjudged the way of operation proper to her beloved tomes; but she has miscalculated the strength of her sons. Every dull head of the congregated multitude--of the illustrious competitors--and of the two officiating readers bows overcome. There is perforce an end; and the chair is yet open to the whole kingdom. The trial involves another matter of some doubt. Do the two clerks read aloud at one and the same time? and to the same audience? The description conveys the impression that they do. If so one might have been tempted to fear that the sermon and the poem might have neutralized each other; but on the contrary the mixture worked like a patent. Where has Cibber been all the while and what has he been doing? ""_What su'd he hae been doin'? Sittin' on his nain lowpin'-on-stane--lukin' frae him._"" Joe Warton complains that he is too much of a passive hero. Why he is not so active as Achilles or even Diomed; yet in Book Second he is equal to Æneas. He is almost as long-winded and excels the Pious in this that he braves a fire of his own raising whereas the other flies from one kindled much against his will-- ""High on a gorgeous seat that far outshone Henley's gilt tub or Flecknoe's Irish throne Or that where on her Curls the public pours All-bounteous fragrant grains and golden showers GREAT CIBBER SATE! ----All eyes direct their rays On him _and crowds turn coxcombs as they gaze_!"" Is that being passive? The crowds are passive--not he surely who in the potent prime of coxcombhood without shifting his seat of honour breathes over all his subjects such family resemblance that they seem one brotherhood sprung from his own royal loins. Besides who ever heard in an Epic poem of a hero contending in games instituted in his own honour? Yet we do not fear to say that had he inspired by the spectacle of Curl and Osborne displaying their prowess for the fair Eliza leapt from his gorgeous ""seat "" and amid the shouts of the lieges in rainbow glory jointed the contest that infallibly he had won the day. We have the authority of Aristotle on our side. You cry aloud for an extract. Here is a superb one:-- ""'Ye Critics! in whose heads as equal scales I weigh what author's heaviness prevails; Which most conduce to sooth the soul in slumbers My H--ley's periods or my Blackmore's numbers; Attend the trial we propose to make: If there be man who o'er such works can wake Sleep's all-subduing charms who dares defy And boasts Ulysses' ear with Argus' eye; To him we grant our amplest pow'rs to sit Judge of all present past and future wit; To cavil censure dictate right or wrong Full and eternal privilege of tongue.' ""Three college sophs and three pert Templars came The same their talents and their tastes the same; Each prompt to query answer and debate And smit with love of poesy and prate. The pond'rous books two gentle readers bring; The heroes sit the vulgar form a ring. The clam'rous crowd is hush'd with mugs of mum Till all tun'd equal send a gen'ral hum. Then mount the clerks and in one lazy tone Through the long heavy painful page drawl on; Soft creeping words on words the sense compose At ev'ry line they stretch they yawn they doze. As to soft gales top-heavy pines bow low Their heads and lift them as they cease to blow; Thus oft they rear and oft the head decline As breathe or pause by fits the airs divine. And now to this side now to that they nod As verse or prose infuse the drowsy god. Thrice Budgel aim'd to speak but thrice supprest By potent Arthur knock'd his chin and breast. Toland and Tindal prompt at priests to jeer Yet silent bow'd to _Christ's no kingdom here_. Who sat the nearest by the words o'ercome Slept first; the distant nodded to the hum; Then down are roll'd the books stretch'd o'er 'em lies Each gentle clerk and mutt'ring seals his eyes. As what a Dutchman plumps into the lakes One circle first and then a second makes; What dulness dropt among her sons imprest Like motion from one circle to the rest: So from the midmost the nutation spreads Round and more round o'er all the _sea of heads_. At last Centlivre felt her voice to fail Motteux himself unfinish'd left his tale. Boyer the state and Law the stage gave o'er Morgan and Mandeville could prate no more; Norton from Daniel and Ostroea sprung Bless'd with his father's front and mother's tongue Hung silent down his never-blushing head And all was hush'd as Folly's self lay dead. ""Thus the soft gifts of Sleep conclude the day And stretch'd on bulks as usual poets lay. Why should I sing what bards the nightly Muse Did slumb'ring visit and convey to stews; Who prouder march'd with magistrates in state To some fam'd round-house ever-open gate! How Henley lay inspir'd beside a sink And to mere mortals seem'd a priest in drink: While others timely to the neighb'ring Fleet (Haunt of the Muses) made their safe retreat."" Ulysses and Æneas presented themselves alive and in the body as visitors in the land of departed souls. A descent to the shades is not wanting in our Epos. It fills the whole Third Book. But our poet again manages a discreet difference in his imitation. Our Dunce hero visits Elysium _in a dream_; whilst he sleeps his head recumbent on the lap of the goddess in the innermost recess of her sanctuary. His vision resembles the Trojan's rather than the Greek's adventure. ""A slipshod sibyl "" ""In lofty madness meditating song leads him. She seems to be typical of the half-crazed human poetess in usual sublime dishabille. Venerable shades of the Dull greet him. As in Virgil's Elysian fields a glimpse is afforded into the dark philosophy of human existence and we see the Lethean bank crowded with spirits who taste and become prepared to live again--so here. And as Æneas finds Anchises engaged in taking cognizance of the ghosts that are to animate Roman bodies so here Cibber sees a great Patriarch of Dulness Bavius (him of old classical renown ) dipping in Lethe the souls that are to be born dull upon the earth. The poet cannot resist a slight deviation from the doctrine of his original. By the ancient theory the Lethean dip extinguishes the memory of a past life of its faults and of their punishment; and thence the willingness to inhabit the gross earthy frame as generated anew. But the dip of Bavius is more powerful; it quenches the faculties that are innate in a spirit fitting it ""for a skull Of solid proof impenetrably dull."" The subterranean traveller then falls in with the ghost of Elkanah Settle who properly represents Anchises and expounds the glories of the Kingdom of Dulness. Something is borrowed also from the vision of Adam in the Eleventh Book of _Paradise Lost_. And something is original; for that which has been is declared as well as that which shall be; and the kingdom of intellectual darkness to the earth's verge displayed in visible presentment which the speaker interprets. The Emperor Chi Ho-am-ti who ordered a universal conflagration of books throughout his celestial dominions--the multitude of barbarous sons which the populous North poured from her frozen loins to sweep in deluge away the civilization of the South--figure here. Here is Attila with his Huns. Here is the Mussulman. Here is Rome of the dark ages. Great Britain appears last--the dulness which has blessed which blesses and which shall bless her. We extract the prophetical part. The visioned progress of Dulness has reached the theatres; and some sixteen verses which contain--says Warton well and truly--""some of the most lively and forcible descriptions any where to be found and are perfect pattern of a clear picturesque style "" call up into brilliant and startling apparition the ineffable monstrosities and impossibilities which constituted the theatrical spectacles of the day. The sight extorts the opening exclamation-- ""What pow'r he cries what pow'r these wonders wrought? Son what thou seek'st is in thee! look and find Each monster meets his likeness in thy mind. Yet would'st thou more? in yonder cloud behold Whose sarsenet skirts are edg'd with flamy gold A matchless youth! his nod these worlds controls Wings the red lightning and the thunder rolls. Angel of Dulness sent to scatter round Her magic harms o'er all unclassic ground: Yon' stars yon' suns he rears at pleasure higher Illumes their light and sets their flames on fire. Immortal Rich! how calm he sits at ease Midst snows of paper and fierce hail of pease! And proud his mistress' orders to perform Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm. ""But lo! to dark encounter in mid air New wizards rise; I see my Cibber there! Booth in his cloudy tabernacle shrin'd On grinning dragons thou shalt mount the wind. Dire is the conflict dismal is the din Here shouts all Drury there all Lincoln's Inn; Contending theatres our empire raise Alike their labours and alike their praise. ""And are these wonders Son to thee unknown? Unknown to thee! these wonders are thy own. These Fate reserv'd to grace thy reign divine Foreseen by me but ah! withheld from mine. In Lud's old walls though long I rul'd renown'd Far as loud Bow's stupendous bells resound; Though my own aldermen conferr'd the bays To me committing their eternal praise Their full-fed heroes their pacific may'rs Their annual trophies and their monthly wars: Though long my party built on me their hopes For writing pamphlets and for roasting Popes; Yet lo! in me what authors have to brag on! Reduc'd at last to hiss in my own dragon. Avert in Heav'n! that thou my Cibber e'er Shouldst wag a serpent-tail in Smithfield fair! Like the vile straw that's blown about the streets The needy poet sticks to all he meets; Coach'd carted trod upon now loose now fast And carry'd off in some dog's tail at last. Happier thy fortunes! like a rolling stone Thy giddy dulness still shall lumber on Safe in its heaviness shall never stray But lick up ev'ry blockhead in the way. Thee shall the Patriot thee the Courtier taste And ev'ry year be duller than the last; Till rais'd from booths to theatre to court Her seat imperial Dulness shall transport. Already Opera prepares the way The sure forerunner of her gentle sway: Let her thy heart next drabs and dice engage The third mad passion of thy doting age. Teach thou the warring Polypheme to roar And scream thyself as none e'er scream'd before! To aid our cause if Heav'n thou canst not bend Hell thou shalt move; for Faustus is our friend; Pluto with Cato thou for this shalt join And link the Mourning Bride to Proserpine. Grub Street! thy fall should men and gods conspire Thy stage shall stand insure it but from fire. Another Æschylus appears! prepare For new abortions all ye pregnant fair! In flames like Semele's be brought to bed While op'ning hell spouts wildfire at your head. ""Now Bavius take the poppy from thy brow And place it here! here all ye heroes bow! ""This this is he foretold by ancient rhymes: Th' Augustus born to bring Saturnian times. Signs following signs lead on the mighty year! See! the dull stars roll round and reappear. See see our own true Phoebus wears the bays! Our Midas sit Lord Chancellor of plays! On poets' tombs see Benson's titles writ! Lo! Ambrose Philips is preferr'd for wit! See under Ripley rise a new Whitehall While Jones' and Boyle's united labours fall: While Wren with sorrow to the grave descends Gay dies unpension'd with a hundred friends; Hibernian politics O Swift! thy fate; And Pope's ten years to comment and translate. ""Proceed great days! 'till Learning fly the shore Till Birch shall blush with noble blood no more; Till Thames see Eton's sons for ever play Till Westminster's whole year be holiday; Till Isis' elders reel their pupils' sport And Alma Mater lie dissolv'd in Port! ""Enough! enough! the raptur'd Monarch cries! And through the iv'ry gate the vision flies."" In Book Fourth the goddess occupies her throne. All the rebellious and hostile powers--wit logic rhetoric morality the muses--lie bound; and diverse votaries of Dulness successively move into presence. The first is OPERA who puts Handel to flight. Then flow in a crowd of all sorts. A part have been described:-- ""Nor absent they no members of her state Who pay her homage in her sons the great; Who false to Phoebus bow the knee to Baal Or impious preach his word without a call. Patrons who sneak from living worth to dead Withhold the pension and set up the head; Or vest dull Flattery in the sacred gown Or give from fool to fool the laurel crown; And (last and worst) with all the cant of wit Without the soul the Muse's hypocrite. ""There march'd the bard and blockhead side by side Who rhym'd for hire and patroniz'd for pride. Narcissus prais'd with all a parson's power Look'd a white lily sunk beneath a shower. There mov'd Montalto with superior air: His stretch'd out arm displayed a volume fair; Courtiers and patriots in two ranks divide Through both he pass'd and bow'd from side to side; But as in graceful act with awful eye Conpos'd he stood bold Benson thrust him by: On two unequal crutches props he came Milton's on this on that one Jonson's name. The decent Knight retir'd with sober rage Withdrew his hand and clos'd the pompous page: But (happy for him as the times went then) Appear'd Apollo's may'r and aldermen On whom three hundred gold-capt youths await To lug the pond'rous volume off in state. ""When Dulness smiling--'Thus revive the wits! But murder first and mince them all to bits! As erst Medea (cruel so to save!) A new edition of old Æson gave; Let standard authors thus like trophies borne Appear more glorious as more hack'd and torn. And you my Critics! in the chequer'd shade Admire new light through holes yourselves have made. ""'Leave not a foot of verse a foot of stone A page a grave that they can call their own But spread my sons your glory thin or thick On passive paper or on solid brick. So by each bard an alderman shall sit A heavy lord shall hang at ev'ry wit And while on Fame's triumphal car they ride Some slave of mine be pinion'd to their side.'"" A dreadful figure appears--THE SCHOOLMASTER. He eulogizes the system of education which teaches nothing but words and verse-making. ""A hundred head of Aristotle's friends"" pour in from the colleges--Aristarchus (Richard Bentley) at their head. He displays his own merits as a critic and extols the system of teaching in the universities; but strides away disgusted on seeing approach a band of young gentlemen returned from their travels on the Continent and accompanied by their travelling tutors and their mistresses. One of the tutors reports at large to the goddess on the style and advantages of their travels and presents his own pupil. Where is such another passage to be found in English poetry? It surpasses Cowper's celebrated strain on the same subject. ""In flow'd at once a gay embroider'd race And titt'ring push'd the pedants off the place: Some would have spoken but the voice was drown'd By the French horn or by the op'ning hound. The first came forwards with as easy mien As if he saw St James's and the Queen. When thus the attendant Orator begun; Receive great Empress! thy accomplish'd son: Thine from the birth and sacred from the rod A dauntless infant! never scar'd with God. The sire saw one by one his virtues wake; The mother begg'd the blessing of a rake. Thou gav'st that ripeness which so soon began And ceas'd so soon he ne'er was boy nor man; Through school and college thy kind cloud o'ercast Safe and unseen the young Æneas past; Thence bursting glorious all at once let down Stunn'd with his giddy larum half the town. Intrepid then o'er seas and lands he flew; Europe he saw and Europe saw him too. There all thy gifts and graces we display Thou only thou directing all our way! To where the Seine obsequious as she runs Pours at great Bourbon's feet her silken sons; Or Tiber now no longer Roman rolls Vain of Italian arts Italian souls: To happy convents bosom'd deep in vines Where slumber abbots purple as their wines; To isles of fragrance lily silver'd vales Diffusing languor in the panting gales: To lands of singing or of dancing slaves Love-whisp'ring woods and lute-resounding waves. But chief her shrine where naked Venus keeps And Cupids ride the Lion of the deeps; Where eas'd of fleets the Adriatic main Wafts the smooth eunuch and enamour'd swain. Led by my hand he saunter'd Europe round And gather'd ev'ry vice on Christian ground; Saw ev'ry court heard ev'ry king declare His royal sense of op'ras or the fair; The stews and palace equally explor'd Intrigu'd with glory and with spirit whor'd; Tried all _hors d'oeuvres_ all _liqueurs_ defin'd Judicious drank and greatly-daring din'd; Dropt the dull lumber of the Latin store Spoil'd his own language and acquir'd no more; All classic learning lost on classic ground; And last turn'd Air the echo of a sound! See now half-cur'd and perfectly well-bred With nothing but a solo in his head; As much estate and principle and wit As Jansen Fleetwood Cibber shall think fit; Stol'n from a duel follow'd by a nun And if a borough choose him not undone; See to my country happy I restore This glorious youth and add one Venus more. Her too receive (for her my soul adores ) So may the sons of sons of sons of whores Prop thine O Empress! like each neighbour throne And make a long posterity thy own. Pleas'd she accepts the hero and the dame Wraps in her veil and frees from sense of shame."" A set of pure idlers appear loitering about. Annius an antiquary begs to have them made over to him to turn into virtuosos. Mummius another antiquary quarrels with him and the goddess reconciles them. The minute naturalists follow ""thick as locusts."" ""Each with some wondrous gift approach'd the Power A nest a toad a fungus or a flower."" A florist lodges a heavy complaint against an entomologist. The singular beauty of the pleading on both sides has often been noticed and by the best critics from Thomas Gray to Thomas De Quincey. ""The first thus open'd: Hear thy suppliant's call Great Queen and common mother of us all! Fair from its humble bed I rear'd this flow'r Suckl'd and cheer'd with air and sun and show'r Soft on the paper ruff its leaves I spread Bright with the gilded button tipt its head. Then thron'd in glass and nam'd it Caroline: Each maid cry'd Charming; and each youth Divine! Did Nature's pencil ever blend such rays Such vary'd light in one promiscuous blaze? Now prostrate! dead! behold that Caroline: No maid cries charming! and no youth divine! And lo the wretch! whose vile whose insect lust Laid this gay daughter of the Spring in dust Oh punish him or to th' Elysian shades Dismiss my soul where no carnation fades. He ceas'd and wept. With innocence of mien The accus'd stood forth and thus address'd the Queen: ""Of all th' enamel'd race whose silv'ry wing Waves to the tepid zephyrs of the spring Or swims along the fluid atmosphere Once brightest shin'd this child of heat and air. I saw and started from its vernal bow'r The rising game and chas'd from flow'r to flow'r. It fled I follow'd now in hope now pain; It stopt I stopt; it mov'd I mov'd again. At last it fixed 'twas on what plant it pleas'd And where it fixed the beauteous bird I seiz'd: Rose or carnation was below my care; I meddle Goddess! only in my sphere. I tell the naked feet without disguise And to excuse it need but show the prize; Whose spoils this paper offers to our eye Fair ev'n death! this peerless butterfly."" The mighty mother cannot find it in her heart to pronounce a decision which must aggrieve one of such a devoted pair. She extols them both and makes over to their joint care and tuition the _fainéants_ aforesaid. The subject leads her into a more serious strain of thinking. There is an evident danger; for the studies which she recommends are studies of nature and the study of nature tends to rise out of nature. The goddess accordingly is strenuous in cautioning her followers to keep within the pale of trifles and of the sensible. The suggestion of the hazard fires a clerk a metaphysician who on the behalf of the metaphysicians undertakes for a theology that shall effectually shut out and keep down religion. Gordon the translator of Tacitus and publisher of the irreligious ""Independent Whig "" being mentioned by the orator of the metaphysicians with praise under the name of Silenus rises and advances leading up apparently the Young England of the day. He presents them as liberated from priest-craft and ready for drinking the cup of a ""Wizard old "" attached to the suite of the goddess. This ""Magus"" extends to them the cup of self-love. ""Which whoso tastes forgets his former friends Sire ancestors HIMSELF."" There is philosophy enough in the last piece of oblivion. Impudence pure mild Stupidity Self-conceit Interest the Accomplishment of Singing under the auspicious smile of the goddess take possession sundrily of her children; and the two great arts of Gastronomia scientific Eating and Drinking. The Queen confers her titles and degrees assisted by the two universities. She then dismisses the assembly with a solemn charge:-- ""Then blessing all Go children of my care! To _practice_ now from _theory_ repair. All my commands are easy short and full; My sons! be proud be selfish and be dull. Guard my prerogative assert my throne: This nod confirms each privilege your own. The cap and switch be sacred to his Grace; With staff and pumps the Marquis leads the race; From stage to stage the licens'd Earl may run Pair'd with his fellow-charioteer the Sun; The learned Baron butterflies design Or draw to silk Arachne's subtle line; The Judge to dance his brother sergeant call! The Senator at cricket urge the ball; The Bishop stow (pontific luxury!) An hundred souls of turkeys in a pie; The sturdy Squire to Gallic masters stoop And drown his lands and manors in a soup. Others import yet nobler arts from France Teach kings to fiddle and make senates dance. Perhaps more high some daring son may soar Proud to my list to add one monarch more; And nobly conscious princes are but things Born for first ministers as slaves for kings Tyrant supreme! shall three estates command _And make one mighty Dunciad of the land_! ""More she had spoke but yawn'd--All Nature nods: What mortal can resist the yawn of gods? Churches and Chapels instantly it reach'd; (St James's first for leaden G---- preach'd;) Then catch'd the Schools; the Hall scarce kept awake; The Convocation gap'd but could not speak: Lost was the Nation's sense nor could be found While the long solemn unison went round: Wide and more wide it spread o'er all the realm; Ev'n Palinurus nodded at the helm; The vapour mild o'er each Committee crept; Unfinish'd treaties in each office slept; And chiefless Armies doz'd out the campaign; And Navies yawn'd for orders on the main. ""O Muse! relate (for you can tell alone Wits have short memories and dunces none ) Relate who first who last resign'd to rest; Whose heads she partly whose completely blest What charms could faction what ambition lull The venal quiet and intrance the dull; Till drown'd was Sense and Shame and Right and Wrong-- O sing and hush the nations with thy song! * * * * * In vain in vain--the all-composing hour Resistless falls; the Muse obeys the pow'r. She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold Of Night primeval and of Chaos old! Before her fancy's gilded clouds decay And all its varying rainbows die away. Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires The meteor drops and in a flash expires. As one by one at dread Medea's strain The sick'ning stars fade off the ethereal plain; As Argus's eyes by Hermes' wand opprest Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest Thus at her felt approach and secret might Art after Art goes out and all is night. See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled Mountains of Casuistry heap'd o'er her head! Philosophy that lean'd on Heav'n before Shrinks to her second cause and is no more. Physic of Metaphysic begs defence And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense! See Mystery to Mathematics fly! In vain! they gaze turn giddy rave and die. Religion blushing veils her sacred fires And unawares Morality expires. Nor public flame nor private dares to shine; Nor human spark is left nor glimpse Divine; Lo! thy dread empire Chaos! is restor'd; Light dies before thy uncreating word: Thy hand great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; And universal Darkness buries All."" Mr Bowles himself a true poet thinks the Fourth Book the best. ""The objects of satire "" he says ""are more general and just: the one is confined to persons and those of the most insignificant sort; the other is directed chiefly to things such as faults of education false habits and false taste. In polished and pointed satire in richness of versification and imagery and in the happy introduction of characters speeches figures and every sort of poetical ornament adapted to the subject this Book yields in my opinion to none of Pope's writings of the same kind."" Excellently well said. But what inconsistency in saying at the same time ""These observations of Dr Warton are in general very just and sensible."" And again ""I by no means _think so meanly_ of it as Dr Warton."" Meanly indeed! Why he has just told us he thinks it equal to any thing of the same kind Pope ever wrote. But the distinguished Wintonian chose to speak nonsense rather than speak harshly of old Joe. What are Dr Warton's ""in general very just and sensible observations?"" ""Our poet was persuaded by Dr Warburton unhappily enough to add a Fourth Book to his finished piece of such a very different cast and colour as to render it at last one of the most motley compositions there is perhaps any where to be found in the works of so exact a writer as Pope. For one great purpose of this Fourth Book (where by the way the hero does nothing at all) was to satirize and proscribe infidels and freethinkers to leave the ludicrous for the serious Grub Street for theology the mock-heroic for metaphysics--which occasion a marvellous mixture and jumble of images and sentiments pantomime and philosophy journals and moral evidence Fleet Ditch and the High Priori road Curl and Clarke."" That reads like a bit of a prize-essay by a bachelor of arts in the ""College of the Goddess in the City."" The _Dunciad_ is rendered not only a motley but perhaps the most motley composition of an exact writer by a Book added to it when it was in a state of perfection--for as a Poem in Three Books ""it was clear consistent and of a piece."" This is not the way to make a poem motley nor a man. ""Motley's the suit I wear "" might have taught the Doctor better. They who don't like the Fourth Book can stop at the end of the Third and then the Poem is motley no more. It is in a higher strain than the Three and why not? The goddess had a greater empire than Warton who was a provincial had ever dreamt of in his philosophy; but in Pope's wide imagination it stood with all its realms. The hero had no more to say or to do--Cibber was banished to Cimmeria for life to work in the mines--and Dulness had forgotten she ever saw his face. ""Then rose the seed of Chaos and of Night To blot out order and extinguish light Of dull and venal a new world to mould And bring Saturnian days of lead and gold."" That long clumsy sentence about ""a marvellous mixture and jumble of images and sentiments "" &c. &c. &c. is pure nonsense. In itself the Fourth Book is most harmonio

sly constructed as a work of art and it rises out of and ascends from the Third a completed creation. To call that YAWN mock-heroic would be profane--it is sublime! ""Speaking of the _Dunciad_ "" continues the Doctor ""as a work of art in a critical not religious light I must venture to affirm that the subject of this Fourth Book was foreign and heterogeneous and the addition of it is injudicious ill-placed and incongruous as any of those similar images we meet with in Pulci or Ariosto."" The addition of a Fourth Book to a poem previously consisting of Three is not an image at all look at it how you will and cannot therefore be compared with ""any of those dissimilar images we meet with in Pulci or Ariosto."" We much admire Pulci and Ariosto especially Ariosto but they and their dissimilar images have no business here; and were Dr Joseph alive any where in the neighbourhood we should whistle in his ear not to be so ostentatious in displaying his Italian literature which was too thin to keep out the rain. ""It is "" he keeps stuttering on ""like introducing a crucifix into one of Teniers's burlesque conversation pieces."" We see no reason why a crucifix should not be in the room of a good Catholic during a burlesque conversation; and Teniers if he never have might have painted one in such a piece without offence had he chosen to do so; but the question we ask simply is what did Doctor Joseph Warton mean? Just nothing at all. ""On the whole "" stammereth the Doctor further on ""the chief fault of the _Dunciad_ is the violence and vehemence of its satire."" The same fault may be found with vitriolic acid nay with Richardson's Ultimate Result. No doubt that for many domestic purposes water is preferable--for not a few milk--and for some milk and water. But not with that latter amalgam did Hannibal force his way through the Alps. But softly--the Doctor compares the violence and vehemence of Pope's satire--no--not the violence and vehemence but the height--to water--but to water rare among the liquid elements. ""And the excessive height to which it is carried and which therefore I may compare to that marvellous column of boiling water near Mount Hecla in Iceland thrown upwards _above ninety feet_ by the force of subterraneous fire."" And he adds in a note to please the incredulous ""Sir Joseph Banks our great philosophical traveller had the satisfaction of seeing this wonderful phenomenon."" ""What are the impressions "" eloquently asks the inspired Joseph ""left upon the mind after a perusal of this poem? Contempt aversion vexation and anger. No sentiments that enlarge ennoble move or mend the heart! Insomuch so that I know a person whose name would be an ornament to these papers if I were suffered to insert it who after reading a book of the _Dunciad_ always soothes himself as he calls it by turning to a canto of the _Faery Queene_."" There is no denying that satire is apt to excite the emotions the Doctor complains of and few more strongly than the _Dunciad_. Yet what would it be without them--and what should we be? But other emotions too are experienced at some of the games; and some of an exalted kind by innumerable passages throughout the poem. Were it not so this would be a saturnine world indeed. Would we have had the name of the wise gentleman that it might ornament these papers who so frequently indulged in ""contempt aversion vexation and anger"" over Pope that he might soothe himself as he called it with Spenser. We wonder if he occasionally left the bosom of the _Faery Queene_ for that of the Goddess of Dulness. ""This is not the case with that very delightful poem _Mac-Flecnoe_ from which Pope has borrowed many hints and images and ideas. But Dryden's poem was the offspring of contempt and Pope's of indignation; one is full of mirth and the other of malignity. A vein of pleasantry is uniformly preserved through the whole of _Mac-Flecnoe_ and the piece begins and ends in the same key."" That very beautiful and delightful poem _Mac-Flecnoe!_ That very pretty and agreeable waterfall Niagara! That very elegant and attractive crater of Mount Vesuvius! That very interesting and animated earthquake vulgarly called the Great Earthquake at Lisbon! Having ourselves spoken of the good-humour of Dryden (some twenty pages back about the middle of this article ) we must not find fault with Warton for saying that a vein of pleasantry is preserved through the whole of _Mac-Flecnoe_; but what thought Mac-Flecnoe himself? ""Ay there's the rub."" Then what a vein of pleasantry is preserved through the whole of _Og_! So light and delicate is the handling that you might be charmed into the soft delusion that you beheld Christopher with his Knout. ""Since the total decay "" innocently exclaims this estimable man ""was foretold in the _Dunciad_ how many very excellent pieces of criticism poetry history philosophy and divinity have appeared in this country and to what a degree of perfection has almost every art either useful or elegant been carried?"" Mr Bowles--_mirabile dictu_--backs his old schoolmaster against the goddess. ""Can it be thought "" says the Canon--standing up for the age of Pope himself--""that this period was enlightened by Young Thomson Glover and many whose characters reflected equal lustre on religion morals and philosophy? But such is satire when it is not guided by truth."" All this might have been said in fewer words--""LOOK AT BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE."" There is not in the _Dunciad_ itself an instance of such stupidity recorded as this indignant attribution of blindness to the present and to the future ""as far off its coming shone "" to ""the seed of Chaos and old night "" by two divines editors both of the works of Alexander Pope Esq. in eight (?) and in ten volumes. Lord Kames in his _Elements of Criticism_ urges an objection to the opening of the _Dunciad_ which if sustained is sufficient to prove the whole poem vicious on beginning to end. ""This author (Pope) is guilty of much greater deviation from the rule. Dulness may be imagined a Deity or Idol to be worshipped by bad writers; but then some sort of disguise is requisite some bastard virtue must be bestowed to give this Idol a plausible appearance. Yet in the _Dunciad_ Dulness without the least disguise is made the object of worship. The mind rejects such a fiction as unnatural."" Warburton meets this objection with his usual _fierté_ and acumen. ""But is there no bastard virtue in the mighty Mother of so numerous an offspring which she takes care to bring to the ears of kings? Her votaries would for this single virtue prefer her influence to Apollo and the Nine Muses. Is there no bastard virtue in the peace of which the poet makes her the author?--'The goddess bade Britannia sleep.' Is she not celebrated for her beauty another bastard virtue?--'Fate this _fair_ idol gave.' One bastard virtue the poet hath given her; which with these sort of critics might make her pass for a wit; and that is her love of a joke--'For gentle Dulness ever loved a joke.' Her delight in games and races is another of her bastard virtues which would captivate her nobler sons and draw them to her shrine; not to speak of her indulgence to young travellers whom she accompanies as Minerva did Telemachus. But of all her bastard virtues her FREE-THINKING the virtue which she anxiously propagates amongst her followers in the Fourth Book might one would think have been sufficient to have covered the poet from this censure. But had Mr Pope drawn her without the least disguise it had not signified a rush. Disguised or undisguised the poem had been neither better nor worse and he has secured it from being rejected as unnatural by ten thousand beauties of nature."" This is too Warburtonian--and Lord Kames must be answered after another fashion by Christopher North. What would his lordship have? That she should be called by some other more specious name? By that of some quality to which writers and other men do aspire and under the semblance of which Dulness is actually found to mask itself--as Gravity Dignity Solemnity? Why two losses would thus be incurred. First the whole mirth of the poem or the greater part of it would be gone. Secondly the comprehensiveness of the present name would be forfeited and a more partial quality taken. The vigour and strength of the fiction requires exactly what Pope has done--the barefaced acceptance of Dulness as the imperial power. The poet acts in fact under a logical necessity. She is really the goddess under whose influence and virtue they her subjects live; whose inspiration sustains and governs their actions. But it would be against all manners that a goddess should not be known and worshipped under her own authentic denomination. To cheat her followers out of their worship by showing herself to them under a diversity of false appearances would have been unworthy of her divinity. As to the probability of the fiction the answer is plain and ready. Nobody asks for probability. Far otherwise. The bravery of the jest is its improbability. There is a wild audacity proper to the burlesque Epos which laughs at conventional rules and the tame obligations of ordinary poetry. The absurd is one legitimate source of the comic. For example are the GAMES probable? Take the reading to sleep--which is purely witty--a thing which the poet does not go out of his way to invent. It lies essentially on the theme being a literary ~agôn~; and it is indeed only that which is continually done (oh us miserable!) thrown into poetical shape. But it is perfectly absurd and improbable done in the manner in which it is represented--not therefore to be blamed but therefore to be commended with cachinnation while the world endures. The truth is that the Dunces are there not for the business of saying what they think of themselves or not that alone but they must say that which we think of them. They must act from motives from which men do not act. They must aspire to be dull and be proud of their dulness. They must emulate one another's dulness or they are unfaithful votaries. In short they are poetically made and should be so made to do consciously and purposely that which in real life they do undesignedly and unawares. Lord Kames goes wrong--and very far wrong indeed--though Warburton was not the man to set him right--through applying to a composition extravagantly conceived--an epic extravaganza--rules of writing that belong to a sober and guarded species. In a comedy you make a man play the fool without his knowing that he is one; because that is an imitation of human manners. And if you ironically praise the virtues of a villain you keep the veil of irony throughout. You do not now and then forget yourself and call him a villain by that name. But the spirit and rule of the poem here is that discretion and sobriety are thrown aside. Here is no imitation of manners--no veil. The persons of the poem under the hand of the poet are something in the condition of the wicked ghosts who come before the tribunal of the Gnossian Rhadamanthus; and whom he by the divine power of his judgment-seat constrains to bear witness against themselves. The poor ghosts do it knowing that they condemn themselves. Here the mirth of the poet makes the Dull glorify themselves by recounting each misdeed under its proper appellation. Joseph Warton mistakes the whole matter as much as Lord Kames. ""Just criticism "" says he ""calls on us also to point out some of the passages that appear exceptionable in the _Dunciad_. Such is the hero's first speech in which contrary to all decorum and probability he addresses the goddess Dulness without disguising her as a despicable being and even calls himself fool and blockhead. For a person to be introduced speaking thus of himself is in truth unnatural and out of character."" Would that the Doctor had been alive to be set at ease on this point by our explanations--but he is dead. They would have quieted his mind too about the celebrated speech of Aristarchus. ""In Book IV. "" he adds ""is such another breach of truth and decorum in making Aristarchus (Bentley) abuse _himself_ and laugh at his _own_ labours. ""The mighty scholiast whose unweary'd pains Made Horace dull and humbled Maro's strains Turn what they will to verse their toil is vain Critics like me shall make it prose again. For Attic phrase in Plato let them seek I poach in Suidas for unlicens'd Greek. For thee we dim the eyes and stuff the head With all such reading as was never read: For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it And write about it Goddess and about it."" If Bentley has turned Horace and Milton (Warton blunderingly reads Maro) into prose by his emendations (Milton assuredly he has--Pope may be wrong about Horace?) he has rendered vast service to the empire of Dulness; and it would be quite unreasonable that he should not claim of the goddess all merited reward and honour by announcing exactly this achievement. With what face could he pretend to her favour by telling her that he had restored the text of two great poets to its original purity and lustre? She would have ordered him to instant execution or to a perpetual dungeon. Finally how happened it that such perspicacious personages as Lord Kames and Dr Warton to say nothing of their hoodwinked followers should have thus objected to the passages and speeches singled out for condemnation as if they alone deserved it without perceiving that the whole poem from the first line to the last was on their principle liable to the same fatal objection? And what on their principle would they have thought had they ever read it of _Mac-Flecnoe_? Pope takes the name Dulness largely for the offuscation of heart and head. He said long before ""Want of decency is want of _sense_;"" and he now seems to think himself warranted in attributing vices and corruptions to a clouded understanding--so to Dulness. At least the darkness and weakness of the moral reason came under the protection of the mighty mother--the daughter of Chaos and of Night. She fosters the disorder and the darkness of the soul. Mere bluntness and inertness of intellect which the name would suggest he never confines himself to. Of sharp misused power of mind too she is the tutelary goddess. Errors which mind arrives at by too much subtlety by self-blinding activity serve her purpose and the poet's; and so some names of powerful intellects are included which on a question of their merits indeed had better been left out. So the science of mathematics far overstepping as the poet conceives the boundary of its legitimate activity-- ""Mad Mathesis alone---- Now running round the circle finds it square."" The real foe of Dulness then is Truth--not simply wit or genius. The night of mind is all that Dulness labours to produce. Misdirected wit and genius help on this consummation and therefore deserve her smile--all the more that they are her born enemies turned traitors to their native cause; and most formidable enemies too had they remained faithful. Needs must she load them with dignity and emoluments. Trace the thought. The poem begins from the real dull Dunces; and _their_ goddess is Dulness inevitably: nothing can be gainsaid there. This is the central origin. Go on. Pert or lively dunces who are not real dull will come in of due course. And from that first foundation the poet may lawfully go on to bring in perverted intelligence and moral vitiation of the soul. Reclining on our swing-chair--and waiting for the devil--with the _Æneid_ in the one hand and the _Dunciad_ in the other we have this moment made a remarkable discovery in ancient and in modern classic poetry. Virgil in his eighth book tells us that the pious Æneas handling and examining with delight the glorious shield which the Sire of the Forge has fabricated for him wonders to peruse storied there in prophetical sculptures the fates and exploits and renown of his earth-subduing descendants. In one of these fore-shadowing representations--that of the decisive sea-fight off the promontory of Actium--you might believe that under the similitude of the conflict and victory which delivered the sovereignty of the Roman world into the hand of Augustus the sly Father of the Fire has willed by hints to prefigure an everlasting war of light and darkness the irreconcilable hostility of the Wits and Dunces and the sudden interposition of some divine poet clothed with preternatural power for the ""foul dissipation and forced rout"" of the miscreated multitude. The foe whose pretensions to the empire of the world are to be signally defeated advances to the combat--""ope barbarica""--helped with a confederacy of barbarians. Queen Dulness herself is characteristically described as heartening and harking forward her legions with pure noise. ""REGINA in mediis _patrio_ vocat agmina sistro "" that is rather with her father Chaos's drum or the drum native to the land of Dulness. Either interpretation forcibly marks out the most turbulent and unintellectual of all musical instruments; and we think at once of her mandate on a later day ""'Tis yours to shake the soul With thunder rumbling from the mustard-bowl."" The contending powers are presented under a bold allegory. ""Omnigenumque Deûm MONSTRA et LATRATOR Anubis Contra NEPTUNUM et Venerem contraque Minervam Tela tenent."" Neptune prefigures this island the confessed ruler of the waves and the precise spot of the globe vindicated as we have seen by two great poets from the reign of Dulness. Venus is here understood in her noblest character as the Alma Venus of Lucretius's invocation as the Power of Love and the Beautiful in the Universe. The Goddess of Wisdom speaks for herself. Against them a heterogeneous rabble of monsters direct their artillery under a dog-headed barking protagonist (what a chosen symbol of an impudent wide-mouthed yelping Bayes!) the ringleader of the Cry of Dunces. Behold the striking and principal figure of the poet himself armed and ready to loose from his hand his unerring shafts. ""Actius hæc cernens arcum intendebat Apollo Desuper."" The poet impersonated in the patron god of all true poets is high Virgilian; and the proud station and posture and the godlike annihilating menace of that ""DESUPER"" is equally picturesque and sublime. The same verse continued brings out the effect of the god's or of the poet's interposition in the instantaneous consternation and utter scattering of the rascal rout. ""... Omnis eo terrore Ægyptus et Indus Omnis Arabs omnes vertebant terga Saboei."" The entire progeny of barbarism are off in full precipitation for a place of refuge if harbour or haven may be had. Or as the same inspired bard elsewhere has it--""fugêre feræ""--the wild beasts have fled. The triumph is complete. The panic seizes their imperial mistress herself who turning her prow sweeps with all sails set from the lost battle. ""Ipsa videbatur ventis REGINA vocatis Vela dare et laxos jam jamque immittere funes; Illam inter cædes pallentem morte futurâ Fecerat Ignipotens undis et Iapyge ferri."" And why is Augustus made Victor? Does not his name stand to all time as the emperor of good letters? Is an Augustan age a less precise and potential phrase for a golden age of the arts than a Saturnian age for the same of the virtues? And why is Antony beaten? Surely because he represents the collective Antony-Lumpkinism of literature. And what has the dear Cleopatra to do in the fight? The meretricious gipsy--the word is Virgil's own--by her illicit attractions and by the dusk grain of her complexion doubly expresses to the life the foul daughter of Night whom the Dunces obey and worship. Vulcan says Virgil made the shield like a god knowing the future. But here Virgil makes Vulcan. And we have now seen enough fully to justify the later popular tradition of his country in steadfastly attributing to him the fame of an arch-wizard. Looking at the thing in this light we derive extreme consolation from the final augurous words of our last citation--""pallentem morte futurâ""--which we oppose with confidence to the appalling final prophecy of Pope and believe that the goddess is as the nymphs were said to be exceedingly long-lived but not immortal. * * * * * _Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes Paul's Work._ "

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file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Library of Early Journals.) BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. NO. CCCLIX. SEPTEMBER 1845. VOL. LVIII. CONTENTS. ENGLISH LANDSCAPE--CONSTABLE 257 MAHMOOD THE GHAZNAVIDE. By B. SIMMONS 266 MARSTON; OR THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART XIX. 272 WATERTON'S SECOND SERIES OF ESSAYS 289 WARREN'S LAW STUDIES 300 MARGARET OF VALOIS 312 THE BARON VON STEIN 328 THE HISTORICAL ROMANCE 341 A FEW WORDS FOR BETTINA 357 NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. NO. VIII.--SUPPLEMENT TO MAC-FLECNOE AND THE DUNCIAD 366 EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 45 GEORGE STREET; AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW LONDON. _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._ SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES EDINBURGH. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCLIX. SEPTEMBER 1845. Vol. LVIII. ENGLISH LANDSCAPE--CONSTABLE.[1] The appearance of the second edition of Leslie's _Life of Constable_ invites attention to this truly English and original artist. We have read this volume with much interest. It is a graceful homage paid by a great living painter to the memory of one who is no more: a kindly and as we believe an honest testimony to the moral and professional worth of one whose works stand out with a striking and distinct character in the English school of landscape-painting and which we are confident will retain the place which they have slowly gained in public estimation as long as a feeling of pictorial truth in its more elevated sense and as distinct from a mere literal imitation of details shall continue to endure. Mr Leslie has accomplished his task with skill as well as good sense; for keeping the labours of the editor entirely in the background he has made Constable his own biographer--the work consisting almost entirely of extracts from his notes journals and correspondence linked together by the slenderest thread of narrative. Story indeed it may be said there was none to tell; for among the proverbially uneventful lives of artists that of Constable was perhaps the least eventful. His birth--his adoption of painting as a profession (for he was originally destined _pulverem collegisse_ in the drier duties of a miller)--his marriage after a long attachment on which parents had looked frowningly but which the lovers by patient endurance and confidence in each other brought to a successful issue--his death just when he had begun to feel that the truth and originality of his style were becoming better appreciated both abroad and at home; these with the hopes and fears and anxieties for a rising family which diversify the married life with alternate joys and sorrows form in truth the only incidents in his history. The incidents of a painter's life in fact are the foundation of his character the gradual development to his own mind of the principles of his art; and with Constable's thoughts and opinions his habits of study the growth of his style--if that term can be applied to the manner of one whose great anxiety it was to have no distinguishable _style_ whatever--with his manly frank affectionate and somewhat hasty disposition with his strong self-reliance and as we may sometimes think his overweening self-esteem--his strength of mind and his weaknesses--this volume makes us familiarly acquainted. Constable was born in 1776 at East Bergholt in Sussex. His father was in comfortable circumstances as may be gathered from the fact that the artist (one of six children) ultimately inherited £4000 as his share of the succession. He was thus entirely exempted from the _res angusta_ with which artists have so often to labour; although with the characteristic improvidence of his profession we still find that he had enough to do to make both ends meet. Born delicate he grew up a strong and healthy boy and was intended by his father who had succeeded by purchase or inheritance to sundry wind and water mills for a miller. Nay for about a year Constable actually performed that duty at one of his father's mills and it is said faithfully and assiduously. Yet he contrived to turn even this episode in his life to some advantage. He treasured up a multitude of mental studies of clouds and skies which to the wind-miller are always objects of peculiar interest and acquired that familiarity with mills and their adjuncts which justified his brother's observation--"When I look at a mill painted by John I see that it will _go round_ which is not always the case with those by other artists." Even before his short trial of a miller's life his love of drawing and painting had shown itself; but receiving little countenance from his father he had established a little sanctuary of his own in a workshop of a neighbouring plumber and glazier John Dunthorne a man of some intelligence and himself an indefatigable artist on an humble scale. His mother who seems from the first to have had something like a prophetic anticipation of his future eminence procured him an introduction to Sir George Beaumont who frequently visited his mother the dowager Lady Beaumont then residing at Dedham. The sight of a beautiful Claude--"The Hagar"--which Sir George generally carried with him when he travelled and of some water-colour drawings by Girtin which Sir George advised him to study as examples of truth and breadth seem to have determined his wavering resolution to become a painter; and the combined influence of Claude and Girtin may indeed be traced more or less during the whole course of his practice. His father appeared at last to have given a reluctant consent and the mill was abandoned for the painting-room or rather for the study of nature in the open air among the forest glades and by the still streams of Suffolk. Suffolk certainly might not appear at first sight to be the place which one would choose for the education of a great painter. Mountains it has none; to the sublimity arising from lake or precipice or the desolate expanse of moor and fell it has no pretension; from the spots where Constable chiefly studied even the prospect of old ocean was shut out; the country presented as he himself describes it only gentle declivities luxuriant meadow flats sprinkled with flocks and herds quiet but clear streams villages farms woodlands-- "The slow canal the yellow-blossom'd vale The willow-tufted bank and gliding sail." What influence scenery of a higher class might have had on Constable's mind it is not easy to decide; as it was the narrow circuit of a few miles round Bergholt within which the materials of his pictures are chiefly found became for him the epitome of English nature; and he associated the very ideal of beauty with those quiet nooks and scenes of tranquillity and amenity where he had first exercised his pencil and amidst which in after life he loved to linger. And in truth to a creative mind--for "it is the soul that sees " and renders back its vision--how much of beauty picturesque variety nay under certain aspects and conditions of the atmosphere how much of grandeur existed within this narrow circle! A friend of ours has maintained an ingenious thesis that there is no such thing as a bad day in nature; though whether after the aspect of the present summer he retains his opinion we think may be questioned. Constable certainly held a similar theory with regard to beauty in landscape. "Madam " said he to a lady who had denounced some object as ugly--"there is nothing ugly. I never saw an ugly thing in my life; for let the form of an object be what it may light shade and perspective will always make it beautiful." This indeed was the talisman with which he worked; _light and shade_--the magic of _chiaro-scuro_ applied to the simple elements of form which the rich pastures and woods of Suffolk afforded and a power of exhibiting the varied influences and character of the skies which if it has been equalled by Turner Calcott and Fielding has certainly never been surpassed by any British landscape-painter. Let us glance at some of those pictures of tranquil English nature which Constable's landscapes afford;--not professing to follow the details of any particular picture but embodying from recollection a few of their leading features as exhibited under those lights or atmospheric effects which he generally selected as in harmony with the sentiment of his scenes. We are standing for instance on a broken foreground across which the brier the dog-rose and the white bindweed have clasped themselves in fantastic tendrils. The white hemlock shoots up rankly by the hedge and the tall bulrush and water-lily mark the course of the little stream which is sliding noiselessly past among the grass. It is early morning as we see by the long oblique shadows. Yet industry is already at work. The wheel of that weather-stained and lichen-covered mill--call it Flatford if you will--is in motion and the dripping water glancing in the morning sun descends from the cogs in a shower of diamonds. The stream that supplies the mill is crossed further down by a rustic bridge as picturesque as it is inconvenient. Beyond and towards the centre a long wooded lane stretches out towards the horizon close and overarching at top but with the sunbeams straggling in between the trunks and checkering the cool road with a network of light and shadow. About midway a small spring trickling from a bank has been collected in a rude stone trough for the refreshment of panting horse and wayworn traveller; beside which two market wains--the one on its way to the neighbouring town the other returning from it--have stopped. The horses are watering; the waggoners gossiping over the news or smoking together the calumet of peace; while a group of urchins in whom the embryo ostler or future strapper are easily detected are looking on with that interest in all that concerns horseflesh which distinguishes the rising members of an agricultural population. Beyond the lane are gentle hills "rounded about by the low wavering sky"--some smoke indicating the market-town and the spire of the village church leading the eye out of the picture and crowning the cheerful serenity of the landscape. The day advances and the scene is changed. In the foreground we have a building-yard by the river. Boats and barges are seen in their rise progress decline and fall;--some completed some exhibiting merely their skeletons upon the stocks; some blistering in the sun beside the broken pier; some which have seen better days now entirely out of commission and falling to pieces among the mud;--placed in all attitudes and projecting broad and picturesque shadows along the ground. But these shadows are soft and transparent not dark and cutting; for the sultry haze which rises steaming from all around makes the summer sunshine veiled and dim. All nature is in a state of indolence. The lazy Stour sleeps beneath his fringes of elm and willow: a deep-laden barge comes leisurely along as if anxious not to disturb his slumbers: the horse has plainly enough to do to make out his four miles an hour; and there is a dog on deck who seems nervous about hydrophobia. The man at the bow depressing his head and elevating the lower part of his person to an American angle of elevation has thrown his sturdy limbs across yon well-stuffed sacks of wheat on their way to Flatford mill. Mercy on us! what can that fellow in the stern be about pretending to steer? Just as we suspected--fast asleep with his hand on the helm. Another change--from the building-yard to the corn-field. The wind has risen as the day advanced and driven off to the west the veil of vapour which had concealed the sun. The clouds ride high in heaven; and we see by their roll and motion that there is a refreshing air astir;--and there is need of it in this field of golden grain framed as it were in the solid green of those groves and over which the gray tower of Dedham church (which somehow or other finds its way into all these combinations of scenery) rises straight and motionless against the rounded forms of the ever-shifting sky. All here speaks of bustle and cheerful activity peace and plenty. It is impossible to look at the scene and think for a moment of the repeal of the corn-laws. Behind the stalwart band of reapers lie the heaps of sheaves that have already fallen beneath their sickle; the tall grain swept by the wind waves firm before them like a hostile rank yet unbroken; while the _lord_ as he is called in Suffolk or leading man among the reapers and mowers stands in advance of the rest as if urging a final charge. In truth there has been rather a lull among the workmen; for breezy as the day is still it is hot--the dinner-hour is nigh and there is a visible anxiety evinced for the arrival of the commissariat. At last it is seen in the offing: the reapers "sagacious of their quarry from afar " gather new vigour from the sight; and yonder tall fellow--an Irishman we are positive even at this distance--seizing his sickle like one inspired is actually working double tides. But stay we have got into wilder quarters and here has been a storm. Ay we thought the clouds after such a sultry morning were not rolling themselves into those ominous grey volumes for nothing. Broken ground lies before us in front seemingly part of an old gravel-pit down which winds a break-neck path lost at yonder turning. Beneath us a level flat where the sullen verdure of the vegetation betrays the marshy reedy sterile character of the soil. Pools of water here and there set amidst the swampy green reflect the dark and watery clouds that are scudding above them. The lavender the water-lily the mallow the fern the fox-glove luxuriate here; abundant food for botany but not exactly in the place one would choose for botanizing--particularly as is the case this moment within an hour of sundown. Beyond the flat the traces of a range of low hills their outline at present lost in rain. Overhead a spongy sky darkening into a lurid gloom to the right; for there the laden thunder-clouds are about to discharge their freight; and right underneath in the middle distance an unhappy windmill which has shortened sail during the preparatory blast stands glimmering like a ghost through the gloom obviously on the eve of the deluge. What may be the probable fate of the miller and his men in this conjuncture humanity of course declines to contemplate; but turning towards the left sees the sun struggling through the opening eyelids of the clouds the leaden hue of the sky on the right breaking off into a lustrous haze and a rainbow growing into form and colour which as it spans the dripping landscape from east to west gives token of a goodly day to-morrow. These are but a few of the combinations which even this limited range of scenery evidently presented to the eye and fancy of a man like Constable; nor is it wonderful after all that to such materials unpretending as they seem an artist embued with a genuine love of nature should have succeeded in imparting a peculiar charm and a never-ending freshness and variety. Amidst scenes of the sane tranquil cast did Hobbima and Waterlo find the subjects of those soothing pictures the spell of which is acknowledged equally by the profound student of art and the simple admirer of nature. Scenes not materially different in their character did Ruysdael envelope in grandeur depicting as Constable expresses it in one of his lectures "those solemn days peculiar to his country and to ours when without storm large rolling clouds scarcely permit a ray of sunlight to break the shades of the forest." And amidst the selfsame scenes--the same forest-lanes and brooks and woods and waters--with the same happy accompaniments of rustic incidents occupations or amusements--did Constable's predecessor Gainsborough find his academy. Very early in Constable's career he adopted the principle which regulated through life the character of his painting. "There is room enough " he writes after considering the Exhibition of 1802--"_There is room enough for a natural painter_. The great vice of the present day is bravura--an attempt to do something beyond the truth. Fashion always had and always will have its day; but truth in all things only will last and can only have just claims on posterity." Here indeed he felt and justly that there was an opening for him in the school of English landscape. Gainsborough who had first communicated truth and life to the treatment of the genuine scenery of England was no more. It is true the grosser absurdities of the Smiths of Chichester and the other compounders of landscapes _secundum artem_ with which we are familiar in the engravings of Woollet in whose performances a kind of pictorial millennium appears to be realized; where the English cottage stands side by side with the Italian villa and Norfolk bumpkins are seen making love to Arcadian shepherdesses knitting beneath the pillars of a Doric temple--these noxious grafts of a conventional taste upon the healthy stem of our native landscape-painting had disappeared. But still the influence of this conventional taste in a great measure remained--shown in the established belief that _subject_ made the picture and necessitating as was supposed the exclusive adoption of certain established modes of composition colouring and treatment from which the hardy experimentalist who should first attempt to deviate was sure for a time at least to encounter opposition; or what was more probable entire neglect. "In art " says Constable writing in 1829 "there are two modes by which men aim at distinction. In the one by a careful application to what others have accomplished the artist imitates their works or selects and combines their various beauties; in the other he seeks excellence at its primitive source nature. In the first he forms a style upon the study of pictures and produces either imitation or eclectic art; in the second by a close observation of nature he discovers qualities existing in her which have never been portrayed before and thus forms a style which is original. The results of the one mode as they repeat that with which the eye is already familiar are soon recognised and estimated; while the advances of the artist on a new path must necessarily be slow--for a few are able to judge of that _which deviates from the usual course or are qualified to appreciate original studies_." In this passage is contained both the principle of Constable's painting and the history of its results: for strange as it may seem so little do general observers look at nature with an observing and pictorial eye--so much are their ideas of what it contains received at second-hand by reflection from pictures--that the forms under which artists have combined to represent her (forms representing it may be a portion of the truth but certainly not the whole truth) have in the great majority of cases superseded the stamp and authority of nature; and truth itself where it did not steal in under a conventional garb has been refused admittance by more than one committee of taste. "What a sad thing " Constable writes to Leslie "that this lovely art is so wrested to its own destruction! Used only to blind our eyes and to prevent us from seeing the sun shine the fields bloom the trees blossom the foliage rustle; while old black rubbed-out and dirty canvasses take the place of God's own works!" With his mind made up as to the course to be adopted Constable betook himself to the study of nature on the spot. Careful _drawing_ was his first object as the substance to which the embodiment of colour and chiaroscuro was to be applied and without which though there might be effect there could be no truth. His studies of trees and foreground are said to have been eminently beautiful. These however he loved to exhibit in their vernal rather than their autumnal character. "I never did admire the autumnal tints even in nature--so little of a painter am I in the eye of common connoisseurship. I love the exhilarating freshness of spring." Buildings he did not court but rather avoided--though in later life he grappled successfully even with architectural detail as in his pictures of Salisbury Cathedral;[2] but in general he dealt with it sparingly. Shipping and coast-scenes he considered "more fit for execution than for sentiment." What he luxuriated in was the study of atmospheric effects and the principles of light and shadow as applied to his sylvan and pastoral landscapes. "I hold the genuine pastoral feeling of landscapes " said he writing in 1829 to his friend Archdeacon Fisher "to be very rare and difficult of attainment. It is by far the most lovely department of painting as well as of poetry." "Painting " he says in another letter "is with me but another word for feeling and I associate my careless boyhood with all that lies on the banks of the Stour. These scenes made me a painter and I am grateful." "Whatever may be thought of my art it is my own; and I would rather possess a freehold though but a cottage than live in a palace belonging to another." Thus feeling intensely the charm of nature--and confident that by the vivid representation of pastoral English landscape he could enable it to exercise upon other minds something of the same spell which it produced on his own--his whole efforts as he says himself were directed to forget pictures and to catch if possible the precise aspect which the scenery which he endeavours to portray presented at the moment of study. And here particularly it is that the genius of Constable is visible. A man of less reach of mind beginning as he did with this minute attention to the vocabulary of detail would probably have ended there. We should have had a set of pictures perfectly painted in parts but forming no consistent whole. All general effect would have been sacrificed to the impression to be produced by particulars. The very love of nature often leads to this error--as in the once-popular Glover and many others. But no one had a fuller sense than Constable that by this means pictures never can be created; that literal imitation of the details of nature is a delusion; because not only is the medium we use entirely inadequate but paint as we may with the most microscopic minuteness of detail the thousand little touches and reflexes of light and shade which soften and harmonize all things in nature are essentially evanescent and incapable of being transferred to canvass. He felt that a certain _substitute_ for nature awakening a corresponding impression upon the mind was all that he could be afforded by painting--that the spirit and not the letter of her handwriting was to be imitated. The object of painting as he himself expressed it "was to realize but not to feign: to remind but not to deceive." Hence while he perfectly succeeded in catching the spirit of the spot--so much so that Mr Leslie visiting the scenes of his pictures for the first time after his death declares "that he was absolutely startled by the resemblance"--he yet exercised over the whole that creative at least compounding art which arrayed the objects in the forms most harmonious to the eye and grouped the details into a whole telling in the most effective manner the story or conveying the impression it was intended to create. The composition of a picture he used to say "was like a sum in arithmetic--take away or add the smallest item and the whole was certain to be wrong." As a consequence we think of this conviction that nature is not to be _literally imitated_ in her colours or forms but that some compromise is to be found by which though on a lower key a similar impression is to be made on the eye and through that on the mind is the general abstinence from positive colour which distinguishes Constable's paintings. It was not that he adopted the conventional orange and brown of the continental school or shrank from endeavouring to carry the full impression of the dewy verdure of English landscape. For these subterfuges in art he had an abundant contempt. "Don't you find it very difficult to determine " said Sir George Beaumont (who with all his fine feelings of art certainly looked at nature through a Claude Lorraine medium ) "where to place _your brown tree_?" "Not in the least " was Constable's answer "for I never put such a thing into a picture." On another occasion when Sir George was recommending the colour of an old Cremona fiddle as a good prevailing tone for every thing Constable answered the observation by depositing an old Cremona on the green lawn in front of the house at Cole-Orton. But what we mean is this--that to produce the effect which green or red produces in nature it does not follow that green or red are to be used in art and that the impression of these colours will often be better brought out by tints in which but a very small portion of either is to be found. Mr Leslie has remarked this peculiarity in several of Constable's pictures. Speaking of Constable's _Boat-building_ he observes--"In the midst of a meadow at Flatford a barge is seen on the stocks while just beyond it the river Stour glitters in the still sunshine of a hot summer's day. This picture is a proof that in landscape what painters call warm colours are not necessary to produce a warm effect. It has indeed no positive colour and there is much of gray and green in it; but such is its atmospheric truth that the tremulous vibration of the heated air near the ground seems visible." Again with regard to a small view from Hampstead heath. "The sky is of the blue of an English summer day with large but not threatening clouds of a silvery whiteness. The distance is of a deep blue and the near trees and grass of the freshest green; for Constable could never consent to patch up the verdure of nature to obtain warmth. These tints are balanced by a very little warm colour on a road and gravel-pit in the foreground a single house in the middle distance and the scarlet jacket of a labourer. Yet I know no picture in which the mid-day heat of summer is so admirably expressed; and were not the eye refreshed by the shade thrown over a great part of the foreground by some young trees that border the road and the cool blue of water near it one would wish in looking at it for a parasol as Fuseli wished for an umbrella when standing before one of Constable's showers." It was probably the manner of Constable's execution as much as any thing else which for a time interposed a serious obstacle to his success; particularly with artists or persons accustomed to attend to the executive detail of painting. "My pictures will never be popular " he said "for they have no handling; but I do not see _handling_ in nature." His aim in fact though we must admit it was not always successful was to exhibit art but not artifice--to efface all traces of the mere mode of execution--to conceal the handwriting of the painter and to imitate those mysterious processes by which nature produces her effects where all is shadowy glimmering indefinable yet pregnant with suggestion. In Turner more than any other modern artist--for in this respect we think he far excelled Constable--is this alchymy of art carried to perfection. Look closely at his pictures and a few patches dashes and streaks only are visible which seem a mere chaos of colour; but retire to the proper distance what magnificent visions grow into shape; how the long avenue lengthens out for miles; how the sun-clad city brightens on the mountain--the stream descends _from_ the eye--the distance spreads out into infinity!--all these apparently unmeaning spots or accidents of colour in which it is difficult to detect the work of the hand or pencil at all being in fact mysterious but speaking hieroglyphics based on profound combinations of colour and light and shadow and full of the finest harmonies to all who can look at nature with the eye of imagination. Constable a we have said was not always successful in this the most hazardous of all attempts in painting. If the touches of pure white which he seemed to scatter on his trees as if from a half-dry brush sometimes assisted the dewy effect which he loved to produce they very often from the absence of that power of _just calculation_ which Turner seems so unerringly to possess produced a spotty effect as if the trees had been here and there powdered with snow. Very frequently he exchanged the pencil for the palette knife in the use of which he was very dexterous but which Mr Leslie admits he occasionally carried to a blamable excess loading his pictures with a _relievo_ of colour and provoking the remark that if he had not attained breadth he had at least secured thickness. On the whole Constable though now and then missing his object--sometimes it would seem as in his skies from overlabouring his effect and trying too studiously to arrest and embody fleeting effects--was eminently successful in the result at which he aimed--that of conveying vividly and almost irresistibly the sentiment and delineative character of the scene. We have already quoted Fuseli's well-known remark when standing before one of his showery pictures. "I feel the wind blowing on my face " was honest Jack Banister's remark (no bad judge by the by ) while contemplating another of his breezy scenes with the rolling clouds broken up by means of sunshine and the bending trees turning out their lighter lining to the gale. "Come here " was the remark of a French painter in the exhibition of the Louvre in 1824; "look at this picture by an Englishman--_it is steeped in dew_." "We never ask " said Mr Purton "whether his figures be well or ill placed; _there they are and unless they choose to move on there they must remain_." This truth and artlessness and natural action or repose of his figures only equalled in the English landscape by those of Gainsborough and Collins he probably owed in some measure to an observation of an early acquaintance-- Antiquity Smith as he was nicknamed by his brother artists who at the commencement of his studies had given him this judicious advice:--"Do not set about _inventing_ figures for a landscape _taken_ from nature; for you cannot remain an hour on any spot however solitary without the appearance of some living thing that will in all probability accord better with the scene and time of day than will any invention of your own." With Constable's strong natural tastes and his long-considered views of landscape--at least that landscape for which he felt a vocation--it may be doubted whether he would have gained any thing by an acquaintance with continental scenery leading as it generally does to the adoption of a certain fixed mode of treatment or even by a more familiar intercourse with the grander features of our own country. He seems to have felt that his originality was in some degree connected with the _intimacy_ of his acquaintance with that domestic nature the study of which he chiefly cultivated and which was matured by constant repetition and comparison of impressions. A circuit of a few miles in fact bounds his bosky bourne from side to side; a circuit of a few hundred yards embraces the subject of nearly half his favourite studies. "The Dutch " he says in one of his journals "were _stay-at-home_ people; _hence_ the source of their originality." "In the education of an artist " says Mr Leslie with great good sense "it is scarcely possible to foresee what circumstances will prove advantageous or the reverse; it is on looking back only that we can judge of these things. Travelling is now the order of the day--and it may sometimes prove beneficial; but to Constable's art there can be little doubt that the confinement of his studies with the narrowest bounds in which perhaps the studies of an artist ever were confined was in the highest degree favourable; for a knowledge of atmospheric effects will be best attained by _a constant study_ of the same objects under every change of seasons and of the times of day. His ambition it will be borne in mind was not to paint many things imperfectly but to paint a few well." A motto in truth worthy of any of the seven sages--applicable to many things besides painting--and which can scarcely be applied in vain to any. _Not many things imperfectly but a few well!_ * * * * * With these imperfect remarks on the general character of Constable's pictures we pass at once to a few extracts from the correspondence which as we have already said makes up the substance of the present volume. Among the letters by much the most striking and amusing are those of Constable's early and steady friend Archdeacon Fisher--an admirable judge of art and himself a very respectable artist. His excell

nt sense--his kindness--his generosity--which laboured to make its object forget the boon or at least the benefactor; his strong attachment to his order yet with a clear perception of the drawbacks inherent in the English hierarchical system; the caustic and somewhat cynical turn of his remarks on contemporary art--communicate great spirit liveliness and interest to his letters. In many things he resembles Paley of whom he seems to have been a warm admirer. He had a thorough appreciation of the excellences of Constable both moral and professional; but he had a keen eye also to the occasional weaknesses want of method and inattention to trifles which now and then disfigured them. ""Pray "" he enquires on one occasion ""how many dinners a-week does your wife get you to eat at a regular hour and like a Christian?"" ""Where real business is to be done "" said he speaking of and to Constable on another occasion ""you are the most energetic and punctual of men. In smaller matters--such as putting on your breeches--you are apt to lose time in deciding which leg shall go in first."" Such an adviser and critic was of the utmost use to Constable; for he never failed to convey to him his candid impressions and advice--and they were generally just though not always followed. Being of opinion that Constable was repeating too often the same effects he writes: ""I hope you will diversify your subject this year as to time of day. Thomson you know wrote not four summers but four seasons. People get tired of mutton at top mutton at bottom and mutton at the side though of the best flavour and size."" This was touching a sore point and Constable replies: ""I am planning a large picture and I regard all you say; but I do not enter into that notion of varying one's plans to keep the public in good-humour. Change of weather and effect will always afford variety. What if Vander Velde had quitted his sea-pieces or Ruysdael his waterfalls or Hobbima his native woods? The world would have lost so many features in art. I know that you wish for no material alteration; but I have to combat from high quarters--even from Lawrence--the plausible argument that _subject_ makes the picture. Perhaps you think an evening effect might do; perhaps it might start me some new admirers but I should lose many old ones. I imagine myself driving a nail: I have driven it some way and by persevering I may drive it home; by quitting it to attack others though I may amuse myself I do not advance beyond the first while that particular nail stands still. No one who can do any one thing well will be able to do any other different thing equally well; and this is true even of Shakspeare the greatest master of variety."" Constable was in a condition in fact to quote the Archdeacon against himself; for in 1827 Fisher had written: ""I must repeat to you an opinion I have long held that no man had ever more than one conception. Milton emptied his mind in the first part of _Paradise Lost_. All the rest is transcript of self. The _Odyssey_ is a repetition of the _Iliad_. When you have seen one Claude you have seen all. I can think of no exception but Shakspeare; he is always varied never mannered."" Here is a graphic sketch by Constable of one who had known better days and whom it is probable those conversant with art about that time may recognise. We shall not fill up the asterisks. ""A poor wretched man called to see me this morning. He had a petition to the Royal Academy for charitable assistance--it was * * *. His appearance was distress itself and it was awful to behold to what ill conduct may bring us; yet calamity has impressed even on this man an air of dignity: he looked like Leslie's Don Quixote. When I knew him at the Bishop's he wore powder had a soft subdued voice and always a smile which caused him to show some decayed teeth; and he carried a gold-headed cane with tassels. Now how changed! His neck long with a large head thin face nose long mouth wide eyes dark and sunken eyebrows lifted hair abundant straight erect and very greasy his body much emaciated and shrunk away from his dismal black clothes and his left arm in a sling from a fall by which he broke the left clavicle. I shall try the Artists' Fund for him. I cannot efface the image of this ghostly man from my mind."" Here are two clerical sketches as a _pendant_ by Fisher:--""I write this sitting in commission upon a dispute between a clergyman and his parishioners and compose while the parties argue. There is a brother parson arguing his own case with powder white forehead and a very red face like a copper vessel newly tinned. He is mixing up in a tremulous note with an eager bloodshot eye accusations apologies statements reservations and appeals till his voice sounds on my ear as I write like a distant waterfall."" ""* * * and * * * have been together on the visitation for three weeks. They have neither broken bread nor spoken together nor I believe seen one another. What a mistake our Oxford and Cambridge apostolic missionaries fell into when they made Christianity a stern haughty thing! Think of St Paul with a full-blown wig deep shovel-hat apron round belly double chin deep cough stern eye rough voice and imperious manner drinking port-wine and laying down the law as to the best way of escaping the observation of the Curates' Residence Act!"" The Archdeacon himself was not without a little vanity however on the subject of his sermons and once received a quiet hit from Constable on the subject. Having preached an old sermon once (which he was not aware that Constable had heard before ) he asked him how he liked it. ""Very much indeed Fisher "" replied Constable; ""_I always did like that sermon._"" Like most men of original mind Constable had a very just and manly taste in other matters besides painting. He read but few poets but he read these with understanding and hearty enjoyment. To arouse his attention it was necessary that they should be original and vigorous. For the mere artistic skill or cultivated taste displayed by some of the popular poets of the day he had no sympathy. Of Milman for instance he writes: ""It is singular that I happened to speak of Milman. No doubt he is learned _but it as not fair to encumber literature_. The world is full enough of what has been already done; and as in the art there is plenty of fine painting but very few good pictures so in poetry there is plenty of fine writing and I am told his is such and as you say gorgeous _but it can be compared. Shakspeare cannot nor Burns nor Claude nor Ruysdael; and it has taken me twenty years to find this out._"" It was on this principle that he classed together Dutch and Italian art--Claude and Ostade Titian and Ruysdael. For different as their modes of execution were they fulfilled his prime condition of having furnished the world with something self-consistent independent and original. ""Every truly original picture "" he would say ""is a separate study and governed by laws of its own; so that what is right in one would be often literally wrong if transferred to another."" It may be anticipated that Constable who had no half opinions on any subject would know his own worth and rate himself at his due value. To his friend Fisher he does not hesitate to praise his own pictures with a _naïveté_ that is amusing but which was in harmony with his general severity and dislike of affectation. He would not even affect a false modesty but spoke of his own performances as he would have done of those of others. ""My Lock "" he says in one of his letters ""is now on the easel: it is silvery windy and delicious--all health and the absence of any thing stagnant and is wonderfully got together. The print will be very fine."" ""My new picture of Salisbury "" he writes in another ""is very beautiful; but when I thus speak of my pictures remember it is _to you_ and only in comparison with myself."" Mr Leslie mentions that he had retained these and similar effusions contrary to the advice of one with whose opinion on other points he generally coincided. He has guessed rightly; for without such revelations we should be but imperfectly acquainted with the man. He adds with truth ""The utterance of a man's real feelings is more interesting though it may have less of dignity than belongs to a uniform silence on the subject of self; while the vanity is often no greater in the one case than in the other."" Of his tender domestic affectionate disposition almost every letter in this volume exhibits proofs. We cannot better illustrate this than by quoting some passages from his letters to his wife while on a visit to Sir George Beaumont at Cole-Orton: while these letters exhibit one of the most delightful pictures of the country life of an accomplished gentleman an excellent artist and a kind patron. It is true that between Sir George and Constable not a few differences in point of taste existed; the baronet was rather an ingenious eclectic than an original painter; his natural belief was that beyond the pale of Claude and Wilson an artist's salvation was at least doubtful; but he was too accomplished too keen-sighted an observer not to be shaken in his theories by the sight of high and original art and too liberal not to admit at last--as Toby did in the case of the fly--that the world was wide enough for both. ""_To_ MRS CONSTABLE. ""_November 2d._--The weather has been bad; but I do not at all regret being confined to this house. The mail did not arrive yesterday till many hours after the time owing to some trees being blown down and the waters out. * * * I am now going to breakfast before the Narcissus of Claude. How enchanting and lovely it is! far very far surpassing any other landscape I ever beheld. Write to me. Kiss and love my darlings. I hope my stay will not exceed this week."" In one of his letters from Cole-Orton to his wife Constables says:-- ""Sir George rises at seven walks in the garden before breakfast and rides out about two--fair or foul. We have had breakfast at half-past eight; but to-day we began at the winter hour--nine. We do not quit the breakfast-table directly but chat a little about the pictures in the room. We then go to the painting-room and Sir George most manfully sets to work and I by his side. At two the horses are brought to the door. I have had an opportunity of seeing the ruins of Ashby the mountain stream and rocks (such Everdingens!) at Grace-Dieu and an old convent there--Lord Ferrers'--a grand but melancholy spot. At dinner we do not sit long; Lady Beaumont reads the newspaper (the _Herald_) to us; and then to the drawing-room to tea; and after that comes a great treat. I am furnished with some portfolios full of beautiful drawings or prints and Sir George reads a play in a manner the most delightful. On Saturday evening it was 'As You Like It;' and I never heard the 'seven ages' so admirably read before. Last evening Sunday he read a sermon and a good deal of Wordsworth's 'Excursion.' Some of the landscape descriptions in it are very beautiful. About nine the servant comes in with a little fruit and a decanter of water; and at eleven we go to bed. I always find a fire in my room and make out about an hour longer as I have every thing there--writing-desk &c.--and I grudge a moment's unnecessary sleep in this place. You would laugh to see my bed-room I have dragged so many things into it--books portfolios prints canvasses pictures &c."" ""_November 9._--How glad I was my dear love to receive your last kind letter giving a good account of yourself and our dear babies. * * * Nothing shall I hope prevent my seeing you this week; indeed I am quite nervous about my absence and shall soon begin to feel alarmed about the Exhibition. * * * I do not wonder at your being jealous of Claude. If any thing could come between our love it is him. I am fast advancing a beautiful little copy of his study from nature of a little grove scene. If you my dearest love will be so good as to make yourself happy without me for this week it will I hope be long before we part again. But believe me I shall be the better for this visit as long as I live. Sir George is never angry or pettish or peevish and though he loves painting so much it does not harass him. You will like me a great deal better than you did. To-morrow Southey is coming with his wife and daughter. I know you would be sorry if I were not to stay and meet him he is such a friend of Gooch's; but the Claudes the Claudes are all all I can think of here. * * * The weather is so bad that I can scarcely see out of the window but Friday was lovely. I shall hardly be able to make you a sketch of the house but I shall bring you much though in little compass to show you. * * * Thursday was Sir George's birth-day. Sixty-nine and married almost half a century. The servants had a ball and I was lulled to sleep by a fiddle."" ""_November 18._--My dearest love * * * I was very glad to hear a very nice account of you and my dear babies. * * * I shall finish my little Claude on Thursday; and then I shall have something to do to some of Sir George's pictures that will take a day or two more and then home. * * * I sent you a hasty shabby line by Southey but all that morning I had been engaged on a little sketch in Miss Southey's album of this house which pleased all parties here very much. Sir George is loath to part with me. He would have me pass Christmas with him and has named a small commission which he wished me to execute here; but I have declined it as I am desirous to return. Sir George is very kind and I have no doubt meant this little picture to pay my expenses. I have worked so hard in the house that I never went out of the door last week so that I am getting quite nervous. But I am sure my visit here will be ultimately of the greatest advantage to me and I could not be better employed to the advantage of all of us by its making me so much more of an artist. * * * The breakfast bell rings. I now hasten to finish as the boy waits. I really think seeing the habits of this house will be of service to me as long as I live. Every thing so punctual. Sir George never looks into his painting-room on a Sunday nor trusts himself with a portfolio. Never is impatient. Always rides or walks for an hour or two at two o'clock; so will I with you if it is only into the square. I amuse myself every evening making sketches from Sir George's drawings about Dedham &c. I could not _carry_ all his sketch-books. * * * I wish I had not cut myself out so much to do here; but I was greedy with the Claudes."" In his next letter to his wife Constable deplores the facility with which he allowed his time to be consumed by loungers in his painting-room--an evil his good-nature to the last entailed on him. Mrs Constable in one of her letters had said:--""Mr **** was here nearly an hour on Saturday reading the paper and talking to himself. I hope you will not admit him so often. Mr **** another lounger has been here once or twice."" ""_Cole-Orton Hall November. 21st._--My dearest love I am as heartsick as ever you can be at my long absence from you and all our dear darlings but which is now fast drawing to a close. In fact my greediness for pictures made me cut out for myself much more work than I ought to have undertaken at this time. One of the Claudes would have been all that I wanted but I could not get at that first and I had been here a fortnight before I began it. To-day it will be done with perhaps a little touch on Saturday morning. I have then an old picture to fill up some holes in. But I fear I shall not be able to get away on Saturday though I hope nothing shall prevent me on Monday. I can hardly believe I have not seen you or my Isabel or my Charley for five weeks. Yesterday there was another very high wind and such a splendid evening as I never before beheld at this time of the year Was it so with you? But in London nothing is to be seen worth seeing in the NATURAL way. ""I certainly will not allow of such serious interruptions as I used to do from people who devour my time brains and every thing else. Sir George says it is quite serious and alarming. Let me have a letter on Sunday my last day here as I want to be made comfortable on my journey which will be long and tiresome and I shall be very nervous as I get near home; therefore pray let me have a good account of you all. I believe some great folks are coming here in December which Sir George dreads as they so much interfere with his painting habits; for no artist can be fonder of the art."" ""_November 25th._--My very dearest love I hope nothing will prevent my leaving this place to-morrow afternoon and that I shall have you in my arms on Thursday morning and my babies; Oh dear! how glad I shall be. I feel that I have been AT SCHOOL and can only hope that my long absence from you may ultimately be to my great and lasting improvement as an artist and indeed in every thing. If you have any friends staying with you I beg you will dismiss them before my arrival."" We have already said we have no intention of going through the meagre incidents in the life of Constable. He was elected an Academician in 1829 after the death of his wife which took place the year before. Much as he was pleased at the attainment of the honour he could not help saying ""It has been delayed till I am solitary and cannot impart it."" He could not add with Johnson ""until I am _known_ and do not _want it_;"" for probably no painter of equal genius was at that time less generally known in his own country. Two days before he writes ""I have just received a commission to paint a _mermaid_ for a _sign to an inn_ in Warwickshire! This is encouraging and affords no small solace after my previous labours on landscape for twenty years."" His death took place in 1837. ""On Thursday the 30th of March I met him at a general assembly of the Academy; the night though very cold was fine he walked a great part of the way home with me. The most trifling occurrences of that evening remain on my memory. As we proceeded along Oxford Street he heard a child cry on the opposite side of the way: the griefs of childhood never failed to arrest his attention and he crossed over to a little beggar girl who had hurt her knee; he gave her a shilling and some kind words which by stopping her tears showed that the hurt was not very serious and we continued our walk. Some pecuniary losses he had lately met with had disturbed him but more because they involved him with persons disposed to take advantage of his good feelings than from their amount. He spoke of these with some degree of irritation but turned to more agreeable subjects and we parted at the west end of Oxford Street laughing. I never saw him again alive. ""The whole of the next day he was busily engaged finishing his picture of Arundel Mill and Castle. One or two of his friends who called on him saw that he was not well but they attributed this to confinement and anxiety with his picture which was to go in a few days to the Exhibition. In the evening he walked out for a short time on a charitable errand connected with the Artists' Benevolent Fund. He returned about nine o'clock ate a hearty supper and feeling chilly had his bed warmed--a luxury he rarely indulged in. It was his custom to read in bed; between ten and eleven he had read himself to sleep and his candle as usual was removed by a servant. Soon after this his eldest son who had been at the theatre returned home and while preparing for bed in the next room his father awoke in great pain and called to him. So little was Constable alarmed however that he at first refused to send for medical assistance. He took some rhubarb and magnesia which produced sickness and he drank copiously of warm water which occasioned vomiting but the pain increasing he desired that Mr Michele his near neighbour should be sent for who very soon attended. In the mean time Constable had fainted his son supposing he had fallen asleep. Mr Michele instantly ordered some brandy to be brought; the bed-room of the patient was at the top of the house the servant had to run down-stairs for it and before it could be procured life was extinct; and within half an hour of the first attack of pain. ""A _post-mortem_ investigation was made by Professor Partridge in the presence of Mr George Young and Mr Michele but strange to say the extreme pain Constable had suffered could only be traced to indigestion no indications of disease were any where discovered sufficient in the opinion of those gentlemen to have produced at that time a fatal result. Mr Michele in a letter to me describing all he had witnessed says 'It is barely possible that the prompt application of a stimulant might have sustained the vital principle and induced reaction in the functions necessary to the maintenance of life.' ""Constable's eldest son was prevented from attending the funeral by an illness brought on by the painful excitement he had suffered; but the two brothers of the deceased and a few of his most intimate friends followed the body to Hampstead [3] where some of the gentlemen residing there who had known Constable voluntarily joined the procession in the churchyard. The vault which contained the remains of his wife was opened he was laid by her side and the inscription which he had placed on the tablet over it 'Eheu! quam tenui e filo pendet _Quidquid in vitâ maxime arridet!_' might will be applied to the loss his family and friends had now sustained. The funeral service was read by one of those friends the Rev. T. J. Judkin whose tears fell fast on the book as he stood by the tomb."" MAHMOOD THE GHAZAVIDE.[4] BY B. SIMMONS. I. Hail to the morn that reigneth Where KAFF [5] since time began Allah's eternal sentinel Keeps watch upon the Sun; And through the realms of heaven From his cold dwelling-place Beholds the bright Archangel For ever face to face! KAFF smiles--the loosen'd morning On Asia is unfurl'd! Sind[6] flashes free and rolls a sea Of amber down the world! Lo! how the purple thickets And arbours of Cashmere Beneath the kindling lustre A rosier radiance wear! Hail to the mighty Morning That odorously cool Comes down the nutmeg-gardens And plum-groves of Cabool! Cold 'mid the dawn o'er GHAZNA The rivall'd moon retires; As on the city spread below Far through the sky's transparent glow A hundred gold-roof'd temples throw Their crescents' sparkling fires. II. The Imam's cry in Ghazna Has died upon the air And day's great life begins to throng Each stately street and square. The loose-robed turban'd merchants-- The fur-clad mountaineers-- The chiefs' brocaded elephants-- The Kurdmans' group of spears-- Grave men beneath the awning Of every gay bazar Ranging their costly merchandise Shawl gem and glittering jar-- The outworn files arriving Of some vast Caravan With dusky men and camels tall Before the crowded khan;-- All that fills kingly cities With traffic wealth and din Resounds imperial Ghazna This morn thy walls within. III. All praise to the First Sultan MAHMOOD THE GHAZNAVIDE! His fame be like the firmament As moveless and as wide! MAHMOOD who saw before him Pagoda'd Bramah fall-- Twelve times he swept the orient earth From Bagdad to Bengal; Twelve times amid their Steppes of ice He smote each Golden Horde[7]-- Round the South's sultry isles twelve times His ships resistless pour'd; MAHMOOD--his tomb in Ghazna For many an age shall show The mighty mace with which he laid DU'S hideous idol low. True soldier of the Prophet! From Somnauth's gorgeous shrine He tore the gates of sandal-wood The carven gates divine; He hung them vow'd in Ghazna To Allah's blest renown-- Trophies of endless sway they tower For unto earth's remotest hour What boastful man may hope the power Again to take them down? IV. All praise to the First Sultan Mahmood the Ghaznavide! His wars are o'er but not the more His sovereign cares subside: From morn to noontide daily In his superb Divan He sits dispensing justice Alike to man and man. What though earth heaves beneath him With ingot gem and urn Though in his halls a thousand thrones Of vanquish'd monarchs burn; Though at his footstool ever Four hundred princes stay; Though in his jasper vestibules Four hundred bloodhounds bay-- Each prince's sabre hafted With the carbuncle's gem Each bloodhound's collar fashion'd From a rajah's diadem?-- Though none may live beholding The anger of his brow Yet his justice ever shineth To the lofty and the low; O'er his many-nation'd empire Shines his justice far and wide-- All praise to the First Sultan Mahmood the Ghaznavide! V. The morn to noon is melting On Ghazna's golden domes; From the Divan the suppliant crowd The poor the potent and the proud Who sought its grace with faces bow'd Have parted for their homes. Already Sultan Mahmood Has risen from his throne When at the Hall's far portal Stands a Stranger all alone -- A man in humble vesture But with a haughty eye; And he calls aloud with the steadfast voice Of one prepared to die-- ""Sultan! the Wrong'd and Trampled Lacks time to worship thee Stand forth and answer to my charge Son of Sebactagi! Stand forth!""---- The brief amazement Which shook that hall has fled-- Next moment fifty falchions Flash round the madman's head And fifty slaves are waiting Their sovereign's glance to slay; But dread Mahmood with hand upraised Has waved their swords away. Once more stands free the Stranger Once more resounds his call-- ""Ho! forth Mahmood! and hear me Then slay me in thy hall. From Oxus to the Ocean Thy standards are unfurl'd Thy treasury-bolts are bursting With the plunder of the world-- The maids of soft Hindostan The vines by Yemen's Sea But bloom to nurse the passions Of thy savage soldiery. Yet not for them sufficeth The Captive or the Vine If in thy peaceful subjects' homes They cannot play the swine. Since on my native Ghazna Thy smile of favour fell How its blood and toil and treasure Have been thine thou knowest well! Its Fiercest swell thine armies Its Fairest serve thy throne But in return hast thou not sworn Our _hearths_ should be our own? That each man's private dwelling And each man's spouse and child Should from thy mightiest Satrap Be safe and undefiled? Just Allah!--hear how Mahmood His kingly oath maintains!-- Amid the suburbs far away I deemed secure my dwelling lay Yet now two nights my lone Serai A villain's step profanes. My bride is cursed with beauty He comes at midnight hour A giant form for rapine made In harness of thy guards array'd And with main dint of blow and blade He drives me from her bow'r And bars and holds my dwelling Until the dawning gray-- Then ere the light his face can smite The felon slinks away. Such is the household safety We owe to thine and thee:-- Thou'st heard me first do now thy worst Son of Sebactagi!"" VI. What tongue may tell the terror That thrill'd that chamber wide While thus the Dust beneath his feet Reviled the Ghaznavide! The listeners' breath suspended They wait but for a word To sweep away the worm that frets The pathway of their Lord. But Mahmood makes no signal; Surprise at first subdued Then shame and anger seem'd by turns To root him where he stood. But as the tale proceeded Some deadlier passion's hue Now flushing dark now fading wan Across his forehead flew. And when those daring accents Had died upon his ear He sat him down in reverie Upon the musnud near And in his robe he shrouded For a space his dreadful brow; Then strongly sternly rose and spoke To the Stranger far below-- ""At once depart!--in silence:-- And at the moment when The Spoiler seeks thy dwelling next Be with Us here again."" VII. Three days the domes of Ghazna Have gilded Autumn's sky-- Three moonless nights of Autumn Have slowly glided by. And now the fourth deep midnight Is black upon the town When from the palace-portals led By that grim Stranger at their head A troop all silent as the dead With spears and torches flashing red Wind towards the suburbs down. On foot they march and midmost Mahmood the Ghaznavide Is marching there his kingly air _Alone_ not laid aside. In his fez no ruby blazeth No diamonds clasp his vest; But a light as red is in his eye As restless in his breast. And none who last beheld him In his superb Divan Would deem three days could cause his cheek To look so sunk and wan. The gates are pass'd in silence They march with noiseless stride 'Till before a lampless dwelling Stopp'd their grim and sullen guide. In a little grove of cypress From the city-walls remote It darkling stood:--He faced Mahmood And pointed to the spot. The Sultan paused one moment To ease his kaftan's band That on his breast too tightly prest Then motion'd with his hand:-- ""My mace!--put out the torches-- Watch well that none may flee: Now force the door and shut me in And leave the rest to me."" He spoke 'twas done; the wicket Swung wide--then closed again: Within stand Mahmood night and Lust-- Without his watching men. Their watch was short--a struggle-- A sullen sound--a groan-- A breathless interval--and forth The Sultan comes alone. None through the pitchy darkness Might look upon his face But they _felt_ the storm that shook him As he lean'd upon that mace. Back from his brow the turboosh He push'd--then calmly said ""Re-light the torches enter there And bring me forth the dead."" They light the torches enter And bring him forth the dead-- A man of stalwart breadth and bone A war-cloak round him spread. Full on the face the torches Flash out----a sudden cry (And those who heard it ne'er will lose Its echo till they die ) A sudden cry escapeth Mahmood's unguarded lips A cry as of a suffering soul Redeemed from Hell's eclipse. ""Oh Allah! gracious Allah! Thy servant badly won This blessing to a father's heart 'Tis not--'tis NOT my son! Fly!--tell my joy in Ghazna;-- Before the night is done Let lighted shrine and blazing street Proclaim 'tis not my son! 'Tis not Massoud the wayward Who thus the Law defied Yet I deem'd that none but my only son Dared set my oath aside: Though my frame grew faint from fasting Though my soul with grief grew wild Upon this spot I would have wrought stern justice on my child. I wrought the deed in darkness For fear a single ray Should light his face and from this heart Plead the Poor Man's cause away. Great Allah sees uprightly I strive my course to run And thus rewards his servant---- _This dead_ is not my son!"" VIII Thus through his reign of glory Shone his JUSTICE far and wide; All praise to the First Sultan MAHMOOD THE GHAZNAVIDE MARSTON; OR THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART XIX. ""Have I not in my time heard lions roar? Have I not heard the sea puft up with wind Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in the pitched battle heard Loud 'larums neighing steeds and trumpets clang?"" SHAKSPEARE. Change is the master-spirit of Europe as permanency is of Asia. The contrast is in the nature of things. However the caprice the genius or the necessities of the sitter on the throne may attempt to impress permanency on the habits of the West or mutability on those of the East his success must be but partial. In Europe we have a perpetual movement of minds a moral ocean to which tides and currents are an operation of nature. But the Caspian or the Euxine is not more defined by its limits of rock and mountain or more inexorably separated from the general influx of the waters which roll round the world than the Asiatic mind is from following the free course and sharing the bold and stormy innovations of Europe. But the most rapid and total change within human memory was the one which was now before my eye. I felt as some of the old alchymists might feel in their laboratories with all their crucibles heating all their alembics boiling all their strange materials in full effervescence; and their eyes fixed in doubt and perhaps in awe on the powerful and hazardous products about to result from combinations untried before and amalgams which might shatter the roof above their heads or extinguish their existence by a blast of poison. I had left Paris Democracy. I found it a Despotism. I had left it a melancholy prey to the multitude; a startling scene of alternate fury and dejection; of cries for revenge and supplications for bread; of the tyranny of the mob and the misery of the nation. I now found it the most striking contrast to that scene of despair;--Paris the headquarters of a military government; the Tuileries the palace of a conqueror; every sound martial; the eye dazzled every where by the spoils of the German and Italian sovereignties; the nation flushed with victory. Stil

the public aspect exhibited peculiarities which interested me the more that they could never have appeared in older times and probably will never return. In the midst of military splendour there was a wild haggard and unhappy character stamped on all things. The streets of the capital had not yet felt the influence of that imperial taste which was to render it an imperial city. I saw the same shattered suburbs the same deep narrow and winding streets the same dismal lanes; in which I had witnessed so often the gatherings of the armed multitude and which seemed made for popular commotion. Mingled with those wild wrecks and gloomy places of refuge rather than dwellings I saw with their ancient ornaments and even with their armorial bearings and gilded shields and spears not yet entirely defaced the palaces of the noblesse and blood-royal of France the remnants of those ten centuries of monarchy which had been powerful enough to reduce the bold tribes of the Franks to a civilized slavery and glittering enough to make them in love with their chains. If I could have imagined in the nineteenth century a camp of banditti on its most showy scale--a government of Condottieri with its most famous captain at its head--every where a compilation of arms and spoils the rude habits of the robber combined with the pomp of military triumph--I should have said that the realization was before me. The Palais Royal was still the chief scene of all Parisian vitality. But the mob orators were to be found there no more. The walks and cafés were now crowed with bold figures epauleted and embroidered laughing and talking with the easy air of men who felt themselves masters and who evidently regarded every thing round them as the furnishing of a camp. The land had now undergone its third stage of that great spell by which nations are urged and roused at the will of a few. The crosier was the first wand of the magician then came the sceptre--we were now under the spell of the sword. I was delighted at this transformation of France from the horrid form of popular domination to the showy supremacy of soldiership. It still had its evils. But the guillotine had disappeared. Savage hearts and sanguinary hands no longer made the laws and executed them. Instead of the groans and execrations the cries of rage and clamours of despair which once echoed through all the streets I now heard only popular songs and dances and saw all the genuine evidences of that rejoicing with which the multitude had thrown off the most deadly of all tyrannies--its own. The foreigner shapes every thing into the picturesque and all his picturesque now was military. Every regiment which passed through Paris on its way from the frontier was reviewed in front of the palace by the First Consul; and those reviews formed the finest of all military spectacles for each had a character and a history of its own.--The regiment which had stormed the bridge of Lodi; the regiment which had headed the assault on the _tête-du-pont_ at Mantua; the regiment which had led the march at the passage of the St Bernard; the regiment which had formed the advance of Dessaix at Marengo--all had their separate distinctions and were received with glowing speeches and appropriate honours by the chief of the state. The popular vanity was flattered by a perpetual pageant and that pageant wholly different from the tinsel displays of the monarchy: no representation of legends trivial in their origin and ridiculous in their memory; but the revival of transactions in which every man of France felt almost a personal interest which were the true sources of the new system of nations and whose living actors were seen passing hour after hour before the national eye. All was vivid reality where all had been false glitter in the days of the Bourbons and all sullenness and fear in the days of the Democracy. The reality might still be rough and stern but it was substantial and not without its share of the superb; it had the sharpness and weight and it had also the shining of the sabre. But this was not all; nothing could be more subtly consecutive than the whole progress of the head of the government. In a more superstitious age it might have been almost believed that some wizard had stood by his cradle and sung his destiny; or that like the greatest creation of the greatest of dramatists he had been met in some mountain pass or on some lonely heath and had heard the weird sisters predicting his charmed supremacy. At this period he was palpably training the republic to the sight of a dictatorship. The return of the troops through Paris had already accustomed the populace to the sight of military power. The movement of vast masses of men by a word the simplicity of the great military machine its direct obedience to the master-hand and its tremendous strength--all were a continued lesson to the popular mind. I looked on the progress of this lesson with infinite interest; for I thought that I as about to see a new principle of government disclosed on the broadest scale--Republicanism in its most majestic aspect giving a new development of the art of ruling men and exhibiting a shape of domination loftier and more energetic than the world had ever yet seen. Still I was aware of the national weaknesses. I was not without a strong suspicion of the hazard of human advance when entrusted to the caprice of any being in the form of man and above all to a man who had won his way to power by arms. Yet I thought that society had here reached a point of division; a ridge from which the streams of power naturally took different directions; that the struggles of the democracy were but like the bursting of those monsoons which mark the distinction of seasons in the East; or the ruggedness of those regions of rock and precipice of roaring torrent and sunless valley through which the Alpine traveller must toil before he can bask in the luxuriance of the Italian plain. Attached as I am in the highest degree to the principle of monarchy and regarding it as the safest anchorage of the state still how was I to know that moral nature might not have her reserves of power as well as physical; that the science of government itself might not have its undetected secrets as well as the caverns of the earth; that the quiverings and convulsions of society at this moment obviously alike beyond calculation and control might not be only evidences of the same vast agencies at work whose counterparts in depths below the human eye shake and rend the soil? Those were the days of speculation and I indulged in them like the rest of the world. Every man stood as the islander of the South Sea may stand on his shore contemplating the conflict of fire and water while the furnaces of the centre are forcing up the island in clouds of vapour and gusts of whirlwind. All was strange undefined and startling. One thing alone seemed certain; that the past _régime_ was gone never to return; that a great barrier had suddenly been dropped between the two sovereignties; that the living generation stood on the dividing pinnacle between the languid vices of the past system and the daring perhaps guilty energies of the system to come. Behind man lay the long level of wasted national faculties emasculating superstitions the graceful feebleness of a sensual nobility and the superb follies of a haughty and yet helpless throne. Before him rose a realm of boundless extent but requiring frames of vigour and feelings undismayed by difficulty to traverse and subdue;--a horizon of hills and clouds where the gale blew fresh and the tempest rolled; where novel difficulties must be met at every step but still where if we trod at all we must ascend at every step where every clearing of the horizon must give us a new and more comprehensive prospect and where every struggle with the rudeness of the soil or the roughness of the elements must enhance the vigour of the nerve that encountered them. Those were dreams; yet I had not then made due allowance for the nature of the foreign mind. I was yet to learn its absence of all sober thought; its ready temptation by every trivially of the hour; its demand of extravagant excitement to rouse it into action and its utter apathy where its passions were not bribed. I had imagined a national sovereignty righteous calm and resolute trained by the precepts of a Milton and a Locke; I found only an Italian despotism trained by the romance of Rousseau and the scepticism of Voltaire. Every day in the capital now had its celebration and all exhibited the taste and talent of the First Consul; but one characteristic fête at length woke me to the true design of this extraordinary man--the inauguration of the Legion of Honour. It was the first step to the throne and a step of incompatible daring and dexterity; it was the virtual restoration of an aristocracy in the presence of a people who had raved with the rage of frenzy against all titles who had torn down the coats-of-arms from the gates of the noblesse and shattered and dug up even the marbles of their sepulchres. A new military caste--a noblesse of the sword--was now to be established. Republicanism had been already ""pushed from its stool "" but this was the chain which was to keep it fixed to the ground. The ceremonial was held in the Hotel des Invalides; and all the civil pomp of the consulate was combined with all the military display. The giving of the crosses of honour called forth in succession the names of all those gallant soldiers whose exploits had rung through Europe in the campaigns of the Alps and the Rhine. Nothing could be more in the spirit of a fine historic picture or in the semblance of a fine drama. The first men of the French councils and armies stood surrounded by the monuments of their ancestors in the national glory--the statues of the Condés and Turennes whose memory formed so large a portion of the popular pride and whose achievements so solid a record in the history of French triumph. To those high sources of sentiment all that could be added by stately decoration and religious solemnity was given; and in the chorus of sweet voices the sounds of martial harmony the acclamations of the countless multitudes within and without and the thunder of cannon was completed the most magnificent and yet the most ominous of all ceremonials. It was not difficult to see that this day was the consecration of France to absolute power and of all her faculties to conquest. Like the Roman herald she had put on in the temple the robe of defiance to all nations. She was to be from this day of devotement the nation of war. It was less visible but not less true that upon the field of Marengo perished the Democracy but in that temple was sacrificed the Republic. The throne was still only in vision; but its outline was clear and that outline was colossal. In my intercourse with the men of the new _régime_ I had associated chiefly with the military. Their ideas were less narrowed by the circle of Paris their language was frank and free and their knowledge was more direct and extensive on the topic which I most desired to comprehend the state of their foreign conquests. I soon had reason to congratulate myself on my choice. One of these a colonel of dragoons who had served with Moreau and whose partialities at least did not lean to the rival hero came hurriedly to me at an early hour one morning to ""take his leave."" But why and where? ""He was ordered to join his regiment immediately and march for the coast of the Channel."" ""To invade us?"" I asked laughingly. ""Not exactly yet perhaps; but it may come to that in good time. I grieve to tell you "" added my gallant friend with more of gravity than I thought he could possibly have thrown into his good-humoured features ""that we are to have war. The matter is perfectly determined in the Tuileries; and at the levee to-day there will probably be a scene. In the mean time take my information as certain and be prepared for your return to England without twenty-four hours' delay."" He took his departure. I attended the levee on that memorable day and saw the _scene_. The Place du Carrousel was unusually crowded with troops which the First Consul was passing in review. The whole population seemed to have conjectured the event of the day; for I had never seen them in such numbers or with such an evident look of general anxiety. The Tuileries were filled with officers of state with leading military men and members of the Senate and Tribunat; the whole body of the foreign ambassadors were present; and yet the entire assemblage was kept waiting until the First Consul had inspected even the firelocks of his guard and the shoes in their knapsacks. The diplomatists as they saw from the high casements of the palace this tardy operation going on exchanged glaces with each other at its contemptuous trifling. Some of the _militaires_ exhibited the impatience of men accustomed to prompt measures; the civilians smiled and shrugged their shoulders; but all felt that there was a purpose in the delay. At length the drums beat for the close of the review; the First Consul galloped up to the porch of the palace flung himself from his charger sprang up the staircase and without stopping for etiquette rushed into the _salle_ followed by cloud of aides-de-camp and chamberlains. The Circle of Presentations was formed and he walked hastily round it saying few rapid words to each. I observed for the first time an aide-de-camp moving on the outside of the circle step for step and with his eye steadily marking the gesture of each individual to whom the First Consul spoke in his circuit. This was a new precaution and indicative of the time. Till then he had run all risks and might have been the victim of any daring hand. The very countenance of the First Consul was historic; it was as characteristic as his career. It exhibited the most unusual contrast of severity and softness; nothing sterner than the gathering of his brow nothing more flattering than his smile. On this occasion we had them both in perfection. To the general diplomatic circle his lip wore the smile. But when he reached the spot where the British ambassador stood we had the storm at once. With his darkest frown and with every feature in agitation he suddenly burst out into a tirade against England--reproaching her with contempt of treaties; with an absolute desire for war; with a perpetual passion for embroiling Europe; with forming armaments in the midst of peace; and with challenging France to an encounter which must provoke universal hostilities. The English ambassador listened in silence but with the air of a high-spirited man who would concede nothing to menace; and with the countenance of an intelligent one who could have easily answered declamation by argument. But for this answer there was no time. The First Consul having delivered his diatribe suddenly sprang round darted through the crowd rushed through a portal and was lost to the view. That scene was decisive. I saw that war was inevitable. I took my friend's advice ordered post-horses and within the twenty-four hours I saw with infinite delight the cliffs of Dover shining in the dawn. I am not writing a history. I am merely throwing together events separated by great chasms in the course of a life. My life was all incident; sometimes connected with public transactions of the first magnitude sometimes wholly personal; and thus I hasten on to the close of a public career which has ended and of an existence diversified by cloud and sunshine but on the whole happy. The war began; it was unavoidable. The objects of our great adversary have been since stripped of their disguise. His system at the time was to lull England by peace until he had amassed a force which would crush her at the outbreak of a war. A few years would have concentrated his strength and brought the battle to our own shores. But there are higher impulses acting on the world than human ambition; the great machine is not altogether guided by man. England had the cause of nations in her charge; her principles were truth honour and justice. She had retained the reverence of her forefathers for the Sanctuary; and the same guidance which had in the beginning taught her wisdom ultimately crowned her with victory. I lived through a period of the most overwhelming vicissitudes of nations and of the great disturber himself who had caused those vicissitudes. I saw Napoleon at the head of 500 000 men on the Niemen; I saw him reduced to 50 000 on the plains of Champagne; I saw him reduced to a brigade at Fontainebleau; I saw him a burlesque of empire at Elba; and I saw him an exile on board a British ship departing from Europe to obscurity and his grave. These things may well reconcile inferior talents to the changes of fortune. But they should also teach nations that the love of conquest is national ruin; and that there is a power which avenges the innocent blood. No country on earth requires that high moral more than France; and no country on earth has more bitterly suffered for its perversion. Napoleon was embodied France; the concentrated spirit of her wild ambition of her furious love of conquest of her reckless scorn of the sufferings and rights of mankind. Nobler principles have followed under a wiser rule. But if France draws the sword again in the ambition of Napoleon she will exhibit to the world only the fate of Napoleon. It will be her last war. On my arrival in England I found the public mind clouded with almost universal dejection. Pitt was visibly dying. He still held the nominal reins of government for some period; but the blow had been struck and his sole honour now was to be that like the Spartan of old he died on the field and with his buckler on his arm. There are secrets in the distribution of human destinies which have always perplexed mankind; and one of those is why so many of the most powerful minds have been cut off in the midst of their career extinguished at the moment when their fine faculties were hourly more essential to the welfare of science of government and of the general progress of society. I may well comprehend that feeling for it was my own. I saw Pitt laid in the grave; I looked down into the narrow bed where slept all that was mortal of the man who virtually wielded the whole supremacy of Europe. Yet how little can man estimate the future! Napoleon was in his glory when Pitt was in his shroud. Yet how infinitely more honoured and thus more happy was the fate of him by whose sepulchre all that was noble and memorable in the living generation stood in reverence and sorrow than the last hour of the prisoner of St Helena! Both were emblems of their nations. The Englishman manly pure and bold of unshaken firmness of proud reliance on the resources of his own nature and of lofty perseverence through good and through evil fortune. The foreigner dazzling and daring of singular intellectual vividness and of a thirst of power which disdained to be slaked but at sources above the ambition of all the past warriors and statesmen of Europe. He was the first who dreamed of fabricating anew the old Roman sceptre and establishing an empire of the world. His game was for a prodigious stake and for a while he played it with prodigious fortune. He found the moral atmosphere filled with the floating elements of revolution; he collected the republican electricity and discharged it on the cusps and pinnacles of the European thrones with terrible effect. But from the moment when he had dissipated that charm he lost the secret of his irresistible strength. As the head of the great republic making opinion his precursor calling on the old wrongs of nations to level his way and marshaling the new-born hopes the ancient injuries and the ardent imaginations of the continental kingdoms to fight his battles; the world lay before him with all its barriers ready to fall at the first tread of his horse's hoof. As an Emperor he forged his own chain. Napoleon the chieftain of republicanism might have revolutionized Europe; Napoleon the monarch narrowed his supremacy to the sweep of his sword. Like a necromancer weary of his art he scattered the whole treasury of his magnificent illusions into ""thin air;"" flung away his creative wand for a sceptre; and buried the book of his magic ""ten thousand fathom deep "" to replace it only by the obsolete statutes of courts and the weak etiquette of governments in decay. Fortunate for mankind that he committed this irrecoverable error and was content to be the lord of France instead of being the sovereign of opinion; for his nature was despotic and his power must have finally shaped and massed itself into a stupendous tyranny. Still he might have long influenced the fates and long excited the awe and wonder of Europe. We too might have worshipped his Star and have forgotten the danger of the flaming phenomenon in the rapidity and eccentricity of its course as we saw it eclipsing the old luminaries in succession; until it touched our orbit and visited us in conflagration. It was said that Pitt died of a broken heart in despair of the prospects of England. The defeat of Austerlitz was pronounced his death-blow. What thoughts may cluster round the sleepless pillow who shall tell? But no man knew England better; none had a bolder faith in her perseverance and principle; none had more broadly laid the foundations of victory in national honour. I shall never be driven into the belief that William Pitt despaired of his country. He died in the vigour of his genius in the proudest struggle of the empire in the midst of the deepest trial which for a thousand years had demanded all the faculties of England. Yet what man within human recollection had lived so long if we are to reckon life not by the calendar but by triumphs? What minister of England what minister of Europe but himself was the head of his government for three-and-twenty years? What man had attained so high an European rank? What mind had influenced so large an extent of European interests? What name was so instinctively pronounced by every nation as the first among mankind? To have earned distinctions like these was to have obtained all that time could give. Not half a century in years Pitt's true age was patriarchal. I was now but a spectator. My connexion with public life was broken off. Every name with which I had been associated was swept away; and I stood like a man flung from ship-wreck upon a shore where every face which he met was that of a stranger. I was still in Parliament but I felt a loathing for public exertions. From habit I had almost identified office with the memorable men whom I had seen governing so long; and the new faces the new declamation and the new principles which the ministerial change brought before me nightly startled my feelings even less as new than as incongruous. I admitted the ability the occasional intelligence and perhaps even the patriotism of the cabinet; but in those reveries (the natural refuge from a long debate ) memory so often peopled the Treasury Bench with the forms of Pitt and his distinguished coadjutors and so completely filled my ear with his sonorous periods and high-toned principles that when I was roused to the reality I felt as those who have seen some great performer in one of Shakspeare's characters until no excellence of his successor can embody the conception once more. I retired from the tumult of London and returned to tastes which I had never wholly forgotten; taking a small residence within a few miles of this centre of the living world and devoting my leisure to the enjoyments of that life which in the purest days of man was given to him as the happiest ""to dress the garden and keep it."" Clotilde in all her tastes joined with mine or rather led them with the instinctive elegance of a female mind accomplished in every grace of education. We read wrote walked talked and pruned our rose-trees and gathered our carnations and violets together. She had already given me those pledges which while they increase the anxiety also increase the affection of wedded life. The education of our children was a new source of interest. They were handsome and healthy. Their little sports the growth of their young perceptions and the freshness of their ideas renewed to us both all the delights of society without their exhaustion; and when after returning from a day spent in the noise and bustle of London I reached my rustic gate heard the cheerful voices of the little population which rushed down the flowery avenue to cling upon my neck; and stood at the door of my cottage with my arm round the waist of my beautiful and fond wife breathing the evening fragrance of a thousand blooms and enjoying the cool air and the purple glories of the sky--I often wondered why men should seek for happiness in any other scene; and felt gratitude not the less sincere for its being calm and solemn to the Giver of a lot so nearly approaching to human fulness of joy. But the world rolls on let who will slumber among its roses. The political world was awoke by a thunder-clap. Fox died. He was just six months a minister! Such is ambition such is the world. He died like Pitt in the zenith of his powers with his judgment improved and his passions mitigated with the noblest prospects of public utility before his eyes and the majestic responsibilities of a British minister assuming their natural rank in his capacious mind. The times too were darkening; and another ""lodestar"" was thus stricken from the national hemisphere at the moment when the nation most wanted guidance. The lights which remained were many; but they were vague feeble and scattered. The ""leader of the starry host"" was gone. I cannot trust myself to speak of this distinguished man; for I was no Foxite. I regarded his policy in opposition as the pleadings of a powerful advocate with a vast retaining fee a most comprehensive cause and a most generous and confiding client. Popularity popular claims and the people were all three made for him beyond all other men; and no advocate ever pleaded with more indefatigable zeal or more resolute determination. But raised to a higher position higher qualities were demanded. Whether they might not have existed in his nature waiting for the development of time is the question. But time was not given. His task had hitherto been easy. It was simply to stand as a spectator on the shore criticising the manoeuvres of a stately vessel struggling with the gale. The helm was at last put into his hand; and it was then that he felt the difference between _terra firma_ and the wild and restless element which he was now to control. But he had scarcely set his foot on the deck when he too was swept away. On such brevity of trial it is impossible to judge. Time might have matured his vigour while it expanded his views: matchless as the leader of a party he might then have been elevated into the acknowledged leader of a people. The singular daring ardent sensitiveness and popular ambition which made him dangerous in a private station might then have found their nobler employment and been purified in the broad and lofty region of ministerial duty. He might have enlarged the partizan into the patriot and instead of being the great leader of a populace have been ennobled into the great guide of an empire. But the world never stands still. On the day when I returned from moralising on the vanity of life over the grave of Fox I received a letter a trumpet-call to the _mêlée_ from Mordecai. It was enthusiastic but its enthusiasm had now taken a bolder direction. ""In abandoning England "" he told me ""he had abandoned all minor and personal speculations and was now dealing with the affairs of kingdoms."" This letter gave only fragments of his views; but it was easy to see that he contemplated larger results than he ventured to trust to paper. ""You must come and see me here "" said he ""for it is only here that you _can_ see me as I ever desired to be seen; or in fact as nature made me. In your busy metropolis I was only one of the millions who were content to make a sort of a reptile existence creeping on the ground and living on the chances of the day. Here I have thrown off my caterpillar life and am on the wing--a human dragon-fly if you will darting at a thousand different objects enjoying the broad sunshine and speeding through the wide air. My invincible attachment to my nation here finds its natural object; for the sons of Abraham are here a _people_. I am a patriarch with my flocks and herds my shepherds and clansmen the sons of my tribe coming to do me honour and my heart swelling and glowing with the prospects of national regeneration. I have around me a province to which one of your English counties would be but a sheepfold; a multitude of bold spirits to whom your populace would be triflers; a new nation elated by their approaching deliverance solemnly indignant at their past oppression and determined to shake the land to its centre or to recover their freedom. ""You will speak of this as the vision of an old man--come to us and you will see it a splendid reality. But observe that _I_ expect no miracle. I leave visions to fanatics; and while I acknowledge the Power of Powers which rides in clouds and moves the world by means unknown to human weakness I look also to the human means which have their place in pushing on the wheels of the great system. The army which has broken down the strength of the Continent--the force which like a whirlwind has torn such tremendous chasms through the old domains of European power and has torn up so many of the forest monarchs by the root--the French legions the greatest instrument of human change since the Gothic invasions are now marching direct on Poland. ""I have seen the man who is at the head of that army--the most extraordinary being whom Europe has seen for a thousand years--the crowned basilisk of France. I own that we must beware of his fangs of the blast of his nostrils and the flash of his eye. He is a terrible production of nature: but he is on our side and even if he should be finally trampled he will have first done our work. I have had an interview with Napoleon! it was long and animated. He spoke to me as to the chief man of my nation and I answered him in the spirit of the chief man. He pronounced that the general change essential to the true government of Europe was incapable of being effected without the aid of our people. He spoke contemptuously of the impolicy by which we had been deprived of our privileges and declared his determination to place us on a height from which we might move the world. But it was obvious to me that under those lofty declarations there was a burning ambition; that if we were to move the world it was for him; and that even then we were not to move it for the monarch of France but for the individual. I saw that _he_ was then the dreamer. Yet his dream was the extravagance of genius. In those hopeless graspings and wild aspirations I saw ultimate defeat; but I saw also the nerve and muscle of a gigantic mind. In his pantings after immeasurable power and imperishable dominion he utterly forgot the barrier which time throws before the proudest step of human genius; and that within a few years his head must grow grey his blood cold the sword be returned to its sheath and even the sceptre fall from his withering hand. Still in our conference we both spoke the same language of scorn for human obstacles of contempt for the narrowness of human views and of our resolution to effect objects which in many an after age should fix the eye of the world. But _he_ spoke of immortal things; relying on mortal conjecture and mortal power. I spoke of them on surer grounds. I felt them to be the consummation of promises which nothing can abolish; to be the offspring of power which nothing can resist. The foundation of his structures was policy the foundation of mine was prophecy. And when his shall be scattered as the chaff of the threshing-floor and be light as the dust of the balance; mine shall be deep as the centre high as the heavens and dazzling as the sun in his glory."" In another portion of his letter he adverted to the means by which this great operation was to be effected. ""I have been for three days on the Vistula gazing at the march of the 'Grand Army.' It well deserves the name. It is the mightiest mass of power ever combined under one head; half a million of men. The armies of Persia were gatherings of clowns compared to this incomparable display of soldiership; the armies of Alaric and Attila were hordes of savages in

comparison; the armies of ancient Rome alone approached it in point of discipline but the most powerful Roman army never reached a fifth of its number. I see at this moment before me the conquerors of the Continent the brigades which have swept Italy the bayonets and cannon which have broken down Austria and extinguished Prussia.--The eagles are now on the wing for a mightier prey."" This prediction was like the prayers of the Homeric heroes-- ""One half the gods dispersed in empty air."" Poland was not to be liberated; the crisis was superb but the weapon was not equal to the blow. It was the first instance in which the French Emperor was found inferior to his fortune. With incomparable force of intellect Napoleon wanted grandeur of mind. It has become the custom of later years to deny him even superiority of intellect; but the man who in a contest open to all goes before all--who converts a republic with all its ardour haughtiness and passion into a monarchy at once as rigid and as magnificent as an Oriental despotism--who in a country of warriors makes himself the leading warrior--who among the circle within circle of the subtlest political intrigues baffles all intrigues converts them into the material of his own ascendency and makes the subtlest and the boldest spirits his instruments and slaves--has given sufficient evidence of the superiority of his talents. The conqueror who beat down in succession all the great military names of Europe must have been a soldier; the negotiator who vanquished all existing diplomacy and the statesman who remodelled the laws curbed the fiery temper and reduced to discipline the fierce insubordination of a people whose first victory had crushed the state and heaped the ruins of the throne on the sepulchre of their king--must have been a negotiator and a statesman of the first rank. Or if those were not the achievements of intellect by what were they done? If they were done without it of what value is intellect? Napoleon had then only found the still superior secret of success; and we deny his intellect simply to give him attributes higher than belong to human nature.--No man before him dreamed of such success no man in his day rivalled it no man since his day has attempted its renewal. ""But he was fortunate!"" What can be more childish than to attempt the solution of the problem by fortune? Fortune is a phantom. Circumstances may arise beyond the conception of man; but where the feebler mind yields to circumstances the stronger one shapes controls and guides them. This man was sent for a great purpose of justice and he was gifted with the faculties for its execution. An act of imperial guilt had been committed of which Europe was to be purged by penalty alone. The fall of Poland was to be made a moral to the governments of the earth; and Napoleon was to be the fiery brand that was to imprint the sentence upon the foreheads of the great criminals. It is in contemplations like these that the Spirit of history ministers to the wisdom of mankind. Whatever may be the retribution for individuals beyond the grave justice on nations must be done in this world; and _here_ it will be done. The partition of Poland was the most comprehensive and audacious crime of the modern world. It was a deliberate insult at once to the laws of nations and to the majesty of the great Disposer of nations. And never fell vengeance more immediate more distinct or more characteristic. The capital of Austria twice entered over the bodies of its gallant soldiery; Russia ravaged and Moscow burnt; the Prussian army extinguished by the massacre of Jena and Prussia in a day fettered for years--were the summary and solemn retribution of Heaven. But when the penalty was paid the fate of the executioner instantly followed. Guilt had punished guilt and justice was to be alike done upon all. Napoleon and his empire vanished as the powder vanishes that explodes the mine. The ground was broken up; the structures of royalty on its surface were deeply fractured; the havoc was complete; but the fiery deposit which had effected the havoc was itself scattered into air. His re-establishment of Poland would have been an act of grandeur. It would have established a new character for the whole Revolution. It would have shown that the new spirit which had gone forth summoning the world to regeneration was itself regeneration; that it was not a tempter but a restorer; that all conquest was not selfish and all protestation not meant to deceive. If Napoleon had given Poland a diadem and placed it on the brow of Kosciusko he would in that act have placed on his own brow a diadem which no chance of the field could have plucked away; an imperishable and dazzling answer to all the calumnies of his age and all the doubts of posterity. He might even have built in the restoration of the fallen kingdom a citadel for his own security in all the casualties of empire; but in all events he would have fixed in the political heaven a star which to the last recollection of mankind would have thrown light on his sepulchre and borne his name. The fall of the Foxite ministry opened the way to a new cabinet and I resumed my office. But we marched in over ruins. In the short period of their power Europe had been shattered. England had stood aloof and escaped the shock; but to stand aloof then was her crime--her sympathy might have saved the tottering system. Now all was gone. When we looked over the whole level of the Continent we saw but two thrones--France and Russia; all the rest were crushed. They stood but their structure was shattered stripped of its adornments and ready to crumble down at the first blow. England was without an ally. We had begun the war with Europe in our line of battle; we now stood alone. Yet the spirit of the nation was never bolder than in this hour when a storm of hostility seemed to be gathering round us from every quarter of the world. Still there were voices of ill omen among our leading men. It was said that France and Russia had resolved to divide the world between them--to monopolize the East and the West; to extinguish all the minor sovereignties; to abolish all the constitutions; to turn the world into two vast menageries in which the lesser monarchies should be shown as caged lions for the pomp of the two lords-paramount of the globe. I heard this language from philosophers from orators even from statesmen; but I turned to the people and I found the spirit of their forefathers unshaken in them still--the bold defiance of the foreigner the lofty national scorn of his gasconading the desire to grapple more closely with his utmost strength and the willingness nay the passionate desire to rest the cause of Europe on their championship alone. I never heard among the multitude a sound of that despair which had become the habitual language of Opposition. They had answered the call to arms with national ardour. The land was filled with voluntary levies and the constant cry of the people was--conflict with the enemy any where at any time or upon any terms. More fully versed in their national history than any other European people they remembered that in every war with France for a thousand years England had finished with victory; that she had never suffered any one decisive defeat in the war that where the forces of the two nations could come fairly into contact their troops had always been successful; and that from the moment when France ventured to contest the empire of the seas all the battles of England were triumphs until the enemy was swept from the ocean. The new cabinet formed its plans on the national confidence and executed them with statesmanlike decision. The struggle on the Continent was at an end; but they resolved to gird it with a chain of fire. Every port was shut up by English guns; every shore was watched by English eyes. Outside this chain the world was our own. The ocean was free; every sea was traversed by our commerce with as much security as in the most profound peace. The contrast with the Continent was of the most striking order. There all was the dungeon--one vast scene of suffering and outcry; of coercion and sorrow; the conscription the confiscation the licensed plunder the bitter and perpetual insult. The hearts of men died within them and they crept silently to their obscure graves. Wounds poverty and ferocious tyranny the heart-gnawing pangs of shame and the thousand thorns which national and conscious degradation strews on the pillow of men crushed by the insolence of a soldiery wore away the human race; provinces were unpeopled and a generation were laid prematurely in the grave. The recollections of the living world will long point to this period as the most menacing portion of all history. The ancient tyrannies were bold presumptuous and remorseless monopolies of power; but their pressure scarcely descended to the multitude. It crushed the senator the patrician and the man of opulence; as the tempest smites the turrets of the palace or shatters the pinnacles of the mountain range. But the despotism of France searched the humblest condition of man. It tyrannized over the cottage as fiercely as it had swept over the thrones. The German or Italian peasant saw his son torn away to perish in some distant region of which he knew no more than that it was the grave of the thousands and tens of thousands of his fellow shepherds and vintagers. The despotism of France less resembled the domination of man from which with all its vigilance there is some hope of escape than the subtlety of a demon which has an evil and a sting for every heart and by which nothing can be forgotten and nothing will be spared. In the whole immense circle of French dominion no man could lay his head down to rest with a security that he might not be roused at midnight to be flung into a captivity from which he was never to return. No man could look upon his property the earnings of his manhood the resource for his age or the provision for his children without the knowledge that it was at the mercy of the plunderer; no man could look upon the birth of his child without the bitter consciousness that another victim was preparing for the general sacrifice; nor could see the ripening form or intellect of those who were given to him by Providence for the comfort and companionship of his advancing years without a conviction that they would be swept away from him. He felt that he would be left unsheltered and alone; and that those in whom his life was wrapt and whom he would have gladly given his life to save were destined to perish by some German or Russian bayonet and make their last bed among the swamps of the Danube or the snows of Poland. I am not now speaking from the natural abhorrence of the Briton for tyranny alone. The proofs are before the eye of mankind. Within little more than half the first year of the Polish campaign three conscriptions of eighty thousand youths each were demanded from France alone. Two hundred and forty thousand living beings were torn from their parents and sent to perish in the field the hospital and on the march through deserts where winter reigns in boundless supremacy! Let the man of England rejoice that those terrible inflictions cannot be laid on him and be grateful to the freedom which protects the most favoured nation of mankind. Arbitrary arrest and the conscription are the two heads of the serpent--either would embitter the existence of the most prosperous state of society; they both at this hour gnaw the vitals of the continental states; they alienate the allegiance and chill the affections; even where they are mitigated by the character of the sovereigns they still remain the especial evils which the noblest patriotism should apply all its efforts to extinguish and the removal of which it would be the most illustrious boon of princes to confer upon their people. But the ramparts of that empire of slavery and suffering were to be shaken at last. The breach was to be made and stormed by England; Europe was to be summoned to achieve its own deliverance; and England was to move at the head of the proudest armament that ever marched to conquest for the liberties of mankind. She began by a thunder-clap. The peace with Russia had laid the Czar at the mercy of France. Napoleon had intrigued to make him a confederate in the league against mankind. But the generous nature of the Russian monarch shrank from the conspiracy and the secret articles of the treaty of Tilsit were divulged to the British cabinet. I shall not now say from what authority they came; but the confidence was spontaneous and the effect decisive. Those Articles contained the outline of a plan for combining all the fleets of subject Europe and pouring the final vengeance of war on our shores. The right wing of that tremendous armament was to be formed of the Danish and Russian fleets. This confederacy must be broken up or we must see a hundred and eighty ships of the line freighted with a French and Russian army at the mouth of the Thames. There was not a moment to be lost if we were to act at all; for a French force was already within a march of the Great Belt to garrison Denmark. The question was debated in council in all its bearings. All were fully aware of the hypocritical clamour which would be raised by the men who were lending themselves to every atrocity of France. We were not less prepared for the furious declamation of that professor of universal justice and protector of the rights of neutral nations--the French Emperor. But the necessity was irresistible; the act was one of self-defence; and it was executed accordingly and with instant and incomparable vigour. A fleet and army were dispatched to the Baltic. An assault of three days gave the Danish fleet into our hands. The confederacy was broken up by the British batteries; and the armament returned with twenty sail of the enemy's line as trophies of the best planned and boldest expedition of the war. Napoleon raged; but it was at finding that England could show a promptitude like his own sanctioned by a better cause. Denmark complained pathetically of the infringement of peace before she had ""completed her preparations for war;"" but every man of political understanding even in Denmark rejoiced at her being disburdened of a fleet whose subsistence impoverished her revenues and whose employment could only have involved her in fatal hostilities with Britain. Russia was loudest in her indignation but a smile was mingled with her frown. Her statesmen were secretly rejoiced to be relieved from all share in the fearful enterprise of an encounter with the fleets of England and her Emperor was not less rejoiced to find that she had still the sagacity and the courage which could as little be baffled as subdued and to which the powers of the North themselves might look for refuge in the next struggle of diadems. This was but the dawning of the day; the sun was soon to rise. Yet public life has its difficulties in proportion to its height. As Walpole said that no man knows the human heart but a minister; so no man knows the real difficulties of office but the man of office. Lures to his passions temptations to his integrity and alarms to his fears are perpetually acting on his sense of honour. To make a false step is the most natural thing in the world under all those impulses; and one false step ruins him. The rumour reached me that there were dissensions in the cabinet; and though all was smooth to the eye I had soon sufficient proof that the intelligence was true. A prominent member of the administration was the object of the intrigue. He was an intelligent high-spirited and straightforward man open in language if the language was not of the most classic order; and bold in his conceptions if those conceptions were not formed on the most accomplished knowledge. He had attained his high position partly by public services but still more by connexion. It was impossible to refuse respect to his general powers but it was equally impossible to deny the intellectual superiority of his competitor. The contrast which they presented in the House was decisive of their talents for debate. While the one spoke his mind with the uncultured expressions of the moment; the other never addressed the House but with the polished and pointed diction of the orator. He was the most accomplished of debaters.--Always prepared always pungent often powerful. Distinguished in early life by scholarship he had brought all the finer spirit of his studies into the business of public life. He was the delight of the House; and the boundless applause which followed his eloquence and paid an involuntary tribute to his mastery of public affairs not unnaturally stimulated his ambition to possess that leading official rank to which he seemed called by the right of nature. The rivalry at length became open and declared; it had been felt too deeply to die away among the casual impressions of public life; it had been suppressed too long to be forgiven on either side; and the crisis was evidently approaching in which it was necessary to take a part with either of those gifted men. I seldom spent more anxious hours in the course of an anxious life than during the period of this deliberation. I felt all the fascinations of the man of genius. On the other hand I respected all the solid and manly qualities of his opponent. In a personal view the issue of the contest was likely to produce evil to my own views. I was still a dependent upon fortune. I had new ties and interests which made official income more important to me day by day. In the fall of the administration I must follow the general fate.--In making my decision with the unsuccessful candidate for power I must go down along with him; and the claims of the competitors were so equally balanced and both were so distinguished that it was beyond all conjecture to calculate the result. I too was not without many a temptation to perplex my judgment. The rivalry had at length become public and the friends of each were active in securing opinions among the holders of office. The whole was a lottery but with my political existence dependent on my escaping a blank. In this dilemma I consulted my oracle Clotilde. Her quick intelligence decided for me at once. ""You must resign "" said she. ""You value both; you cannot side with either without offending their feelings or what I more regard distressing your own. Both are men of intelligence and honour and they will understand your motives and respect them. To retain office is impossible."" ""But Clotilde how can I bear the thought of reducing you and my infants to the discomforts of a narrow income and the obscurity of a life of retirement?"" ""A thousand times better than you could endure the thought of retaining office against your judgment or taking a part against a friend. Follow the impressions of your own generous nature and you will be dearer than ever to Clotilde--even though it condemned us all to the deepest obscurity."" Tears gushed into her eyes as she spoke the words; and in her heart she was evidently less of the heroine than in her language: the children had come playing round her feet at the moment; and the family picture of the reverse in our fortunes filled with this cluster of young faces unconscious of the chance which lay before them was too severe a trial for a mother's feelings. Her tears flowed abundantly and the beating of her heart showed the anguish of her sacrifice. But she still persisted in her determination. As I took leave of her to go down to the House her last words as she pressed my hand were--""Resign and leave the rest to fortune."" A motion on the subject of the rival claims had been appointed for the evening; and the premier was to open the debate. The House was crowded at an early hour; and as my services were required in the discussion I postponed the communication of my resolve until the division should announce that my labours were at an end. But the hour passed away in routine business. Still the premier did not appear. The anxiety grew excessive. At length whispers ran round the benches of a rencounter between the two distinguished individuals; and like all rumours of this nature the results were pronounced to be of the most alarming kind. The consternation was gradually mitigated by the announcement that one of the combatants remained unhurt but that the other had received a mortal wound. The House was speedily deserted; and all rushed out to ascertain the truth of this melancholy intelligence. Yet nothing was to be gathered among the numberless reports of the night and I returned home harassed almost into fever. The morning quieted the general alarm. The wound was dangerous but not mortal; and both combatants had sent in their resignation. It was accepted by royalty and before another night fell; I was sent for by the premier and offered one of the vacant offices. Such are the chances of public life. The lottery had been drawn and mine was a prize. With what feelings I returned on that night to my fireside; with what welcome I was received by my gentle yet heroic wife; or with what eyes I glanced upon my infants as they came to ask the paternal kiss and blessing before they parted for their pillows I leave to those who know the rejoicing of the heart to conceive. Those events had shaken the ministry as dissensions always have done; and it still cost us many a severe struggle to resist the force of Opposition combined with the clamours of the country. England and France now presented a spectacle unexampled in the annals of hostilities engaged in a war which seemed interminable--both determined to conquer or perish; both impelled by the most daring courage; yet neither able to inflict the slightest blow upon the other with but fifteen miles between. France was nearer to Russia nay was nearer to the remotest extremity of Asia than to England. In the midst of the fiercest war both preserved the attitude of the most profound peace. The lion and the tiger couching on the opposite sides of some impassable ravine each watching the fiery eyes and naked fangs of the other would have been the natural emblems of this hopeless thirst of encounter between the two most powerful and exasperated nations of the earth. It is no superstition to trace those events to a higher source than man. The conclusion of this vast conflict was already written in a record above the short-sighted vision and infirm memory of our nature. In all the earlier guilt of Europe France has been the allotted punisher of the Continent; and England the allotted punisher of France. I make no presumptuous attempt to explain the reason; but the process is incontestable. When private profligacy combines with some atrocious act of public vice to make the crimes of the Continent intolerable France is sent forth to carry fire and sword to its boundaries to crush its armies in the field to sack its cities and to decimate its population. Then comes the penalty of the punisher. The crimes of France demand purgation. The strength of England is summoned to this stern duty and France is scourged; her military pride is broken; her power is paralysed peace follows and Europe rests for a generation. The process has been so often renewed and has been completed with such irresistible regularity that the principle is a law. The period for this consummation was now come once more. I was sitting in my library one evening when a stranger was introduced who had brought a letter from the officer commanding our squadron on the Spanish coast. He was a man of noble presence of stately stature and with a countenance exhibiting all the vivid expression of the South. He was a Spanish nobleman from the Asturias and deputed by the authorities to demand succours in the national rising against the common enemy Napoleon. I was instinctively struck by the measureless value of resistance in a country which opened to us the whole flank of France; but the intelligence was so wholly unexpected so entirely beyond calculation and at the same time so pregnant with the highest results to England that I was long incredulous. I was prepared to doubt the involuntary exaggeration of men who had every thing at stake; the feverish tone of minds embarked in the most formidable of all struggles; and even the passion of the southern in every event and object of force sufficient to arouse him into action. But the Asturian was firm in his assurances clear and consistent in his views and there was even a candour in his confession of the unprepared state of his country which added largely to my confidence. Our dialogue was I believe unprecedented for the plainness of its enquiries and replies. It was perfectly Lacedæmonian. ""What regular force can Spain bring into the field?"" ""None."" ""What force has Napoleon in Spain at this moment?"" ""At least two hundred and fifty thousand men and those in the highest state of equipment and discipline."" ""And yet you venture to resist?"" ""We have resisted we shall resist and we shall beat them."" ""In what state are your fortresses?"" ""One half of them in the hands of the French and the other half without garrisons provisions or even guns; still we shall beat them."" ""Are not the French troops in possession of all the provinces?"" ""Yes."" ""Are they not in fact masters of the country?"" ""No."" ""How am I to reconcile those statements?"" ""The French are masters by day; the Spaniards are masters by night."" ""But you have none of the elements of national government. You have lost your king."" ""So much the better."" ""Your princes nobles and court."" ""So much the better."" ""Even your prime minister and whole administration are in the hands of the enemy."" ""Best of all!"" said the respondent with a frown like a thunder-cloud. ""What resource then have you?"" ""The people!"" exclaimed the Spaniard in a tone of superb defiance. ""Still--powerful as a united people are--before you can call upon a British government to embark in such a contest it must be shown that the people are capable of acting together; that they are not separated by the jealousies which proverbially divide your country."" ""Señor Inglese "" said the Don with a Cervantic curl of the lip ""I see that Spain has not been neglected among the studies of your high station. But Spain is _not_ to be studied in books. She is not to be sketched like a fragment of a Moorish castle and carried off in a portfolio. Europe knows nothing of her. You must pass the Pyrenees to conceive her existence. She lives on principles totally distinct from those of all other nations; and France will shortly find that she never made a greater mistake than when she thought that even the southern slope of the Pyrenees was like the northern."" ""But "" said I ""the disunion of your provinces the extinction of your army and the capture of your executive government must leave the country naked to invasion. The contest may be gallant but the hazard must be formidable. To sustain a war against the disciplined troops of France and the daring determination of its ruler would require a new age of miracle."" The Spaniard bit his lip and was silent. ""At all events your proposals do honour to the spirit of your country and I shall not be the man to throw obstacles in your way. Draw up a memoir; state your means your objects and your intentions distinctly; and I shall lay it before the government without delay."" ""Señor Inglese it shall be done. In that memoir I shall simply say that Spain has six ranges of mountains all impregnable and that the Spanish people are resolved to defend them; that the country is one vast natural fortress; that the Spanish soldier can sleep on the sand can live on the simplest food and the smallest quantity of that food; that he can march fifty miles a-day; that he is of the same blood as the conquerors of the Moors and with the soldiers of Charles V.; and that he requires only discipline and leaders to equal the glory of his forefathers."" His fine features glanced with manly exultation. ""Still before I can bring your case before the country we must be enabled to have an answer for the objections of the legislature. Your provinces are scarcely less hostile to each other than they are to the enemy. What plan can unite them in one system of defence? and without that union how can resistance be effectual?"" ""Spain stands alone "" was the reply. ""Her manners her feelings and her people have no examples in Europe. Her war will have as little similarity to the wars of its governments. It will be a war not of armies but of the shepherd of the artificer the muleteer the contrabandist--a war of all classes the peasant the priest the noble nay the beggar on the highway. But this was the war of her ancestors the war of the Asturias which cleared the country of the Moors and will clear it of the French. All Spain a mass of hostility a living tide of unquenchable hatred and consuming fire--the French battalions pouring over the Pyrenees will be like battalions poured into the ocean. They will be engulfed; they will never return. Our provinces are divided but they have one invincible bond--abhorrence of the French. Even their division is not infirmity but strength. They know so little of each other that even the conquest of one half of Spain would be scarcely felt by the rest. This will be a supreme advantage in the species of war which we contemplate--a war of desultory but perpetual assaults of hostilities that cease neither night nor day of campaigns that know no distinction between summer and winter--a war in which no pitched battles will be fought but in which every wall will be a rampart every hollow of the hills a camp every mountain a citadel every roadside and swamp and rivulet the place of an ambuscade. We shall have no battalions and brigades we require no tactics; our sole science will be to kill the enemy wherever he can be reached by bullet or knife until we make Spain the tomb of invasion and her very name an omen and a ruin to the tyrant on the French throne."" The councils of England in the crisis were worthy of her ancient name. It was resolved to forget the long injuries of which Spain had been the instrument during her passive submission to the arrogance of her ally and master. The Bourbons were now gone; the nation was disencumbered of that government of chamberlains maids of honour and duennas. It was to be no longer stifled in the perfumed atmosphere of court boudoirs or to be chilled in the damps of the cloister. Its natural and noble proportions were to be left unfettered and undisguised by the formal fashions of past centuries of grave frivolity and decorous degradation. The giant was to rise refreshed. The Samson was to resume his primal purpose; he was no longer to sleep in the lap of his Delilah; the national fame was before him and breaking his manacles at one bold effort he was thenceforth to stand as nature had moulded him powerful and prominent among mankind. These were dreams but they were high-toned and healthy dreams--the anticipations of a great country accustomed to the possession of freedom and expecting to plant national regeneration wherever it set foot upon the soil. The cause of Spain was universally adopted by the people and was welcomed by Parliament with acclamation; the appointment of a minister to represent the cabinet in Spain was decided on and this distinguished commission was pressed upon my personal sense of duty by the sovereign. My official rank placed me above ambassadorships but a service of this order had a superior purpose. It was a mission of the country not of the minister. I was to be the instrument of an imperial declaration of good-will interest and alliance to a whole people. In another week the frigate which conveyed me was flying before the breeze along the iron-bound shore of Galicia; the brightest and most burning of skies was over my head the most billowy of seas was dashing and foaming round me and my eye was in continual admiration of the noble mountain barriers which in a thousand shapes guard the western coast of Spain from the ocean. At length the bay of Corunna opened before us; our anchor dropped and I made my first step on the most picturesque shore and among the most original people of Europe. My destination was Madrid; but it was essential that I should ascertain all the facts in my power from the various provincial governments as I passed along; and I thus obtained a more ample knowledge of the people than could have fallen to the lot of the ordinary traveller. I consulted with their juntas I was present at their

festivals I rode with their hidalgos and I marched with their troops. One of the peculiarities which as an Englishman has always interested me in foreign travel is that it brings us back to a period different from the existing age at home. All descending from a common stock every nation of Europe has made a certain advance; but the advance has been of different degrees. Five hundred years ago they were all nearly alike. In the Netherlands I continually felt myself carried back to the days of the Protectorate; I saw nearly the same costume the same formality of address and the same habits of domestic life. In Germany I went back a century further and saw the English primitive style of existence the same stiff architecture the same mingling of stateliness and simplicity not forgetting the same homage to the ""divine right of kings."" In Spain I found myself in the thirteenth century and but for the language the heat and the brown visages around me could have imagined myself in England in the days when ""barons bold"" still exercised the rights of feudalism when gallant archers killed the king's deer without the king's permission and when the priest was the lawgiver of the land. Day by day I saw the pilgrim making his weary way from shrine to shrine; the landowner caracoling his handsome horse over wild heaths and half-made highways--that horse caparisoned with as many fantastic trappings as the charger of chivalry and both horse and rider forming no feeble representation of the knight bound on adventure. I saw the monastery of our old times exhibiting all its ancient solidity sternness and pomp; with its hundred brethren; its crowd of sallow silent domestics; its solemn service; and even with its beggars crowding and quarreling for their daily dole at its gate. The face of the country seemed to have been unchanged since the first invasion of the Visigoths:--immense commons grown barren from the absence of all cultivation; vast dreary sheep-walks; villages few rude and thinly peopled; the absence of all enclosures and a general look of loneliness which however I could have scarcely imagined in England at any period since the Heptarchy. Yet those wild wastes were often interspersed with delicious spots; where after toiling half the day over a desert wild as Arabia the traveller suddenly stood on the brink of some sweet and secluded valley where the eye rested on almost tropical luxuriance--all the shrubs and blossoms which require so much shelter in our rougher climate flourishing in the open air; hedges of myrtle and jessamine; huge olives and primeval vines spreading in all the prodigality of nature over the rocks; parasite plants clothing the oaks and elms with drapery of all colours floating in every breath of wind; and most delicious of all in the fiery centre of Spain streams cool as ice and clear as crystal gushing and glancing away through the depths of the valley; sometimes glittering in the sun then plunging into shade then winding along seen by starts like silver snakes until they were lost under sheets of copse and foliage unpruned by the hand of man and which seemed penetrable only by the bird or the hare. WATERTON'S SECOND SERIES OF ESSAYS.[8] At the conclusion of the autobiography prefixed to his former series of Essays published some years since Mr Waterton announced that he then ""put away the pen not to be used again except in self-defence."" That this resolution has been departed from from whatever motive will be matter for congratulation to most if not all of the readers of the ""Wanderings"" and ""Essays;"" and the volume before us derives an additional interest from its being an unsolicited donation to the widow of his deceased friend Mr Loudon the well-known naturalist. Methinks the author would not have done amiss in continuing both to this and the former series of essays the peculiarly appropriate title under which his first lucubrations were given to the world: since veritable _Wanderings_ they are over every imaginable variety of subject and climate from caymans in the Essequibo to the blood of St Januarius at Naples; schemes for the banishment of _Hanoverian_ rats (Mr W. never allows this voracious intruder a British denizenship) in Yorkshire and for averting the projected banishment of the rooks in Scotland. Among the amusing _omniun gatherum_ intermingled with the valuable ornithological information in the present volume we find dissertations on the gigantic raspberries now alas! no more produced in the ruined garden of Walton Hall--on the evils of tight shoes tight lacing and stiff cravats--on the natural history of that extinct-by-law variety of the human species called the chimney sweeper--and last not least on that of the author himself in the continuation of his unique autobiography; and we rejoice to find him though now close upon his grand climacteric still able to climb a tree by the aid of toes which have never been cramped by tight shoes with all the vigour if not all the agility of his lusty youth breathing hostility against no living creature except Mr Swainson and Sir Robert Peel--the little love he already bore to the latter for framing the oath of abjuration for Catholics[9] not being greatly augmented by the imposition of the income-tax--and still maintaining in Walton Park an inviolable asylum for crows hawks owls and all the generally proscribed tribes of the feathered race. The continuation of the autobiography is taken up from the publication of the first volume of essays in 1837 and consists chiefly of the narrative of adventures by land and perils by sea in an expedition with his family by the route of Holland and the Rhine to the sunny shores of Italy. But the intervening period was not without incidents worthy of record. By a judicious system of pavement joined with Roman cement and drains secured at the mouths by iron grates ""Charles Waterton in the year of grace 1839 effectually cleared the premises at Walton Hall of every Hanoverian rat young and old ... and if I were to offer L.20 sterling money for the capture of a single individual in or about any part of the premises not one could be procured."" Not long after this memorable achievement a case of hydrophobia in Nottingham promised to afford him an opportunity of trying the virtues of the famous _Wourali_ poison as a cure for this dreadful and hitherto unconquerable malady. The difficulties and dangers encountered in the search for this potent narcotic through the wilds of Guiana and the subsequent experiments on the ass _Wouralia_ which after being apparently deprived of life by its influence was revived by the inflation of the lungs with a blowpipe and lived twenty-four years in clover at Walton are familiar to the readers of the _Wanderings_--but its presumed efficacy in cases of hydrophobia was not destined to be tested in the present instance as the patient had expired before Mr W.'s arrival. Its powers were however exhibited in the presence of a scientific assemblage:--one of two asses operated upon though restored at the time died on the third day the other was perfectly recovered by the process of artificial respiration and ""every person present seemed convinced that the virulence of the Wourali poison was completely under the command of the operator ... and that it can be safely applied to a human being labouring under hydrophobia!"" Now this inference with all due deference to Mr Waterton appears to partake not a little of the _non sequitur_; and unless the _modus operandi_ by which relief is to be obtained during the suspension of vitality thus produced is more clearly explained we doubt whether many applications will be made for ""the scientific assistance of Mr Gibson of the General Hospital at Nottingham to give the sufferer a chance of saving his life by the supposed though yet untried efficacy of the Wourali poison which worst come to the worst would by its sedative qualities render death calm and composed and free from pain."" Satisfied however with the somewhat equivocal result of this experiment Mr Waterton resumed his preparations for departure and having ""called up the gamekeeper and made him promise as he valued his place that he would protect all hawks crows herons jays and magpies "" sailed from Hull for Rotterdam with his two sisters-in-law and his only son a boy eleven years of age. Mr Waterton's Catholic sympathies for the Belgian revolt ""for real liberty in religious matters "" and his lamentations over the magnificent churches in Holland stripped of their pictures and ornaments on the change of religion do not prevent his feeling very favourably disposed towards the Dutch and their country ""the uniformity of which and the even tenor of their tempers appear as if one had been made for the other."" The protection extended to the stork which builds without fear in the heart of their towns gives them an additional claim on his good-will; and ""would but our country gentlemen put a stop to the indiscriminate slaughter of birds by their ruthless gamekeepers we should not have to visit Holland to see the true habits of the stork nor roam through Germany to enjoy the soaring of the kite--a bird once very common in this part of Yorkshire but now a total stranger to it."" The progressive extinction of so many of the larger species of birds once indigenous to England before the progress of drainage and clearing; has long been a subject of regret not only to the naturalist but the sportsman. Of the stately bustard once the ornament of all our downs scarce a solitary straggler now remains--the crane as well as the stork which once abounded in the fen districts has totally disappeared; and though the success which has attended the attempts to re-introduce the capercailzie in Scotland has restored to us one of our lost species it is much to be feared that unless Mr Waterton's example in converting his park into a sanctuary be followed by other country gentlemen of ornithological tastes the raven the crow and the larger species of hawks in whose preservation no one is interested and which are already becoming _raræ aves_ in the agricultural districts will eventually disappear from the British Fauna. The great influx of English into Belgium while scarce any are to be found in Holland is attributed probably with reason to the national love of sight-seeing which finds gratification in the ceremonies and decorations of the Belgian churches--""up and down which crowds of English are for ever sauntering.... 'How have you got over your time to-day?' I said one afternoon to an acquaintance who like Mr Noddy's eldest son in Sterne was travelling through Europe at a prodigious speed and had very little spare time on his hands. He said he had knocked off thirteen churches that morning!"" The headquarters of the English residents appear to be at Bruges and Mr Waterton highly approves of the selection:--""Did my habits allow me to prefer streets to woods and green fields I could retire to Bruges and there end my days."" But after visiting the convent of English nuns where some of the ladies of Mr Waterton's family had received their education and the portrait of ""that regal profligate Charles II."" (Mr Waterton's love of truth here gets the better of his ancestral predilections for the house of Stuart) in the hall of the ancient society of archers of which he was a member during his exile the travellers continued their route by Ghent and along the valley of the Meuse ""which on a fine warm day in July appears as rich and beautiful as any valley can well be on this side of ancient Paradise "" to Aix-la-Chapelle. At this famous Prussian watering-place Mr Waterton found much to move his bile not only in the sight of ladies risking their fortunes at the public gaming-tables authorised and protected by government but in the folly of the valetudinarians who perversely counteract the beneficial effects of the waters by ""resorting to the _salle-à-manger_ and there partaking of all the luxuries from the cornucopia of Epicurus Bacchus and Ceres."" He derived some consolation however from the contemplation of the magnificent and varied prospect from the wooded heights of the Louisberg above the town; and the sight on his last visit of a pair of ravens circling over his head in aërial revolutions and then winging their way towards the forest of Ardennes awakened recollections of home and ""of the rascally cobbler who desecrated the Sunday morning by robbing the last raven's nest in this vicinity."" At Freyburg they encountered a phenomenon in the shape of a poetical German waiter--and a poet too in the English language though he had never been in England nor much among English; but the waiter's effusions the subject of which was the cathedral of Freyburg were never destined to reach England but now lie with the rest of Mr Waterton's travelling goods and chattels in the wreck of the Pollux at the bottom of the Mediterranean sea. The passage of the Alps disappointed our traveller's hopes of finding among their heights some of the rarer European birds:--""the earth appeared one huge barren waste and the heavens produced not a single inhabitant of air."" On descending the southern side of the mountains they at length received ocular demonstration of their being really in Italy by observing matronly-looking woman engaged in certain offices touching the long black hair of her daughter which showed that combs were still as scarce as when Horace stigmatized the ""incomptum caput"" of Canidia; and the necessity of lavender water to pass with any thing like comfort through the town and villages which looked so enchanting at a distance in the midst of their olive groves and cypresses is feelingly commented upon. But before entering Rome we must give Mr Waterton's own account of an exploit which made some noise at the time of its performance and the motives at least of which appear to have been mis-stated. On a former visit he had gained great renown by climbing in company with Captain Alexander of the royal navy to the summit of the cross surmounting the ball of St Peter's and leaving his gloves on the point of the conductor! and as a pendant to this notable achievement it was announced about this time in most of the English papers that in a fervour of religious enthusiasm on approaching the Eternal City he had walked barefoot as a pilgrim the last twenty miles and thus so severely lacerated his feet as to be incapable for some time of moving. ""Would that my motives had been as pure as represented! The sanctity of the churches the remains of holy martyrs which enrich them the relics of canonized saints placed in such profusion throughout them might well induce a Catholic traveller to adopt this easy and simple mode of showing his religious feeling. But unfortunately the idea never entered my mind at the time; I had no other motives than those of easy walking and self-enjoyment."" The enjoyment to be derived from walking without shoes or stockings over a rough pavement in sharp frost proved as problematical in practice as it would be to most persons in theory; and Mr Waterton found to his cost that the fifteen years which had elapsed since he went barefoot with impunity in the forests of Guiana had materially impaired his soles' power of endurance. After sustaining a severe injury in his right foot of which the intensity of the cold prevented his being sensible at the instant he was glad to resume his _chaussure_ and was laid up on the sofa for two months after his arrival. ""It was this unfortunate adventure which gave rise to the story of my walking barefooted into Rome and which gained me a reputation by no means merited on my part."" Notwithstanding this mishap and the many things offensive to English feelings in the manifold impurities of Roman streets and kitchens Mr Waterton speaks with much satisfaction of his sojourn for several months in ""Rome immortal Rome replete with every thing that can instruct and please."" Though his former visits had in great degree satiated him with galleries and palaces he still found great attractions in the studio of the Roman Landseer Vallati [10] the famous painter of wild-boars; but his great point of attraction seems to have been the bird-market near the Pantheon--the extent of traffic in which may be judged from the statement that during the spring and autumn passage of the quails which are taken in nets of prodigious extent on the shores of the Mediterranean 17 000 of these birds have passed the Roman custom-house in one day. The catalogue of birds exposed for sale as articles of food comprehends nearly all the species found in Italy: not even robin-redbreast is sacred from the omnivorous maw of the Italian gourmand and a hundred at a time may be seen lying on a stall. ""The birdmen outwardly had the appearance of banditti but it as all outside and nothing more: they were good men notwithstanding their uncouth looks and good Christians too for I could see them waiting at the door of the Jesuits' church by half-past four on a winter's morning to be ready for the first mass."" By ingratiating himself with this rough-seeming fraternity Mr Waterton succeeded in obtaining specimens of many rare birds which fortunately escaped the wreck of the Pollux by having been previously forwarded to Leghorn. Among these scattered ornithological notices we find some interesting remarks on the true designation of the ""sparrow sitting alone upon the house-top "" to which the Royal Psalmist likened himself in his penitence and vigils. It is obvious that the description could not apply to our common house sparrow the habits of which are certainly the reverse of solitary or pensive; and Mr Waterton is undoubtedly correct in referring it to the Blue or Solitary Thrush--a bird not found in this country but common in Spain Italy and the south of France and still more so in the Levant--the _Petrocincla cyanea_ of scientific naturalists and the _Passera solitaria_ of the Italians. ""It is a real thrush in size in shape in habits and in song--and is indeed a solitary bird for it never associates with any other and only with its own mate in breeding time--and even then it is often seen quite alone upon the house-top where it warbles in sweet and plaintive strains and continues its song as it moves in easy flight from roof to roof. The traveller may often see it on the remains of the Temple of Peace but much more frequently on the stupendous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla and always on the Colosseum: and in fine on the tops of most of the churches monasteries and convents within and without the walls of the Eternal City. It being an assiduous frequenter of the habitations of man I cannot have a doubt that it was the same bird which King David saw on the house-top before him and to which he listened as it poured forth its sweet and plaintive song."" The ceremonies of St Anthony's Day when the beasts of burden decked in many-coloured trappings are brought to receive the priestly benediction are described with much unction and defended with Mr Waterton's usual zeal for the ordinances of his church and with considerable tact against the ridicule often thrown upon them by ""thoughtless and censorious travellers."" ""I recalled to my mind the incessant and horrible curses which our village urchins vent against their horses on the Barnsley canal which passes close by my porters' lodges""--and truly the most rigid of Protestants could scarcely deny in this case the advantage for the well-doing of both man and beast which the usages of Rome have over those of Yorkshire. But the approach of the malaria season at length compelled them to leave Rome for Naples; and on the journey Mr Waterton's ornithological tastes were gratified to the utmost. ""I saw more birds than I had seen on the whole of the journey from England; and after having seen the ram of Apulia I no longer considered Homer's story of Ulysses with the sheep of Polyphemus as so very much out of the way."" But a still more imposing spectacle than the festival of St Anthony awaited them at Naples: this was the liquefaction of the blood of St Januarius on September 19 to witness which was the principal object of their visit. We shall leave Mr Waterton to speak for himself. ""At the termination of high mass the phial containing the blood was carried by one of the canons into the body of the cathedral that every person might have an opportunity of inspecting the blood and kissing the phial should he feel inclined. There were two phials--a large one containing the blood as it had flowed from the wounds of the martyr at its execution; and a smaller one containing his blood mixed with sand just as it had been taken from the ground on which it had fallen. These two phials were enclosed in a very strong and beautifully ornamented case of silver and glass. I kissed this case and had a most satisfactory opportunity of seeing the blood in its solid state ... and the canon who held it turned it over and over many times to prove to us that the blood was not liquid.... At one o'clock P.M. no symptoms whatever of a change had occurred. A vast number of people had already left the cathedral so that I found the temperature considerably lowered. Precisely at a quarter before two the blood suddenly and entirely liquefied. The canon who held the case passed close by me and afforded me a most favourable opportunity of accompanying him close up to the high altar where I kissed the phial and joined my humble prayers to those of the multitude.... Nothing in the whole course of my life has struck me so forcibly as this occurrence;... and I here state in the most unqualified manner my firm conviction that the liquefaction of the blood of St Januarius is miraculous beyond the shadow of a doubt. Were I to conceal this my conviction from the public eye I should question the soundness of both my head and my heart and charge my pen with arrant cowardice."" After a short excursion to Sicily in which Mr Waterton had occasion to surmise that the ancient furies of Scylla and Charybdis had quitted their old quarters to take up their abode in the passport-offices and regretted his inability to avail himself of the opportunities which the island afforded for observing the spring and autumn passage of the migratory birds they paid a farewell visit to the tomb of Virgil and left ""that laughing noisy merry city of Naples on a fine and sunny morning to enjoy for eight or nine months more the soothing quiet of the Roman capital."" At length on the 16th June 1841 the party left Rome and sailed the next day from Civita Vecchia on board the Pollux steamer for Leghorn; but their good fortune at length deserted them. ""Cervantes has told us that there is nothing certain in this life--'no hay cosa segura en esta vida.'"" It was soon evident to Mr Waterton as an old traveller that there was a great want of nautical discipline on board the Pollux and of this they soon had fatal proof. In the midst of the night the vessel came in collision with the Mongibello a steamer of larger size steering on the opposite course which stove her in amidships and she sunk in a quarter of an hour. The captains and mates of both vessels were asleep below but from the calmness of the sea and the exertions of the Prince of Canino (Charles Bonaparte ) who was fortunately a passenger on board the Mongibello and took the helm from the steersman when he was on the point of sheering off from the wreck all the crew and passengers of the Pollux except one man were got safe on board the former vessel. All their property was lost and on their being landed the next day at Leghorn an attempt was made by the authorities to detain the vessel and all on board for twenty days in quarantine on the ground of the Pollux's bill of health having been lost in the foundered vessel! But Prince Canino again came to the rescue and they eventually returned in the Mongibello to Civita Vecchia and thence to Rome where as a climax to their misfortunes Mr Waterton was for some time laid up by an attack of fever. It was not till the 20th of July that he finally set out with his party for England having in the mean time made a singular addition to his suite which is treated of at length in one of the Essays. Among the various strange birds which find a place in the Roman bill of fare is a pretty little owl yclept the Civetta (called by British ornithologists from its diminutive size the _passerina_ or sparrow owl ) which abounds throughout Italy where it figures in more varied capacities than is consistent with the usually reserved habits of its race. ""You may see it plucked and ready trussed for the spit on the same stall at which hawks crows jackdaws jays magpies hedgehogs frogs snails and buzzards are offered for sale to the passing conoscenti""--a catalogue of dainties which bears but a small proportion to a more extended _carte raisonnée_ elsewhere given by Mr Waterton who verily believes that ""scarcely any thing which has had life in it comes amiss to the Italians in the way of food except the Hanoverian rat."" It is used by sportsmen (as we find from Savi's _Ornitologia Toscana_) as a decoy for small birds which it attracts within gunshot by its singular gestures when placed on the top of a pole; and it ""is much prized by the gardener for its uncommon ability in destroying insects snails slugs and reptiles. There is scarcely an outhouse in the vineyards and gardens which is not tenanted by the Civetta and it is often brought up tame from the nest."" It has hitherto been known in England only as a rare and accidental visitor; and Mr Waterton actuated by a patriotic desire to secure for his countrymen the benefit of its services--""not by the way in the kitchen but in the kitchen-garden""--provided himself with a dozen as _compagnons de voyage_ on quitting Rome. At Genoa an inclination was manifested by the custom-house officers to claim duty on this novel article of export--and a precedent might have been drawn from the case of the eagles which were sent from Killarney to Colonel Montagu before the duties between England and Ireland were abolished and detained at Bristol on the plea that there was a duty on all singing-birds! The Genoese _doganieri_ however on Mr Waterton's assurance that the owls were not for the purposes of traffic and were moreover the native produce of _la bellissima Italia_ (with the sly addition that he ""had reason to believe they are common in Genoa so that they can well be spared "") graciously allowed them to pass duty-free; but at Basle an unexpected obstacle arose. Mr Waterton's letter of credit had been lost in the Pollux; and in spite of letters of recommendation from the Prince of Canino and the Italian Rothschild Torlonia ""M. Passavant the banker a wormwood-looking money-monger refused to advance a single _sous_ "" even on the deposit of a valuable watch; and Mr Waterton with his owls and his family would have stuck fast at Basle but for the arrival of Mr W. Brougham (brother of Lord Brougham ) who furnished him with a supply; and the whole party reached Aix-la-Chapelle safe and sound. But here Mr Waterton thought proper by way of cleansing his _protegés_ from the soils of their long journey to give them as well as himself the benefit of a warm bath!--""an act of rashness"" (as he himself terms it) which caused the death of five of the number from cold the same night. Two others perished afterwards from casualties and the remaining five arrived safe at Walton Hall. ""On the 10th of May 1842 there being abundance of slugs snails and beetles on the ground at seven o'clock in the evening the weather being serene and warm I opened the door of the cage and the five owls stepped out to try their fortunes in this wicked world. As they retired into the adjacent thicket I bade then be of good heart; and although the whole world was now open to them I said if they would stop in my park I would be glad of their company and would always be a friend and benefactor to them."" How the little strangers have sped--whether they have increased and multiplied in the hospitable shades of Walton Hall to gratify their entomological tastes for the benefit of neighbouring kitchen-gardens or strayed from this asylum and fallen victims as _raræ aves_ to some ruthless bird-stuffer we hope to be informed in the ""more last words"" which we yet hope for on the pen of Mr Waterton. ""Of all the brave birds that e'er I did see The owl is the fairest in her degree "" quoth an old ditty; and we must ourselves confess to a peculiar _penchant_ for an ""owl in an ivy bush "" partly from personal sympathy for its shortsightedness and not less for the aspect of solemn wisdom which gained for it of yore a place on the crest of Minerva's helmet and has made it in the regions of the East the counsellor of kings and princes. Who has not heard of the reproof thus conveyed through the medium of a vizier skilled in the mystic language of birds to the devastating ambition of Sultan Mahmood of Ghazni? The gates of whose tomb (it may be remarked _par parenthèse_ ) the _savans_ have now decided never to have been at Somnat at all--a piece of useful knowledge cheaply acquired no doubt at the expense of a war which has secured the owls of that country for some years to come against any scarcity of ruined villages wherewith to endow their daughters. We regret therefore to find that Mr Waterton to whom we owe the introduction of the Civetta in England and who in the first series of his Essays has eloquently vindicated the character of the barn-owl against the aspersions alike of the poets of the Augustan age and the old women of the present day still denies the accomplishment of hooting to the Yorkshire barn-owls and persists in considering it restricted to the single individual shot by Sir William Jardine. ""We know full well that most extraordinary examples of splendid talent do from time to time make their appearance on the world's wide stage--and may we not suppose that the barn-owl which Sir William shot in the absolute act of hooting may have been a gifted bird of superior parts and knowledge endowed perhaps from its early days with the faculty of hooting or else taught it by its neighbour the tawny owl? I beg to remark that though I unhesitatingly grant the faculty of hooting to this one particular individual owl still I flatly refuse to believe that hooting is common to barn-owls in general."" The same denial is repeated in the present volume; but Sir William's owl is no longer alone in his glory as the possession of a similar talent to at least a limited extent has been ascribed in the pages of the _Zoologist_ to the Oxford owls. As Mr Waterton's accuracy as an observer cannot be questioned we can only infer that the advantages of education enjoyed by the owls of Alma Mater and the Modern Athens enables them to attain a degree of vocal proficiency beyond the reach of their rustic brethren in Yorkshire--and we hope ere long to hear of Mr Waterton's having added a feathered professor of languages from one or other of these seats of learning to the colony of barn-owls established in the ruin of the old gateway at Walton. Mr Waterton has never been famous for showing too much mercy to his opponents in controversy--and on the present occasion the vials of his wrath are poured forth without stint though certainly not without strong provocation on the head of Mr Swainson well known some years since as a writer on natural history and as one of the principal advocates of the _Quinary System_[11]--a sort of zoological _transcendentalism_ (to borrow a phrase from Kant and his disciples) then fashionable according to which all the genera and species of animals known or hereafter to be discovered were held bound spontaneously to arrange themselves in circular groups of _five_ neither more nor less in obedience to some intuitive principle of nature of which the details were not yet very clearly made out. It would appear that Mr Swainson who is characterised as a ""morbid and presumptuous man "" had been at variance--on personal as well as scientific grounds--with Mr Waterton from whom he received a castigation for his ornithological heresies in a letter published in 1837; but his retaliation was delayed for two years when in an account of the cayman published in Lardner's _Cabinet Cyclopædia_ he describes it as ""on land a slow-paced and even timid animal; so that an active boy armed with a small hatchet might easily dispatch one. There is no great prowess therefore required to ride on the back of a poor cayman after it has been secured or perhaps wounded; and a modern writer

ight well have spared the recital of his feats in this way upon the cayman of Guiana had he not been influenced in this and numberless other instances by the greatest possible love of the marvellous and a constant propensity to dress truth in the garb of fiction;"" and subsequently speaks of the cayman as ""so timid that had we been disposed to perform such ridiculous feats our compassion for the poor animals would have prevented us."" Mr Waterton had no opportunity of replying to these offensive imputations at the time they were published being then absent in Italy while Mr Swainson was on the point of finally quitting England in order to become a settler in New Zealand. But though thus separated by the entire diameter of the globe ""steam will soon convey to him a copy of this "" says Mr Waterton--and verily he has demolished the unlucky Swainson without ruth or mercy. Whether this ""wholesale dealer in unsound zoology "" as Mr Waterton calls him ever can have seen a cayman except at a safe distance appears somewhat dubious; and his story of this reptile hiding its prey in a hole till semi-putrid though it would convey a high idea of the respect entertained by his brother caymans for the rights of property must be incredible to any one who has ever inspected the jaws of the animals which (as Mr Waterton observes) ""are completely formed for snatch and swallow."" We fear moreover that the character which general experience has assigned to these huge reptiles whether called crocodiles caymans or alligators is much more in accordance with the anecdote related by Governor Ynciarte of a man carried off into the river by one of these monsters from the alameda or public walk of Angostura than with Swainson's description of a timid creature liable to be knocked on the head by an idle boy with a hatchet the defenceless state of which excited his compassion. If therefore Mr Swainson does not come forward either to substantiate these novel statements or to retract them the scientific world is likely to come to the conclusion drawn by Mr Waterton that ""when he wrote his account of this reptile he was either totally unacquainted with its habits and economy or that he wilfully perverted them in order to be revenged on me"" for the letter above mentioned. From the circumstances under which the present volume was put forth one or two letters are included which do not appear to have been originally intended for publication--and these are not the least characteristic parts of the work--as that to Mr Hog of Newliston in advocacy of the persecuted Scotch rooks and one to Mr Loudon himself on the methods of clearing a garden from vermin in which there is much practical sense. It is not good for weasels or hedgehogs any more than for man to be alone in this world. ""You say 'you will send to a gardener in the country for a weasel.' You must send for two male and female. A bachelor weasel or a spinster weasel would not tarry four-and-twenty hours in your garden. Either of them would go a sweet-hearting and not return. You remark that your 'hedgehogs soon disappeared.' No doubt unless confined by a wall.... A garden well fenced by a wall high enough to keep dogs out is a capital place for hedgehogs. But there ought always to be two man and wife.... The windhover (or kestrel) hawk is excellent for killing beetles and also for consuming slugs and snails; cats dare not attack him wherefore he is very fit for a garden."" We have not heard whether any effect has been produced by Mr Waterton's remonstrances against the edict of extermination fulminated against his sable friends the rooks--but we fear that farmers in all countries are much on a par with those Delaware colonists and Isle of Bourbon planters whose fate he adduces as a warning. Having destroyed their grakles on a similar charge to that on which sentence has now been passed on the rooks they lost their whole crops by insects and were compelled not only to re-introduce the grakles but to protect them by law. We trust that the Scotch farmers will not be obliged by a similar calamity to avail themselves of Mr Waterton's obliging offer to send them in case of such necessity a fresh supply of these ""useful and interesting birds."" Mr Waterton never loses an opportunity of showing his contempt for the modern systems of ornithology which by their complicated nomenclature eternally changed by every new sciolist have almost succeeded in converting that fascinating science into an unintelligible jargon of hard names. ""As I am not a convert to the necessity or advantages of giving to many of our British birds these new and jaw-breaking names I will content myself with the old nomenclature so well-known to every village lad throughout the country.... The ancients called the wren _troglodytas_; but it is now honoured with the high-sounding name of _Anorthura_ alleging for a reason that the ancients were quite mistaken in their supposition that this bird was an inhabitant of caves as it is never to be seen within them. Methinks that the ancients were quite right and that our modern masters in ornithology are quite wrong. If we only for a moment reflect that the nest of the wren is spherical and is of itself as it were a little cave we can easily imagine that the ancients on seeing the bird going in and out of this artificial cave considered the word _troglodytas_ an appropriate appellation."" Among the various feathered visitants attracted by the city of refuge provided for them at Walton were a flock of twenty-four wild-geese of the large and beautiful species called the Canada or Cravat goose (from the conspicuous white patch on its black neck ) which unexpectedly appeared on the lake one winter and took up their permanent abode there occasionally making excursions to the other waters in the neighbourhood. ""In the breeding season two or three pairs will remain here. The rest take themselves off and are seen no more till the return of autumn when they reappear without any addition to the flock or diminution of it. This is much to be wondered at; and I would fain hazard a conjecture that the young may possibly be captured in the place where they have been hatched and the pinioned to prevent escape. But after all this is mere speculation. We know nothing of the habits of our birds of passage when they are absent from us; and we cannot account how it comes to pass that the birds just mentioned invariably return to this country without any perceptible increase of numbers; or if the original birds die or are destroyed why it is that the successors arrive here in the same numbers as their predecessors."" This remark has before been made in the case of swallows and other migratory birds the numbers of which returning each spring in localities where they can be accurately observed and counted has always been found to be he same as that which arrived the preceding year though the flock which departed southward in autumn had been swollen by the young broods accompanying their parents. Thus Gilbert White ascertained that at Selborne the number of swifts was invariably eleven pair; and as in some instances when old birds have been caught and marked they have been found to return during several succeeding years this fact would seem to justify the inference that the young birds after quitting the country of their birth do not for at least a year or two join in the annual migration of their species. By waylaying the stay-at-home geese at the time when the moult of the wing-quills disabled them for flight Mr Waterton succeeded in securing and pinioning six of them thus preventing their future departure. They subsequently received an accession to their party in two Bernacle ganders which Mr Waterton had brought over from Rotterdam and the partners of which had died soon after their arrival perhaps from the act of pinioning them; though Mr Waterton seems more inclined to attribute their untimely end to the stupidity of a Hull custom-house officer who sent the hamper containing them jolting in a truck without springs over the rough pavement to the custom-house only to be peremptorily sent back as not liable to duty by another of the same genus. ""The two ganders bereft of their connubial comforters seemed to take their misfortunes sorely to heart for some time till at last they began to make advances for permission to enter into the company of the Canadian geese. These good birds did not hesitate to receive them; and from that time these two very distinct species of geese (one being only half the size of the other) have become inseparable companions."" The confederacy of these distant relations led however to some unexpected results which are related by Mr Waterton with inimitable quaintness. On returning from Italy in the autumn of 1841 he was informed by the keeper that a left-handed marriage had been struck up between one of the little ganders and a pinioned Canadian goose the produce of which had been five addle eggs. ""Had he told me that the income-tax is a blessing and the national debt an honour to the country I could more readily have believed him than that a Canada goose had been fool enough to unite herself to a Bernacle gander. Nevertheless the man persisted in what he affirmed; and I told the story to others and nobody believed me."" The breeding-season of 1842 proved however the truth of the story; but the oddly-matched couple were again disappointed in their hopes of a family--the eggs all proving addle. The third year saw the persevering pair again engaged in incubation: ""and nothing could exceed the assiduity with which the little Bernacle stood guard often on one leg over his bulky partner. If any body approached the place his cackling was incessant; he would run at him with the fury of a turkey-cock; he would jump up at his knees and not desist in his aggressions till the intruder had retired. There was something so remarkably disproportionate betwixt this goose and gander that I gave to this the name of Mopsus and to that the name of Nisa:[12] ... the whole affair appeared to me one of ridicule and bad taste; and I was quite prepared for a termination similar to that of the two preceding years when behold! to my utter astonishment out came two young ones the remainder of the five eggs being addle. The vociferous gesticulations and strutting of little Mopsus were beyond endurance when he first caught sight of his long-looked-for progeny. He screamed aloud whilst Nisa helped him to attack me with their united wings and hissings as I approached the nest in order to convey the little ones to the water ... and this loving couple apparently so ill-assorted and disproportionate have brought up the progeny with great care and success. The hybrids are elegantly shaped but are not so large as the mother nor so small as the father; their plumage partaking in colour with that of both parents.... I certainly acted rashly notwithstanding appearances in holding this faithful couple up to the ridicule of visitors who accompanied me to the spot. I have had a salutary lesson and shall be more guarded for the future in giving an opinion. My speculation that a progeny could not be produced from the union of a Bernacle gander with a Canada goose has utterly failed. I stand convinced by a hybrid reprimanded by a gander and instructed by a goose."" The melody ascribed to the dying swan has long been well known to exist only in the graceful mythology of the ancients; but as few opportunities occur of witnessing the bird's last moments some interest attaches to Mr Waterton's personal observations on this point which we can ourselves corroborate having not long since been present at the death of a pet swan which like Mr Waterton's favourite had been fed principally by hand; and instead of seeking to conceal itself at the approach of death quitted the water and lay down to die on the lawn before its owner's door. ""He then left the water for good and all and sat down on the margin of the pond. He soon became too weak to support his long neck in an upright position. He nodded and then tried to recover himself; and then nodded again and again held up his head: till at last quite enfeebled and worn out his head fell gently on the grass his wings became expanded a trifle or so and he died while I was looking on.... Although I gave no credence to the extravagant notion which antiquity had entertained of melody from the mouth of the dying swan still I felt anxious to hear some plaintive sound or other some soft inflection of the voice which might tend to justify that notion in a small degree. But I was disappointed.... He never even uttered his wonted cry nor so much as a sound to indicate what he felt within."" Mr Waterton repeats in the present volume the determination which he had expressed in his former Essays not to appear again before the public as an author:--""It is time to say farewell and to bid adieu to natural history as far as the press is concerned."" But we still hope that he may again be induced on returning from Italy whither we believe he has once more bent his steps by some other cause than the death of a valued friend to depart from this resolution. As he himself remarks with truth in the preface to his first series of Essays ""we can never expect to have a complete history of birds until he who undertakes the task of writing it shall have studied his subject in the field of nature ""--and how little this has been attended to even in the ornithology of our own country is sufficiently shown by the errors which till of late disfigured all the received works on this subject and have been copied with implicit faith from one _soi-disant_ naturalist by another. Since that kindred spirit Gilbert White the first English naturalist who studied the habits of living birds in the open air instead of describing the colours of the plumage of stuffed specimens in cabinets we have had no one who has investigated the economy of animals and particularly of that most beautiful class of the animal kingdom the birds so thoroughly _con amore_ as Mr Waterton in this and his preceding publications--identifying himself (it may almost be said) with their _feelings_ and idiosyncrasies and vindicating them from the aspersions thrown upon them in the writings of closet-naturalists with the indignant zeal of a champion whose heart and soul is in the cause of injured innocence. Those who saw the sloth exhibited last summer in the Regent's Park Zoological Gardens when at large and suspended by its huge claws to the _under_ side of a branch of a tree must have recognised the minute accuracy of Mr Waterton's account in the _Wanderings_ of the habits of this animal so much impugned at the time because diametrically opposed to the statements of zoologists who had either never seen it alive or seen it only when placed on a flat surface a position which it never assumes in its natural state and which its conformation renders one of extreme pain and constraint. Much animadversion has also been lavished by writers of the same class on Mr Waterton's sketches of British ornithology as the facilities for observation procured by the security afforded to his _protegés_ and the unusual degree to which they have been consequently familiarised have enabled him to overthrow many long-established errors--a thankless task at best and which in some instances has not been rendered more palatable to those whose blunders were thus exposed by the unsparing shafts of his raillery. But against all these antagonists Mr Waterton is very well able to defend himself as the unlucky Mr Swainson and some others of his assailants know to their cost; and wishing him the full fruition for many long years of the bodily activity which enables him still to scale the highest tree in Walton Park to inspect a crow's nest and not less of that irresistible _naïveté_ and _bonhommie_ which give such enjoyable zest to all his writings we bid him for the present farewell--and if in sooth we are ne'er again to meet the Lord of Walton Hall in print we scarce ""shall look upon his like again!"" WARREN'S LAW STUDIES.[13] The readers of _Blackwood_ who month after month followed with increasing interest the adventures of Titmouse and the adversity and restoration of the Aubrey family will excuse us if we apparently diverge from our usual literary course to track the author of ""Ten Thousand a-Year"" in a work which he has given to the legal profession or rather to those who meditate entering upon that profession or who have just set their foot upon the threshold. Mr Warren's ""Introduction to Law Studies"" has already received the approbation of the public testified by the sale of an unusually large edition. This has prompted the author to fresh endeavours to render it worthy of the peculiar place it fills and of his own name; and he now ""after ten years of additional experience (eight of them at the bar )"" publishes a second edition ""remodelled rewritten and greatly enlarged""--indeed so considerably altered and amplified as to be in reality a new work under the old title. ""In the present work "" says the preface ""is incorporated one which the author has for some years meditated offering to the public viz. an elementary and popular outline of the leading doctrines and practice of each of the three great departments of the law civil criminal and ecclesiastical."" The work therefore now consists of three distinct parts. 1. A general survey of the legal profession--a description of the nature of its several departments of the various studies labours modes of life of the conveyancer the special pleader the common-law and equity barrister in order to guide the choice of a young man who probably has hitherto a very confused notion of what and how many different things may be implied in the vague expression of ""going to the bar."" 2. A concise and elementary view of the several branches of the law which fall to the especial study of these several departments of the profession as equity the ecclesiastical and common law; and 3. the recommendation of a course of study pointing out the best books on each subject and adding many useful hints to the young student on the discipline of his mind and the acquirement of general knowledge. To us it seems that such a work must be of very great utility and that Mr Warren has given the most complete ""beginning book"" that was ever put into the hands of a young person seeking or entering a profession. It is not a publication which as far as we know replaces or competes with any other but fills up a vacancy and supplies a want which must have often been painfully felt. How can a young man ambitious of entering the bar know the nature of that profession into which he is so anxious to enlist himself? He goes into a court of justice and sees men in their grotesque but imposing costume haranguing the judge and the jury and without further thought he resolves that he too will be an orator and haranguer. Or what is more frequently the case he reads the published speeches of an Erskine or a Curran accompanied with memoirs of the men and accounts of their forensic triumphs and he burns to achieve the like actions and to wield the same ""resistless eloquence."" But who is to tell him the nature of that territory and by what manner of journey it is to be traversed which lies between him and the gowned orator he is desirous of emulating? He sees the great actor on the stage or hears of the intoxicating applause which he wins; but who is to conduct him behind the scenes show him the apprenticeship he has to pass through the hazards of failure the impatience and tedium of unemployed energies--""the sad seclusion of unfrequented chambers or the sadder seclusion of crowded courts?""[14] How invaluable at such a time would be some kind good-natured friend who had passed through the rough experience who had sufficient remembrance of his own early mistakes and difficulties to comprehend all his bewilderment and sufficient tolerance to endure being questioned on matters which to him have grown too trite and familiar to seem to need explanation. In Mr Warren's book he will meet with exactly the information he wants; he will find a chart of the profession unrolled before him; he may quietly test his own abilities or his own courage to adopt any of the several departments as they are submitted to his inspection. He will obtain all that he could gather from that kind good-natured friend at the bar whom he has been longing for and would so willingly seize by the button--nay far more than he could gather from any one man who had not made the subject one of especial attention and taken pains himself to collect information from various quarters. Besides how infinitely agreeable is it whilst yet a resolution is unripe whilst yet it is the secret of our bosom to be able to get our doubts solved and our questions answered from the silent pages of a book; to be spared the penance of exposing half-formed designs to the jocular scrutiny of our friends--to be permitted to consult without necessarily making a confidant--to be able to dismiss our thought if it is destined to be dismissed without betraying how dear a guest it has been. The more youthful and less instructed of its readers will find every portion of this work useful to them; especially they will have reason to thank; the author for that facile introduction he has offered them to the study of the law itself. Never has been such a gently inclined plane set up for weak and unsteady feet against the hill of legal knowledge. The talent which Mr Warren has for familiar and elementary exposition is something quite peculiar. Nor will they fail to profit by his many practical hints for the discipline of the mind and his advice as to their general reading. The student more advanced in years and in thought and who entertains the project of entering the profession at a time when his mind has approached towards maturity will perceive and will have the candour to reflect that much of the work was not written for _him_. But on the other hand he is the very person who will especially value it for that description of practical familiar but most necessary information which it is rare to get from books at all--which to him it is peculiarly disagreeable to be compelled to extract piece-meal from chance conversation with men but half furnished with it and perhaps impatient of the interrogatories put to them. What are the distinctions between the several species of the lawyer? What sort of an animal is in reality the conveyancer or the special pleader or the equity draftsman--what are its habits where its haunts--how is it bred how nourished--what process is he himself to go through before he can be recognised as belonging to the class--how best may he set to work and with least loss of time?--these are matters which he is very curious to know and to him nothing is more welcome than to find them all explained in the printed page--to find them where he is accustomed to look for every thing amongst his old friends the books. Surprise has often been expressed at the fact that there is no publicly appointed method of legal tuition no lectures delivered on which it is compulsory to attend not even any examination to be finally undergone before admittance to the bar. A little acquaintance however with the nature of legal studies will soon dissipate this astonishment. There is but one way in which the law _can_ be mastered; severe steady solitary reading accompanied by the privilege of watching the real practice of the jurist in the chambers of the conveyancer or the special pleader. To one bent on the professional study of the law; lectures would be mere waste of time. To the idler they may bear the appearance and bring some of the profit of study; to the conscientious and resolved student they would be an idleness and a dissipation. Where a subject admits of being oratorically treated good lectures are extremely valuable; for oratory has its office in tuition stimulates to reflection and stirs generous sentiments and we wish the oratory of the professor's chair were more cultivated amongst us than it is. Nor need we say that where the subject admits or requires the illustration of scientific experiments lectures are almost indispensable. But in the tangled study of the law where one must go backwards and forwards as in a rope-walk and twist one's own cable out of many threads--of what use can the lecturer possibly be? To teach us law in a fluent discourse what is it but to have us feed--as the humming-birds are said to do--upon the wing? But even humming-birds feed in no such fashion; they sit down to their supper of rose-water. Much more must a lawyer have his table--his desk--fast before him; and spreading out his various fare which needs a deal of mastication feed alternately and slowly and solemnly on the several dishes which with ostrich stomach he has to digest. As to the absence of all examination previous to an admission to the bar the fact that not only in our own inns of court but in all similar institutions such examinations have been allowed to dwindle into some empty and puerile form sufficiently demonstrates their inutility. If an examination were appointed it would be no test of the efficiency of the advocate; no sufficient guarantee to the ingenuous client who should wander into Westminster Hall in search of a lawyer. Not to add that the learned gentleman may have had ample time to forget all his legal knowledge in the interval between his call to the bar and the opening of his first brief. A license indeed is given to practise as an advocate without any other qualification than that of respectability of character and the payment of certain fees; but the case of no client is confided to the young orator unless those who have the greatest interest in his competency are satisfied that he can be safely relied on. Men suffer their _health_ to be trifled with by ignorant quacks and ridiculous pretenders--not their money. We need no Sir James Graham's bill in the profession of the law. Besides it is not the good opinion of an uninformed public which the barrister has to seek or to depend upon. A lawyer he is judged by lawyers. It is in the estimation of attorneys and solicitors that he must rise--not that of respectable ladies and nervous baronets. They stand between him and that unlearned public to which the physician on the contrary at once appeals. The very circumstance however that there is no such public course of instruction marked out and no prospective examination to be prepared for--that all is to be gained from that silent array of books which fill the long shelves of a legal library or from those chambers of the practitioner which to those who look at them from without seem as dark with mystery as they are with dust and smoke--this we repeat renders such a guide-book as that which Mr Warren has presented to the public almost indispensable. In forming a critical estimation of his labours on this publication it would be extremely unfair to forget for a moment the peculiar nature of the work. He is writing for the young. It is an elementary treatise. It is a book peculiarly practical; the very opposite of whatever is theoretical or speculative. If the style is somewhat more diffuse than we should on all occasions approve we are far from regarding this as a defect _here_. The work amongst other advantages presents really a storehouse of that useful phraseology in which a public speaker should abound that phraseology which lies between the familiarity of business and the pomp of oratory. And if as we may perhaps be tempted again to remark there is something too much of laudation of that profession and of that system of jurisprudence to which he is introducing the young aspirant this too is a bias to which in the present work it would be ungracious to raise an objection. An elementary teacher should not chill and discourage his pupils by criticisms of a cold and censorious character; he should rather exercise his penetration in drawing into light concealed excellences. In this Mr Warren follows the example of the first of all commentators the most successful of all teachers--Blackstone; who continues to be the most popular of all expounders of the law even though the system that he expounds has almost deserted him. It seems that the law can be made obsolete but not the commentary. With a pupil it is a thing understood and agreed upon that he is to learn the system as it now exists; to engage him to do this it were bad policy to decry that system and expose its faults with a merciless analysis. When the student has mastered it as a lesson he may then overlook and criticise it with what severity he thinks fit. We will quote a passage which will illustrate at once the lively manner of our writer and also this happy Blackstonian tendency--the habit of animadverting very gravely on those errors of the law which have been reformed and remaining still ""a little blind"" to those which are yet untouched. ""Down to the year 1832 the system of common law pleading and practice supplied the student during the greater period of his pupilage with little else than the most degrading and unprofitable drudgery. It presented to his despairing eyes a mass of vile verbiage--a tortuous complexity of detail which defied the efforts of any but the most creeping ingenuity and industry. There was really every thing to discourage and disgust a liberal and enlightened mind however well inured to labour by the invigorating discipline of logic and mathematics. The deep and clear waters--so to speak--of legal principle there always were and will be for _they_ are immutable and eternal; but you had to buffet your way to them through ""many a mile of foaming filth "" that harassed exhausted and choked the unhappy swimmer long before he could get sight of the offing. Few beside those who had had the equivocal advantage of being early familiarised with such gibberish as ""special general imparlance""--""special testatum capias""--""special original""--""testatum pone""--""protestando""--""colour""--""_de bene esse_ "" &c. &c. &c. could obtain a glimmering of daily practice without a serious waste of time and depreciation of the mental faculties. Let the thousands who under the old system almost at once adopted and abandoned legal studies attest the truth of this remark. There was in short every thing to discourage a gentleman from entering to obstruct him in prosecuting the legal profession. Recently however a great change has been effected. There has been a real reform--a practical searching comprehensive reform of the common law; a shaking down of innumerable dead leaves and rotten branches; a cutting away of all the shoots of prurient vegetation which served but to disfigure the tree and to conceal and injure its fruit. Now you may see in the common law a tree noble in its height and figure sinewy in its branches green in its foliage and goodly in its fruit. May it be permitted however to express an humble hope that the gardener will know _when to lay aside_ his knife!""--(P. 20.) And yet Warren has a knife too of his own which he would willingly employ upon some part of this noble tree--either its old or its new branches. It is impossible for even the most indulgent commentator not to perceive that there are in our system of pleading many technicalities which so far from being necessary to the administration of justice have no other operation than to retard to complicate to defeat the administration of justice. At p. 738--a very prudent and respectful distance from the quotation we have just made--we find the following admission:-- ""Such is a faint sketch of the existing system of special pleading upon the reform and remodelling of which has been bestowed during the last fifteen years the anxious and profound consideration of some of the ablest and most experienced legal intellects which were ever addressed to such an undertaking or concerned in the practice or administration of the law. Their alterations were bold and extensive and perhaps may be said to have been to the same extent successful. The principal objects proposed to be effected by the late changes were enumerated in an early part of this work where also was given a general account of all the late changes effected in the department of Common Law pleading and practice. To this we now refer the reader; and also to the Appendix (No. IV.) where will be found _in extenso_ the Rules of Court by which these great alterations were effected. While the principal objects of the framers of them have been accomplis

ed by effecting a great saving of expense in the length of the pleadings and their incidents; by securing an economical and satisfactory trial at Nisi Prius through the precise and specific nature of the issues required to be presented to the jury and the effectual expedients resorted to for the purpose of saving an unnecessary expenditure in obtaining evidence: it cannot be denied that the excessive stringency of the rules which restrict a plaintiff to a single count in respect of a single cause of action and a defendant to a single plea in support of a single ground of defence too frequently operates most injuriously so as to secure the defeat of justice. _It is continually a matter of serious difficulty to refer a particular combination of facts to their appropriate legal category; and if the wrong one should be selected substantial justice is sacrificed before arbitrary legal technicality._ It would be easy to illustrate the truth of these remarks by reference to cases of daily occurrence. The rule in question must either be relaxed or its injurious effects neutralized by greatly enlarged powers of amendment conferred upon the judge at Nisi Prius. With all these defects however it cannot be denied that the recent changes in the law of pleading evidence and practice with reference to the interests of suitors have justified the most sanguine anticipations of those who set in motion the machinery which effected those changes; and with reference to students and practitioners have tended to exact a far greater amount of diligence learning and acuteness than for a long series of years has been deemed requisite."" Mr Warren's illustrations whether imaginary or drawn from experience and observation are always as might be expected graphic and amusing. It is thus that he exemplifies a very useful precept which he gives to the young student for the bar:-- ""He must _very early familiarise himself with the correct meaning of at least the leading technical terms of Logic_--which are of frequent use in the courts--not for petty pedantry or display but from their real advantage--from indeed the necessity of the case. Instances of the vexatious consequences of ignorance in these matters will not unfrequently fall under the notice of a watchful observer. Some two or three years ago a counsel manifestly not having enjoyed a _very_ superior education was engaged in arguing a case _in banco_ at Westminster--before four very able judges one of them being a man remarkable for his logical acuteness and dexterity. 'No no--_that_ won't do ' said he suddenly interposing--'put the converse of the proposition Mr ----: try it _that_ way.' The judge paused: the counsel too paused while a slight expression of uneasiness flitted over his features. He expected the _judge_ to 'put the converse' for him; but the judge did not. '_Put the converse_ of the proposition Mr ---- and see if _that_ will hold'--repeated the judge with some surprise and a little peremptoriness in his tone. But it was unpleasantly obvious that Mr ---- _could_ not 'put the converse' of the proposition--nor understand what as meant. Some better informed brother barrister whispered to him the converse of the proposition--but it was useless: Mr ---- faltered--repeated a word or two as if mechanically--'_Well!_' said the judge kindly suspecting the true state of the case 'go on with your argument Mr ----!' It may appear strange that so glaring a case should occur at the bar--but nevertheless such a case _did_ occur and such cases have occurred and are likely to occur again as long as persons of inferior education come intrepid in ignorance to the bar."" We think however that Mr Warren is a little too hard upon the unfortunate orator who was not aware of the meaning of the ""converse of the proposition "" and that the judge might as well have ""put it"" himself. A man may be a very good reasoner who has not learned ""to name his tools "" which is all that is taught by the logic of Aristotle. How evidently is the following invested with all the vivid colouring of actual observation:-- ""It can hardly be necessary after all that has been said upon the subject of special pleading both in this chapter and in preceding parts of the work to warn the youth who rashly rushes to the bar without a competent knowledge of pleading of the folly of which he is guilty and the danger to which he is exposing himself. To a young counsel ignorant of pleading a brief will be little else than a sort of Chinese puzzle. He must either give up in despair all attempts at mastering its contents or hurry in ridiculous agitation from friend to friend making vain efforts to 'cram' himself for some occasion of solitary display afforded him by the zealous indiscretion of a friendly solicitor. Feverish with anxiety wretched under the apprehension of public failure and the consciousness of incompetence after trembling in court lest he should be called upon to show himself he returns to chambers to curse his folly--to make when too late exertions to retrieve his false position or abandon it for ever with all the cloud-picturings of a vain and puerile ambition."" There is a general reluctance to believe in the union of literary talents and business-like qualities of mind. They are thought incompatible. A lover of literature is held to have little chance of success. A prejudice so general must have some foundation; but the incompatibility in whatever degree it exists lies we are persuaded not in the several mental qualities--not in the intellectual apparatus fitted for the two careers of literature and a profession--but in the different dispositions in the diversity of tastes which the two pursuits engender. The literary man fails in no faculty that profession calls for but he may contract a strong repugnance for the species of activity it demands. In literature thought is indulged and solicited for its own sake; it excites or it amuses; it may be invested with the deepest and most stirring interests of religion and philosophy or it may be the very rainbow of the mind having no life but only in and for its beauty. In professional vocations the intellectual effort is subordinated to a definite and fixed purpose; it is the purpose not the thought which must continually animate our exertions; and the purpose binds down the current of thought rigidly to its own service. Literature is the luxury of the spirit the free aristocratic life of intellectual pleasure; profession is the useful but fettered existence of the sons of toil. In the one the spirit revels as a mountain stream that leaps in the face of heaven from crag to crag; in the other it is the same stream lower down confined in narrow channel and half-buried by the ponderous wheel-work of that ever-clacking mill which it has to turn. What wonder then that the literary man should have certain disgusts to overcome when he is called on to forsake his own free and variable life for a mode of existence where thought is no longer her own mistress but with constant repetition must take service in the mechanism of society? And he does often recalcitrate. But when owing to some overruling motive of ambition or necessity this distaste is overcome it is an immense advantage which the possessor of literary talents has over the ordinary practitioner of any profession. In that of the law it has been especially remarked that those who have been most eminently successful have confessed to the repugnance they had in the first instance to conquer; and such examples of eminent success have for the most part consisted of men who had betrayed a decided talent and aptitude for literature. The writer whom we have before us is a striking instance of literary tastes being irresistibly borne down by the craving after active life and perhaps a strong impulse of ambition. The present work is sufficient to testify that however vivid his imagination his patience is still greater. We know him to be one of those who abhor rest who court fatigue to whom the utmost drudgery becomes welcome when invested with the interest of an immediate practical purpose. To one of such a stamp literature could only prove a sort of apprenticeship to cultivate and develope his mind not to determine his career. And so it has been. It was in vain that nature placed the pencil in his hand; she could not win him to the repose of the artist; his spirit was already pledged to a life of action of toil of hope of enterprise. All along he has chosen the path of forensic ambition nor when most exerting his fancy has he ever swerved from the goal. May success await him in his laborious course! May he be landed high and dry upon the envied eminences of social life! But--by Jupiter!--if nature had given _us_ the pencil of the artist we would not have let go our hold though the seals of office were ten times as large and ten times as brilliant as they are and were dangled before us within arm's-reach. You might have lifted us softly and gently and placed us as with a mother's arms even upon the broad woolsack we would not have dropped that pencil. No; we would have said to the boisterous prosperities of life--Here is that which will make station indifferent; if to food and raiment men must needs add the charms of variety here is that which will gild even obscurity with an assured and tranquil pride! As we have intimated we do not feel disposed to blame our author that he speaks often of his ""glorious "" his ""noble"" profession. The golden hue of sunrise is rightly cast upon the pinnacles and towers of that city the traveller is toiling to reach. What narrow and squalid streets what blind alleys what there is of filth and ruin in the great capital of intelligence he may find out afterwards for himself. There was a time when we too were younger than we are and saw the proud city at the same advantageous distance when dazzled by the view of its more conspicuous ornaments we might have been tempted to make the same exclamations and to use the same flattering phraseology. At that time if any one had thrown a shadow of moral blame on the very principle and universal practice of the profession of advocacy we should have indignantly repelled the accusation we should have rushed to its defence perhaps we even did attempt to throw our little shield before its huge and very vulnerable body. But now--when some years have rolled over our heads and we have learned to think more calmly if not more wisely--when we have caught a glimpse of the men who fill high places and stood near enough to discover that they were of earth's common mould--when the actual din of forensic oratory deafening and monotonous has rung in our ears and we have sat and watched the solemn juggle and the stale hypocrisy with which that legal strife called a trial is conducted--now if any teacher of ethics should denounce the demoralizing principle of advocacy--the principle we mean of contending for any client or any cause that craves fee in hand--we should no longer be eager to thrust ourselves between him and the object of his indignation; we should let his wrath take its course; we should listen with patience with neutrality perhaps with secret satisfaction at his attack. What after all is to be said in answer to the reproach which every simple-minded man must make--not against this or that member of the profession because an individual is always considered blameless who only adopts the customs of his country--but against the whole profession the principle and theory of its action this arguing for A or B for Yes or No as they first come without the least regard for justice or for truth? It is well known what Paley has said in its defence. ""There are falsehoods "" he writes in his chapter on Lies ""which are not lies that is which are not criminal; as 1. when no one is deceived--which is the case in parables fables novels jests tales to create mirth ludicrous embellishments of a story where the declared design of the speaker is not to inform but to divert; compliments in the subscription of a letter a servant's denying his master a prisoner pleading not guilty _and an advocate asserting the justice or his belief of the justice of his client's cause_. In such instances no confidence is destroyed because none was reposed; no promise to speak the truth is violated because none was given or understood to be given."" Ay but the advocate _does_ strive to be believed--does labour to deceive. His very object is to gain credit for his assertion whether contrary or not to his sense of truth. He stands there it is true in the character of advocate subject to whatever suspicion you may attach to that character; but all his ability is employed to overcome that suspicion and compel you to credit him. ""Confidence is not reposed;"" not readily it may be; he labours therefore the more assiduously to win it. How can he avail himself of the plea here offered for him? How can he place himself in the sane category with the portly merchant who signs himself ""your humble servant "" and would indeed be strangely surprised if you took him at his word? Or with the obedient valet who denies his master with the customary ""not at home?"" No man uses language with a more evident desire to obtain our conviction than the advocate. There is another so-called _theory_ of advocacy which we will state in the words of Bishop Warburton. In his _Divine Legation_ vol. i. p. 397 he says speaking of Cicero--""As an orator he was an advocate for his client or more properly _personated him_. Here then without question he was to feign and dissimulate his own opinions and speak those of his client. And though some of those who call themselves casuists have held it unlawful for an advocate to defend what he thinks an ill cause yet I apprehend it to be the natural right of every member of society whether accusing or accused to speak freely and fully for himself. And if either by a legal or natural incapacity this cannot be done _in person_ to have a _proxy_ provided or allowed by the state to do for him what he cannot or may not do for himself. I apprehend that all states have done it and that every advocate is such a proxy."" This explanation goes far. Of a certainty every man has a right to approach a court of justice with such plea or such demand as the law gives him. For his ultimate aims for his moral purposes in so doing he alone is responsible. We do not desire the barrister so to prejudge the cause of the litigant as to decide whether or not he ought as a moral man to carry it into a court of justice. Let his plea or his demand be laid before the tribunal of his country and as he cannot in the complicated state of our jurisprudence do this for himself it is right and equitable that there should be professional men whose function it is to do this for him. But it follows not that the professional man is to pledge his own personal convictions in every case he undertakes. _Let him speak in the name of his client_ let him limit himself to the office of interpreter where his own convictions do not allow him to be the zealous advocate. The state ought to give to every man free access to a court of justice and to all the armoury of the law; how he uses the weapons he finds there he must account to God and his own conscience and the moral judgment of society; but the state is not to give to every rogue the benefit of the apparent convictions in his favour of a learned and honorable gentleman. If the barrister speaks and is understood to speak as from his client and not from his own conviction the indiscriminate advocacy of causes which the administration of justice requires is reconcilable with the manifest claims of morality. But not otherwise. To lend out the zeal of truth to varnish every cause is what no system of jurisprudence demands and what no system of ethics can tolerate. Yet this is what is done. If a conveyancer is instructed to draw a will which appears to him unjust he must feel some pain in so doing; but it is not a pain of conscience for it is not his office to compel people to make equitable wills. It is an office which at the distance he stands from the parties and with his limited knowledge of their character and mutual relationships he could not possibly undertake; he would be a mere disturber of the peace of society if he attempted to regulate the morality of all the conveyances and testaments that he drew. It would indeed be a doctrine destructive of all order and of the very machinery of society that would as a general rule impose upon men of profession or of trade the responsibilities which lie in the first instance upon the consciences of their clients. A man could not sell a piece of whipcord from his shop without having an assurance from the customer that he was not buying it to strangle his wife withal. The conveyancer therefore quietly pursues his instructions and draws the will. In the like manner if a barrister is instructed to plead the statute of limitations to a debt it is no concern of his if the client is not acting in a conscientious manner in taking advantage of the statute. The law gives him this plea and it is not for the jurist to debar him the use of it. He presents it therefore to the court. But if not content with pleading the statute of limitations for a client who employs the law to escape from a moral obligation he labours to convince the jury that in availing himself of this plea his client is acting in a very honourable or at least in no blamable manner; if by an artful colouring of the facts or by insinuations against other parties he contrives to lead the culprit in triumph through the court then we say that a baseness is committed by the advocate for which there is no excuse in the constitution of courts of justice nor in the subtleties of casuistry. Those who have expatiated on the duty of the barrister to _do all_ for his client be that client whom he may have generally taken care to place before us the cases of political prosecution where the advocate appears to act a brave and generous part in opposing the government and the legal officers of the crown. By dexterously keeping the small cases in view while they were enlarging on the broad principle of indiscriminate advocacy they have often contrived to give to this principle itself an air of generosity; as if the barrister were performing a noble self-sacrifice were devoting himself in a quite heroic manner by giving himself head and heart voice and intelligence to the first distressed applicant for his aid. It is only by referring to the political nature of the occasion on which it was delivered that we can account for the following splendid exaggeration of Lord Brougham's upon this subject:-- ""An advocate by the sacred duty which he owes his client knows in the discharge of that office but one person in the world that client and none other. To save that client by all expedient means--to protect that client at all hazards and costs to all others and among others to himself--is the highest and most unquestioned of his duties; and he must not regard the alarm the suffering the torment the destruction which he may bring upon any other. Nay separating even the duties of a patriot from those of an advocate and casting them if need be to the wind he must go on reckless of the consequences if his fate it should unhappily be to involve his country in confusion for his client's protection."" This piece of eloquent absurdity was delivered on the trial of Queen Caroline and the speaker was playing the advocate at the time he delivered it. But Lord Brougham would not surely speak or write in the same strain upon other and more ordinary occasions--if for instance the client for whom the country was to be involved in confusion was a railway company![15] Every man has something to be said for him in the way of defence or palliation; we have no objection to every man having his advocate in Westminster Hall; but we are persuaded that public opinion is far too indulgent to this ""glorious and noble"" profession when it permits its members speaking as from their own conviction to sport with truth to any extent that may be serviceable to their clients. A more temperate zeal which should not overstep what the interest of justice demands would indeed be less munificently rewarded; but in every other respect it would be a clear gain both to the cause of public morality and the administration of the laws. But that which perhaps more frequently calls up a feeling of pain and humiliation in the barrister is that for which he is not at all responsible; namely the nature of those _legal_ weapons the employment of which his client has a right to demand of him. The rules of _pleading_ and of _evidence_ have been lately much simplified and improved and they will year after year be still further improved; but they still furnish the willing or the unwilling advocate with abundant obstructions to the fair investigation of truth. Speaking of pleading Mr Warren has very truly said in a passage we have already quoted--""It is continually a matter of serious difficulty to refer a particular combination of facts to their appropriate legal category; and if the wrong one should be selected substantial justice is sacrificed before arbitrary legal technicality."" A glance at these ""legal categories"" will fully bear out the statement which our author has here so temperately made. Let us open the justly lauded book of Mr Stephen ""On the Principles of Pleading""--a work which every man lawyer or not who receives a gratification from clear and logical statements may take pleasure in perusing. We extract the following account of _personal actions_:-- ""Of personal actions the most common are the following--Debt covenant detinue trespass trespass on the case replevin. ""The action of _debt_ lies where a party claims the recovery of a debt _i. e._ a liquidated or certain sum of money alleged to be due to him. ""The action of _covenant_ lies where a party claims damages for a breach of covenant _i. e. of a promise under seal_. ""The action of _detinue_ lies where the party claims the specific recovery of goods and chattels or deeds and writings detained from him. ""The action of _trespass_ lies where a party claims damages for a trespass against him. A trespass is an injury _committed with violence_."" Having described these the author comes to one which requires to have its history told before it can be rendered intelligible. This is still not unfrequently the case in our law; instead of a definition founded on the nature of things and growing out of the science itself of jurisprudence we are presented with a narrative to tell us how the matter came about. ""The action of _trespass on the case_ lies where a party sues for damages for any wrong or cause of complaint to which covenant or trespass will not apply. This action originated in the power given by the statute of Westminster 2 to the clerks of the chancery to frame new writs _in consimili casu_ with writs already known.... Such being the nature of the action it comprises of course many different species. There are two however of more frequent use than any other species of trespass on the case or perhaps than any other form of action whatever. These are Assumpsit and Trover. ""The action of _assumpsit_ lies where a party claims damages for breach of simple contract _i. e. a promise not under seal_."" The action of _trover_ differs from _detinue_ inasmuch as the party claims _damages_ not the recovery of the identical goods and chattels. With the action of _replevin_ we will not trouble our readers to whom we ought perhaps to apologise for entering thus far into legal technicalities. But now reflect a moment on this classification. A promise under seal must assuredly require a different proof from a promise not under seal; but what end is answered by calling one an action of _covenant_ and the other an action of _assumpsit_? Or what good result can arise from limiting the definition of _debt_ to the claim of a sum certain? Who sees not what a snare may be here laid for the feet of unwary suitors? The names of _trover_ _detinue_ _trespass_ give no information to the defendant; the substantial cause of action is stated in the declaration and these names are mere useless additions. Yet the right name must be chosen or it is fatal to the suit. If _trespass_ be adopted instead of _trespass on the case_ the error is fatal; and yet mark how lucid how intelligible how satisfactory is the classification designated by these terms of art. Trespass is the proper form of action when the injury has been committed _with violence_ This looks sufficiently distinct. But then the violence may be either _actual_ or _implied_; and the law will imply violence wherever the injury is _direct_ and the property injured of a _tangible_ nature. In the most stealthy peaceable entrance upon another man's land the law implies violence. What therefore may or may not be said in the usual phrase to be done _vi et armis_ remains to be known by no means from the nature of the facts themselves but from arbitrary decisions of courts. To make out a class of actions as those committed with violence and then to imply violence where in reality there is none is first to make and then unmake the distinction. And yet as some distinction is for the embarrassment of suitors to be retained this implication of violence is restricted to cases where the injury is _direct_ and not _consequential_; and what shall be denominated a direct and what a consequential injury is again a matter of no small difficulty. Moreover in order to sustain trespass the property injured must be of a _corporeal_ nature. It would be a sad solecism in the eye of the law to allow a man to bring trespass on account of his _tithes_--this being according to definition an _incorporeal_ property and from its nature therefore not subject to violence. This barbarous nomenclature of actions might be swept away at once with considerable advantage. If the plaintiff ""complaining"" of the defendant proceeded at once to a brief statement of his cause of action this would answer all the purposes of pleading. It was said by the commissioners in the third report on the common law that an abolition of these distinctions would entail ""much uncertainty on the right of action."" With utmost deference to the commissioners this is a very strange assertion. These categories are known only to the lawyers; and surely a student of the law cannot be at a loss to distinguish the substantial ground of action from a mere formulary of pleading. A layman may often imagine he has a right of action where he has none. Did the commissioners mean gravely to assert that these categories of which he knows nothing--or whether he knows them or not--could enlighten him as to the redress he is entitled to in a court of justice? It is however in the inexhaustible armoury of quibble and objection which the law of _evidence_ supplies him with that the generous advocate must feel the greatest amount of embarrassment and repugnance. It is his office to stand at the door of testimony and thrust back every witness and reject every document he can upon pleas which whatever their original ground or design he very well knows do not impeach the real value of the evidence rejected. But into this topic we must not enter. It is not our present object to write upon the reform of the laws. The subject would lead us much too far. One general remark only we will venture to make. Neither in nor out of the profession must men yet be impatient with the frequent changes that our laws undergo. Though in common with our author we estimate highly a settled state of things and have to deprecate the rashness of some too hasty legislators we cannot yet ""lay aside the knife."" They are very inconvenient these partial changes but there is no other mode of proceeding. Whilst we are living in the very city which we have to improve and in great part to rebuild what else can we do but pull down here and there a street at a time and reconstruct it on a better plan? It is miserable work this pulling down. One is blinded by dust--one loses one's way; all seems ruin and confusion. But the new street rises--the rubbish is removed--the dust is laid; one finds one's way again and finds it twice as short as before. It is only by successive changes of this kind that the great city of our jurisprudence can be adapted to the wants of its multiplied and changed inhabitants. We ought perhaps to mention that Mr Warren has been discreetly silent on some of the topics to which we have ventured to allude. He has very wisely avoided all questions of casuistry; and we trust that in our glances on the moral position of the bar we shall not be thought to have manifested any want of respect for a learned body the members of which in their individual character stand as high in our estimation as those of any body whatever and which as a whole presents a greater array of talent than in any other denomination of men could be met with. We revert once more to Mr Warren's very useful able and praiseworthy publication to wish him success not only in this undertaking which may be already said to be crowned with success but in the still greater and more laborious enterprise which he has on foot and which this specimen of his legal authorship shows him fully competent to achieve. MARGARET OF VALOIS. On the eighteenth day of August 1572 a great festival was held in the palace of the Louvre. It was to celebrate the nuptials of Henry of Navarre and Margaret of Valois. This alliance between the chief of the Protestant party in France and the sister of Charles IX. and daughter of Catharine of Medicis perplexed and in some degree alarmed the Catholics whilst it filled the Huguenots with joy and exultation. The king had declared that he knew and made no difference between Romanist and Calvinist--that all were alike his subjects and equally beloved by him. He caressed the throng of Huguenot nobles and gentlemen whom the marriage had attracted to the court was affectionate to his new brother-in-law friendly with the prince of Condé almost respectful to the venerable Admiral de Coligny to whom he proposed to confide the command of an army in a projected war with Spain. The chiefs of the Catholic party were not behind-hand in following the example set them by Charles. Catharine of Medicis was all smiles and affability; the Duke of Anjou afterwards Henry III. received graciously the compliments paid him by the Huguenots themselves on his successes at Jarnac and Moncontour battles which he had won before he was eighteen years old; Henry of Guise whose reputation as a leader already at the age of two-and-twenty almost equalled that of his great father was courteous and friendly to those whose deadly foe he had so lately been. The Duke of Mayenne and the Admiral the Guise and the Condé were seen riding conversing and making parties of pleasure together. It was the lion lying down with the lamb. On the twenty-second of August four days after the marriage in which the Huguenots saw a guarantee of the peaceful exercise of their religion the Admiral de Coligny was passing through the street of St Germain l'Auxerrois when he was shot at and wounded by a captain of _petardiers_ one Maurevel who went by the name of _Le Tueur du Roi_ literally the King's Killer. At midnight on the twenty-fourth of August the tocsin sounded and the massacre of St Bartholomew began. It is at this stirring period of French history abounding in horrors and bloodshed and in plots and intrigues both political and amorous that M. Alexandre Dumas commences one of his most recently published romances. Beginning with the marriage of Henry and Margaret he narrates in his spirited and attractive style various episodes real and imaginary of the great massacre from the first fury of which Henry himself doomed to death by the remorseless Catherine of Medicis was only saved by his own caution by the indecision of Charles IX. and the energy of Margaret of Valois. The marriage between the King of France's sister and the King of Navarre was merely one of _convenance_ agreed to by Henry for the sake of his fellow Protestants and used by Catherine and Charles as a lure to bring ""those of the religion "" as they were called to Paris there to be slaughtered unsuspecting and defenceless. Margaret then scarcely twenty years of age had already made herself talked of by her intrigues; Henry who was a few months younger but who even at that early period of his life possessed a large share of the shrewdness and prudence for which his countrymen t

e Béarnese have at all times been noted was at the very time of his marriage deeply in love with the Baroness de Sauve one of Catharine de Medicis' ladies by whom he was in his turn beloved. But although little affection existed between the royal pair the strong links of interest and ambition bound them together; and no sooner were they married than they entered into a treaty of political alliance to which for some time both steadily and truly adhered. On the night of the St Bartholomew a Huguenot gentleman the Count Lerac de la Mole who has arrived that day at Paris with important letters for the King of Navarre seeks refuge in the apartments of the latter from the assassins who pursue and have already wounded him. Unacquainted however with the Louvre he mistakes the door and enters the apartment of the Queen of Navarre who seized with pity and struck also by the youth and elegance of the fugitive gives him shelter and herself dresses his wounds employing in his behalf the surgical skill which she has acquired from the celebrated Ambrose Paré whose pupil she had been. One of the most furious of La Mole's pursuers is a Piedmontese gentleman Count Hannibal de Coconnas who has also arrived that day in the capital and put up at the same hotel as La Mole. When the latter is rescued by Margaret Coconnas wanders through Paris killing all the Huguenots he can find--such at least as will defend themselves. In a lonely part of the town he is overpowered by numbers and is rescued from imminent peril by the Duke of Guise's sister-in-law the Duchess of Nevers that golden-haired emerald-eyed dame of whom Ronsard sang-- ""La Duchesse de Nevers Aux yeux verts Qui sous leur paupière blonde Lancent sur nous plus d'éclairs Que ne font vingt Jupiters Dans les airs Lorsque la tempête gronde."" To cut the story short La Mole falls violently in love with Margaret Coconnas does the same with the duchess; and these four personages play important parts in the ensuing narrative which extends over a space of nearly two years and into which the author according to his custom introduces a vast array of characters for the most part historical all spiritedly drawn and well sustained. M. Dumas may in various respects be held up as an example to our history spoilers self-styled writers of historical romance on this side the Channel. One does not find him profaning public edifices by causing all sorts of absurdities to pass and of twaddle to be spoken within their precincts; neither does he make his kings and beggars high-born dames and private soldiers use the very same language all equally tame colourless and devoid of character. The spirited and varied dialogue in which his romances abound illustrates and brings out the qualities and characteristics of his actors and is not used for the sole purpose of making a chapter out of what would be better told in a page. In many instances indeed it would be difficult for him to tell his story by the barest narrative in fewer words than he does by pithy and pointed dialogue. As the sole means of placing his life in comparative safety Henry abjures the Protestant faith and remains in a sort of honourable captivity at the court of France suspected by Charles and detested by Catharine to whom Réné the Florentine her astrologer and poisoner has predicted that the now powerless prince of Navarre shall one day reign over France. Some days have passed the massacres have nearly ceased and the body of Admiral de Coligny discovered amongst a heap of slain has been suspended to the gibbet at Montfaucon. Charles IX. always greedy of spectacles of blood proposes to pay a visit to the corpse of his dead enemy whom had called his father and affectionately embraced upon their last meeting previous to the attempted assassination of the admiral by Maurevel an attempt instigated by Charles himself. We will give the account of this visit in the words of M. Dumas. It was two in the afternoon when a long train of cavaliers and ladies glittering with gold and jewels appeared in the Rue St Denis displaying itself in the sun between the sombre lines of houses like some huge reptile with sparkling scales. Nothing that exists at the present day can give an adequate idea of the splendour of this spectacle. The rich silken costumes of the most brilliant colours which were in vogue during the reign of Francis I. had not yet been replaced by the dark and graceless attire that became the fashion in Henry III.'s time. The costume of the reign of Charles IX. was perhaps less rich but more elegant than that of the preceding epoch. In the rear and on either side of this magnificent procession came the pages esquires gentlemen of low degree dogs and horses giving the royal train the appearance of a small army. The cavalcade was followed by a vast number of the populace. That morning in presence of Catharine and the Duke of Guise and of Henry of Navarre Charles the Ninth had spoken as if it were quite a natural thing of going to visit the gibbet at Montfaucon or in other words the mutilated body of the admiral which was suspended from it. Henry's first impulse had been to make an excuse for not joining the party. Catharine was looking out for this and at the very first word that he uttered expressive of his repugnance she exchanged a glance and a smile with the Duke of Guise. Henry whom nothing escaped caught both smile and glance underwent them and hastened to correct his blunder. ""After all "" said he ""why should I not go? I am a Catholic and owe as much to my new religion."" Then addressing himself to the king:--""Your majesty may reckon upon me "" said he; ""I shall always be happy to accompany you wherever you go."" In the whole procession no one attracted so much curiosity and attention as this king without a kingdom this Huguenot who had become Catholic. His long and strongly marked features his somewhat common _tournure_ his familiarity with his inferiors--a familiarity which was to be attributed to the habits of his youth and which he carried almost too far for a king--caused him to be at once recognised by the spectators some of whom called out to him--""To mass Henriot to mass!"" To which Henry replied. ""I was there yesterday I have been there to-day I shall go again to-morrow. _Ventre-saint-gris!_ I think that is enough."" As for Margaret she was on horseback--so beautiful so fresh and elegant that there was a perfect chorus of admiration around her some few notes of which however were addressed to her companion and intimate friend the Duchess of Nevers who had just joined her and whose snow-white steed as if proud of its lovely burden tossed its head and neighed exultingly. ""Well duchess "" said the Queen of Navarre ""have you anything new to tell me?"" ""Nothing madam I believe "" replied Henriette. Then in a lower tone she added--""And the Huguenot what is become of him?"" ""He is in safety "" replied Margaret. ""And your Piedmontese hero? Where is he?"" ""He insisted upon being one of the party and is riding M. de Nevers' charger a horse as big as an elephant. He is a superb cavalier. I allowed him to come because I thought that your Huguenot protégé would be still confined to his room and that consequently there could be no risk of their meeting."" ""_Ma foi!_"" replied Margaret smiling ""if he were here I do not think there would be much danger of a single combat. The Huguenot is very handsome but nothing else--a dove and not an eagle; he may coo but he will not bite. After all "" added she with a slight elevation of her shoulders ""we perhaps take him for a Huguenot whilst he is only a Brahmin and his religion may forbid his shedding blood. But see there duchess--there is one of your gentlemen who will assuredly be ridden over."" ""Ah! it is my hero "" cried the duchess; ""look look!"" It was Coconnas who had left his place in the procession in order to get nearer to the Duchess of Nevers; but at the very moment that he was crossing the sort of boulevard separating the street of St Denis from the faubourg of the same name a cavalier belonging to the suite of the Duke of Alençon who had just come up was run away with by his horse; and being unable immediately to check the animal came full tilt against Coconnas. The Piedmontese reeled in his saddle and his hat fell off. He caught it in his hand and turned furiously upon the person by whom he had been so rudely although accidentally assailed. ""Good heavens!"" said Margaret in a whisper to her friend ""it is Monsieur de la Mole!"" ""That pale handsome young man?"" cried the duchess. ""Yes; he who so nearly upset your Piedmontese."" ""Oh!"" exclaimed the duchess ""something terrible will happen! They recognise each other."" They had done so. Coconnas dropped the bridle of his horse in surprise at meeting with his former acquaintance whom he fully believed he had killed or at any rate disabled for a long time to come. As to La Mole when he recognised Coconnas a flush of anger overspread his pallid countenance. For a few seconds the two men remained gazing at each other with looks which made Margaret and the duchess tremble. Then La Mole glancing around him and understanding doubtless that the place was not a fit one for an explanation spurred his horse and rejoined the Duke of Alençon. Coconnas remained for a moment stationary twisting his mustache till he brought the corner of it nearly into his eye and then moved onwards. ""Ha!"" exclaimed Margaret with mingled scorn and vexation; ""I was not mistaken then. Oh this time it is too bad!"" And she bit her lips in anger. ""He is very handsome "" said the duchess in a tone of commiseration. Just at this moment the Duke of Alençon took his place behind the king and the queen-mother; so that his gentlemen in order to follow him had to pass Margaret and the Duchess of Nevers. As La Mole went by he removed his hat bowed low to the queen and remained bareheaded waiting till her majesty should honour him with a look. But Margaret turned her head proudly away. La Mole doubtless understood the scornful expression of her features; his pale face became livid and he grasped his horse's mane as if to save himself from falling. ""Look at him cruel that you are "" said Henriette to the Queen; ""he is going to faint."" ""Good "" said Margaret with a smile of immense contempt. ""Have you no salts to offer him?"" Madame de Nevers was mistaken. La Mole recovered himself and took his place behind the Duke of Alençon. The royal party continued to advance and presently came in sight of the gallows at Montfaucon. The King and Catharine of Medicis were followed by the Dukes of Anjou and Alençon the King of Navarre the Duke of Guise and their gentlemen; then came Margaret the Duchess of Nevers and the ladies composing what was called the Queen's flying squadron; finally the pages esquires lackeys and the people--in all ten thousand souls. The guards who marched in front placed themselves in a large circle round the enclosure in which stood the gibbet; and on their approach the ravens that had perched upon the instrument of death flew away with hoarse and dismal croakings. To the principal gallows was hanging a shapeless mass a blackened corpse covered with mud and coagulated blood. It was suspended by the feet for the head was wanting. In place of the latter the ingenuity of the people had substituted a bundle of straw with a mask fixed upon it; and in the mouth of the mask some scoffer acquainted with the admiral's habits had placed a toothpick. It was a sad and strange sight to behold all these elegant cavaliers and beautiful women passing like one of the processions which Goya has painted under the blackened skeletons and tall grim gibbets. The greater the mirth of the visitors the more striking was the contrast with the mournful silence and cold insensibility of the corpses which were its object. Many of the party supported with difficulty this horrible spectacle; and Henry of Navarre especially in spite of his powers of dissimulation and habitual command over himself was at last unable to bear it longer. He took as a pretext the stench emitted by these human remains; and approaching Charles who with Catharine of Medicis had paused before the body of the admiral-- ""Sire "" said he ""does not your Majesty find that the smell of this poor corpse is too noxious to be longer endured?"" ""Ha! think you so Harry?"" cried Charles whose eyes were sparkling with a ferocious joy. ""Yes sire."" ""Then I am not of your opinion. _The body of a dead enemy always smells well._"" ""By my faith! sire "" said Monsieur de Tavannes ""your Majesty should have invited Pierre Ronsard to accompany us on this little visit to the admiral; he would have made an impromptu epitaph on old Gaspard."" ""That will I make "" said Charles. And after a moments reflection ""Listen gentlemen "" said he-- ""Ci-gît mais c'est mal entendu Pour lui le mot est trop honnête Ici l'amiral est pendu Par les pieds à faute de tête."" ""Bravo! bravo!"" cried the Catholic gentlemen with one voice whilst the converted Huguenots there present maintained a gloomy silence. As to Henry he was talking to Margaret and the Duchess of Nevers and pretended not to hear. ""Come sir "" said Catharine who in spite of the perfumes with which she was covered began to have enough of this tainted atmosphere--""Come sir "" said she to the king ""the best of friends must part. Let us bid adieu to the admiral and return to Paris."" And bowing her head ironically to the corpse by way of a farewell she turned her horse and regained the road whilst her suite filed past the body of Coligny. The crowd followed the cavalcade and ten minutes after the king's departure no one remained near the mutilated body of the admiral. When we say no one we make a mistake. A gentleman mounted on a black horse and who probably during the stay of the king had been unable to contemplate the disfigured corpse sufficiently at his ease lingered behind and was amusing himself by examining in all their details the chains irons stone pillars in short the whole paraphernalia of the gibbet which no doubt appeared to him who had been but a few days at Paris and was not aware of the perfection to which all things are brought in the metropolis a paragon of hideous ingenuity. This person was our friend Coconnas. A woman's quick eye had in vain sought him through the ranks of the cavalcade. Monsieur de Coconnas remained in admiration before the masterpiece of Enguerrand de Marigny. But the woman in question was not the only person who sought Coconnas. A cavalier remarkable for his white satin doublet and the elegance of his plume after looking before him and on either side had at last looked back and perceived the tall form of the Piedmontese and the gigantic profile of his horse sharply defined against the evening sky now reddened by the last rays of the setting sun. Then the gentleman in the white satin doublet left the road which the cavalcade was following struck into a side path and describing a curve returned towards the gibbet. He had scarcely done this when the Duchess of Nevers approached the Queen of Navarre and said-- ""We were mistaken Margaret for the Piedmontese has remained behind and Monsieur de la Mole has followed him."" ""_Mordi!_"" cried Margaret laughing ""is it so? I confess that I shall not be sorry to have to alter my opinion."" She then looked round and saw La Mole returning towards the gallows. It was now the turn of the two princesses to quit the cavalcade. The moment was favourable for so doing for they were just crossing a road bordered by high hedges by following which they would get to within thirty paces of the gibbet. Madame de Nevers said a word to the captain of her guards Margaret made a sign to Gillonne her tirewoman and confidant; and these four persons took the cross road and hastened to place themselves in ambuscade behind some bushes near the spot they were desirous of observing. There they dismounted and the captain held the horses whilst the three ladies found a pleasant seat upon the close fresh turf with which the place was overgrown. An opening in the bushes enabled them to observe the smallest details of what was passing. La Mole had completed his circuit and walking up behind Coconnas he stretched out his hand and touched him on the shoulder. The Piedmontese turned his head. ""Oh!"" said he ""it was no dream then. You are still alive?"" ""Yes sir "" replied La Mole ""I am still alive. It is not your fault but such is the case."" ""_Mordieu!_ I recognise you perfectly "" said Coconnas ""in spite of your pale cheeks. You were redder than that the last time I saw you."" ""And I recognise you also "" said La Mole ""in spite of that yellow cut across your face. You were paler than you are now when I gave it to you."" Coconnas bit his lips but continued in the same ironical tone. ""It is curious is it not Monsieur de la Mole particularly for a Huguenot to see the admiral hung up to that iron hook?"" ""Count "" said La Mole with a bow ""I am no longer a Huguenot I have the honour to be a Catholic."" ""Bah!"" cried Coconnas bursting into a laugh ""You are converted? How very sly of you!"" ""Sir "" replied La Mole with the same serious politeness ""I made a vow to become a Catholic if I escaped the massacre."" ""It was a very prudent vow "" returned the Piedmontese ""and I congratulate you on it; is it the only one you made?"" ""No sir I made one other "" replied La Mole patting his horse with his usual deliberate grace. ""And it was----"" enquired Coconnas. ""To hang you up yonder to that little hook which seems to be waiting for you just below Monsieur de Coligny."" ""What!"" cried Coconnas ""all alive just as I am?"" ""No sir; after passing my sword through your body."" Coconnas became purple and his grey eye flashed fire. ""Really "" said he with a sneer; ""to yonder rail? You are not quite tall enough for that my little gentleman."" ""Then I will get upon your horse "" replied La Mole. ""Ah! you think my dear M. Hannibal de Coconnas that you may assassinate people with impunity under the loyal and honourable pretext of being a hundred to one. Not so. A day comes when every man finds his man and for you that day is come now. I am almost tempted to break your ugly head with a pistol shot; but pshaw! I should perhaps miss you for my hand still shakes with the wounds you so treacherously gave me. ""My ugly head!"" roared Coconnas throwing himself off his horse. ""On foot! Monsieur le Compte--out with your blade!"" And he drew his sword. ""I think your Huguenot called him ugly "" whispered the Duchess of Nevers to Margaret. ""Do you find him so?"" ""He is charming "" cried Margaret laughing ""and Monsieur de la Mole's anger renders him unjust. But hush! let us observe them."" La Mole got off his horse with as much deliberation as Coconnas had shown haste drew his sword and put himself on guard. ""Ah!"" cried he as he extended his arm. ""Oh!"" exclaimed Coconnas as he stretched out his. Both it will be remembered were wounded in the shoulder and a sudden movement still caused them acute suffering. A stifled laugh was audible from behind the trees. The princesses had been unable to restrain it when they saw the two champions rubbing their shoulders and grimacing with pain. The laughed reached the ears of La Mole and Coconnas who had been hitherto unaware of the presence of witnesses but who now on looking round perceived the ladies. La Mole again put himself on guard steady as an automaton and Coconnas as their swords crossed uttered an energetic _Mordieu!_ ""_Ah ça!_"" exclaimed Margaret ""they are in earnest and will kill one another if we do not prevent it. This is going too far. Stop gentlemen I entreat you."" ""Let them go on "" said Henriette who having already seen Coconnas make head successfully against three antagonists at once trusted that he would have at least as easy a bargain of La Mole. At the first clash of the steel the combatants became silent. They were neither of them confident in their strength and at each pass or parry their imperfectly healed wounds caused them sharp pain. Nevertheless with fixed and ardent eye his lips slightly parted his teeth firmly-set La Mole advanced with short steady steps upon his adversary; who perceiving that he had to do with a master of fence retreated--gradually it is true but still retreated. In this manner they reached the edge of the moat or dry ditch on the other side of which the spectators had stationed themselves. There as if he had only retired with the view of getting nearer to the duchess Coconnas stopped and made a rapid thrust. At the same instant a sanguine spot which grew each second larger appeared upon the white satin of La Mole's doublet. ""Courage!"" cried the Duchess of Nevers. ""Poor La Mole!"" exclaimed Margaret with a cry of sorrow. La Mole heard the exclamation threw one expressive glance to the queen and making a skilful feint followed it up by a pass of lightning swiftness. This time both the women shrieked. The point of La Mole's rapier had appeared crimson with blood behind the back of Coconnas. Neither of the combatants fell; they remained on their feet staring at each other each of them feeling that at the first movement he made he should lose his balance. At last the Piedmontese more dangerously wounded than his antagonist and feeling that his strength was ebbing away with his blood threw himself forward upon La Mole and seized hill with one arm whilst with the other hand he felt for his dagger. La Mole mustered all his remaining strength raised his hand and struck Coconnas on the forehead with his sword-hilt. Coconnas fell but in falling he dragged his adversary after him and both rolled into the ditch. Then Margaret and the Duchess of Nevers seeing that although apparently dying they still sought to finish each other sprang forward preceded by the captain of the guards. But before they reached the wounded men the eyes of the latter closed their grasp was loosened and letting fall their weapons they stretched themselves out stiff and convulsed. A pool of blood had already formed itself around them. ""Oh! brave brave La Mole!"" exclaimed Margaret unable to repress her admiration. ""How can I forgive myself for having suspected you?"" And her eyes filled with tears. ""Alas! alas!"" cried the duchess sobbing violently. ""Say madam did you ever see such intrepid champions?"" ""_Tudieu!_--What hard knocks!"" exclaimed the captain trying to stanch the blood that flowed from the wounds. ""Hola! you who are coming come more quickly."" A man seated on the front of a sort of cart painted of a red colour was seen slowly approaching. ""Hola!"" repeated the captain ""will you come then when you are called? Do you not see that these gentlemen are in want of assistance?"" The man in the cart whose appearance was in the highest degree coarse and repulsive stopped his horse got down and stepped over the two bodies. ""These are pretty wounds "" said he ""but I make better ones."" ""Who then are you?"" said Margaret experiencing in spite of herself a vague and unconquerable sensation of terror. ""Madam "" replied the man bowing to the ground ""I an Maître Caboche executioner of the city of Paris; and I am come to suspend to this gibbet some companions for the admiral."" ""And I am the Queen of Navarre; throw out your dead bodies place our horses' clothes in your cart and bring these two gentlemen carefully to the Louvre."" La Mole recovers from his wounds before Coconnas is out of danger. The latter is in great measure restored to health through the care and attention which his late antagonist generously lavishes on him; they become intimate friends and Coconnas is appointed to the household of the Duke of Alençon to which La Mole already belongs. The duke out of opposition to his brothers the king and the Duke of Anjou has a leaning towards the Huguenot party. De Mouy a Protestant leader whose father has been assassinated by Maurevel comes in disguise to the Louvre to communicate with Henry of Navarre in the sincerity of whose conversion the Huguenots do not believe. Henry however who knows that the walls of the Louvre have ears refuses to listen to De Mouy and declares himself Catholic to the backbone; and De Mouy despairing and indignant leaves the king's apartment. The Duke of Alençon who has overheard their conference as Henry suspected stops the Huguenot emissary and shows a disposition to put himself at the head of that party and become King of Navarre. There is a great deal of intrigue and manoeuvring very skilfully managed by Henry who makes D'Alençon believe that he has no wish to become any thing more than a simple country-gentleman and that he is willing to aid him in his ambitious designs. He proposes that they should watch for an opportunity of leaving Paris and repairing to Navarre. Before the negotiations between the two princes are completed however the Duke of Anjou has been elected King of Poland and has had his election ratified by the Pope; and D'Alençon then begins to think that it would be advisable to remain at Paris on the chance of himself becoming King of France. Charles IX. is delicate and sickly subject to tremendous outbursts of passion which leave him weak and exhausted; his life is not likely to be a long one. Should he die and even if the Poles should allow their new king to return to France D'Alençon would have time he thinks before the arrival of the latter to seize upon the vacant throne. Even the reversion of the crown of Poland would perhaps be preferable to the possession of that of Navarre. Whilst ruminating these plans one of the king's frequent hunting parties takes place in the forest of Bondy and is attended by all the royal family except the Duke of Anjou then absent at the siege of La Rochelle. At this hunting party the following striking incidents occur. The _piqueur_ who had told the king that the boar was still in the enclosure had spoken the truth. Hardly was the bloodhound put upon the scent when he plunged into a thicket and drove the animal an enormous one of its kind from its retreat in a cluster of thorn-bushes. The boar made straight across the road at about fifty paces from the king. The leashes of a score of dogs were immediately slipped and the eager hounds rushed headlong in pursuit. The chase was Charles's strongest passion. Scarcely had the boar crossed the road when he spurred after him sounding the view upon his horn and followed by the Duke of Alençon and by Henry of Navarre. All the other chasseurs followed. The royal forests at the period referred to were not as at present extensive parks intersected by carriage roads. Kings had not yet had the happy idea of becoming timber-merchants and of dividing their woods into _tailles_ and _futaies_. The trees planted not by scientific foresters but by the hand of God who let the seed fall where the wind chose to bear it were not arranged in quincunxes but sprang up without order and as they now do in the virgin forests of America. Consequently a forest at that period was a place in which boars and stags wolves and robbers were to be found in abundance. The wood of Bondy was surrounded by a circular road like the tire of a wheel and crossed by a dozen paths which might be called the spokes. To complete the comparison the axle was represented by _carrefour_ or open space in the centre of the wood whence all these paths diverged and whither any of the sportsmen who might be thrown out were in the habit of repairing till some sight or sound of the chase enabled them to rejoin it. At the end of a quarter of an hour it happened as it usually did at these hunts that insurmountable obstacles had opposed themselves to the progress of the hunters the baying of the hounds had become inaudible in the distance and the king himself had returned to the _carrefour_ swearing and cursing according to his custom. ""Well D'Alençon! Well Henriot!"" cried he--""here you are _mordieu!_ as calm and quiet as nuns following their abbess. That is not hunting. You D'Alençon--you look as if you had just come out of a band-box; and you are so perfumed that if you got between the boar and my dogs you would make them lose the scent. And you Henriot--where is your boar-spear? Where your arquebuss?"" ""Sire "" replied Henry ""an arquebuss would be useless to me. I know that your majesty likes to shoot the boar himself when it is brought to bay. As to the spear I handle it very clumsily. We are not used to it in our mountains where we hunt the bear with nothing but a dagger."" ""By the _mordieu_ Henry when you return to your Pyrenees you shall send me a cart-load of bears. It must be noble sport to contend with an animal that can stifle you with a hug. But hark! I hear the dogs! No I was mistaken."" The king put his horn to his mouth and sounded fanfare. Several horns replied to him. Suddenly a _piqueur_ appeared sounding a different call. ""The view! the view!"" cried the king; and he galloped off followed by the other sportsmen. The _piqueur_ was not mistaken. As the king advanced he heard the baying of the pack which was now composed of more than sixty dogs fresh relays having been slipped at different places near which the boar had passed. At last Charles caught a second glimpse of the animal and profiting by the height of the adjacent trees which enabled him to ride beneath their branches he turned into the wood sounding his horn with all his strength. The princes followed him for some time but the king had so vigorous a horse and carried away by his eagerness he dashed over such steep and broken ground and through such dense thickets that first the ladies then the Duke of Guise and his gentlemen and at last the two princes were forced to abandon him. All the hunters therefore with the exception of Charles and a few _piqueurs_ found themselves reassembled at the _carrefour_. D'Alençon and Henry were standing near each other in a long alley. At about a hundred paces from them the Duke of Guise had halted with his retinue of twenty or thirty gentlemen who were armed it might have been thought rather for the battle-field than the hunting-ground. The ladies were in the _carrefour_ itself. ""Would it not seem "" said the Duke of Alençon to Henry glancing at the Duke of Guise with the corner of his eye ""that yonder man with his steel-clad escort is the true king? He does not even vouchsafe a glance to us poor princes."" ""Why should he treat us better than our own relations do?"" replied Henry. ""Are we not you and I prisoners at the court of France hostages for our party?"" The Duke Francis started and looked at Henry as if to provoke a further explanation; but Henry had gone further than was his wont and he remained silent. ""What do you mean Henry?"" enquired the duke evidently vexed that his brother-in-law by his taciturnity compelled him to put the question. ""I mean brother "" answered Henry ""that those armed men who seem so careful not to lose sight of us have quite the appearance of guards charged to prevent us from escaping."" ""Escaping! Why? How?"" cried D'Alençon with a well-feigned air of surprise and simplicity. ""You have a magnificent jennet there Francis "" said Henry following up the subject whilst appearing to change the conversation. ""I am sure he would get over seven leagues in an hour and twenty from now till noon. It is a fine day for a ride. Look at that cross-road--how level and pleasant it is! Are you not tempted Francis? For my part my spurs are burning my heels."" Francis made no answer. He turned red and pale alternately and appeared to be straining his hearing to catch some sound of the chase. ""The news from Poland have produced their effect "" said Henry to himself ""and my good brother-in-law has a plan of his own. He would like to see me escape but I shall not go alone."" He had scarcely made the reflection when several of the recently converted Huguenots who within the last two or three months had returned to the court and the Romish church came up at a canter and saluted the two princes with a most engaging smile. The Duke of Alençon already urged on by Henry's overtures had but to utter a word or make a sign and it was evident that his flight would be favoured by the thirty or forty cavaliers who had collected around him as if to oppose themselves to the followers of the Duke of Guise. But that word he did not utter. He turned away his head and putting his horn to his mouth sounded the rally. Nevertheless the new-comers as if they thought that D'Alençon's hesitation was occasioned by the vicinity of the Guisards had

gradually placed themselves between the latter and the two princes arraying themselves in _échelon_ with a sort of strategic skill which implied a habit of military manoeuvres. Guise and his followers would have had to ride over them to get at the Duke of Alençon and the King of Navarre; whilst on the other side a long and unobstructed road lay open before the brothers-in-law. Suddenly between the trees at ten paces from the King of Navarre there appeared another horseman whom the princes had not yet seen. Henry was trying to guess who this person was when the gentleman raised his hat and disclosed the features of the Viscount of Turenne one of the chiefs of the Protestant party and who was supposed to be then in Poitou. The viscount even risked a sign which meant to say--""Are you coming?"" But Henry after consulting the inexpressive countenance and dull eyes of the Duke of Alençon turned his head two or three times upon his shoulders as if something in the collar of his doublet inconvenienced him. It as a reply in the negative. The viscount understood it gave his horse the spur and disappeared amongst the trees. At the same moment the pack was heard approaching; then at the end of the alley the boar was seen to pass followed at a short distance by the dogs whilst after them came Charles IX. like some demon-huntsman bareheaded his horn at his mouth sounding as though he would burst his lungs. Three or four _piqueurs_ followed him. ""The king!"" cried D'Alençon riding off to join in the chase. Henry encouraged by the presence of his partizans signed to them to remain and approached the ladies. ""Well "" said Margaret advancing to meet him. ""Well madam "" said Henry ""we are hunting the boar."" ""Is that all?"" ""Yes the wind has changed since yesterday morning. I think I predicted that such would be the case."" ""These changes of wind are bad for hunting--are they not sir?"" enquired Margaret. ""Yes "" replied her husband ""they sometimes overturn previous arrangements and the plan has to be remade."" At this moment the baying of the pack was again heard near the _carrefour_. The noise and tumult rapidly approaching warned the hunters to be on the alert. All heads were raised every ear as strained when suddenly the boar burst out of the wood and instead of plunging into the opposite thicket made straight for the _carrefour_. Close to the animal's heels were thirty or forty of the strongest amongst the dogs and at less than twenty paces behind these came Charles himself without cap or cloak his clothes torn by the thorns his face and hands covered with blood. Only one or two _piqueurs_ kept up with him. Alternately sounding his horn and shouting encouragement to the dogs the king pressed onwards every thing but the chase forgotten. If his horse had failed him at that moment he would have exclaimed like Richard III. ""My kingdom for a horse!"" But the horse appeared as eager as his rider. His feet scarce touched the ground and he seemed to snort fire from his blood-red nostrils. Boar dogs and king dashed by like a whirlwind. ""Hallali! hallali!"" cried the king as he passed. And again he applied his horn to his bleeding lips. A short distance behind him came the Duke of Alençon and two more _piqueurs_. The horses of the others were blown or distanced. Every body now joined in the pursuit for it was evident that the boar would soon turn to bay. Accordingly at the end of ten minutes the beast left the path and entered the wood; but on reaching a neighbouring glade he turned his tail to a rock and made head against the dogs. The most interesting moment of the hunt had arrived. The animal was evidently prepared to make a desperate defence. The dogs fierce and foaming after their three hours' chase precipitated themselves upon him with a fury which was redoubled by the shouts and oaths of the king. The hunters arranged themselves in a circle Charles a little in front having behind him the Duke of Alençon who carried an arquebuss and Henry of Navarre who was armed only with a _couteau-de-chasse_. The duke unslung his arquebuss and lit the match; Henry loosened his hunting-knife in the scabbard. As to the Duke of Guise who affected to despise field-sports he kept himself a little apart with his gentlemen; and on the other side another little group was formed by the ladies. All eyes were fixed in anxious expectation upon the boar. A little apart stood a _piqueur_ exerting all his strength to resist the efforts of two enormous dogs who awaited covered with their coats of mail howling savagely and struggling as though they would break their chains the moment when they should be let loose upon the boar. The latter did wonders. Attacked at one time by forty dogs that covered him like a living wave or many-coloured carpet and strove on all sides to tear his wrinkled and bristling hide he at each blow of his formidable tusk tossed one of his assailants ten feet into the air. The dogs fell to the ground ripped up and threw themselves with their bowels hanging out of their wounds once more into the _mélée_; whilst Charles with hair on end inflamed eyes and distended nostrils bent forward over the neck of his foaming steed and sounded a furious _hallali_. In less than ten minutes twenty dogs were disabled. ""The mastiffs!"" cried Charles; ""the mastiffs!"" At the word the _piqueur_ slipped the leashes and the two dogs dashed into the midst of the carnage upsetting the smaller hounds and with their iron-coated sides forcing their way to the boar whom they seized each by an ear. The animal feeling himself _coiffé_ as it is termed gnashed his teeth with pain and fury. ""Bravo Duredent! Bravo Risquetout!"" vociferated Charles. ""Courage my dogs! a spear! a spear!"" ""Will you have my arquebuss?"" said the Duke of Alençon. ""No "" cried the king. ""No--one does not feel the ball go in; there is no pleasure in that. One feels the spear. A spear! a spear!"" A boar-spear made of wood hardened in the fire and tipped with iron was handed to the king. ""Be cautious brother!"" exclaimed Margaret. ""_Sus sus_ sire!"" cried the Duchess of Nevers. ""Do not miss him sire. A good thrust to the brute!"" ""You may depend on that duchess "" replied Charles. And levelling his spear he charged the boar who being held down by the two dogs could not avoid the blow. Nevertheless at the sight of the glittering point of the weapon the animal made a movement on one side and the spear instead of piercing his breast grazed his shoulder and struck against the rock in his rear. ""_Mille noms d'un diable!_"" cried the king ""I have missed him. A spear! a spear!"" And backing his horse like a knight in the lists he pitched away his weapon of which the point had turned against the rock. A _piqueur_ advanced to give him another. But at the same moment as if he had foreseen the fate that awaited him and was determined to avoid it at any cost the boar by a violent effort wrenched his torn ears from the jaws of the dogs and with bloodshot eyes bristling and hideous his respiration sounding like the bellows of a forge and his teeth chattering and grinding against each other he lowered his head and made a rush at the king's horse. Charles was too experienced a sportsman not to have anticipated this attack and he turned his horse quickly aside. But he had pressed too hard upon the bit; the horse reared violently and either terrified at the boar or compelled by the pull on the bridle fell backwards. The spectators uttered a terrible cry. The king's thigh was under the horse. ""Slack your rein!"" cried Henry ""slack your rein!"" The king relinquished his hold on the bridle seized the saddle with his left hand and with his right tried to draw his hunting-knife; but the blade pressed upon by the weight of his body would not leave its sheath. ""The boar! the boar!"" cried Charles. ""Help D'Alençon! help!"" Nevertheless the horse left to himself and as if he had understood his rider's peril made an effort and had already got up on three legs when Henry saw the Duke Francis grow deadly pale bring his arquebuss to his shoulder and fire. The ball instead of striking the boar now but at two paces from the king broke the front leg of the horse who again fell with his nose upon the earth. At the same moment Charles's boot was torn by the tusk of the boar. ""Oh!"" murmured D'Alençon between his pallid lips ""I think that the Duke of Anjou is King of France and that I am King of Poland!"" It seemed indeed probable. The snout of the boar was rummaging Charles's thigh when the latter felt somebody seize and raise his arm--a keen bright blade flashed before his eyes and buried itself to the hilt in the shoulder of the brute; whilst a gauntleted hand put aside the dangerous tusks which were already disappearing under the King's garments. Charles who had taken advantage of the horse's movement to disengage his leg rose slowly to his feet and seeing himself covered with blood became as pale as a corpse. ""Sire "" said Henry who still on his knees held down the boar which he had stabbed to the heart--""Sire there is no harm done. I put aside the tusk and your Majesty is unhurt."" Then getting up he let go his hold of the hunting-knife and the boar fell the blood flowing from his mouth even more plentifully than from the wound. Charles surrounded by the alarmed throng and assailed by cries of terror that might well have bewildered the calmest courage was for a moment on the point of falling senseless near the dying animal. But he recovered himself and turning towards the King of Navarre pressed his hand with a look in which was visible the first gleam of kindly feeling that he had shown during his twenty-four years of existence. ""Thanks Henriot "" said he. ""My poor brother!"" cried D'Alençon approaching the king. ""Ah! you are there D'Alençon?"" cried Charles. ""Well you famous marksman what is become of your bullet?"" ""It must have flattened upon the hide of the boar "" said the duke. ""_Eh! mon Dieu!_"" cried Henry with a surprise that was admirably acted; ""see there Francis--your ball has broken the leg of his Majesty's horse!"" ""What!"" said the king; ""is that true?"" ""It is possible "" said the duke in great confusion; ""my hand trembled so violently."" ""The fact is that for an expert marksman you have made a singular shot Francis "" said Charles frowning. ""For the second time thanks Henriot. Gentlemen "" continued the king ""we will return to Paris; I have had enough for to-day."" Margaret came up to congratulate Henry. ""_Ma foi!_ yes Margot "" said Charles ""you may congratulate him and very sincerely too for without him the King of France would now be Henry the Third."" ""Alas! madam "" said the Béarnais ""the Duke of Anjou already my enemy will hate me tenfold for this morning's work. But it cannot be helped. One does what one can as M. d'Alençon will tell you."" And stooping he drew his hunting-knife from the carcass of the boar and plunged it thrice into the ground to cleanse it from the blood. Before leaving the Louvre on the morning of the boar-hunt Charles has been prevailed upon by Catharine of Medicis who in consequence of the prediction already referred to has vowed Henry's destruction to sign a warrant for the King of Navarre's arrest and imprisonment in the Bastile. In this warrant she inserts the words ""dead or alive "" and entrusts its execution to the assassin Maurevel intimating to him that Henry's death will be more agreeable to her than his capture. Charles however learns that his mother has had an interview with Maurevel guesses the fate reserved for Henry and as the least troublesome way of rescuing the man who had that day saved his life he makes his brother-in-law accompany him to sup and pass the night out of the Louvre. Henry does not dare to refuse although he is expecting a nocturnal visit from De Mouy in his apartment and the two kings leave the palace together. Here is what passes after their departure. It wanted two hours of midnight and the most profound silence reigned in the Louvre. Margaret and the Duchess of Nevers had betaken themselves to their rendezvous in the Rue Tizon; Coconnas and La Mole had followed them; the Duke of Alençon remained in his apartment in vague and anxious expectation of the events which the queen-mother had predicted to him; finally Catharine herself had retired to rest and Madame de Sauve seated at her bedside was reading to her certain Italian tales at which the good queen laughed heartily. For a long time Catharine had not been in so complacent a humour. After making an excellent supper with her ladies after holding a consultation with her physician and making up the account of her day's expenditure she had ordered prayers for the success of an enterprise highly important she said to the happiness of her children. It was one of Catharine's Florentine habits to have prayers and masses said for the success of projects the nature of which was known but to God and to herself. Whilst Madame de Sauve is reading a terrible cry and a pistol-shot are heard followed by the noise of a struggle from the direction of the King of Navarre's apartment. All are greatly alarmed except Catharine who affects not to have heard the sounds and forbids enquiry as to their cause attributing them to some brawling guardsmen. At last the disturbance appears to have ceased. ""It is over "" said Catharine.--""Captain "" she continued addressing herself to Monsieur de Nancey ""if there has been scandal in the palace you will not fail to-morrow to have it severely punished. Go on reading Carlotta."" And Catharine fell back upon her pillows. Only those nearest to her observed that large drops of perspiration were trickling down her face. Madame de Sauve obeyed the formal order she had received but with her eyes and voice only. Her imagination represented to her some terrible danger suspended over the head of him she loved. After a short struggle between emotion and etiquette the former prevailed; her voice died away the book fell from her hands and she fainted. Just then a violent noise was heard; a heavy hurried step shook the corridor; two pistol-shots caused the windows to rattle in their frames and Catharine astonished at this prolonged struggle sprang from her couch pale and with dilated eyeballs. The captain of the guard was hastening to the door when she seized his arm. ""Let no one leave the room "" she cried; ""I will go myself to see what is occurring."" What was occurring or rather what had occurred was this: De Mouy had received that morning from Henry's page Orthon the key of the King of Navarre's apartment. In the hollow of the key was a small roll of paper which he drew out with a pin. It contained the password to be used that night at the Louvre. Orthon had moreover delivered a verbal invitation from Henry to De Mouy to visit him at the Louvre that night at ten o'clock. At half-past nine De Mouy donned a cuirass of which the strength had been more than once tested; over this he buttoned a silken doublet buckled on his sword stuck his pistols in his belt and covered the whole with the counterpart of La Mole's famous crimson mantle. Thanks to this well-known garment and to the password with which he was provided he passed the guards undiscovered and went straight to Henry's apartment imitating as usual and as well as he could La Mole's manner of walking. In the antechamber he found Orthon waiting for him. ""Sire de Mouy "" said the lad ""the king is out but he begs of you to wait and if agreeable to throw yourself upon his bed till his return."" De Mouy entered without asking any further explanation and by way of passing the time took a pen and ink and began marking the different stages from Paris to Pau upon a map of France that hung against the wall. This he had completed however in a quarter of an hour; and after walking two or three times round the room and gaping twice as often he took advantage of Henry's permission and stretched himself upon the large bed surrounded with dark hangings which stood at the further end of the apartment. He placed his pistols and a lamp upon a table near at hand laid his naked sword beside him and certain not to be surprised since Orthon was keeping watch in the antechamber he sank into a heavy slumber and was soon snoring in a manner worthy of the King of Navarre himself. It was then that six men with naked swords in their hands and daggers in their girdles stealthily entered the corridor upon which the door of Henry's apartment opened. A seventh man walked in front of the party having besides his sword and a dagger as broad and as strong as a hunting-knife a brace of pistols suspended to his belt by silver hooks. This man was Maurevel. On reaching Henry's door he paused introduced into the lock the key which he had received from the queen-mother and leaving two men at the outer door entered the antechamber with the four others. ""Ah ha!"" said he as the loud breathing of the sleeper reached his ears from the inner room ""he is there."" Just then Orthon thinking it was his master who was coming in went to meet him and found himself face to face with five armed men. At the sight of that sinister countenance of that Maurevel whom men called _Tueur du Roi_ the faithful lad stepped back and placed himself before the second door. ""In the king's name "" said Maurevel ""where is your master?"" ""My master?"" ""Yes the King of Navarre."" ""The King of Navarre is not here "" replied Orthon still in front of the door. ""'Tis a lie "" replied Maurevel. ""Come! out of the way!"" The Béarnese are a headstrong race; Orthon growled in reply to this summons like one of the dogs of his own mountains. ""You shall not go in "" said he sturdily. ""The king is absent."" And he held the door to. Maurevel made a sign; the four men seized the lad pulled him away from the door-jambs to which he clung and as he opened his mouth to cry out Maurevel placed his hand over it. Orthon bit him furiously; the assassin snatched away his hand with a suppressed cry and struck the boy on the head with his sword-hilt. Orthon staggered. ""Alarm! alarm! alarm!"" cried he as he fell senseless to the ground. The assassins passed over his body; two remained at the second door and the remaining two entered the bed-chamber led on by Maurevel. By the light of the lamp still burning upon the table they distinguished the bed of which the curtains were closed. ""Oh ho!"" said the lieutenant of the little band ""he has left off snoring it seems."" ""_Allons sus!_"" cried Maurevel. At the sound of his voice a hoarse cry resembling rather the roar of a lion than any human accents issued from behind the curtains which the next instant were torn asunder. A man armed with a cuirass and his head covered with one of those _salades_ or head-pieces that come down to the eyes appeared seated upon the bed a pistol in either hand and his drawn sword upon his knees. No sooner did Maurevel perceive this figure and recognise the features of De Mouy than he became frightfully pale his hair bristled up his mouth filled with foam and he made a step backwards as though terrified by some horrible and unexpected apparition. At the same moment the armed figure rose from its seat and made a step forwards so that the assailed seemed to be pursuing and the assailant to fly. ""Ah! villain "" exclaimed De Mouy in the hollow tones of suppressed fury ""do on come to kill me as you killed my father?"" The two men who had accompanied Maurevel into the chamber alone heard these terrible words; but as they were spoken De Mouy's pistol had been brought to a level with Maurevel's head. Maurevel threw himself on his knees at the very moment that De Mouy pulled the trigger. The bullet passed over him and one of the guards who stood behind and who had been uncovered by his movement received it in his heart. At the same instant Maurevel fired but the ball rebounded from De Mouy's cuirass. Then De Mouy with one blow of his heavy sword split the skull of the other soldier and turning upon Maurevel attacked him furiously. The combat was terrible but short. At the fourth pass Maurevel felt the cold steel in his throat; he uttered a stifled cry fell backwards and in falling overturned the lamp. Immediately De Mouy profiting by the darkness and vigorous and active as one of Homer's heroes rushed into the outer room cut down one of the guards pushed aside the other and passing like a thunderbolt between the two men stationed at the door of the antechamber received their fire without injury. He had still got a loaded pistol besides the sword which he so well knew how to handle. For one second he hesitated whether he should take refuge in Monsieur d'Alençon's apartment the door of which he thought was just then opened or whether he should endeavour to leave the Louvre. Deciding upon the latter course he sprang down the stairs ten steps at a time reached the wicket uttered the password and darted out. ""Go up-stairs "" he shouted as he passed the guardhouse; ""they are slaying there for the king's account."" And before he could be pursued he had disappeared in the Rue du Coq without having received a scratch. It was at this moment of time that Catharine had said to De Nancey--""Remain here; I will go myself to see what is occurring."" ""But madam "" replied the captain ""the danger to which your Majesty might be exposed compels me to follow."" ""Remain here sir "" said Catharine in a more imperative tone than before. ""A higher power than that of the sword watches over the safety of kings."" The captain obeyed. Catharine took a lamp thrust her naked feet into velvet slippers entered the corridor which was still full of smoke and advanced cold and unmoved towards the apartment of the King of Navarre. All was again dead silence. Catharine reached the outer door of Henry's rooms and passed into the antechamber where Orthon was lying still insensible. ""Ah ha!"" said she ""here is the page to begin with; a little further we shall doubtless find the master."" And she passed through the second room. Then her foot struck against a corpse: it was that of the soldier whose skull had been split. He was quite dead. Three paces further she found the lieutenant: a ball in his breast and the death-rattle in his throat. Finally near the bed lay a man bleeding profusely from a double wound that had gone completely through his throat. He was making violent but ineffectual efforts to raise himself from the ground. This was Maurevel. Catharine's blood ran cold; she saw the bed empty; she looked round the room and sought in vain amongst the three bodies that lay weltering upon the floor that of him whom she would fain have seen there. Maurevel recognised her; his eyes became horribly dilated and he held out his arms with a gesture of despair. ""Well "" said she in a low voice ""where is he? What has become of him? Wretch! have you let him escape?"" Maurevel endeavored to articulate; but an unintelligible hissing which issued from his wound was the only sound he could give forth; a reddish froth fringed his lips and he shook his head in sign of impotence and suffering. ""But speak then!"" cried Catharine; ""speak if it be only to say one word."" Maurevel pointed to his wound and again uttered some inarticulate sounds made an effort which ended in a hoarse rattle and swooned away. Catharine then looked around her: she was surrounded by the dead and the dying; blood was flowing in streams over the floor and a gloomy silence prevailed in the apartment. She spoke once more to Maurevel but he could not hear her voice; this time he remained not only silent but motionless. Whilst stooping over him Catharine perceived the corner of a paper protruding from the breast of his doublet: it was the order to arrest Henry. The queen-mother seized it and hid it in her bosom. Then in despair at the failure of her murderous project she called the captain of her guard ordered the dead men to be removed and that Maurevel who still lived should be conveyed to his house. She moreover particularly commanded that the king should not be disturbed. ""Oh!"" murmured she as she reentered her apartment her head bowed upon her breast ""he has again escaped me! Surely the hand of God protects this man. He will reign! he will reign!"" Then as she opened the door of her bedroom she passed her hand over her forehead and composed her features into a smile. ""What was the matter madam?"" enquired all her ladies with the exception of Madame de Sauve who was too anxious and agitated to ask questions. ""Nothing "" replied Catharine; ""a great deal of noise and nothing else."" ""Oh!"" suddenly exclaimed Madame de Sauve pointing to the ground with her finger ""each one of your Majesty's footsteps leaves a trace of blood upon the carpet!"" Thrice foiled in her designs upon Henry's life the queen-mother does not yet give in. Henry whom the king has reproached with his ignorance of falconry has asked the Duke of Alençon to procure him a book on that subject. Catharine hears of this request and gives D'Alençon a book of the kind required--a rare and valuable work but of which the edges of the leaves are stuck together apparently from age in reality by poison. The idea is old but its application is novel and very effective. The queen-mother convinces D'Alençon that Henry is playing him false and the duke places the fatal book in the King of Navarre's room during his absence being afraid to give it into his hands. He then re-enters his apartment hears Henry as he thinks return to his and passes half an hour in the agonies of suspense and terror. To escape from himself and his reflections he goes to visit his brother Charles. We have only space for a very short extract showing the frightful and unexpected result of Catharine's atrocious scheme. Charles was seated at a table in a large carved arm-chair: his back was turned to the door by which Francis had entered and he appeared absorbed in some very interesting occupation. The duke approached on tiptoe; Charles was reading. ""_Pardieu!_"" exclaimed the king on a sudden ""this is an admirable book. I have heard speak of it but I knew not that a copy existed in France."" D'Alençon made another step in advance. ""Curse the leaves!"" cried the king putting his thumb to his lips and pressing it on the page he had just read in order to detach it from the one he was about to read; ""one would think they had been stuck together on purpose in order to conceal from men's eyes the wonders they contain."" D'Alençon made a bound forwards. The book Charles was reading was the one he had left in Henry's room. A cry of horror escaped him. ""Ha! is it you D'Alençon?"" said Charles; ""come here and look; at the most admirable treatise on falconry that was ever produced by the pen of man."" D'Alençon's first impulse was to snatch the book from his brother's hands; but an infernal thought paralysed the movement--a frightful smile passed over his pallid lips; he drew his hand across his eyes as if something dazzled him. Then gradually recovering himself-- ""Sire "" said he to the king ""how can this book have come into your Majesty's hands?"" ""In the most simple manner possible. I went up just now to Henriot's room to see if he was ready to go a-hawking. He was not there but in his stead I found this treasure which I brought down with me to read at my ease."" And the king put his thumb to his lips and turned another page. ""Sire "" stammered D'Alençon who felt a horrible anguish come over him ""Sire I came to tell you----"" ""Let me finish this chapter Francis "" interrupted Charles. ""You shall tell me whatever you like afterwards. I have read fifty pages already or devoured them I should rather say."" ""He has tasted the poison twenty-five times!"" thought Francis. ""My brother is a dead man."" He wiped with his trembling hand the chill dew that stood upon his brow and waited as the king had commanded till the chapter was finished. The end of Charles IX. is well known. A dreadful complaint a sweat of blood which many historians attribute to poison and which the Huguenots maintained to be a punishment inflicted on him by Heaven for the massacre of their brethren rendered the latter months of his life a period of horrible torture. At his death Henry having every thing to dread from the animosity of Catharine and from that of the Duke of Anjou Charles's successor fled from Paris and took refuge in his kingdom of Navarre. THE BARON VON STEIN.[16] ""It is to the great abilities enlightened patriotism and enduring constancy of the BARON STEIN that Prussia is indebted for the measures which laid the foundation for the resurrection of the monarchy.""--ALISON. ""Baron Stein "" says Bourrienne ""has been too little known;""--and unquestionably considering what he was to Prussia and through Prussia to Europe at the most important crisis of recent history he is too little known still. Why is this? Plainly in the first place because he had the misfortune to be a German statesman and not a French one;--these French do make such a noise in the world partly with real cannons partly with artificial volcanoes and puerile pyrotechny of all kinds that a man cannot live and have ears without hearing about them. Celebrity is indeed a very cheap affair according to the French fashion; restlessness and recklessness are the main elements of it. Only keep spurting and spitting about obstreperously and the most stiff ears must at length be converted. As to real character and substantial worth that must not give you a moment's concern. Is not Catiline to this day as _famous_ a man as Cicero? and is not the celebrity of Bonaparte who was (_pace tanti nominis_) nothing better than a bold and brilliant blackguard equal to that of the Apostle Paul who was a saint? Yes verily; and M. Thiers and the hot war-spirits in France know it very well: but as for your great meditative unobtrusive honest truthful and laborious German--your devoted Scharnhorst for instance who fell at Lutzen--the great world hears not of such a man unless by accident though his life be a living epitome of the gospel. But there are other Germans too as fiery and hot and volcanic as any Frenchman of whom however Europe hears but little in proportion to their worth; their reputation suffers partly by the virtue partly by the vice of the people to whom they belong; for the people in general are not a noise-making people--this is the virtue--and the German government--this is the vice--are timid and eschew publicity. The Baron von Stein was one of these hot glowing impetuous volcanic Germans--a political Luther as he has most justly been called; but he had the misfortune to belong to a people who never dreamed of conquering any thing except transcendental ideas in the region of the moon and beyond it; and he served a good pious ""decent"" master the late Frederick William III. who when he was merry (like a good Christian ) was more inclined to sing psalms than to crack cannons and prayed heaven every morning that he might die a good man rather than live a great king. Then in addition to this comes the great and authoritative extinguisher of all German political reputation the CENSORSHIP--a ""_monstrum horrendum ingens_ "" and ""_cui lumen ademptum_"" truly; for it will neither see itself nor allow others having eyes to see for it. An honest and thorough life of Baron Stein is in fact in the present slavish state of the Prussian political press an impossibility; for the sturdy old Freiherr was a declared enemy of the whole race of red-tapists and other officials of the quill who since the peace have maintained a practical monopoly of public business in Prussia and who in fact keep the monarch's conscience and tie his hands much more effectually than chancellor or parliament does in Great Britain. It is only therefore in the way of scattered notices drawn from various sources that a knowledge of such a German statesman as Stein can be obtained; and these sources also from the same evil influence of the censorship are necessarily very imperfect; the men who knew Stein and were in possession of correspondence and other papers that might illustrate his life are all _marked_ men; to the government of the bureaucracy _suspected_ men--men who had many of them like the Baron himself been immediately after the peace subjected to the most odious kinds of moral and sometimes corporeal persecution. Their publications of course were watched with peculiar jealousy by the Argus-eyed censorship; and we may always be sure that what they do tell us is only the half of what they might have told us

ad they dared to speak out. Under these circumstances the English reader will perhaps be obliged to us for taking the trouble to sketch out a short outline of the life and temper of Baron Stein from such scanty materials as time and chance have thrown in our way; and he will at the same time pardon the great deficiencies that must necessarily exist in the execution of such a work.[17] Henry Frederick Charles _of_ and _at_ Stein (_vom_ and _zum_ Stein!) was born in the year 1757 of an old and noble family at Nassau on the Lahn. His father belonged to that higher class of nobility according to the old German constitution who held immediately of the Empire (Reichs: unmittelbare und Landbarfreie )--a descent which had perhaps a not unimportant effect in influencing the position which Stein afterwards assumed; for while the Baron always acted in the spirit rather of the middle classes than of the princes and their courts and indeed often indulged in the strongest expressions of contempt for the whole body of princes in Germany he never forgot his own character as a free and independent baron of the German empire and was notwithstanding the popular character of his great measures in his tone of mind as much aristocratic as democratic. Intended by his father to take office under the Imperial government he was sent first to Göttingen to study public law and history and then to Wetzlar the seat of the Imperial chamber; but the name of the Empire in those days had already lost its power over the minds of ambitious youth. Frederick the Great was the guiding star of the time; and as if prophetic of the death-blow that awaited the crumbling old edifice from the hand of Napoleon in 1806 Stein so early as 1780 entered the Prussian service as director of the mines (_Bergrath_) at Wetter in Westphalia. In 1784 we find him ambassador at Aschaffenburg. He was then made president of all the Westphalian chambers and in active connexion with this province we find him remaining till 1804 when on occasion of the death of Struensee one of the Prussian ministers he was called to Berlin and made minister of finance and of trade and commerce by Frederick William III. In this capacity he remained till the opening of the year 1807 when as the _Conversations Lexikon_ asserts being at Königsberg with the king after the battle of Jena ""on account of some differences with the cabinet"" he resigned his situation and retired to his estates in Nassau. We notice this retirement and the alleged cause of it particularly because as will appear in the sequel Stein with all his talent seems to have been a man of a peculiar temper and not so easily to be managed on many occasions as he was both willing and able to manage others. However whatever the cause of the resignation might be Frederick William had sense enough to see that these were not times when Prussia could want the services of any man of real talent and energy; and accordingly (some say on the recommendation of Napoleon ) so early as the harvest of that same year he called the baron back and made him prime-minister. Here was a situation worthy of a great man; Prussia after the battle of Jena overthrown prostrate and bleeding beneath the iron tramp of insolent France. How to convert this Prussia into the Prussia that in a few years afterwards was destined to be a chief instrument employed by Providence in the overthrow of the general European tyrant--here was a problem!--one worthy of the worthiest man that the kingdom of the Great Frederick could find; and most worthily did the Baron von Stein execute the mission. The reforms which he boldly planned and no less boldly executed in that critical year 1808 followed out as they were by his able successor Count Hardenberg are sufficient to place him in the very first rank of modern statesmen. He actually changed a nation of serfs by a single bloodless blow into a free people; he did that for Prussia morally and socially which Frederick the Great had done only geographically; he caused it to rank side by side with the more civilized and advanced as opposed to the semi-barbarous (Russia) and stationary or retrograde (Austria and Spain) powers of Europe. To detail at large the important social changes thus effected in a single year by this most energetic man would lead us too far from our biographical purpose here and prevent us from making such a free use as we should desire of the correspondence published by Von Gagern and Hormayr. We shall therefore content ourselves with a short quotation from Mr Alison's sixth volume; and may refer the reader at the same time to the more detailed and yet succinct statement of the same matter given by Mr Russell--_Tour in Germany_ vol. ii. p. 116. ""So clearly were his ideas formed and so decided his conviction as to the only means which remained of reinstating the public affairs that he commenced at once a vigorous but yet cautious system of amelioration; and only four days after his appointment as Minister of the Interior a royal decree appeared which introduced a salutary reform into the constitution. ""By this ordinance the peasants and burghers obtained the right hitherto confined to the nobles of acquiring and holding landed property while they in their turn were permitted without losing caste to engage in the pursuits of commerce and industry. Landholders were allowed under reservation of the rights of their creditors to separate their estates into distinct parcels and alienate them to different persons. Every species of slavery whether contracted by birth marriage or agreement was prohibited subsequent to the 11th November 1810; and every servitude _corvée_ or obligation of service or rent other than those founded on the rights of property or express agreement was for ever abolished. By a second ordinance published six weeks afterwards certain important franchises were conferred on municipalities. By this wise decree which is in many respects the Magna Charta of the Prussian burghs it was provided that the burghers should enjoy councillors of their own election for regulating all local and municipal concerns: that a third of the number should go out by rotation and be renewed by an election every year; that the council thus chosen should assemble twice a-year to deliberate on the public affairs; that two burgomasters should be at the head of the magistracy one of whom should be chosen by the king from a list of three presented and the other by the councillors; and that the police of the burgh should be administered by a syndic appointed for twelve years and who should also have a seat in the municipal council. The administration of the _Haute Police_ or that connected with the state was reserved to Government. By a third ordinance an equally important alteration was made in favour of the numerous class of debtors whom the public calamities had disabled from performing their engagements by prohibiting all demand for the capital sums till the 24th June 1810 providing at the same time for the punctual payment of the interest under pain of losing the benefit of the ordinance. Thus at the very moment that France during the intoxication consequent on the triumphs of Jena and Friedland was losing the last remnant of the free institutions which had been called into existence during the fervour and crimes of the Revolution Prussia amidst the humiliation of unprecedented disasters and when groaning under the weight of foreign chains was silently relaxing the fetters of the feudal system and laying the foundation in a cautious and guiltless reformation of experienced grievances for the future erection of those really free institutions which can never be established on any other bases than those of justice order and religion."" But Stein was too fierce and fiery a spirit not merely too ardent but too open and reckless a ""French-hater "" to remain long as prime-minister of Prussia under such a suspicious and jealous-eyed master-general of continental police as Napoleon. An intercepted letter revealed Stein's sentiments to the French; and by order of Napoleon Hardenberg a man of a more smooth and polite exterior (though as true a _German_ at heart ) was nominated in his place. The reforming baron after felling a few gigantic trees was obliged to surrender the work of perfect clearing of the social forest to a not unworthy successor himself retiring or (to speak more properly) being banished to Prague. There he lay in a convenient central position like a lion nursing his wrath ready to start off in any direction--back to Prussia south to Vienna north to Petersburg or wherever any thing substantial by word or deed was likely to be done against the man whom his soul hated with an intensity of moral indignation truly grand even out-Bluchering Blucher. Stein indeed hated Napoleon not for one good reason only but for four: first as he was a Frenchman vainglorious and false; second as he was a conqueror; third as he was a tyrant and an oppressor; fourth as he was a godless man and a heathen. In Prague therefore Stein remained in company with Justus Eumer the banished Elector of Hesse-Cassel Karl von Nostez and many French emigrants as it were in a secret-burning focus and hidden metropolis of anti-Gallican spirit [18] for a few years waiting not patiently but in his fashion with extreme impatience for the coming of the great day of political retribution in which he believed as firmly as in God and in the last judgment. German writers speak with patriotic enthusiasm of the ""_noctes cænæque deûm_""--""_diegöttlichen Abende_ "" which with Pozzo di Borgo and other choice spirits Stein spent in this important period when events no less unexpected than great were knocking at the door. It must have been a god-like treat indeed in these terrible times when a man in Germany could hardly draw his breath for fear of Davoust to have seen launched from the dark fiery Saracenic eyes of Deutschland's political Luther those ""thundering fulgurations""[19] of indignant German hate which were soon to be followed by a tempest of more indignant cannon-balls; but few and feeble amid the barrenness of German political literature are the voices from those prophetic times that have been wafted to British ears. The following short notices from Varnhagen von Ense are all that we have been able to recover. ""Stein lived at Prague in a very retired manner; for though on familiar terms with the most noble families by ancient family connexions and by social position he made great demands on those whom he admitted to his intimacy. German truth and honour scientific culture decision and firmness of character and if possible talent and wit were qualities not easily found combined; but such a combination he required to secure his friendship and respect. He was often forced indeed to content himself with some one of these qualities separately; and for myself my principal recommendation to his notice consisted I suppose in my having travelled a good deal in Germany in my having been at Paris and seen Napoleon and more than all in my having fought against the tyrant. When introduced to him first I was at once struck by something abrupt in his manner; it seemed to me he was a person who in every thing he did or said asserted his own superiority to the mass of mankind and was accustomed to work in all things without respect for time place or person. There was at the same time an unconstrained simplicity about him and an utter want of pride and pretence in his manner. In conversation on public affairs and matters of social economy he was most animated and most instructive; once started on a subject of this kind he was carried along irresistibly by his own enthusiasm; and any ignorance displayed or doubt expressed by those with whom he agreed only served as a spur to set his ideas more on the gallop. And he would go with the most admirable patience into long details of fact in order to bring round his adversary to his opinion. I was struck particularly by the decidedly polemical character of his remarks: ever and anon he drew this or the other Prussian statesman into the argument and in criticising severely their conduct seemed not seldom to give as much ease to his own heart as instruction to me. His whole manner was such as in the Opposition side of a British Parliament might have produced the most extraordinary effects. In his extreme fits of eloquent indignation a sort of convulsive tremor would seize his whole voice and movements; he would shut his eyes and could scarcely bring out his words with the due articulation. But immediately thereafter he would become calm again; and with what a breadth and penetration of glance did he then look through his adversary reading every secret objection on his countenance and preparing a new and more terrible onset to carry the citadel of his doubts by storm! To converse with him was indeed to carry on a continued battle; for it pleased him even when the person with whom he conversed for the moment agreed with him to consider him as an adversary and to argue with him as in all points a decided opponent of his views: always however without any ill-will or the least personal feeling. This sort of animated irritation gave a peculiar charm to Stein's conversation; the Emperor Alexander in particular was quite charmed with the roughness and bluntness of his manner; for except by a slight admixture of humour Stein never attempted to tame the rudeness of his address even in the presence of the most august personages. ""In literature his taste was decidedly anti-speculative although rather practical. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were the men of his heart; he had a high opinion of Niebuhr both as a historian and as a practical statesman: Heeren he praised and recommended as the rough and practical: Fichte gained his good opinion by his patriotic addresses to the German people; but for philosophy in general he had no taste: Schleiermacher's philosophical religion was too subtle for him and in respect of orthodoxy more than suspicious; and the most famous recent German speculators he declared plainly MAD. But of all the writers of the time his sympathies drew him most strongly towards Arndt. When the second part of this writer's _Spirit of the Age_ appeared I found him continually (on the eve of the Russian expedition) in a state of the most violent irritation and excitement. He would seize the sheets as they were lying beside him and read out the most violent passages to me always with increasing vehemence. But seldom could he finish a whole page continuously so strongly did the fit of mingled indignation and exultation seize him so necessary was it for him to give vent to his own boiling feelings by irregular interjections. 'Since Burke ' said he 'no such genuine political eloquence has appeared no truth that so cuts its way to the heart!' He then recommended Arndt's style to my imitation.' In this way you may attempt something--facts!--facts!--and not speculative phrases! Do you understand me Herr Metaphysics?' ""It is worthy of remark how intimately Stein's impetuousness and violence of disposition were connected with his bodily organization. He asked me once what was the number of my pulses; and on hearing my answer held out his hand to me and with a smile requested that I would count his. There were about a hundred in the minute. This number he assured me was the common rate of his pulse when in perfect health: and it seemed to me that he looked on this gallop of his blood as a sort of charter from nature entitling him to be more passionate and violent without offence than other men."" This is a most characteristic passage and introduces us into the inner nature of the man more than a whole chapter of dissertation. Verily a Luther in every line!--a fitful impulsive and tempestuous--a glowing and a volcanic spirit--a most decided despotic and iron-willed German--a man altogether worthy to hate Napoleon with a perfect hatred as Luther did the Pope and to march to Paris as the true heart's brother of that hot old septuagenarian hussar Marshal Blücher. One thing we have omitted in the above extract for the sake of brevity and yet we must allude to it with a passing word. During the three ears of his residence at Prague Stein employed himself assiduously in the study of the French Revolution following it minutely through all its phases through the columns of the _Moniteur_. His opinion therefore on this subject is well worth registering; and we give the following two sentences on the subject not from Varnhagen but from Von Gagern's correspondence (8th June 1825.)-- ""Mounier wrote on '_Des Causes qui ont empéché les Français d'être Libres_.' To me they seem very simple. Inconsiderate minsters who called together an assembly of 700 Frenchmen without having arranged the form of their deliberations the organization of the persons who were to deliberate or their respective rights. Then shallow inexperienced vain talkers Lameth Lafayette and Barrère &c. often abused for the worst purposes by persons of the most abandoned character formed the first Assembly--murderers and robbers were dominant in the second."" But we must proceed in our history of Stein's outward fates. When Napoleon in the culminating point of his vainglorious exultation had assembled the monarchs of Germany around him at Dresden in the summer of 1812 Stein was still at Prague and not without apprehensions for his personal safety. Napoleon had laid violent hands on and butchered many less dangerous enemies in Germany--witness Palm the bookseller and honest Andrew Hofer; and a German like Stein at the ear of Alexander in the year of 1812 was equal to an army of 60 000 men. However by a lucky negligence of the French spies the baron escaped to Russia whither he had been invited by the emperor and was in Petersburg during that eventful winter; a much more dangerous enemy to the French invaders than the cautious Kutusoff at Moscow. Here he was immediately followed by a no less fiery French-hater--the man whom we have seen him compare with Burke and who was henceforward to act as his secretary--Ernest Maurice ARNDT the author of the well-known national song ""Marshal Blücher "" and of some admirable historical sketches. From his ""Reminiscences"" we extract the following few but marked lines of portraiture:-- ""I arrive at Petersburg on the 26th of August and proceeded immediately to the minister. On entering I was immediately struck by his likeness to my old philosophical friend Fichte. The same figure short broad and compact--the same forehead only broader and more sloping backward--the same small sparkling eyes the same powerful now--the words racy clear decided and going like arrows from the bow directly to the mark. And I soon also found the same inexorable moral sternness of character only with the difference that always must exist in the whole manner of being between a practical statesman and a speculative philosopher. In Stein's face there were two distinct worlds different and contrary. In the upper part dwelt the bright and serene gods with an almost uninterrupted sway. His magnificent broad forehead his keen and yet kindly eyes his powerful nose proclaimed conjoined depth and command. A strange contrast to this was offered in the lower part of the face: The mouth was too small and delicate for the upper region; the chin also was weak. Here common mortals had their haunts--here anger and passion sported terribly--here those sudden fits of impetuousness would rage which however (thank God ) only required to be firmly met that they might be soothed. Strange truly was it to behold the lower part of his face quivering with excitement--the little mobile mouth with fearful celerity brimming with indignant indignation--and yet at the same time the upper region remaining a sunny Olympus and even his lightning eyes flashing no fear: one part of his face freeing the beholder from the terror inspired by the other. On other occasions when no violent excitement moved him every feature every gesture and every word of this noble man breathed honesty courage and piety. He was a man that brought from his mother's womb the instinct and the necessity to command. He was a born prince and king. He was one of those who must be first or he could do nothing. His whole character was so peculiar and so powerful that he could not adapt himself to other people much less subordinate. Many noble men have been able to do this but Stein decidedly could not."" These notices from Arndt and Varnhagen will we hope serve to bring the reader into some personal familiarity with the man; in what follows the patriot and the statesman will demand our exclusive attention. The correspondence with Count Münster published by Baron Hormayr it the second volume of the _Lebensbilder_ commences with a letter dated 6th October 1811 when Stein was still in Prague. From it we shall make a short extract putting in a strong light the state of public feeling in Germany produced by the insulting despotism of Napoleon and which was the main cause that ultimately led to his overthrow. ""Every thing here is based on mere force and oppression of every kind. Napoleon's endeavour is not like that of Augustus Cæsar to bewitch the world into the belief that a universal monarchy is the best thing for Europe; but on the contrary he seems anxious to seize every occasion by haughty demeanour rude despotic forms and needless irritation of every noble feeling to make the weight of the tyranny which he has superinduced as intolerable as possible. This conduct has a most beneficial effect for it keeps alive in the breasts of men a constant indignation--a striving to break the bonds that confine them. Had his despotism been more mild Germany might have slept the sleep of death. ""But the spirit of indignation thus awakened acts not only against the foreign tyrant but against the native princes in whom the German people now see either dastardly poltroons who intent only on their own preservation and deaf to every feeling of honour and duty seek safety in their heels; or titled slaves and bailiffs who with the substance and the life-blood of their subjects purchase a few years' lease of a beggarly existence. From this arises a general wish for a constitution based on unity energy and nationality; and any great man who should be able to give or rather to restore us such a nationality and such a constitution would be sure of a hearty welcome from the great mass of the people. Nor is there any thing in the character of those who now fill the petty thrones of Germany calculated to react against this feeling of dissatisfaction; on the contrary every sort of extra vileness weakness and low sneaking selfishness prevails."" The contempt here expressed for the German princes was (as we have said) very characteristic of Stein--an old free baron of the Empire; and the important matter of German _unity_ and _nationality_ here touched on is more decidedly brought forward in the following extract from a letter to the same person dated Petersburg December 1 1812:-- ""I am sorry that your Excellency should see only a Prussian in me while at the same time you reveal yourself to me in the character of a Hanoverian. I have only one fatherland and that is Germany; and as according to the ancient constitution I belonged only to my _whole_ country and not to any particular part of it so my heart is given still to the German fatherland and not to this or that province. In this moment of important development the dynasties are in fact quite indifferent to me; I view them only as instruments. My wish is that Germany should become great and strong and regain its ancient integrity independence and nationality; and that it should attain and firmly maintain this position between France on the one hand and Austria on the other is as much the interest of Europe in general as of this particular part of it; and it seems to me equally plain that this great European object cannot possibly be attained by means of the present rotten and crumbling old machinery. This were to erect the system of an artificial military boundary on the ruins of the old baronial castles and the walls and towns of fortified cities and to throw aside altogether the ideas of Vauban Cohorn and Montalembert. ""My confession of faith in this matter is contained in one word--UNITY. And if my plan does not please you take another: Put Austria in the place of Prussia and make it lord of Germany--if this be practicable--only don't bring back the old Montagues and Capulets and the halls of the old barons. If the bloody contest which Germany has already stood for twenty years and is now called upon to undergo again be to end in a FARCE ('_mit einem possenspiel endigen_ ') I for one shall prefer to have nothing to do with the matter and will take myself back into private life with all possible speed and comfort."" In this letter we see applied to the political constitution of Germany as it was to be arranged at the peace all that comprehensive grandeur of idea combined with decision and despotism (it would be false to use a milder word) of execution which had in the single year 1808 done such wonders in reconstructing the social fabric in Prussia. But it was one thing to deal despotically with the internal government of one state--especially after a battle of Jena!--and another thing to apply the same over-riding principle to the complex relations of many states. It was one thing to say to the debased aristocracy of Prussia Thou shalt admit the poor into the participation of thy privileges; the serf shall be a free man and the merchant shall shake hands with the noble: quite a different thing to say to the King of Bavaria in the spring of 1813 after the peace Thou shalt be swallowed up in Austria; and to the Elector of Hesse-Cassel Thou who didst in 1807 flee _from_ Jerome shalt in 1813 flee _to_ Frederick William III. who like mighty Brahma (in the Hindoo history ) shall absorb thee quite into his Prussian godhead. The eager and impetuous old Freiherr with his racing pulse had manifestly been anticipating a few centuries and attempting to dictate to necessity here. He wished a good thing perhaps and a great thing; but a thing that in the circumstances could not possibly be. Hear how sensibly the calm cool and moderate Hanoverian Graf Münster argues the matter. 'Tis plain that our brave Luther is getting too violent and will require a Melancthon and an Erasmus to keep him in order. ""London 4th January 1813. ""With regard to the future arrangements of the German states you yourself say we should invite the expelled princes to join our cause; and we cannot do this surely if we intend after the risk is over to throw them overboard: or is it likely that they will resign of their own accord and offer their thrones to either of the two masters of whom we may give them the option? The peace of Westphalia you call an abortion. Be it so; but it was better any how than a thirty years' war; and I see nothing more likely than such war to arise from any project to _conquer_ Germany and to make a violent subjugation of Bavaria Saxony Hessia Baden Brunswick &c. In the most of these lands the princes themselves will have the chief voice in determining what side their subjects shall take in the approaching struggle. I do not speak particularly of the Confederation of the Rhine or of the state of things introduced in 1802; but from the days of Monbod and Hernam until now Germany has always been divided except indeed for one short period during which the country suffered much misery. It is plain enough I grant that the constitution of Germany was not the work of an enlightened national will--did not proceed from any clear consideration of the best interests of the country--but _what constitution in the world is there that has not been the work in a great measure of accidental circumstances_? Since Solon and Lycurgus only the Constituent National Assembly in France and the stupid Cortes in Spain have dreamed of such a thing as constitution-making and the work of both has been blown as we see to the four winds. 'Tis true England is trying something of the same kind just now in the Sicilies; but God preserve us from such a mistaken course! Your criticism on our constitution is indeed altogether too severe; from the principles of the Teutonic constitution all public liberty in Europe originally sprang. The contest in which we are engaged will certainly not end in a '_farce_;' but why you should go back into private life preferring to be rather the grave-digger than the physician of our present political state I really cannot conceive. Let us rather endeavour after what is practically attainable than grasp at splendid theoretical possibilities. You are fond of English authorities; let me therefore remind you of him who said--_the practice of a constitution is frequently very different from its theory_. There is much that I like in Arndt's book and its author I highly esteem; but the way of amelioration (_Verbesserung_) which I propose to follow seems to present some prospect of success where your _revolutionary_ projects bring with them a risk of losing all. ""You say that the _dynasties_ are a matter of indifference to you. To me they are not. There lives in them a spirit which one can trace through ages. Read only what Müller in his _Fürstenbund_ says of the Guelphs. 'Need I mention the fame of the Guelphs whose spirit of unbending independence has made their name a watchword for liberty?' Even England has never been so free as under the three Georges and the fourth George brings the same sentiments with him to the throne. Compare with this your slavish Prussian system! I respect Frederick the Great but he caused the ruin of Germany by his aggrandizement and the ruin let me add of his own state too by creating a body that only his great soul could animate and which after his death lay helpless. When I showed the Prince Regent your remarks on the dynasties he exclaimed--If Stein is quite indifferent to them why does he not name us (Hanover) instead of PRUSSIA? I feel inclined to put the same question. Let us be content if we can do the best with the materials given us for our own age. ('_Lassen sie uns doch auch für unsere eigene Lebenszeit sorgen._') Why think particularly of the King of Prussia a man whom with the same breath that you exalt him you put under three subjects [20] and take at the same time his army into your own hands to keep him from doing harm? I pray your Excellency to observe that while my proposal leaves us free hands for any possible future improvement your two plans will offend all parties: your first plan to make Austria swallow up Germany will offend all Europe and Germany to boot; your second plan to divide Germany between Austria and Prussia will excite the opposition not only of Russia England and Sweden but of all those North Germans who are not prepared to receive as a _boon the Prussian system with cell its machinery of boards and councils of auscultants and assessors and its hereditary incapacity to understand that old maxim of political philosophy_--GOVERNA MEGLIO CHI MEN GOVERNA--He governs best who governs least. ""Neither am I at all prepared to agree with what you say on the subject of the German courts. I have lived long in great courts and I know not a few small ones; and I can honestly say that the state of morals among the peasants in country villages has always appeared to me more corrupt than in the highest circles of polite and cultivated society; and I can find little difference in principle between the case of one man intriguing in high circles for _grandes entrées_ and that of another setting a similar machinery to work to obtain the presidency in any church meeting of a small parish or a union of parishes; between one who to attain a selfish object flatters a prince and another who flatters the prefect of a department. If a difference is to be made the higher object which excites the higher passions seems rather entitled to a preference. ""Again I do not see why we should put altogether out of view how much science civilization and wealth have gained by the multiplication of central points where all these things may be cherished and whence as from so many life-giving fountains they may be beneficently dispensed. What country is there that can compete with Germany in respect of scientific culture?--and have the courts of so many princes not contributed to this result? And in ancient Greece was it not a similar state of things that as one great element at least produced a similar

result? But I will not attempt to discuss this subject in all its bearings. Enough if you will believe me that in the arrangement of the future political state of Germany I do not look for a mere FARCE; while at the same time I feel obliged to protest decidedly in present circumstances at least against your project of uniting Germany under one or two masters."" There are many admirable points in the above letter; and after pondering it well no intelligent reader will doubt for a moment that the schemes of Stein with regard to German _unity_ were not only impracticable in their main scope but in some respects of very questionable propriety. It were necessary however to have had the experience of a Prussian and the heart of a Stein in the year 1813 if one would fully understand how imperatively these practical impossibilities must have presented themselves to the earliest and patriotic minds of those days. Convinced that the cool Hanoverian is right we still feel inclined to sympathise with the hot Prussian who is in the wrong. ""_Malo cum Plutone errare._"" Stein followed Alexander into Germany witnessed the battles of Lutzen and Bautzen disheartening as they were like all true Germans undismayed: and on the 23d August 1813 shortly after the resumption of hostilities we find him a second time in Prague and writing most characteristically as follows:-- ""The spirit of the people here is by no means what it was in 1809; and for this plain reason that the government does nothing and will do nothing to rouse it. At that time (1809) the STADIONS held the helm and they used every means to waken the nobler feelings of human nature and they attained their object. Now at the head of affairs we have a cold scheming shallow calculating man who is afraid of nothing so much as an energetic measure--loves nothing more than a goal at the nearest possible distance from his nose--and is always ready to help himself out of a scrape with any miserable patchwork that may serve for the nonce. Hence the marriage introduced by a divorce the foolish hope of a partial peace the childish congress the wretched ultimatum and so forth."" And on the 14th September after the war was fairly broken out again we find the following remarks occasioned by the untoward battle of Dresden:-- ""The latest events have taught us what to think of our new allies and their commander (Schwartzenberg.) We have gained an increase in _mass_ not in _insight_ nobility of sentiment or vigour; we now understand what the fruits are of the new system pursued in Austria since 1810. From 1806 to 1809 the two Stadions gave all their energy to the great work of elevating the spirit of the nation and at the same time strengthening and fully equipping the army; and they succeeded in both points; the nation was animated by the most devoted enthusiasm the army fought with true valour. Since the peace of Vienna on the other hand the new ministry has been concerned only to purchase a beggarly peace to disorganize the army to cripple the public spirit and to solve the great problem of European regeneration by the miserable arts of diplomacy. This also has succeeded. The nation has become lukewarm and the army fight with no very remarkable display of soldiership. * * * The man who calculates but without depth may be a very good book-keeper but is no mathematician. ""The result as we have hitherto seen is that we have fought EVERY WHERE with distinguished success except where _the grand army_ was present that between Russia and Austria no very friendly feelings prevail ('_eine grosse Abneigung herrscht_ ') made worse of course by the well-known lukewarmness of the latter power. Over and above all this Metternich aims at a preponderant influence such as neither his talents his character nor the military position of the Austrian empire entitles him to. The Emperor Alexander sees all this clearly and will very probably undertake the command of his own and the Prussian army in person; and the movement of masses thus animated will then communicate itself to the inert Austrians. ""It is of the utmost importance that some conclusion should be come to about the settlement of Germany. From * * * expect no comprehensive views; he seeks for nothing but the shortest and most comfortable road and will content himself with respectable vamping in any shape. The history of the negotiations proves this; and had it not been for the MADNESS OF NAPOLEON we should unquestionably have had for the third fourth and fifth time a ruinous and wretched peace."" The person so severely handled in two places of these letters where he is not named is plainly enough Prince Metternich; a statesman who whatever may be his abilities and whatever may have been his merits--and merits in the management of German affairs--from the peace of Vienna in 1809 to that of Paris in 1815 (and it were out of place to attempt discussing these points here ) was plainly in every respect the _antipodes_ of Stein; and a man whom the hot Prussian baron could no more form a just judgment of than Martin Luther could of Erasmus. Diplomatists and mere politicians even the best of them are seldom--to say the least of it--the most noble specimens of human nature: there are bad and good amongst them of course; but Stein in his despotic sweeping style was fond of classing them all together as in one of his letters to Gagern; where after expressing his confident reliance on ""Providence and the hand of a loving Father who guides all "" he adds but ""from the sly crafty animals called politicians--(the original is English)--from these _homunciones_ I expect nothing."" The official position which Stein occupied during the eventful year 1813 was that of Supreme Director of the Interim Central Board of Administration (_Central Verwaltung_) of the conquered provinces of Germany till arrangements should be made for their final disposal in a general congress. When that congress came to do its work of course he had nothing more to do; and it will be pretty evident to the reader from the temper and opinions of the man as above exhibited that he was in nowise calculated to work efficiently with such men as Metternich Talleyrand and Lord Castlereagh at Vienna. The very composition of the congress made up of every possible complex and contending interest rendered from the beginning the realization of Stein's patriotic views with regard to German unity impossible. In such congregations of working and counter-working diplomatists not the triumph of any great principle but the compromise of a number of petty claims is generally the result; but compromise and patchwork of every kind were to a man of Stein's temper only another name for the DEVIL. The congress of Vienna so far as Germany was concerned ended according to his views in a ""FARCE;"" for not only were the other German states great and small left entire but SAXONY also--Napoleon's centre and base in the late war--was preserved only a half (instead of the whole) of it being cut off for the great German object of forming ""a strong Prussia."" And with regard to this point we must confess we feel in some respects inclined to agree with the Prussian baron. If Saxony was to be made an exception to the general rule it would have been better for many reasons to have handed it over undivided to the great Northern power. If neither one strong German empire nor an equally-poised federal system was any longer possible a strong Prussia was certainly a thing imperatively called for. But congresses are congresses; and we must even content ourselves with the most convenient adjustment of contending claims that was found practicable at the time; and if the result seems unsatisfactory we may turn away our eyes from it; occupy ourselves with the best business that offers itself and let God work. So at least Stein did. He kept his word to Count Münster most faithfully; and after the decisive thunders of Leipsig and Waterloo having done his part to bring the great European tragedy to a worthy catastrophe he retired from witnessing the ""farce "" with all convenient speed into private life and was heard of no more in court or cabinet in Berlin from that day till his death. In the spring of 1816 we find him in his own ancestral castle in Nassau addressing a fiend as follows:--""Yes dear friend we have won much; but much also should have been otherwise. God governs the world and abandons no German; and if we remain true and German (_treu und Deutsch_ ) we shall take up the matter some other day with the French again and settle the account more satisfactorily. For myself I long to depart; _this world is once for all so constituted that a man cannot walk on the straight path and yet ought not to walk on the crooked_. 'Tis even so; circumstances and relations drive and force men. They act and think they are the doers; but it is God that decides."" This most characteristic passage expresses only Stein's feeling that the French had been allowed to escape so cheaply by the generosity of the Allies at the peace of Paris; but he had much more substantial grievances to vex him nearer home; and next to the feeble machinery of the diet at Frankfort that which hurt him most was the political reaction at Berlin that commenced immediately after the peace and threatened to undo that great social work which he had so boldly begun in 1808. However much a Prussian in his political sympathies Stein was essentially an Englishman in his principles; the tendency of all his measures as they were introduced by himself or followed out by Hardenberg was to temper the military and bureaucratic despotism of Frederick the Great by a wise admixture of popular influence; he wished a ""constitution"" after the English model as much as circumstances might permit not in form merely but in deed; he was not afraid of free discussion among a well-educated people like the Germans and was too noble-minded to imitate in Berlin or Maine the spy-system on which Napoleon had based his immoral monarchy of physical force at Paris. It was not to be expected however that in a country hitherto governed solely by the Court and by the Bureau these English views of Stein should not have met with sturdy opposition; in fact it was mainly by help of the battle of Jena that he was enabled to do what he did for creating a Prussian PEOPLE in 1808. Now that terrible shock had passed; and the host of defeated bureaucratists and court minions after the battle for the liberation of the fatherland had been fought by others now began to crown into their old places and to occupy the ears of a king more honest to promise what was right than strong to do it. Accordingly instead of ""freedom of the press"" and ""constitution"" in Prussia we have heard no sound since the year 1815 but that of prohibited books imaginary conspiracies of beer-inspired Burschen deposed professors and banished old Luther; and every thing in short except what the pious old Frederick William III. promised or was made to appear to promise with such gracious popular and constitutional phrases at Vienna in the year 1815. Whether the military and bureaucratic despotism of Germany may not after all be a better system of government on the whole than our strange system of local and corporate influence of all sorts of fermenting acids and alkalis here is a question which some persons of a speculative disposition may consider open enough; but that the supreme power having once pledged itself to give a people a free constitution and freedom of the press should act with honour and do what was promised seems (if there be any such thing as public morals at all ) under any form of government nothing more than what common policy as well as propriety would dictate. Those who bear the rule in Germany however have for the last thirty years done every thing that they possibly could do to make the royal word a public mockery and a shame; one cannot review the well-known despotic proceedings of the German diet first in 1829 and afterwards in 1832 without subscribing a most full assent to the sentence of the Baron von Stein when he says in reference to those very matters--""the falsehood that prevails in our age is deserving of the most serious reprehension."" And again ""Our German government sink more and more daily in public estimation by their timidity and perfidy."" With regard to the whole system indeed of Prussian government the system of doing every thing by official men and nothing by voluntary movement of the people and apart from this special matter of the ""_constitution_ "" Stein was accustomed to use the strongest language of reprobation; witness the following letter to Von Gagern dated 24th August 1821. Coppenberg was a favourite seat of the Baron in Westphalia. ""In the lonely woody Coppenberg I live so remote from the world and its doings that nothing can disturb me in the enjoyment of nature and a country life except bad weather which happily has left us a few days ago and is not likely soon to return. In Westphalia here my friends are more concerned about the new tax and the new edict about the peasants (which satisfies no party ) than about the schemes of Metternich on the banks of the Danube and the great events in Greece. For myself I can say nothing more about public affairs than that while I have little confidence in the present leaders I have an unbounded trust in Providence; and that necessary as a CONSTITUTION _is to Prussia and beneficial as it would be if fairly worked I expect nothing from any machinery which will necessarily be opposed by the persons who have possession of the king's ear and the court influence generally_: and I see plainly that we are still as we have hitherto been to be governed by salaried persons equipped with mere book-learning without any substantial interest in the country without property by mere bureaucratists--a system which will last so long as it can last--'_Das geht so lange es geht!_' These four words contain the soul of our and suchlike spiritless (_geistlos_) government machines:--in the first place salaried--and this implies a tendency to maintain and to multiply the number of salaried officials; then _book-learned_--that is living in the world of the dead letter and not in the actual world; _without interest_--for these men stand in no connexion with any class of the citizens which are the mass of the state; they are a peculiar caste these men of the quill (""_die Schreiberkaste_;"") lastly _without property_--this implies that they stand unmoved by all changes that affect property in sunshine or in rain with taxes high or low with old chartered rights maintained or destroyed with independent peasants or a rabble of mere journeymen with a dependence of the peasants on the proprietors or of all on the Jews and the bankers--'tis all one to the bureaucracy. They draw their salary from the public purse and write--write--write on--secretly--silently--invisibly with shut doors--unknown--unnoticed--unnamed--and bring up their children after them to be what their fathers were--very serviceable writing-machines. ""Our machinery--the old military machinery--I saw fall on the 14th October 1806; possibly the machinery of the desk and the quill and the red tape has a 14th of October already doomed for it in Heaven."" These are serious words; and though Stein was one of those intense and strongly accentuating minds that never could state a truth without overstating it (as Martin Luther also was continually doing ) they are not wise who would treat the hard blows from the cudgel of such a man as if they were puffs and whiffs of angry smoke from some wrathful Heine or other furious poetical politician in Paris. Stein was the most practical of men; he had lived all his life amid the details of practice; and like all practical men in the midst of his violence knew how to preserve certain sobriety and moderation without which no such thing as governing is possible. There is nothing in our opinion that any King of Prussia could do better than seriously to ponder the passage we have just quoted and also the few short sentences that follow:-- Nassau Sept. 29 1819. ""I expect nothing satisfactory and substantial from the assembling together and the deliberations of mediocre and superficial men. ""The most important thing that could be done for the preservation of the public peace in Germany were to _put an end to the reign of arbitrary power and in the place of it to commence a system of constitutional law; in the place of the bureaucratists and the democratic pamphleteers--of whom the former oppress the people by much and bad governing and the other excite and confound it--to place the influence and the activity of the proprietors of the soil_."" With these memorable words we are willing that the character of Stein as an English statesman in Prussia should grave itself deep in the hearts both of Englishmen and Prussians. We have only to add that in his latter years Stein occupied himself in organizing a society at Frankfort for publishing the original documents of German history which are best known to the English historical student in connexion with the name of Perz; and that he took an active share in the business of the provincial states of Westphalia. He was also (since 1827) member of the council of state in Berlin; but this dignity conferred at so late a period seems merely to have been intended as a sort of unavoidable compliment to a person of his rank and standing. It certainly did not imply that his well-known English principles were intended to assume any greater prominency in the conduct of Prussian and German affairs than they had enjoyed since the peace. Baron Stein died on the 29th June 1831 in his castle of Coppenberg in Westphalia. THE HISTORICAL ROMANCE. We are constantly told that invention is worn out; that every thing is exhausted that all the intellectual treasures of modern Europe have been dug up; and that we must look to a new era of the world and a different quarter of the globe for new ideas or fresh views of thought. It must be confessed that if we look to some parts of our literature there seems too good reason for supposing that this desponding opinion is well founded. Every thing in some departments does seem worked out. Poetry appears for the time wellnigh extinguished. We have some charming ballads from Tennyson; some touching lines from Miss Barret; but where are the successors of Scott and Byron of Campbell and Southey? Romance in some branches has evidently exhausted itself. For ten years we had novels of fashionable life till the manners and sayings of lordlings and right honourables had become familiar to all the haberdashers' apprentices and milliners' girls in London. That vein being worked out literature has run into the opposite channel. Action and reaction is the law not less of the intellectual than the physical world. Inventive genius has sought out in the lower walks of life those subjects of novel study and fresh description which could no longer be found in the higher. So far has this propensity gone so violent has been the oscillation of the pendulum in this direction that novelists have descended to the very lowest stages of society in the search of the new or the exciting. Not only have the manners the selfishness and vulgarity of the middle ranks been painted with admirable fidelity and drawn with inimitable skill but the habits and slang of the very lowest portrayed with prurient minuteness and interest sought to be awakened in the votaries of fashion or the Sybarites of pleasure by the delineation of the language and ideas of the most infamous wretches who ever disgraced society by their vices or endangered it by their crimes. ""Whatever "" says Dr Johnson ""makes the PAST or the FUTURE predominate over the present exalts us in the scale of thinking beings."" The words are familiar till they have become trite; but words are often repeated when the sense is far off. It is in the general oblivion of the thought of the philosopher while his words were in every mouth that the cause of the want of originality in modern works of imagination is to be found. If to the ""Past"" and the ""Future "" enumerated by Johnson we add the ""DISTANT "" we shall have an effectual antidote and the only one which is effectual against the sameness of present ideas or the limited circle of present observation. The tendency to _localize_ is the propensity which degrades literature as it is the chief bane and destroyer of individual character. It is the opposite effect of engendering a tendency to expand which constitutes the chief value of travelling in the formation of character. If the thought and conversation of individuals are limited to the little circle in which they live or the objects by which they are immediately surrounded we all know what they speedily become. It is in the extension of the interest to a wider circle in the admission of objects of general concern and lasting importance into the sphere of habitual thought that the only preservative against this fatal tendency is to be found. It is the power of doing this which forms the chief charm of the highest society in every country and renders it in truth every where the same. A man of the world will find himself equally at home and conversation flow at once with equal ease in the higher saloons of London or Paris of Rome or Vienna of Warsaw or St Petersburg. But he will find it scarcely possible to keep up conversation for a quarter of an hour in the _bourgeois_ circle of any of these capitals. It is the same with literature; and especially that wide and important branch of literature which aiming at the exciting of interest or delineating of manners should in an especial manner be guarded against the degradation consequent on a narrow restriction of its subjects to matters only of local concern. The prodigious success and widespread popularity which have attended some of the most able novels of this new school of romance in late years as well as the great ability which their composition evinces must not blind our eyes to the degrading tendency of such compositions upon the national literature. Immediate circulation great profit to the bookseller a dazzling reputation to the author are by no means to be relied on as the heralds of lasting fame. In cases innumerable they have proved the reverse. Still less are they to be considered as proofs that the writer be his abilities what they may has worthily performed his mission or elevated himself to the exalted level of which his art is susceptible. The most pernicious romances and poems that ever appeared have often been ushered into the world by the most unbounded immediate applause; witness the _Nouvelle Heloïse_ of Rousseau and _Pucelle_ of Voltaire. It was just their dangerous and seductive qualities which gave them their success. Rousseau knew this well. He addressed himself with skill and perfect knowledge of the age to its passions and vices:--""J'ai vu les moeurs de mon temps et j'ai publié ces lettres "" were the first words of his _Nouvelle Heloïse_. In the school we have mentioned there is nothing immoral or improper; but is there any thing elevating or improving? The true test of real excellence is not immediate success but durable fame; it is to be found not in the popularity of circulating shops or reading clubs but in the shelves of the library or the delight of the fireside. When a work suddenly attains great immediate celebrity in a particular circle or country it is generally though not always an indication that it is not destined to enjoy any lasting reputation. The reason is that it is addressed to local feelings temporary passions and particular desires; and it rises to eminence from interesting or gratifying them. But that is not the way permanently to attract mankind. Nothing can do so but what is addressed to the universal feeling of our nature and has penetrated to the inmost chords which are common to all ages and countries. The touching them alone can secure durable fame. Where now are all the novels portraying fashionable life with which the shops of publishers teemed and the shelves of circulating libraries groaned not ten years ago? Buried in the vault of all the Capulets. Where will the novels portraying manners in the lowest walks of life be ten years hence? He is a bold man who says they will be found in one well-selected library. We do not dispute the vast ability of some of these productions. We are well aware of the fidelity with which they have painted the manners of the middle class previously little touched on in novels; we fully admit the pathos and power of occasional passages the wit and humour of many others the graphic delineation of English character which they all contain. But admitting all this the question is--have these productions come up to the true standard of novel-writing? Are they fitted to elevate and purify the minds of their readers? Will the persons who peruse and are amused perhaps fascinated by them become more noble more exalted more spiritual beings than they were before? Do not these novels able and amusing as they are bear the same relation to the lofty romances of which our literature can boast that the Boors of Ostade or the Village Wakes of Teniers do to the Madonnas of Guido or the Holy Families of Raphael? These pictures were and are exceedingly popular in Flanders and Holland where their graphic truth could be appreciated; but are they ever regarded as models of the really beautiful in painting? We leave it to the most ardent admirers of the Jack Sheppard school to answer these questions. The doctrine now so prevalent is essentially erroneous that the manners of the middle or lowest class are the fit object of the novelist because they are natural. Many things are natural which yet are not fit to be exposed and by the customs of all civilized nations are studiously concealed from the view. Voltaire's well-known answer to a similar remark when made in regard to Shakspeare indicates though in a coarse way the true reply to such observations. If every thing that is natural and we see around us is the fit object of imitation and perpetuating in literature it can no longer be called one of the _Fine_ Arts. It is degraded to a mere copying of nature in her coarsest and most disgusting equally as her noblest and most elevating aspects. We protest against the doctrine that the lofty art of romance is to be lowered to the delineating the manners of cheesemongers and grocers of crop-head charity boys and smart haberdashers' and milliners' apprentices of doubtful reputation. If we wish to see the manners of such classes we have only to get into a railway or steamboat; the sight of them at breakfast or dinner will probably be enough for any person accustomed to the habits of good society. Still more solemnly do we enter our protest against the slang of thieves or prostitutes the flash words of receivers of stolen goods and criminal officers the haunts of murderers and burglars being the proper subject for the amusement or edification of the other classes of society. It might as well be said that the refuse of the common-sewers should be raked up and mixed with the garbage of the streets to form our daily food. That such things exist is certain; we have only to walk the streets at night and we shall soon have ample evidence of their reality. But are they the proper object of the novel-writer's pencil? That is the question; and it is painful to think that in an age boasting its intelligence and glorying in the extent of its information such a question should be deemed susceptible of answer in any but one way. These two extremes of novel-writing--the Almack and Jack Sheppard schools--deviate equally from the standard of real excellence. The one is too exclusively devoted to the description of high the other of low life. The one portrays a style of manners as artificial and peculiar as that of the paladins and troubadours of chivalry; the other exhibits to our view the lowest and most degraded stages of society and by the force of humour or the tenderness of pathos interests us too often in the haunts of vice or the pursuits of infamy. It is easy to see that the one school was produced by the reaction of the human mind against the other; genius tired of the eternal flirtations of guardsmen and right honourables sought for unsophisticated nature in the humour of low or the sorrows of humble life. But low and humble life are sophisticated just as much as elevated and fashionable; and if we are driven to a selection we would prefer the artificial manners of the great to the natural effusions of the vulgar. We would rather as the child said to the ogress be eat up by the gentleman. But true novel-writing should be devoted to neither the one nor the other. It should aim at the representation of what Sir Joshua Reynolds called ""general or common nature""--that is nature by its general features which are common to all ages and countries not its peculiarities in a particular circle or society. It is by success in delineating that and _by it alone_ that lasting fame is to be acquired. Without doubt every age and race of men have their separate dress end costume and the mind has its externals as well as the body which the artist of genius will study with sedulous care and imitate with scrupulous fidelity. But the soul is not in the dress; and so it will be found in the delineation of mind as in the representation of the figure. All these extravagances in the noble art of romance originate in one cause. They come of not making ""the past and the _distant_ predominate over the present."" It is like sketching every day from nature in the same scenery or country: the artist if he has the pencil of Claude Lorraine or Salvator Rosa will in the end find that if the _objects_ of his study are endless their _character_ has a certain family resemblance; and that if he is not repeating the same study he is reproducing under different forms the same ideas. But let him extend his observation to a wider sphere: let him study the sublimity of mountain or the sweetness of pastoral scenery let him traverse the Alps and the Apennines the Pyrenees or the Caucasus; let him inhale the spirit of antiquity amidst the ruins of the Capitol or the genius of Greece on the rocks of the Acropolis; let him become embued with modern beauty on the shores of Naples or the combined charms of Europe and Asia amidst the intricacies of the Bosphorus--and what a world of true images objects and beauties is at once let into his mind! It is the same with romance. It is by generalizing ideas by means of extended observation that variety is to be communicated to conception and freshness to incident; that the particular is to be taken from character and the general impressed upon mind. But the novelist has this immense advantage over the painter--not only the present but the past lie open to his study. The boundless events of history present themselves to his choice: he can not only roam at will over the present surface of the globe with all its variety of character event and incident but penetrate backwards into the unsearchable depths of time. When will fresh subjects for description be wanting with such a field to the hand of genius? Never to the end of the world: for years as they revolve nations as they rise and fall events as they thicken around mankind but add to the riches of the vast storehouse from which it is to select its subjects or cull its materials. Look at Shakspeare--with what felicity has he selected on this inexhaustible reserve to vary his incidents to invigorate his ideas to give raciness to his characters! He has not even confined himself to English story rich as it is in moving or terrible events and strikingly as its moving phantasmagoria come forth from his magic hand. The tragedies the comedies the events the ideas of the most distant ages of the world of the most opposite states of society of the most discordant characters of mankind seem depicted with equal felicity. He is neither thoroughly chivalrous like Tasso and Ariosto nor thoroughly Grecian like Sophocles and Euripides nor thoroughly French like Corneille and Racine. He has neither portrayed exclusively the manners of Arthur and the Round Table nor of the courts of the Henrys or the Plantagenets. He is as varied as the boundless variety of nature. Profoundly embued at one time with the lofty spirit of Roman patriotism he is not less deeply penetrated at another with the tenderness of Italian love. If Julius Cesar contains the finest picture that ever was drawn of the id

as of the citizens of the ancient world Juliet is the most perfect delineation of the refined passions of the modern. The bursting heart uncontrollable grief but yet generous spirit of the Moor--the dark ambition and blood-stained career of the Scot come as fresh from his pencil as the dreamy contemplation of the Prince of Denmark or the fascinating creation of the Forest of Ardennes. It is hard to say whether he is greatest in painting the racked grief of Lear the homely sense of Falstaff or the aërial vision of Miranda. Here is the historical drama; here is the varied picture of the human heart; and if the world is not prolific of Shakspeares he at least has afforded decisive evidence of the vastness of the field thus opened to its genius. The HISTORICAL ROMANCE should take its place beside the plays of Shakspeare. It does not aim at representation on the stage; it has not the powers of the actor the deception of scenery the magic of theatrical effect nor the charms of music to heighten its impression. But in exchange it has one incalculable advantage which in the end is adequate to overbalance them all: it brings delight to the fireside. Seated in our arm-chairs with the wintry winds howling around us with our feet at a blazing fire we are transported by the wand of the novelist to the most remote ages and distant counties of the earth. The lofty spirit and generous passions of chivalry; the stern resolves and heroic resolution of ancient patriotism; the graceful profligacy and studied gallantry of the court of Louis XIV.; the deep Machiavelism of Italian perfidy; the blunt simplicity of German virtue; the freeborn fearlessness of English valour; the lofty soul and poetic imagery of the North American savage; the dauntless intrepidity of his Castilian conqueror; the heart-stirring pathos of Eastern story; the savage ferocity of Scythian conquest--may be alternately presented to our view. We roam at will not only over space but time; and if the writer is worthy of his high vocation he can so warm the imagination by the interest of event the delineation of character the force of passion or the charm of the pathetic that the strongest impression of reality is conveyed to the reader's mind. Add to this the material appliances which are at his disposal; and which though far inferior to mental power in rousing interest or awakening sympathy have yet great effect in giving life to the picture and transporting the imagination to the scenes or the ages which are intended to be portrayed. The scenery of all the different parts of the world under every possible variety of light colour and circumstance; the manners habits and customs of all nations and all ages and all grades of society; the dresses arms houses and strongholds of men in all stages of their progress from the huntsmen of Nimrod to the Old Guard of Napoleon; the ideas of men in different classes and ranks of life in all ages--form so many additions to his pictures which if skilfully managed must give them infinite variety and interest. There is no end there never can be any end to the combinations of genius with such materials at its disposal. If men since this noble art has been created ever run into repetition it will be from want of originality in conception not variety in subject. The prodigious addition which the happy idea of the historical romance has made to the stores of elevated literature and through it to the happiness and improvement of the human race will not be properly appreciated unless the novels most in vogue before the immortal creations of Scott appeared are considered. If we take up even the most celebrated of them and in which the most unequivocal marks of genius are to be discerned it seems hardly possible to conceive how their authors could have acquired the reputation which they so long enjoyed. They are distinguished by a mawkish sensibility a perpetual sentimentality as different from the bursts of genuine passion as their laboured descriptions of imaginary scenes are from the graphic sketches which in later times have at once brought reality before the mind's eye. The novels of Charlotte Smith Miss Radcliffe and Miss Burney belong to this school; they are now wellnigh unreadable. Even works of higher reputation and unquestionable genius in that age the _Nouvelle Heloïse_ of Rousseau and _Sir Charles Grandison_ of Richardson now form a heavy task even for the most ardent lover of romance. Why is it that works so popular in their day and abounding with so many traits of real genius should so soon have palled upon the world? Simply because they were not founded upon a broad and general view of human nature; because they were drawn not from real life in the innumerable phases which it presents to the observer but imaginary life as it was conceived in the mind of the composer; because they were confined to one circle and class of society and having exhausted all the natural ideas which it could present its authors were driven in the search of variety to the invention of artificial and often ridiculous ones. Sir Walter Scott as all the world knows was the inventor of the historical romance. As if to demonstrate how ill founded was the opinion that all things were worked out and that originality no longer was accessible for the rest of time Providence by the means of that great mind bestowed a new art as it were upon mankind--at the very time when literature to all appearance was effete and invention for above a century had run in the cramped and worn-out channels of imitation. Gibbon was lamenting that the subjects of history were exhausted and that modern story would never present the moving incidents of ancient story on the verge of the French Revolution and the European war--of the Reign of Terror and the Moscow retreat. Such was the reply of Time to the complaint that political incident was worn out. Not less decisive was the answer which the genius of the Scottish bard afforded to the opinion that the treasures of original thought were exhausted and that nothing now remained for the sons of men. In the midst of that delusion he wrote _Waverley_; and the effect was like the sun bursting through the clouds. After a space shorter than is usually required for a work of original conception to make its way in society the effect began to appear. Like the invention of gunpowder or steam it in the end worked a change in the moral world. Envy was silenced; criticism was abashed; detraction ceased to decry--malignity to deride. The hearts of men were taken as it were by storm. A new vein of boundless extent and surpassing richness was opened as it were under our feet. Men marvelled that it had been so long of being found out. And the first discoverer worked it with such rapidity and success that for long no one attempted to disturb him in the turning forth of its wealth. It is curious now that this great revolution in romance-writing has taken place and is felt and acknowledged by all the world to reflect on the causes apparently accidental by which it was brought about and the trivial circumstances which might have turned aside perhaps for ever the creative mind of Scott from this its appropriate sphere of original action. The first chapters of _Waverley_ as we learn from Lockhart's Life were written in 1808; but the work was laid aside in an unfinished form and was almost forgotten by its author. It would probably have remained there overlooked and incomplete to the day of his death had not the extraordinary popularity of Lord Byron's _Childe Harold_ and subsequent pieces joined to some symptoms of waning public favour in the reception of his own later pieces particularly _Rokeby_ and the _Lord of the Isles_ awakened in his mind as he himself has told us a latent suspicion that he had better retire from the field of poetry before his youthful competitor and betake himself to another career in which hitherto no rival had appeared. Under the influence of this feeling of distrust in his poetical powers the all but forgotten manuscript of _Waverley_ was drawn forth from its obscurity the novel was finished and given to the world in July 1814. From that moment the historical romance was born for mankind. One of the most delightful and instructive species of composition was created; which unites the learning of the historian with the fancy of the poet; which discards from human annals their years of tedium and brings prominently forward their eras of interest; which teaches morality by example and conveys information by giving pleasure; and which combining the charms of imagination with the treasures of research founds the ideal upon its only solid and durable basis--the real. The historical romance enjoys many advantages for the creation of interest and even the conveying of information over history. It can combine in a short space the exciting incidents which are spread over numerous volumes; and by throwing entirely into the background the uninteresting details of human events concentrate the light of imagination on such as are really calculated to produce an impression. Immense is the facility which this gives for the creation of interest and the addition of life to the picture. What oppresses the historian is the prodigious number of details with which he is encumbered. As his main object is to convey a trustworthy narrative of real events none of them can with due regard to the credit of the narrative be omitted. If they are so it is ten to one that the author finds reason to repent his superficial survey before he has concluded his work; and if he is fortunate enough to escape such stings of self-reproach he is quite certain that the blot will be marked by some kind friend or candid critic who will represent the thing omitted how trifling soever as the most important incident in the whole work and the neglect of which is wholly fatal to its credit as a book of authority. Every traveller knows how invariably this is the case with any object which may have been accidentally omitted to be seen in any province or city; and that the only way to avoid the eternal self-reproaches consequent on having it constantly represented by others as the most interesting object to be seen is--at all hazards of time fatigue or expense--to see every thing. But the historical novelist is fettered by no such necessity--he is constrained to encumber his pages with no inconsiderable details. Selecting for the objects of his piece the most striking characters and moving incidents of the period he has chosen he can throw full light upon them and paint the details with that minuteness of finishing which is essential to conjuring up a vivid image in the reader's mind. He can give the truth of history without its monotony--the interest of romance without its unreality. It was the power they enjoyed of abstracting in this manner from surrounding and uninteresting details which constituted the principal charm of ancient history. The _Cyropædia_ and _Anabasis_ of Xenophon are nothing but historical romances. Livy's pictured page--Sallust's inimitable sketches--Tacitus's finished paintings over their chief fascination to the simplicity of their subjects. Ancient history being confined to the exploits of a single hero or monarch or the rise of a particular city could afford to be graphic detailed and consequently interesting. That was comparatively an easy task when the events of one or at most two states on the shores of the Mediterranean alone required to be portrayed. But such a limitation of subject is impossible in modern history when the transactions of Europe Asia Africa and America require to be detailed to render the thread of events complete. Even biography is scarcely intelligible without such a narrative of the surrounding nations and incidents as makes it run into the complexity and consequent dulness of history. But the author of historical romance is entirely relieved from this necessity and consequently he can present the principal events and characters of his world in far more brilliant colours to his readers than is possible for the historian. Certainly with some the results of his more attractive influence will be doubted; but be that as it may it is the Henry V. or Richard III. of Shakspeare that occur to every mind when these English monarchs are thought of not the picture of them presented able as it is by Hume or Turner. If we hear of Richard Coeur-de-Lion we immediately conjure up the inimitable picture of the crusading hero in _Ivanhoe_ or the _Talisman_. Elizabeth of England is admirably portrayed in the pages of Hume but the Elizabeth of _Kenilworth_ is the one which is engraven on every mind; and when the romantic tale and heroic death of Mary of Scotland are thought of it is less the masterly picture of Robertson or the touching narrative of Tytler that recurs to the recollection than the imprisoned princess of the _Abbot_ or the immortal Last Sacrament of Schiller. Considered in its highest aspect no art ever was attempted by man more elevated and ennobling than the historical romance. It may be doubted whether it is inferior even to the lofty flights of the epic or the heart-rending pathos of the dramatic muse. Certain it is that it is more popular and embraces a much wider circle of readers than either the _Iliad_ or the _Paradise Lost_. Homer and Tasso never in an equal time had nearly so many readers as Scott. The reason is that an interesting story told in prose can be more generally understood and is appreciated by a much wider circle than when couched in the lofty strains and comparative obscurity of verse. It is impossible to over-estimate the influence for good or for evil which this fascinating art may exercise upon future ages. It literally has the moulding of the human mind in its hands;--""Give me "" said Fletcher of Saltoun ""the making of ballads and I will give you the making of laws."" Historical romances are the ballads of a civilized and enlightened age. More even than their rude predecessors of the mountains and the forest they form those feelings in youth by which the character of the future man is to be determined. It is not going too far to say that the romances of Sir Walter Scott have gone far to neutralise the dangers of the Reform Bill. Certain it is that they have materially assisted in extinguishing at least in the educated classes of society that prejudice against the feudal manners and those devout aspirations on the blessings of democratic institutions which were universal among the learned over Europe in the close of the eighteenth century. Like all other great and original minds so far from being swept away by the errors of his age he rose up in direct opposition to them. Singly he set himself to breast the flood which was overflowing the world. Thence the reaction in favour of the institutions of the olden time in church and state which became general in the next generation and is now so strongly manifesting itself as well in the religious contests as the lighter literature of the present day. ""Some authors "" says Madame de Staël ""have lowered the romance in mingling with it the revolting pictures of vice; and while the first advantage of fiction is to assemble around man all that can serve as a lesson or a model it has been thought that a temporary object might be gained by representing the obscure scenes of corrupted life as if they could ever leave the heart which repels them as pure as that to which they were unknown. But a romance such as one can conceive such as we have some models of is one of the noblest productions of the human mind one of the most influential on the hearts of individuals and which is best fitted in the end to form the morals of nations.""[21] It is in this spirit that romance should be written--it is in this spirit that it has been written by some of the masters of the art who have already appeared during the brief period which has elapsed since its creation. And if in hands more impure it has sometimes been applied to less elevated purposes; if the turbid waters of human corruption have mingled with the stream and the annals of the past have been searched not to display its magnanimity but to portray its seductions; we must console ourselves by the reflection that such is the inevitable lot of humanity that genius cannot open a noble career which depravity will not enter nor invent an engine for the exaltation of the human mind which vice will not pervert to its degradation. As the historical romance has been of such recent introduction in this country and the world it is not surprising that its principles should as yet be not finally understood. It may be doubted whether its great master and his followers themselves have been fully aware of the causes to which their own success has been owing. Like travellers who have entered an unknown but varied and interesting country they have plunged fearlessly on threading forests dashing through streams traversing plains crossing mountains and in the breathless haste of the journey and the animation of spirit with which it was attended they have become in a great degree insensible to the causes which produced the charm which surrounded their footsteps. Yet like every other art the historical romance has its principles; and it is by the right comprehending and skilful application of these principles that its highest triumphs are to be gained. They are the same as those which have long been unfolded by the great masters of composition in relation to poetry and the drama; they are to be found applied by Sir Joshua Reynolds to the sister art of painting. Yet are they not attended to by the great mass of readers and even by authors themselves if we may judge by the frequent failures which are exhibited little understood or frequently neglected. The first requisite of the historical romance is a subject which shall be _elevated and yet interesting_. It must be elevated or the work will derogate from its noblest object that of rousing the sympathetic passions and awakening the generous feelings; it must be interesting or these effects will be produced in a very limited degree. Readers of romance look for excitement; they desire to be interested and unless they are so the author's productions will very soon be neglected. This is universally known and felt alike by readers and writers; but yet there is a strange misapprehension prevalent among many authors even of distinguished talent in regard to the methods by which this interest is to be awakened. It is frequently said that the public are insatiable for novelty; that all home subjects are worn out; and thence it is concluded that whatever is new must possess the greatest chance of becoming popular. In the desire to discover such novelty every part of the world has been ransacked. Stories from Persia and the East have been plentifully brought forward; the prairies and savages of North America have furnished the subjects of more than one interesting romance; Russia Poland Italy Spain as well as France Germany Sweden and the United States have been eagerly ransacked to satisfy the craving of a generation seeking after something new. The total failure of many of these novels the dubious success of many others though written with unquestionable talent may convince us that this principle of looking only for novelty may be carried too far and that it is within certain limits only that the appetite for variety can successfully be indulged. And what these limits are may be readily learned by attending to what experience has taught in the sister arts. It has been said and said truly that ""eloquence to be popular must be in advance of the audience _and but a little in advance_."" The experience of all ages has taught that the drama is never successful unless it appeals to feelings which find a responsive echo in the general mind and awakens associations of general interest in the breast of the audience. It is the same with the historical romance. It may and should deviate a little from the circle of interesting association generally felt; but it should be _but a little_. The heart of the readers of novels as well as the spectators of tragedies is at home. The images the emotions the loves the hatreds the hopes the fears the names the places familiar to our youth are those which awaken the strongest emotions of sympathy in later years. Novelty is frequently felt as agreeable; but it is so chiefly when it recalls again in other climes or in the events of other ages the feelings and passions of our own. We like occasionally to leave home; but when we do so there is nothing so delightful as to be recalled to it by the touching of any of those secret chords which bind man to the place of his nativity or the scene of his dearest associations. The novels which are to be durably popular in any country must be founded not indeed necessarily on incidents of its own story but on the ideas with which it is familiar and on incidents cousin-german at least to those of its own national existence. The institutions of chivalry the feudal system have created as it were in this respect one great family of the European nations which renders at least to the educated classes the manners emotions and passions of the higher ranks an object of universal interest. We can sympathise as warmly with the paladins of Ariosto or the knights of Tasso as ever could the troubadours of Provence or the nobles of Italy. But if this lofty circle which forms the manners of chivalry is once passed we descend to inferior grades of society. The novelist of every country will find that what he portrays will not permanently or generally interest a wider circle than that of its own inhabitants. We can take no interest in the boyards of Russia or the boors of Poland; but little in the agas and kuzilbashes of Eastern story. Novelty as in the _Arabian Nights_ may attract in youth for a single publication; but fairy or Eastern tales will never form the intellectual bread of life. The universal admiration with which _Don Quixote_ and the Waverley novels are regarded over the whole world must not blind us to the extreme difficulty of making the manners of the middle or lower ranks if brought forward as the main machinery of a romance durably interesting to any but those to whom they are familiar. Even Scott and Cervantes owe great part of their success to the skill with which they have combined the noble manners and exalted ideas engendered in the European heart by the institutions of chivalry and as widely spread as its spirit with the graphic picture of the manners in the different countries where the scene of their romances was laid. And it is not every man who can draw the bow of Ulysses. _Ivanhoe_ the _Abbot_ and _Old Mortality_ may be considered as the perfection of historical romances so far as subject goes. They all relate to events of national history well known to all persons possessing any information in England and Scotland and deeply connected with the most interesting associations to those of cultivated minds. The undaunted courage and jovial manners of the Lion-hearted hero; the cruel oppression of Norman rule; the bold spirit of Saxon independence; the deep sorrows and ever-doubtful character of the heroic Queen of Scots; the fearful collision of Puritan zeal with Cavalier loyalty from which issued the Great Rebellion--are engraven on every heart in the British islands. They formed the most appropriate subjects therefore for the foundation or substratum of novels to be permanently interesting to the Anglo-Saxon race with the addition of such imaginary characters or incidents as might illustrate still further the manners and ideas of the times. Nor are such subjects of universal and national interest by any means yet exhausted. On the contrary many of the most admirable of these have never yet been touched on. The cruel conquest of Wales by Edward I.; the heroic struggles of Wallace against the same monarch; the glorious establishment of Scottish independence by Robert Bruce; the savage ferocity and heart-rending tragedies of the wars of the Roses; the martyr-like death of Charles I.; the heart-stirring conquests of Edward III. and the Black Prince; the heartless gallantry of the age of Charles II.; the noble efforts of the Highlanders in 1715 and 1745 for their hereditary sovereign form a few of the periods of British history either not at all or as yet imperfectly illustrated by historical romance. Nor is the stock terminated; on the contrary it is growing and hourly on the increase. The time has already come when the heroism of La Vendée the tragedies of the Revolution form the appropriate subject of French imaginative genius; and the period is not far distant when Wellington and the paladins of the late war transported from this earthly scene by the changes of mortality will take lasting and immortal place in the fields of romance. The success of many of the novels of recent times in the conception of which most genius has been evinced and in the composition most labour bestowed has been endangered if not destroyed by inattention to this principle in the choice of a subject. There is great talent much learning and vigorous conception in the _Last Days of Pompeii_ by Bulwer; and the catastrophe with which it concludes is drawn with his very highest powers; but still it is felt by every class of readers to be uninteresting. We have no acquaintance or association with Roman manners; we know little of their habits; scarce any thing of their conversation in private: they stand forth to us in history in a sort of shadowy grandeur totally distinct from the interest of novelist composition. No amount of learning or talent can make the dialogues of Titus and Lucius of Gallius and Vespasia interesting to a modern reader. On the other hand the _Last of the Barons_ is an admirably chosen historical subject worked out with even more than the author's usual power and effect; and but for a defect in composition to be hereafter noticed it would be one of the most popular of all his productions. Great talent and uncommon powers of description have been displayed in Oriental novels; but they have not attained any lasting reputation--not from any fault on the part of the writers but the want of sympathy in the great majority of readers with the subject of their compositions. Strange to say we feel nothing foreign in James's _Attila_. So deeply were we impregnated with barbarian blood--so strongly have Scythian customs and ideas descended to our times--that the wooden palace of the chief of the Huns surrounded with its streets of carts and myriads of flocks and herds in the centre of Hungary is felt as nothing alien. On the other hand some of Sir Walter's later productions have failed notwithstanding great ability in the execution from undue strangeness in the subject. _Anne of Geierstein_ and the Indian story in the _Chronicles of the Canongate_ belong to this class; and even if _Robert of Paris_ had not been written during the decay of the author's mental powers it would probably have failed from the impossibility of communicating any of the interest of a novel to a story of the Lower Empire. In this respect there is an important distinction between the drama and the historical romance which writers in the latter style would do well to keep in view. Tragedy being limited in general to a very short period during which events of the most heart-rending kind are accumulated together in order as strongly as possible to awaken the sympathy or move the hearts of the spectators it is comparatively of little importance where the scene is laid. Where the bones and muscles of the mind are laid bare by deep affliction mankind in all ages and countries are the same. The love of Juliet the jealousy of Othello are felt with equal force in all parts of the world. We can sympathize as strongly with the protracted woes of Andromache or the generous self-immolation of Antigone as the Athenian audience who wept at the eloquence of Euripides or the power of Sophocles: we feel the death of Wallenstein to be as sublime as the Germans who are transported by the verses of Schiller; and they weep at the heroism of Mary Stuart with as heartfelt emotion as the people of Scotland to whom her name is a household word. But it is otherwise with romance. It is occasionally and at considerable intervals only that these terrible or pathetic scenes are represented in its pages which sweep away all peculiarities of nation age or race and exhibit only the naked human heart: nineteen-twentieths of its pages are taken up with ordinary occurrences one-half of its interest is derived from the delineation of manners or the developing of character in dialogue which exhibits none of the vehement passions; and the interest of the reader is kept up chiefly by the fidelity of the drawing the spirit of the conversation or the accuracy and brilliancy of the descriptions. If these prove uninteresting from their being too remote from ordinary observation or association the work will fail with whatever talent or power its principal and tragic scenes may be executed. In proposing as the grand requisite to the historical romance that the subject should be of an _elevating and ennobling kind_ we by no means intend to assert that the author is always to be on stilts that he is never to descend to the description of low or even vulgar life or that humour and characteristic description are to be excluded from his composition. We are well aware of the value of contrast in bringing out effect; we know that the mind of the reader requires repose even from the most exalted emotions; we have felt the weariness of being satiated with beauty in the galleries of the Vatican or the valleys of Switzerland. Brilliants require setting and bright light can be brought out only by proportional depth or breadth of shadow. If the novelist tries to keep up exalted sentiments or pathetic scenes too often he will fall into the mistake of the painter who throws an equal light on all parts of his picture. Probably the rule which Sir Joshua Reynolds says he found by observation had been invariably observed by Titian--viz. to have one-fourth only of his picture in very bright light one-fourth in deep shadow and the remaining half in middle tint may be equally applicable to the compositions of the novelist. But admitting all this--admitting further that novels which deviate from the elevated standard may often attain a great temporary popularity the greater probably owing to that very deviation--it is not the less true that the main object of the art is to awaken generous and elevated feelings; and that in no other way than by attention to this object is durable fame to be obtained. The celebrity arising from skill in the painting of low or vulgar manners from power in the description of desperate or abandoned characters how great soever it may be for a time never fails to pass away with the lapse of time. Voltaire's romances once so popular are now nearly as much dead stock in the bookseller's hands; and the whole tribe of the licentious novelists of France prior to the Revolution are now read only by the licentious youth of Paris and a few prurient sensualists in other countries. It will be the same with Victor Hugo Janin and George Sand in the next generation and in other countries. All their genius learning and interest will not be able to save them from the withering effect of their accumulated horrors shocking indecencies and demoralizing tendency. Again in the composition of the historical romance the story should be _sufficiently simple_ and a certain degree of unity preserved in the interest and emotion which are to be awakened. It is not meant to be asserted by this that the novelist is to be confined strictly to unities like the Greek drama or that the same variety within certain limits is not to be presented in the pages of romance which we see every day around us in real life. All that is meant to be advanced is that this variety must be confined within certain limits if the interest of the piece is to be properly kept up; and that it should be an especial object with the novelist to avoid that complication and intricacy of incidents which forms so formidable though unavoidable an addition to the difficulties of an historian. It is the more singular that romance writers should have fallen into this mistake that it is the very difficulty which stands most in the way of the interest of history and which it is the peculiar advantage of their art to be able in a great measure to avoid. Yet it is the error which is most general in

riters of the greatest ability in this department of literature and which has marred or ruined the effect of some of their happiest conceptions. It has arisen doubtless from romance writers having observed the extreme multiplicity of incidents and events in real life and in the complicated maze of historical narrative; and thence imagined that it was by portraying a similar combination that romance was to be assimilated to truthful annals and the ideal founded on the solid basis of the real. They forget that it is this very complication which renders history in general so uninviting and acceptable (compared with romance) to so limited a circle of readers; and that the annals of actual events then only approach to the interest of fiction when their surpassing magnitude or the importance of the characters involved in them justifies the historian in suspending for a time the thread of inconsiderable and uninteresting incidents and throwing a broad and bright light similar to that of imagination on the few which have been attended with great and lasting effects. The great father of historical romance rarely falls into this mistake. The story at least in most of his earlier and most popular pieces--_Waverley_ the _Antiquary_ the _Bride of Lammermoor_ _Old Mortality_ the _Abbot_ _Ivanhoe_ _Kenilworth_ _Quentin Durward_ and _Rob Roy_--is extremely simple; the incidents few and well chosen; the interest of an _homogeneous_ kind and uniformly sustained; the inferior characters and incidents kept in their due subordination to the principal ones. The subordinate characters of these admirable works their still life descriptions and minor incidents are grouped as it were around the main events of the story and brought forward in such a way as to give variety while they do not detract from unity. It is impossible to conceive more perfect models of the historical romance both in point of subject conception and execution than _Ivanhoe_ and the _Abbot_. In both the subject is national and generally interesting--in both the historical characters brought forward are popular and connected with early associations--in both the period chosen is one in which great national questions were at stake and the conversations and characters afforded the means of bringing them prominently before the mind of the reader--in both the incidents of the piece are few and simple; and the lesser plots or characters which they contain serve only to amuse the mind and give variety to the composition without interfering with the unity of its general effect. How few and simple are the events in the _Bride of Lammermoor_! The tragedies of Sophocles do not exhibit a more perfect example of the preservation of the unity of emotion. Yet how interesting is the whole story--how completely does it carry along every class of readers--how well does every incident of moment prepare the mind for the dreadful catastrophe in which it terminates! How few are the incidents in the _Abbot_--how scanty the materials on which the story is built! A page riding from a castle in Dumfries-shire to Edinburgh his introduction to the Regent Murray and adventures during a few days in Holyrood his attendance on the imprisoned Queen in Lochleven Castle her escape from thence and final overthrow at Langside--form the whole incidents out of which the web of that delightful romance has been woven. Its charm consists in a great degree in the simplicity itself in the small number of historic incidents it records the interest of those incidents in themselves and the room thereby afforded for working up all the details and the minor plot of the piece the loves of the page and Catharine in perfect harmony with the main event and without disturbing their development. It were to be wished that later writers had followed the example thus set by the father of historical romance in the selection of their subject and the construction of their plot. But so far from doing so they have in general run into the opposite extreme and overlaid their story with such a mass of historical facts and details as has not only destroyed the unity of interest but has in many cases rendered the story itself scarcely intelligible. Take two of the most popular romances of two justly celebrated living novelists Sir E. L. Bulwer and Mr James--_The Last of the Barons_ and _Philip Augustus_. The period of history leading characters and subject of both are admirably chosen; and the greatest talent has been displayed in both in the conception of the characters and the portrait of the ideas and manners of the times which both present. But the grand defect of both and which chills to a great degree the interest they otherwise would excite is the crowding of historic incident and complication of the story. Bulwer's novel is so crowded with rebellions revolutions and dethronements that even the learned reader who has some previous acquaintance with that involved period of English history has great difficulty in following the story. Ample materials exist for two or three interesting historical novels in its crowded incidents. _Philip Augustus_ labours equally plainly under the same defect. There is a triple plot going forward through nearly the whole piece; the story of the King and Queen with the Papal interdict; that of Prince Arthur Plantagenet and his cruel uncle John of England; and that of De Coucy and Isadore of the Mount. No human ability is adequate to carrying three separate stories abreast in this manner and awakening the interest of the reader in each. The human mind is incapable of taking in at the same time deep emotion of more than one kind. What should we say if Shakspeare had presented us with a tragedy in which were brought forward scenes or acts about the ambition of Macbeth the loves of Romeo and Juliet and the jealousy of Othello? Assuredly they would have mutually strangled each other. This is just what happens in these otherwise admirable novels; the complication of the events and the variety of interests sought to be awakened prevent any one from taking a strong hold of the mind. Rely upon it there is more truth in the principle of the Greek unities than we moderns are willing to admit. The prodigious overpowering effect of their tragedies is mainly owing to the unity of emotion which is kept up. It bears the same relation to the involved story of modern romance which the single interest of the _Jerusalem Delivered_ or _Iliad_ does to the endless and complicated adventures of Ariosto's knights or the sacred simplicity of the Holy Families of Raphael to the crowded canvass of Tintoretto or Bassano. Perhaps the most perfect novel that exists in the world with reference to the invaluable quality of unity of emotion as well as the admirable disquisitions on subjects of taste and reflection which it contains is Madame de Staël's _Corinne._ Considered as a story indeed it has many and glaring defects; the journey of Lord Nevil and Corinne to Naples from Rome is repugnant to all our ideas of female decorum; and the miserable sufferings and prostration of the heroine in the third volume during her visit to Scotland is carried to such a length as to leave a painful impression on every reader's mind. But abstracting these glaring errors the conception and execution of the work are as perfect as possible. The peculiar interest meant to be excited the particular passion sought to be portrayed is early brought forward and the whole story is the progress and final lamentable result of its indulgences. It is not the sudden passion of Juliet for Romeo the peculiar growth of the Italian clime which is portrayed but the refined attachment of northern Europe which is taken in more by the ear than the eye and springs from the sympathy of minds who have many tastes and feelings in common. Nothing detracts from nothing disturbs this one and single emotion. The numerous disquisitions on the fine arts the drama antiquities poetry history and manners which the novel contains--its profound reflections on the human heart the enchanting descriptions of nature and the monuments of Italy which it presents--not only do not interfere with the main interest but they all conspire to promote it. They are the means by which it is seen the mutual passion was developed in the breasts of the principal characters; they furnish its natural history by exhibiting the many points of sympathy which existed between minds of such an elevated caste and which neither had previously found appreciated in an equal degree by any one in the other sex. It is in the skill with which this is brought out and the numerous disquisitions on criticism taste and literature with which it abounds rendered subservient to the main interest of the whole that the principal charm of this beautiful work is to be found. Another principle which seems to regulate the historical romance as it does every other work which relates to man is that its principal interest must be sought in human passion and feeling. It appears to be the more necessary to insist on this canon that the inferior appliances of the art--the description of manners scenery dresses buildings processions pomps ceremonies and customs--has opened so wide a field for digression that by many writers as well as readers they have come to be supposed to form its principal object. This mistake is in an especial manner conspicuous in the writings of Ainsworth whose talents for description and the drawing of the horrible have led him to make his novels often little more than pictorial phantasmagoria. It is to be seen also in a great degree in James; who although capable as many of his works especially _Mary of Burgundy_ _Attila_ and the _Smugglers_ demonstrate of the most powerful delineation of passion and the finest traits of the pathetic--is yet so enamoured of description and so conscious of his powers in that respect that he in general overlays his writings with painting to the eye instead of using that more powerful language which speaks to the heart. It is no doubt a curious thing and gives life to the piece to see a faithful and graphic description of a knight on horseback with his companion and their respective squires skirting a wood mounted on powerful steeds on a clear September morning. The painting of his helm and hauberk his dancing plume and glancing mail his harnessed steed and powerful lance interests once or even twice; but it is dangerous to try the experiment of such descriptions too often. They rapidly pall by repetition and at length become tedious or ridiculous. It is in the delineation of the human heart that the inexhaustible vein of the novelist is to be found; it is in its emotion desires and passions ever-varying in externals ever the same in the interior that scope is afforded for the endless conceptions of human genius. Descriptions of still life--pictures of scenery manners buildings and dresses--are the body as it were of romance; they are not its soul. They are the material parts of the landscape; its rocks mountains and trees; they are not the divine ray of the sun which illuminates the brilliant parts of the picture and gives its peculiar character to the whole. The skilful artist will never despise them; on the contrary he will exert himself to the utmost in their skilful delineation and make frequent use of them taking care to introduce as much variety as possible in their representations. But he will regard them as an inferior part only of his art; as speaking to the eye not the heart; as the body of romance not its soul; and as valuable chiefly as giving character or life to the period described and repose to the mind in the intervals of the scenes of mental interest or pathos on which his principal efforts are to be concentrated. Descriptions of external things often strike us as extremely brilliant and give great pleasure in reading; but with a few exceptions where a _moral_ interest has been thrown into the picture of nature they do not leave any profound or lasting impression on the mind. It is human grandeur or magnanimity the throb of grief the thrill of the pathetic which is imprinted in indelible characters on the memory. Many of the admirable descriptions of still life in _Waverley_ fade from the recollection and strike us as new every time we read them; but no one ever forgot the last words of Fergus when passing on the hurdle under the Scotch gate at Carlisle ""God save King _James_!"" None of the splendid descriptions in the choruses of Æschylus produce the terrible impression on the mind which Sophocles has done by that inimitable trait when in the close of _Antigone_ he makes Eurydice upon hearing of the suicide of her son Hæmon on the body of his betrothed leave the stage _in silence_ to follow him by a violent death to the shades below. The last rule which it seems material for the historical novelist to observe is that characteristic or national manners especially in middle or low life should wherever it is possible be drawn from real life. The manners of the highest class over all Europe are the same. If a novelist paints well-bred person in one capital his picture may with a few slight variations stand for the same sphere of society in any other. But in middle and still more in low life the diversity in different countries is very great and such as never can be reached by mere reading or study of the works of others. And yet amidst all this diversity so much is human nature at bottom every where the same that the most inexperienced reader can distinguish even in the delineation of manners to which he is an entire stranger those which are drawn from life from those which are taken from the sketches or ideas of others. Few in this country have visited the Sierra Morena and none certainly have seen it in the days of Cervantes yet we have no difficulty in at once perceiving that Sancho Panza and the peasants and muleteers in _Don Quixote_ are faithfully drawn from real life. Few of the innumerable readers of Sir Walter have had personal means of judging of the fidelity of his pictures of the manners and ideas of the Scotch peasants in his earlier novels; but yet there is no one in any country who does not at once see that they have been drawn from nature and contain the most faithful picture of it. It is the fidelity of this picture which gives the Scotch novels their great charm. It is the same with Fielding: his leading characters in low life are evidently drawn from nature and thence his long-continued popularity. When Sir Walter comes to paint the manners of the middle classes or peasants in England from plays farces and the descriptions of others as in _Kenilworth_ _Woodstock_ _Peveril of the Peak_ and the _Fortunes of Nigel_ he is infinitely inferior and in truth often insupportably dull. His dialogue is a jargon mixed up of scraps and expressions from old plays or quaint tracts such as no man on earth ever did speak and which it is only surprising a man of his sagacity should have supposed they ever could. The same defect is more signally conspicuous in the dialogue of several of the historical romances of James. It is the accurate and faithful picture of national character from real life joined to the poetical interest of his Indian warriors and his incomparable powers of natural description which has given Cooper his great and well-deserved reputation. In many of the essential qualities of a novelist he is singularly defective. His story is often confused and awkwardly put together. Unity of interest is seldom thought of. He has no conception of the refined manners and chivalrous feelings of European society: though he has of late years seen much of it in many countries he has never been able to become familiar with its ideas or imbibe its spirit. His heroes among the white men at least are never any thing above American skippers or English subalterns or post-captains: his heroines have in general the insipidity which is we hope unjustly ascribed with great personal charms to the fair sex on the other side of the Atlantic. But in the forest or on the wave he is superb. His _Last of the Mohicans_ and _Prairie_ are noble productions to be matched with any in the world for the delineation of lofty and elevated character--the more interesting that they belong to a race like the heroic age now wellnigh extinct. He paints the adventures the life the ideas the passions the combined pride and indolence valour and craft heroism and meanness of the red men with the hand of a master. Equally admirable is his delineation of the white man of the frontier of civilization--Hawkeye or Leather-stocking with his various other denominations--who is the precursor as it were of European invasion who plunges into the forest far ahead of his more tardy followers and leads the roaming life of the Indian but with the advantage of the arms the arts and the perseverance of the Anglo-Saxon. But he is strictly a national writer. It is in the delineation of Transatlantic character scenes of the forest or naval adventures that his great powers are shown; when he comes to paint the manners or lay the seat of his conceptions in Europe he at once falls to mediocrity and sometimes becomes ridiculous. Manzoni is an author of the highest excellence whose celebrity has been derived from the same faithful delineation from real life of national manners. He has written but one novel the _Promessi Sposi_; though various other works some religious some historical have proceeded from his pen. But that one novel has given him a European reputation. It is wholly different in composition and character from any other historical romance in existence: it has no affinity either with Scott or Cooper Bulwer or James. The scene laid in 1628 at the foot of the mountains which shut in the Lake of Como transports us back two centuries in point of time and to the south of the Alps in point of scene. As might be expected the ideas characters and incidents of such a romance differ widely from those of northern climes and Protestant realms. That is one of its great charms. We are transported as it were into a new world; and yet a world so closely connected with our own by the manners and ideas of chivalry our once common Catholic faith and the associations which every person of education has with Italian scenes and images that we feel in traversing it the pleasure of novelty without the _ennui_ of a strange land. No translation could give an idea of the peculiar beauties and excellences of the original. As might be expected the feudal baron and the Catholic church enter largely into the composition of the story. The lustful passions savage violence and unbridled license of the former strong in his men-at-arms castle battlements and retainers; the disinterested benevolence charitable institutions and paternal beneficence of the latter resting on the affections and experienced benefits of mankind are admirably depicted. His descriptions of the plague famine and popular revolt at Milan are masterpieces which never were excelled. The saintlike character of Cardinal Borromeo strong in the sway of religion justice and charity in the midst of the vehemence of worldly passion and violence with which he is surrounded is peculiarly striking. It is fitted like Guizot's _Lectures on History_ to illustrate the incalculable advantage which arose in an age of general rapine and unsettled government from the sway the disinterestedness and even the superstitions of religion. But the greatest merit of the work is to be found in the admirable delineation of the manners ideas hopes and fears joys and sorrows of humble life with which it abounds. The hero of the piece is a silk-weaver named Renzo near Lecco on the Lake of Como; the heroine Lucia his betrothed the daughter of a poor widow in the same village; and the story is founded on the stratagems and wiles of an unbridled baron in the vicinity whose passions had been excited by Lucia's beauty first to prevent her marriage then to obtain possession of her person. In the conception of such a piece is to be seen decisive evidence of the vast change in human affairs since the days when Tasso and Ariosto poured forth to an admiring age in the same country the loves of high-born damsels the combats of knights the manners the pride and the exclusiveness of chivalry. In its execution Manzoni is singularly felicitous. He is minute without being tedious graphic but not vulgar characteristic and yet never offensive. His pictures of human life though placed two centuries back are evidently drawn from nature in these times: the peasants whom he introduces are those of the plains of Lombardy at this time; but though he paints them with the fidelity of an artist it is yet with the feelings of a gentleman. His details are innumerable--his finishing is minute; but it is the minute finishing of Albert Durer or Leonardo da Vinci not of Teniers or Ostade. In this respect he offers a striking contrast to the modern romance writers of France--Victor Hugo Janin Madame Dudevant and Sue--by whom vice and licentiousness are exhibited with vast power but more than their native undisguised colours.--But this wide and interesting subject must be reserved for a future occasion. A FEW WORDS FOR BETTINA. There seems a very general belief among sensible people that we have had enough of the Germans. What with barons and princes and geheimraths and consistorialraths and poets and philosophers burying their profundity in tobacco smoke and other ""reek"" more impervious still we certainly have had enough in book and essay for the last few years of the German Man. And latterly the German women have come in for their share. If the men have been puffed and praised till their very names are ridiculous and offensive it is not so with the gracious and high-born ladies. All the old dowagers that flourish a goose-quill make a simultaneous assault on the unfortunate ""frau "" or ""fraulein;"" pedantic old bachelors are horrified at the wildness of some of the female Godwin's observations and fall to in the general _mélée_ tugging and tearing at the miserable damsel till not a shred is left to cover her; and starched old maids who have been wondering for twenty years if Woman can etherealize society rejoice to see the punishment of such a presuming minx and encourage the performers with all their might. The attack may be very spirited and the culprit properly trounced in most cases--so we are contented to leave the fantastic and philosophic heroines--so bepraised by their countrymen--to the tender mercies of our Amazons at home; but we couch the lance in Maga's lists on behalf of one whose name is known very widely but whose character is little understood and constitute ourselves champion _à l'outrance_ of Bettina Brentano. Yes we are in love--over head and ears--with Bettina Brentano. But we must guard ourselves a little in making this confession. It is towards the nice clever black-eyed light-figured little houri of that name in the pleasant years 1807-8-9 and 10 that we own the soft impeachment or rather make proud profession of our feelings. With regard to the present bearer of the denomination who has gone in despite of our affection and married a man of the name of Arnini we confess we are utterly indifferent to her; and shall maintain till our dying day that the authoress of the _Letters to Goethe_ died in the early part of the year 1811 universally lamented and giving promise of a mind when matured and steadied such as no petticoated genius--not De Staël herself--has equalled. Such letters so full of wild fancies poetical descriptions and burning declarations were never written by man to woman or woman to man before or since. They could not be written by woman to man--they were written by a _child_ to Goethe. And this is the key to the wonders of the correspondence. Don't let people talk nonsense about the improprieties of her behaviour--and shake their foolish heads and lift their puritanic eyes up to heaven: her conduct we grant them would have been very improper in _them_; but in Bettina Brentano it was beautiful graceful and as free from impropriety as the morning and evening walks of Paul and Virginia. Perhaps we may condescend on some of the particulars dwelt on in the accusation--but perhaps we may not--for the people who see errors and grossnesses in the language or behaviour of Bettina blush ""celestial rosy red"" at the Apollo and the Venus. Let them get trousers and petticoats for the god and goddess and leave poor Bettina alone. There lived in Frankfort in the summer of 1807 a little girl of fourteen or fifteen years of age very small in stature and so light and dancing in her movements that she might have passed for an attendant of Queen Titania; but in her deep black eyes there was a sort of light that the fairies have not yet arrived at--and her voice was musical--and her lips were rosy; and every where she was known as the cleverest little girl that ever was seen either in fairyland or Frankfort or any where else. She was of a sweet affectionate trusting nature and entered with a romantic tenderness into an alliance with a wild half-insane enthusiast several years older than herself--the sister Günderode a canoness of a convent on the Rhine. The lay-sister talked and reasoned herself into the persuasion that she would be happier out of the world than in it; so instead of marrying the surgeon or other respectable inhabitant of the free city and having a large family to provide for which would have put more sensible thoughts into her head she stabbed herself one fine day on the bank of the river--and Bettina had no longer a friend. But there dwelt in the same town a majestic woman--strong-minded tender-hearted--and with talent enough to compensate for the stupidity of all the other old women (male and female) in Frankfort; and her name was Madame Goethe and she was seventy-five years old and lived in an old house by herself. Bettina went to her with her head sunk in grief and her heart yearning for somebody to make a friend of and sat down on a stool at the old lady's feet and said ""I have lost my Günderode will you be my friend in her stead?"" And the old lady was delighted and kissed her; and Bettina sat at her feet day after day from that time forth; and they were the two tenderest friends in Germany. And a pleasant thing it would be to have been a mouse in the wall to hear such conversation as was carried on by the two. Now in the year 1749 there was born a boy in Frankfort --a poet great in soul--the maker of his country's literature--no other than the illustrious Goethe--a son worthy of such a mother as Bettina's friend; and while all Germany and France--the whole civilized world in short--were almost worshipping his matured perhaps his decaying genius the noble mother was loud and eloquent in her description of him as a boy--as a youth--as a poet of twenty years old; and the little girl of fifteen sat and listened till there arose in her heart--or rather in her brain for it was a stirring of the intellect more than the affections--a feeling of intense admiration softened under the mother's teaching into something that she herself fancied was love; for which audacious fancy the sagacious old woman gave her some raps over the knuckles--(we are not sure that they were altogether figurative either but good substantial raps)--enough to make the fingers tingle in a very disagreeable manner indeed. But in spite of raps whether figurative or not she went on feeding her fancy with all these glowing accounts; and for a while we have no doubt that she never gave the almanac a thought--nor the baptismal register--nor the fact known to all arithmeticians that a person born in 1749 was fifty-eight years old in 1807. Fifty-eight years old with long white hair. But Bettina had never seen him. She only knew him in his works as a poet and as a man--or rather as a boy--in the beautiful recollections of his mother. ""You don't ask after Wolfgang "" says that sensible old matron in one of her letters; ""I've always said to you--wait a while till some one else comes you'll not trouble your _head_ about _him_ any more."" But in the mean time she did trouble her _head_ about him to an intolerable extent; and great was her rejoicing when her brother-in-law offered to take her as companion to his wife in a journey he was forced to make to Berlin and afterwards to Weimar. The country was at that time the seat of war; camps and positions of many different armies had to be passed through; and as a protection to the ladies they were dressed in men's clothes. Bettina sat on the box the whole time--passed as a little tiger at the inns where they slept--making herself generally useful harnessing and unharnessing the horses--sleeping all night outside though the weather was piercingly cold; and finally after a week of hard travelling arrived at the city of the sages--the literary capital of Germany. Her first care here was to change her dress and find out her relation Wieland--from him she got a note to Goethe and armed with that presented herself at his house. This is her account of the meeting in her letter to his mother:-- ""The door opened and there he stood solemn and still and looked steadily at me. I stretched my hands to him I believe--but soon I was unconscious of every thing. Goethe catched me to his breast.--'Poor child have I frightened you?' These were the first words that made their way to my heart. He led me into his room and placed me on a sofa opposite him. We were both silent--at last he said 'You have read in the newspapers that we have lately met with a severe loss in the death of the Duchess Amelie.' 'Ah! I said 'I never read the newspapers.' 'Indeed! I thought you took an interest in all that goes on at Weimar.' 'No no I take no interest in any thing at Weimar but you; and I have not patience enough to toil through a newspaper.' 'You are an affectionate little girl.' A long pause--I banished all the while to the horrid sofa and very fidgety of course. You know how impossible it is for me to sit there and do the pretty behaved. Ah mother can a person change his nature all at once? I said plump--'Here on this sofa I can't stay ' and sprang up. 'Make yourself comfortable by all means ' said he. So I flew to him and put my arms round his neck. He took me on his knee and pressed me to his heart. All was still. I had not slept for such a time. I had sighed to see him for years. I fell asleep with my head on his breast; and when I awoke it was to a new existence;--and that is all at this present writing."" Bettina we repeat was fifteen--Goethe was fifty-eight; and this narrative was sent to his mother. We will only add that Voltaire affected an interesting blush when he thought on the improprieties of the Book of Ruth. So hold up your head our bright-eyed beautiful Bettina and cheer the heart of the old man eloquent with your affection; and tell him over and over in your own wild and captivating manner that you love him and worship him and think of him always and sing his ballads and read his books--and nobody in their senses will think a bit the worse of you for it--not even your worthy husband who was five or six and twenty years old when you married him; and very likely was nearly as enthusiastic about Wolfgang as yourself. And as to kissing and jumping on people's knees and hugging close to the heart these seem equivalent among the Germans of all ranks and ages to a good hearty shake of the hand among our more sedately behaved population; and though we think that under ordinary circumstances our national customs in those respects are preferable we are not prepared to say that we should be sorry for the introduction of a little Germanism in our own case if we were a great poet at the age of fifty-eight and were acquainted with a lively happy charming little genius like Bettina of fifteen. And that she was all that we have called her--and more--we will now proceed to show by giving a few translations from her letters; and if we can find an opportunity of introducing a story or two by the mother we will not let it pass.--And here let us make a remark savouring perhaps of national vanity--of which failing we have heard our countrymen not unfrequently accused. Our remark is this that the Frau Rath as Goethe's mother is called has many characteristics about her which we have been in the habit of considering Scotch. If we reduced her reported conversations to our native Doric they would read exactly like the best parts of Scott and Galt--a great deal of shrewdness mixed with a wild sort of humour sarcastic and descriptive;

but in her perhaps elevated by an occasional burst of poetry into something higher than is met with in the _Ayrshire Legatees_ or even in _Cyril Thornton_. In saying this we allude of course to none of the tedious ""havers"" contained in the book dedicated to the King of Prussia or at least to the anti-biblical parts of them--the old Frau Rath being about the worst commentator it has ever been our fortune to meet. But let us go back to Bettina. ""Morris Bethman tells me "" says the Frau Rath in a letter to her pet ""that the De Staël is going to call on me. She has been in Weimar. I wish you were here for I must get up my French as well as I can."" And the jealousy of the fiery Bettina bursts out at the very thought of any one being at Weimar and visiting Goethe but herself. ""I have not heard from your son since the 13th of August and here is the end of September. De Staël has made his time pass quickly and driven me out of his head. A celebrated woman is a curiosity. Nobody else can compete with her. She is like brandy which the poor grain it is made from can never be compared to. For brandy smacks on the tongue and gets into the heard and so does a celebrated woman. But the simple wheat is better far to me;--the sower sows it in the loosened soil and the bounteous sun and fruitful showers draw it from the earth again and it makes green the whole field and bears golden ears and at last gives rise to a happy harvest-home. I would rather be a simple wheat-grain than a celebrated woman; and rather far rather that he should break me for his daily bread than that I should get into his head like a dram. And now I will tell you that I supped last night with De Staël in Maintz. No woman would sit next her at table so I sat down beside her myself. It was uncomfortable enough; for the gentlemen stood round the table and crowded behind our chairs to speak to her and see her close. They bent over me. I said--'_Vos adorateurs me suffoquent_.' She laughed. She told me that Goethe had spoken to her of me. I would fain have sat and listened for I should like to hear what it was he said. And yet I was wrong; for I would rather he did not speak of me to any one--and I don't believe he did--she perhaps only said so. At last so many came to speak to her and pressed upon me so much that I couldn't bear it any longer. I said to her--'_Vos lauriers me pèsent trop sur les épaules_;' and I stood up and pushed my way through the crowd. Sismondi her companion came to me and kissed my hand and told me I was very clever and said it to the rest and they repeated it twenty times over as if I had been a prince whose sayings are always thought so wise though ever so commonplace. ""After that I listened to what she said about Goethe. She said she expected to find him a second Werther but she was disappointed--neither his manners nor appearance were like it and she was very sorry that he fell short of him so entirely. Frau Rath I was in a rage at this (that was of no use you will say ) and I turned to Schlegel and said to him in German 'Madame de Staël has made a double mistake--first in her expectation and then in her judgment. We Germans expect that Goethe can shake twenty heroes from his sleeve to astonish the French--but in our judgment he himself is a hero of a very different sort.' Schlegel is very wrong not to have informed her better on this. She threw a laurel leaf that she had been playing with on the ground. I stamped on it and pushed it out of the way with my foot and went off. That was my interview with the celebrated woman."" But the De Staël is made the heroine of another letter in which Bettina give Goethe an account of her presentation to his mother. The ceremony took place in the apartments of Morris Bethman. ""Your mother--whether out of irony or pride--had decked herself wonderfully out--but with German fancy not in French taste; and I must tell you that when I saw her with three feathers on her head swaying from side to side--red white and blue--the French national colours--which rose from a field of sun-flowers--my heart beat high with pleasure and expectation. She was rouged with the greatest skill; her great black eyes fired a thundering volley; about her neck hung the well-known ornament of the Queen of Prussia; lace of a fine ancestral look and great beauty--a real family treasure--covered her bosom. And there she stood with white _glacée_ gloves;--in one hand an ornamented fan with which she set the air in motion; with the other which was bare and all be-ringed with sparkling jewels she every now and then took a pinch from the snuff-box with your miniature on the lid--the one with long locks powdered and with the head leant down as if in thought. A number of dignified old dowagers formed a semicircle in the bedroom of Morris Bethman; and the assemblage on a deep-red carpet--a white field in the middle on which was worked a leopard--looked very grand and imposing. Along the walls were ranged tall Indian plants and the room was dimly lighted with glass-lamps. Opposite the semicircle stood the bed on an estrade raised two steps also covered with a deep-red carpet with candelabra at each side. ""At last came the long-expected visitor through a suite of illuminated rooms accompanied Benjamin Constant. She was dressed like Corinne;--a turban of aurora and orange-coloured silk--a gown of the same with an orange tunic very high in the waist so that her heart had very little room. Her black eyebrows and eyelashes shone and so did her lips also with a mystic red. The gloves were turned down and only covered the hand in which she carried as usual the myrtle twig. As the room where she was waited for was much lower than the others she had four steps to descend. Unluckily she lifted up her gown from the front instead of from behind which gave a severe blow to the solemnity of her reception; for it appeared for a moment worse even than merely funny when this extraordinary figure dressed in strictly Oriental fashion broke loose upon the staid and virtuous _élite_ of Frankfort society. Your mother gave me a courageous look when they were introduced. I had taken my stand at a distance to watch the scene. I observed De Staël's surprise at the wonderful adornment of your mother and at her manner which was full of dignity. She spread out her gown with her left hand giving the salute with her right which sported the fan; and while she bowed her head repeatedly with great condescension she said in a loud voice that sounded distinctly through the room--'_Je suis la mère de Goethe._'--'_Ah je suis charmée!_' said the authoress; and then there was a solemn silence. Then followed the presentation of her distinguished companions who were all anxious also to be introduced to Goethe's mother. She answered all their polite speeches with a new-year's wish in French which she muttered between her teeth with a multitude of stately curtsies. In short the audience was now begun and must have given them a fine idea of our German _grandezza_. Your mother beckoned me to her side to interpret between them; the conversation was all about you--about your childhood. The portrait on the snuff-box was examined. It was painted in Leipsic before the great illness you had; but even then you were very thin. It was easy to see all your present greatness in those childish features and particularly the author of _Werther_. De Staël spoke of your letter and said she would like to see how you write to your mother and your mother promised to show her; but thought I she shall never get any of your letters from _me_ for I don't like her. Every time your name was mentioned by those ill-shaped lips a secret rage came upon me. She told me you called her 'Amie' in your letters. Ah! she must have seen how surprised I was to hear it; yes--and she told me more--but my patience failed. How _can_ you be friendly to such an ugly face? Ah! there may be seen how vain you are!--or is it possible she can have been telling a story?"" With this charitable resolution of her doubts Bettina leaves off her description of the meeting between De Staël and ""la mère de Goethe."" We think the affected jealousy of the little creature very amusing; and moreover we consider that all her words and actions in relation to Goethe were in keeping with an imaginary character she had determined to assume. I shall be in love with him and he shall be in love with me; and as he is a poet I will be very poetical in my passion; as he writes tragedies I will be dramatic; as he is ""a student of the human mind "" I will puzzle him with the wisdom of sixty united to the playfulness of ten or twelve --the flames of Sappho to the childishness of my real age and disposition. And so indeed she did. The old philosopher of Weimar did not know what to make of her. He keeps writing to her that he cannot decide whether she is most ""wunderbar"" or ""wunderlich""--wonderful or odd. And round about his puzzled head she buzzes; now a fire-fly nearly singeing his elevated eyebrows--now a hornet inserting a sharp little sting in his nose--now a butterfly lighting with beautiful wings on the nosegay in his breast; but at all times bright brilliant and enchanting. So no wonder the astonished and gratified egotist called out for more; ""more""--""more letters dear Bettina "" ""write to me as often as you can."" And to show her that her letters were useful to him he not unfrequently sent her back long passages of her own epistles turned into rhyme--and very good rhymes they are and make a very respectable appearance among his collected poems. And a true philosopher old Goethe was (of the Sir Joseph Banks' school of philosophy as illustrated by Peter Pindar.) Instead of admiring the lovely wings and airy evolutions of the butterfly that rested so happily on his bouquet--he determined to examine it more minutely and put it into his dried collection. So he laid coarse hands upon it--transfixed it with a brass pin and listened to its humming as long as it had strength to hum; and finally transferred it to a book as an extraordinary specimen of a new species--for which astonishing discovery he was bespattered with undeserved praises by the whole press of Germany. At this time he was writing his _Wahlverwandtshafter_ or Electric Affinities; and as it introduced a young girl filled with the same wild passion for another woman's husband that Bettina affected to feel for him letter by letter was sedulously studied to give a new touch either of tenderness or originality to his contemptible Miss Ottilie. But we have already in this Magazine expressed our opinion of that performance and of the great Goethe in general; so that we shall not return to the subject on the present occasion. Pleasanter it is to follow the fairy-footed Bettina in her scramblings over rock and fell her wadings through rivers and sleepings on the dizzy verge of old castle walls that look down a hundred fathoms of sheer descent into the Rhine. And pleasanter still to hear her give utterance to sentiments--unknown to the pusillanimous unpatriotic heart of the author of _Werther_--of sympathy with the noble Tyrolese in their struggles for freedom and her generous regard for them when they were subdued. Nothing perhaps is more astonishing in these letters--considering the date of them 1809-10--than the utter silence maintained on the state of public affairs. The French are mentioned once or twice--but generally in praise--Napoleon as often; but not a word to show that there was any stirring in the German mind on the subject of their country or independence. There they went on smoking and drinking beer writing treatises on the Greek article or poems on Oriental subjects in the same prosy dull dreamy fashion as ever with the cannon of Jena sounding in their ears and the blood of Hofer fresh upon the ground. Well done then beautiful merry deep-souled tender-hearted Bettina! From her windows at Munich she saw the smoke of the burning villages in the Tyrol; and her constant wish is for men's clothes and a sword to go and join the patriots and have a dash at the stupid dunderheaded Bavarians. But our clever little friend is not alone in her good feelings. Count Stadion a dignitary of the church and Austrian ambassador is her sworn ally; and few things are more beautiful than the descriptions of the reverend diplomatist and the fiery-eyed little Bettina being united by their sympathy in what was then a fallen and hopeless cause. But there was still another sympathiser and the discovery of his feelings we will let Bettina herself describe:-- Next day was Good-Friday. Stadion took me with him to read me mass. I told him with many blushes the great longing I had to join the Tyrolese. Stadion told me to depend on _him_; he would take a knapsack on his back and go into the Tyrol and do all I wanted to do instead of me. This was the last mass that he could read to me for his departure in a few days was settled. Ah me! it fell heavy on my heart that I was to lose so dear a friend. After mass I went into the choir threw on a surplice and joined in Winter's Lament. In the mean time the Crown-prince and his brother came in--the crucifix lay on the ground--both the brothers kissed it and afterwards embraced. They had had a quarrel till that day about a court tutor whom the Crown-prince had thought ill of and dismissed from his brother's service. They were reconciled in the way I have said in the old church and it was a delightful thing to see it. Bopp an old music-master of the Crown-prince who also gave me some lessons accompanied me home. He showed me a sonnet composed by the Crown-prince that morning. It speaks well for his 'inner soul ' that he feels this inclination to poetry in interesting circumstances. Nature assuredly asserts her rights in him and he will surely not let the Tyrolese be hardly dealt with. Yes I have great trust in him. Old Bopp told me many things that raised my opinion of him to the highest pitch. On the third holiday he carried me to the English garden to hear the Crown-prince's address to the assembled troops with whom he was going to serve his first campaign. I could hear nothing distinctly but what I did hear I did not at all like; he spoke of their bravery their perseverance and loyalty and that he with their assistance would bring back the Tyrolese to obedience and that he considered his own honour conjoined to theirs &c. &c. As I went home this worried me very much. I saw that the Crown-prince in the hands of his generals would do all that his heart rebelled against. I thought as I returned from the show that no man in the world ever speaks truth to one in power but rather that there are always flatterers to approve of all he does; and the worse his conduct the greater their fear that he may doubt of their approbation. They have never the good of mankind in their eye but only the favour of their master. So I determined to take a bold step to satisfy my own feelings--and I hope you will excuse me if you think I did wrong. ""After expressing to the Crown-prince my love and respect for his genius I confessed to him my sentiments towards the Tyrolese who were gaining such a heroic crown--my confidence that he would show mildness and forbearance where his people were now giving way only to cruelty and revenge--I asked him if the title 'Duke of the Tyrol' had not a nobler sound than the names of the four kings who had united their power to exterminate those heroes? And however it turned out I hoped he would acquire from his conduct even the title of 'The Humane.' ""This was the contents of a letter that filled four pages. After writing it in the most furious excitement I sealed it very calmly and gave it into the music-master's hands telling him--'This is something about the Tyrolese that may be very useful to the Crown-prince.' ""How glad a man is to make himself of importance! Old Bopp nearly tumbled down-stairs it his hurry to give such an interesting letter to the Prince; and I with my usual light-headedness forgot all about it. I went to Winter to sing hymns--to Tieck--to Jacobi--nowhere could I find any body to agree with me; every where there seemed nothing but fear; and if they had known what I had done they would have forbidden me their houses. I looked bitterly on them all and thought--Be you Bavarian and French--I and the Crown-prince are German and Tyrolese. Or he gets me put in prison--and then I am at once free and independent; and if I ever get out again I will go over to the Tyrolese and meet the Crown-prince on the field and force from him what he now refuses to my entreaty. ""The old music-master came back pale and trembling. ""'What was there in the paper you gave me for the Crown-prince?' he said. 'It may ruin me for life. The Crown-prince looked excited as he read it--ay angry; and when he saw me there he ordered me off without one gracious word.' ""I could not help laughing. The music-master grew more and more anxious and I more and more delighted. I rejoiced already in my imprisonment; and I thought how I could carry on my philosophic speculations in my solitude. Once only I saw the Crown-prince at the theatre. He gave me a friendly nod. Very good. For eight days I had not seen Stadion; but on the 10th of April I got certain information that he had gone off by night. I was very sorry to think I had seen him for the last time; and it struck me with strange significance that he read his last mass on Good-Friday. At last my long repressed and dissembled feelings burst forth in tears. It is in solitude one knows his own wishes and his helplessness. I found no place of repose for my struggling heart; and tired with weeping I at length fell asleep. Have you ever fallen asleep worn out with weeping? But men do not weep. You have never wept so that the sobs shook your breast even in your sleep? Sobbing in my dreams I heard my name. It was dark. By the faint glimmer of the street lamps I perceive a man near me in a foreign military uniform sabre sabretash--dark hair. I should have thought it was Black Fred (Stadion's name among his intimates.) ""No--it is no mistake; it is indeed Black Fred come to take his leave. ""'My carriage is at the door--I am going--as a soldier--to the Austrian army; and with regard to your Tyrolese friends you shall have nothing to reproach me with or you never see me more; for I give you my word of honour I will not consent to their being betrayed. I have this moment been with the Crown-prince. He drank with me the health of the Tyrolese and a '_pereat_' to Napoleon. He took me by the hand and said--'Remember that in the year nine in April during the Tyrolese rebellion the Crown-prince of Bavaria opposes Napoleon.' And so saying he clanged his glass on mine so that he broke the foot of it off.' ""I said to Stadion--'Now then I am all alone and have no friend left.' ""He smiled and said--'You write to Goethe. Write him from me that the Catholic priest will gather laurels on the Tyrolese battle-field.' ""I said--'I shall not soon hear a mass again.' ""'And I shall not soon read one ' he answered. ""He then took up his weapons and reached me his hand to say good-by. I am sure I shall never see him again. ""Scarcely was he gone when a knock came to the door and old Bopp came in. It was still dark in the room but I knew by his voice he was in good-humour. He held out a broken glass to me; with great solemnity and said--'The Crown-prince sends you this and bids me tell you that he drank the health of those you take under your protection out of it; and here he sends you his cockade as a pledge of honour that he will keep his word to you and prevent all cruelty and injustice.'"" The fate of Hofer comes unfortunately to our memory to mar the pleasantness of this little dramatic incident; but the whole story gives a favourable impression of the Crown-prince who is now the poetical Louis of Bavaria--the dullest and stupidest of whose works (we may observe in a parenthesis) makes a poor figure in its Greek dress and had better be retranslated as quickly as possible into its original Teutsch. It is curious to see the sort of society that Bettina moves in--crown-princes and prince-bishops and ambassadors-extraordinary--and all treating her with the greatest regard. There must have been something very taking in the bright black eyes and rosy lips of the correspondent of Goethe and friend apparently of all the German magnificoes; for she uses them with very little ceremony and holds her head as high among them as if she knew there was more in it than was contained under all their crowns and mitres. But it was not with the magnates of the land alone that she was on such terms. The literary potentates were equally pleased with her attention. If a rising artist wants encouragement he applies to Bettina. Sculptors painters musicians all lay their claims before her; and we find her constantly using her influence on their behalf with the literary dictator of Weimar. If a scholar or philosopher is sick she sits at his bedside; and in the midst of all the playfulness wildness eccentricity (and perhaps affectation ) we meet with in the letters we see enough of right spirit and good heart to counterbalance them all; and such a malicious little minx! and such a despiser of prudery and contemner of humbug in all its branches! It is delightful to reflect on the torment she must have been to all the silly stiff-backed old maids within reach of tongue and eye. And therefore--and for many reasons besides--we maintain that Bettina from fifteen to seventeen is an exquisite creature fiery and impassioned as Juliet and witty as Beatrix. We will also maintain till our dying day that neither her Romeo nor Benedict was near sixty years old. The information given by the Frau Rath about her son has already been incorporated in the thousand and one memoirs and recollections supplied by the love and admiration of his friends;--we will therefore not follow Bettina in her record of his boyish days as gathered from his mother and reported to himself further than to remark that vanity seems from the very first to have been his prevailing characteristic--even to so low a pitch as the ""sumptuousness of apparel."" Think of a little snob in the Lawnmarket--son of a baillie--dressing himself two or three times a-day--once plainly--once half-and-half--and finally in hat and feather--silks and satins--a caricature of a courtier of Louis XIV.; and all this at the age of eight or nine! We have said that our love for Bettina only extends to the three years of her life from 1807 to 1810. At that period it dies a natural death. She assumed at fourteen the feelings of a love-inspired heart-devoted ""character""--as fictitious we are persuaded as any created by dramatist or poet; and it was pleasant to see with what art and eloquence she acted up to it. It seemed a wonderful effort of histrionic skill and superior in an infinite degree to the mere representation on the stage of an Ophelia or Miranda. But when years passed on and she still continued the same ""character "" she strikes us with the same feelings that would be excited by some actress who should grow so enamoured of her favourite part as to go on Opheliaizing or Desdemonaing off the stage--singing snatches of unchristian ballads with the hair dishevelled during prayers in church; or perpetually smothering herself with pillows on the drawing-room sofa. It is as if General Tom Thumb were to grow to a decent size and still go on imitating Napoleon and insisting on people paying a shilling to see his smallness. Bettina should have stopped before she grew womanly; for though we have not the least suspicion of her having had any meaning in what she did--further than to show her cleverness--still the attitudes that are graceful and becoming in a children's dance take a very different expression in an Indian _nautch_. And therefore we return to our belief at the commencement of this paper that the ""child"" of Goethe's correspondence died and was buried in a garden of roses in the year 1810--_De mortuis nil nisi bonum_. NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. No. VIII. SUPPLEMENT TO MACFLECNOE AND THE DUNCIAD. Well then we have once more--to wit a month ago--wheeled round and encountered face to face our two great masters with whom we at first set out--John Dryden and Alexander Pope. We found them under a peculiar character that of Avengers--to be imaged by the Pythean quelling with his divine and igneous arrows the Python foul mud-engendered monster burthening the earth and loathed by the light of heaven. Dryden and Pope! Father and son--master and scholar--founder and improver. Who can make up his election which of the two he prefers?--the free composition of Dryden that streams on and on full of vigour and splendour of reason and wit as if verse were a mother tongue to him or some special gift of the universal Mother--or the perfected art of Pope? Your choice changes as your own humour or the weathercock turns. If jolly Boreas the son of the clear sky as Homer calls him career scattering the clouds and stirring up life over all the face of the waters grown riotous with exuberant power you are a Drydenite. But if brightness and stillness fall together upon wood and valley upon hill and lake then the spirit of beauty possesses you and you lean your ear towards Pope. For the spirit of beauty reigns in his musical style; and if he sting and kill it is with an air and a grace that quite win and charm the lookers-on; and a sweetness persuades them that he is more concerned about embalming his victims to a perennial pulchritude after death than intent upon ravishing from them the breath of a short-lived existence. Dryden is all power--and he knows it. He soars at ease--he sails at ease--he swoops at ease--and he trusses at ease. In his own verse not another approaches him for energy brought from familiar uses of expression. Witness the hazardous but inimitable-- ""To file and polish God Almighty's fool "" and a hundred others. Shakespeare and Milton are now and then (_in blanks_ as Tweedie used to say) all-surpassing by such a happiness. But Dryden alone moves unfettered in the fettering couplet--alone of those who have submitted to the fetters. For those who write distichs running them into one another head over heels till you do not know where to look after the rhyme--these do not wear their fetters and with an all-mastering grace dance to the chime but they break them and caper about the fragments clanking dismally and strangely about their heels. Turn from the clumsy clowns to glorious John:--sinewy flexible well-knit agile stately-stepping gracefully-bending stern stalwarth--or sitting his horse ""erect and fair "" in career and carrying his steel-headed lance of true stuff level and steady to its aim and impetuous as a thunderbolt. His strokes are like the shots of that tremendous ordnance-- ""chain'd thunderbolts and hail Of iron globes---- That whom they hit none on their feet might stand Though standing else as rocks."" But we are forgetting ourselves. We must not run into elongated criticism however excellent in a SUPPLEMENT--and therefore gladden you all with a specimen--without note or comment--from the second part of _Absalom and Achitophel_. ""Doeg though without knowing how or why Made still a blundering kind of melody; Spurr'd boldly on and dash'd through thick and thin Through sense and nonsense never out nor in; Free from all meaning whether good or bad And in one word heroically mad: He was too warm on picking-work to dwell } But fagoted his notions as they fell } And if they rhymed and rattled all was well. } Spiteful he is not though he wrote a satyr For still there goes some thinking to ill nature: He needs no more than birds and beasts to think All his occasions are to eat and drink. If he call rogue and rascal from a garret He means you no more mischief than a parrot: The words for friend and foe alike were made To fetter them in verse is all his trade. For almonds he'll cry whore to his own mother: And call young Absalom king David's brother. Let him be gallows-free by my consent And nothing suffer since he nothing meant; Hanging supposes human soul and reason This animal's below committing treason: Shall he be hang'd who never could rebel? That's a preferment for Achitophel. Railing in other men may be a crime But ought to pass for mere instinct in him: Instinct he follows and no further knows For to write verse with him is to transprose. 'Twere pity treason at his door to lay Who makes heaven's gate a lock to its own key: Let him rail on let his invective Muse Have four and twenty letters to abuse Which if he jumbles to one line of sense Indict him of a capital offence In fire-works give him leave to vent his spight Those are the only serpents he can write; The height of his ambition is we know But to be master of a puppet-show On that one stage his works may yet appear And a month's harvest keeps him all the year. ""Now stop your noses readers all and some } For here's a tun of midnight-work to come } Og from a treason-tavern rowling home } Round as a globe and liquor'd every chink Goodly and great he sails behind his link; With all this bulk there's nothing lost in Og For every inch that is not fool is rogue: A monstrous mass of foul corrupted matter As all the devils had spew'd to make the batter When wine has given him courage to blaspheme He curses God but God before curst him; And if man could have reason none has more That made his paunch so rich and him so poor. With wealth he was not trusted for heaven knew What 'twas of old to pamper up a Jew; To what would he on quail and pheasant swell That ev'n on tripe and carrion could rebel? But though heaven made him poor with reverence speaking He never was a poet of God's making; The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull With this prophetic blessing--Be thou dull: Drink swear and roar forbear no lewd delight Fit for thy bulk do any thing but write: Thou art of lasting make like thoughtless men A strong nativity--but for the pen! Eat opium mimic arsenic in thy drink Still thou mayst live avoiding pen and ink. I see I see 'tis counsel given in vain For treason botcht in rhyme will be thy bane: Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck 'Tis fatal to thy fame and to thy neck: Why should thy metre good King David blast? A psalm of his will surely be thy last. Dar'st thou presume in verse to meet thy foes Thou whom the penny pamphlet foil'd in prose? Doeg whom God for mankind's mirth has made O'er-tops thy talent in thy very trade; Doeg to thee thy paintings are so coarse A poet is though he's the poet's horse. A double noose thou on thy neck dost pull For writing treason and for writing dull; To die for faction is a common evil But to be hang'd for nonsense is the devil: Had thou the glories of thy king exprest Thy praises had been satyr at the best; But thou in clumsy verse unlickt unpointed Hast shamefully defy'd the Lord's anointed: I will not rake the dunghill for thy crimes For who would read thy life that reads thy rhymes? But of King David's foes be this the doom May all be like the young man Absalom! And for my foes may this their blessing be To talk like Doeg and to write like thee!"" This is the _ne plus ultra_ of personal satire. Yet there are passages of comparable excellence in the _Dunciad_. Aha! what have we here? A contemptuous attack on Pope by--a Yankee-Cockney! What a cross! JOHN RUSSELL LOWELL from Massachusets thus magpie-like chattereth at the Nightingale. ""_Philip._--You talk about the golden age of Queen Anne. It was a French pinchbeck age. ""_John._--Stay not so fast. I like the writers of that period for the transparency of their style and their freedom from affection. If I may trust my understanding of your meaning our modern versifiers have only made the simple discovery that an appearance of antiquity is the cheapest passport to respect. But the cheapest which we purchase with subservience is too dear. You yourself have no such prejudice against the Augustan age of English literature. I have caught you more than once with the _Tatler_ in your hand and have heard you praising Dryden's prefaces. ""_Philip._--You and I have very different notions of what poetry is and of what its object should be. You may claim for Pope the merit of an envious eye which could turn the least scratch upon the character of a friend into a fester of a nimble and adroit fancy and of an ear so niggardly that it could afford but one invariable cæsura to his verse; but when you call him poet you insult the buried majesty of all earth's noblest

nd choicest spirits. Nature should lead the true poet by the hand and he has far better things to do than to busy himself in counting the warts upon it as Pope did. A cup of water from Hippocrene tasting as it must of innocent pastoral sights and sounds of the bleat of lambs of the shadows of leaves and flowers that have leaned over it of the rosy hands of children whose privilege it ever is to paddle in it of the low words of lovers who have walked by its side in the moonlight of the tears of the poor Hagars of the world who have drunk from it would choke a satirist. His thoughts of the country must have a savour of Jack Ketch and see no beauty but in a hemp field. Poetry is something to make us wiser and better by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth which God has set in all men's souls; not by picking out the petty faults of our neighbours to make a mock of. Shall that divine instinct which has in all ages concerned itself only with what is holiest and fairest in life and nature degrade itself to go about seeking for the scabs and ulcers of the putridest spirits to grin over with a derision more hideous even than the pitiful quarry it has moused at? Asmodeus's gift of unroofing the dwellings of his neighbours at will would be the rarest outfit for a satirist but it would be of no worth to a poet. To the satirist the mere outward motives of life are enough. Vanity pride avarice--these and the other external vices are the strings of his unmusical lyre. But the poet need only unroof his own heart. All that makes happiness or misery under every roof of the wide world whether of palace or hovel is working also in that narrow yet boundless sphere. On that little stage the great drama of life is acted daily. There the creation the tempting and the fall may be seen anew. In that withdrawing closet solitude whispers her secrets and death uncovers his face. There sorrow takes up her abode to make ready a pillow and a resting-place for the weary head of love whom the world casts out. To the poet nothing is mean but every thing on earth is a fitting altar to the supreme beauty. ""But I am wandering. As for the poets of Queen Anne's reign it is enough to prove what a kennel standard of poetry was then established that Swift's smutchy verses are not even yet excluded from the collections. What disgusting stuff too in Prior and Parnell! Yet Swift perhaps as the best writer of English whom that period produced. Witness his prose. Pope treated the English language as the image-man has served the bust of Shakspeare yonder. To rid it of some external soils he has rubbed it down till there is no muscular expression left. It looks very much as his own 'mockery king of snow' must have done after it had begun to melt. Pope is for ever mixing water with the good old mother's milk of our tongue. You cannot get a straightforward speech out of him. A great deal of his poetry is so incased in verbiage that it puts me in mind of those important-looking packages which boys are fond of sending to their friends. We unfold envelope after envelope and at last find a couple of cherry-stones. But in Pope we miss the laugh which in the other case follows the culmination of the joke. He makes Homer lisp like the friar in Chaucer and Ajax and Belinda talk exactly alike. ""_John._--Well we are not discussing the merits of Pope but of the archaisms which have been introduced into modern poetry. What you say of the Bible has some force in it. The forms of speech used in our version of it will always impress the mind even if applied to an entirely different subject. What else can you bring forward? ""_Philip._--Only the fact that by going back to the more natural style of the Elizabethan writers our verse has gained in harmony as well as strength. No matter whether Pope is describing the cane of a fop or the speech of a demigod the pause must always fall on the same syllable and the sense be chopped off by the same rhyme. Achilles cannot gallop his horses round the walls of Troy with Hector dragging behind his chariot except he keep time to the immitigable seesaw of the couplet."" Master Lowell gives tongue with a plagiarism from Southey. In his _Life of Cowper_ that great writer somewhat rashly says ""The age of Pope was the golden age of poets--but it was the pinchbeck age of poetry."" What is pardonable in Southey is knoutable in his ape. Think of one American Cantab playfully rating and complimenting another on having caught him more than once with the _Tatler_ in his hand and with having heard him praising Dryden's prefaces! What liberality--nay what universality of taste! Absolutely able in the reaches of his transatlantic soul to relish Dryden's prefaces! But in his appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober Philip cannot crop-sick but nauseate the thought of Pope being a poet. The whole dialogue--somewhat of the longest--_tedious_ exceedingly--is polluted with similar impudencies. ""The strong point in Pope's displays of sentiment is in the graceful management of a cambric handkerchief. You do not believe a word that Heloïse says and feel all the while that she is squeezing out her tears as if from a half-dry sponge."" Such is the effect of too copious draughts from that Hippocrene which alternately discharges cock-tail and mint-julep. John however does not go the whole hog with Philip. He erects his ears to their full length and brays thus--""_I do not think that you do Pope justice!_"" and then does Pope justice as follows: ""_His translation of Homer is as bad as it can be I admit!_"" I ADMIT! ""But surely you cannot deny the merit of lively and ingenious fancy to his 'Rape of the Lock;' nor of knowledge of life and a certain polished classicalness to his epistles and satires. His portraits are like those of Copley of fine gentlemen and ladies whose silks and satins are the best part of them."" But poor cautious timid trimming turn-about John cannot so conciliate bully Philip who squabashes at once both poet and critic. ""_Philip._--I cannot allow the parallel. In Copley's best pictures the drapery though you may almost hear it rustle is wholly a subordinate matter. Witness some of those in our College-hall here at Cambridge--that of Madam Boylston especially. I remember being once much struck with the remark of a friend who convinced me of the fact that Copley avoided the painting of wigs whenever he could thus getting a step nearer nature. Pope would have made them a prominent object. I grant what you say about the 'Rape of the Lock ' but this does not prove that Pope was a poet. If you wish an instance of a _poet's_ fancy look into the 'Midsummer Night's Dream.' I can allow that Pope has written what is entertaining but surely not poetical. Show me a line that makes you love God and your neighbour better that inclines you to meekness charity and forbearance and I will show you a hundred that make it easier for you to be the odious reverse of all these. In many a Pagan poet there is more Christianity. No poet could write a 'Dunciad ' or even read it. You have persuaded yourself into thinking Pope a poet as in looking for a long time at a stick which we believe to be an animal of some kind we fancy that it is stirring. His letters are amusing but do not increase one's respect for him. When you speak of his being classical I am sure that you jest."" The waves of the Atlantic have wafted acorns dropped from the British oak to the Western shores and a wide and strong grove is growing up there. We feel our kindred with the fellow-beings of our tongue and rejoice with a natural and keen interest in every thing true great and good that is produced within the States. Powers are moving there that may that do want much tempering; but of which when tempered we augur high things. One such tempering is reverence of the past and Pope is one of the great names which England tenders to young America. We augur ill and are uneasy for our cousins or nephews when we see them giving themselves airs and knowing better than their betters. What are we to think when instead of the fresh vigour which should rise on the soil of the self-governed we find repetition for the worse of the feeblest criticisms which have disgraced some of our own weaklings? This presumptuous youngling talks technically and does not know what he is talking about. Pope has _not_ but one invariable cæsura to his verse. He has an ordinary range of four places for his cæsura and the variety and music which he manages to give his verse under that scheme dictated by a sensitive ear is truly wonderful. That Pope is only a satirist and can find nothing in humanity but its faults infirmities and disgraces to feed upon with delight is a shameful falsehood. He is as generous in praise as he is galling in sarcasm; and the voice of Christian Europe has pronounced him a moral and religious poet. It is rather strange to see the stickler for the beauty and exaltation of poetry diligent in purifying and ennobling the taste of his countrymen by raking in the dirt for disgusting and loathsome images to express his slanderous character of a writer eminent among the best for purity and refinement. We take leave of Mr Lowell with remarking that his affected and hyperbolical praises heaped on the old English dramatists are as nauseous as any ignorant exaggeration can be bombastically protruded on us at second-hand from an article in an old number of the _Retrospective Review_ from which most of the little he knows is taken and in the taking turned into most monstrous nonsense. Friends of our soul! Permit us now in this our Supplement to suggest to your recollection that Satire is public or private. Public satire is or would he authoritative robed magisterial censure. Private satire is private warfare--the worst plague of the state and the overthrow of all right law. It is worse. For when baron besieges baron there is high spirit roused and high deeds are achieved. But private malice in verse is as if the gossiping dames of a tea-table were armed with daggers instead of words to kill reputations--the School for Scandal turned into a tragedy. We are groaning now over the inferior versifiers. To the Poets to the mighty ones we forgave every thing a month ago. We say then again that although duly appointed to this Chair of Justice in which we sit and having our eyes bandaged like the Goddess whose statue is in the corner of the hall yet our hands are open and we are willing--as in all well-governed kingdoms judges have been willing--to take bribes. But we let it be known we must be bribed high. Juvenal Persius Horace Dryden and Pope have soothed the itching of our palms to our heart's content; and each has gained his cause in or impartial court. Nay we are very much afraid that if that gall-fed parricidal ruffian Archilochus who twisted his verses into a halter for noosing up his wife's father--a melancholy event to which the old gentleman it is said lent a helping-hand--were more to us than a tradition we should be in danger of finding in the poignancy of his iambics a sauce too much to our relish. _Avec cette sauce_--cried the French gastronome by the ecstasy of his palate bewitched out of his moral discretion--_Avec cette sauce on mangerait son père!_ But leaving these imaginative heights and walking along the level ground of daily life common sense and sane criticism we go on to assert that private satire lower than the highest is intolerable. The grandeur of moral indignation in Juvenal never is altogether without a secret inkling of disquietude at the bottom of the breast. It may be the Muse's legitimate and imposed office to smite the offending city; but it is never her joyous task. The judge never gladly puts on the black cap. The reality oppresses us--we are sore and sick in the very breath of the contagion even if we escape untainted by it. The power of poetry possesses us for the time and we must submit. Perhaps it is right if the Muse be a great _magistra vitæ_ that she should present life under all its aspects and school us in all its disciplines; and the direct real official censure of manners may be a necessary part of her calling. But how differently does the indirect censure affect us! Shakspeare creating Iago censures wily treacherous envious malignant cold-blooded villany where and whensoever to be found. He does not fix the brand upon the forehead of a time or of a profession or of a man or of a woman; but of a devil who is incarnate in every time who exercises every profession is an innate is the householder rather now in the steeled breast of a man and now in woman's softest bosom. This ubiquitous possibility of the Mark's occurring--the ignorance of the archer where his gifted arrow will strike--ennobles aggrandizes his person and his work. It does not weaken the service which the poet is called upon to render to humanity by showing himself the foe of her foes. And we the spectators of the drama--what is that strangely balanced and harmonized conflict of emotions by means of which we at once loathe and endure the poisonous confidant of the Moor? From the depths of the heart abhorring the odious execrable man whilst our fancy hovers fascinated about the marvellous creation! Yet we do not call Shakspeare here a Satirist. The distinction is broad. The Satirist is in the most confined or in the most comprehensive sense--PERSONAL. And now we doubt not readers beloved that while you have been enjoying these our reflections on Satire you may likewise have been dimly foreseeing the purposed end towards which our drift is setting in as on a strong tide. We have been dealing with first-raters. In them the power of the poetry reconciles us to the matter--mitigates the repugnancy otherwise ready to wait in a well-constituted mind upon a series of thoughts and images which studiously persevere in venting the passions of hate and scorn. The curse of the Muse on all middling poets--and upon Parnassus one is tempted to ascribe to the middle zone of the mountain all those who do not cluster about one of the summits--the common curse seems to fall with tenfold violence upon the middling Satirist. The great poet has authority magistery masterdom seated in his high spirit; and when he chooses to put forth his power we bow before him or stoop our heads from the descending bolt. But if one not thus privileged leap uncalled into the awful throne to hurl self-dictated judgments this arrogant usurpation of supremacy; justly offends and revolts us. For he who censures the age or any notable division of contemporary society in verse does in fact arrogate to himself an unappealable superiority. He speaks or affects to speak muse-inspired as a prophet oracularly. He does not enquire he thunders. Now the thunder of a scold is any thing but agreeable--and we exclaim-- ""Demens! qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen Ære et cornipedum cursu simulârat equorum."" Poets are the givers of renown. Their word is fame. But fame is good and ill; and therefore they speak Eulogy and Satire. They are the tongues of the world. The music of verse makes way for Lear's words to all our hearts. It makes way for the Satirist's to the heart where they are to be mortal. If mankind justly moved condemn the Poet will find voice for that condemnation. Wo be to those who by goading provoke him who is the organ of the universal voice to visit his own wrong to wreak his own vengeance on their heads! The wrong the wrath is private; but the voice retains its universality and they are withered as if by the blast of the general hate or scorn-- ""He was not for an age but for all time "" said one poet of another. There are two ways of belonging to one's age. You are born of it--you die with it. Johnson disclaims for Shakspeare the co-etaneousness by birth and by death. He is the son of all time; and the inheritor of all time. His mind is the mind of ages deceased and of ages unborn; and his writings remain to each succeeding generation as fresh as if it had witnessed their springing into existence. They take no date. Something of this is common to all essential poetry-- ""Vivuntque commissi calores Æoliæ fidibus puellæ."" The loves of Sappho _live_. They have not passed away. They _are_ immortally. Therefore the Poet as we said is the giver of fame. His praise--his scorn--lives for ever. All who are worthy to read Us know how well the rude primeval people comprehended the worth of the poet. The song rang to the borders of the land or of the name and that was glory or ignominy alive in every heart. Honour given by the poet was then a substantial possession; to be disgraced by his biting vituperation was like the infliction of a legal punishment. The whole condition of things--men's minds and their outward relations--corresponded to that which seems now to us an extraordinary procedure--that of constituting the poet in virtue of that name a state functionary holding office rank and power. Now the poet is but a self-constituted Censor. He holds office from the Muse only; or upon occasion from the mighty mother Dulness. The Laureateship is the only office in the State of Poetry that is in the Queen's gift; and that thanks to her benignity and the good sense of the nineteenth century has become a sinecure conferred on an Emeritus. ""Hollo! my fancy whether dost thou roam?"" Nay she is not roaming at all--for we have been all along steering in the wind's eye right to a given point. We come now to say a few words of CHARLES CHURCHILL. Of him it was said by one greater far that he ""blazed the meteor of a season."" For four years--during life--his popularity--in London and the suburbs--was prodigious; for forty--and that is a long time after death--he was a choice classic in the libraries of aging or aged men of wit upon town; and now that nearly a century has elapsed since he ""from his horrid hair shook pestilence and war"" o'er slaves and Scotsmen tools and tyrants peers poetasters priests pimps and players his name is still something more than a mere dissyllable and seems the shadow of the sound that Mother Dulness was wont to whisper in her children's ears when fretting wakefully on her neglected breasts. The Satirist of all poets calls the enquiry of the world upon himself. The Censor of manners should in his own be irreproachable. The satirist of a nation should feel that in that respect in which he censures he is whole and sound; that in assailing others he stands upon a rock; that his arrows cannot by a light shifting of the wind return to his own bosom. It was not so with Churchill. But he had his virtues--and he died young. ""Life to _the last enjoy'd_!! here Churchill lies."" It is not of his life but his writings we purpose to speak. It is not to be thought that his reputation at the time and among some high critics since could be groundless. There is an air of power in his way of attacking any and every subject. He goes to work without embarrassment with spirit and ease and is presently in his matter or in some matter rarely inane. It is a part and a high part of genius to design; but he was destitute of invention. The self-dubbed champion of liberty and letters he labours ostentatiously and energetically in that vocation; and in the midst of tumultuous applause ringing round a career of almost uninterrupted success he seldom or never seems aware that the duties he had engaged himself to perform--to his country and his kind--were far beyond his endowments--above his conception. His knowledge either of books or men was narrow and superficial. In no sense had he ever been a student. His best thoughts are all essentially common-place; but in uttering them there is almost always a determined plainness of words a free step in verse a certain boldness and skill in evading the trammel of the rhyme deserving high praise; while often as if spurning the style which yet does not desert him he wears it clinging about him with a sort of disregarded grace. The Rosciad--The Apology--Night--The Prophecy of Famine--An Epistle to William Hogarth--The Duellist--Gotham--The Author--The Conference--The Ghost--The Candidate--The Farewell--The Times--The Journey--Fragment of a Dedication--such is the list of _Works_ whereof all England rung from side to side--during the few noisy years he vapoured--as in the form of shilling or half-crown pamphlets they frighted the Town from its propriety and gave monthly or quarterly assurance to a great people that they possessed a great living Poet worthy of being numbered with their mightiest dead. He began with the Play-house. The theatre! Satire belongs to the day and the theatre belongs to the day. They seem well met. The spirit of both is the same--intense popularity. Actors are human beings placed in an extraordinary relation to other human beings: public characters; but brought the nearer to us by being so--the good ones intimate with our bosoms dear as friends. Their persons features look gait gesture familiar to our thoughts vividly engraven. They address themselves to every one of us personally in tones that thrill and chill or that convulse us with merriment--and all for pleasure! They ask our sympathy but they task it not. No burthen of distress that they may lay upon us do we desire to rid off our hearts. We only call for more more! They stir up the soul within us as nothing else in which personally we are quite unconcerned does. Therefore the praise or sarcasm that visits them comes home to the privacy of our own feelings. Besides they belong to the service of the Muse; and so the other servant of the Muse the Satirist as the superintendent of the household may reasonably reprehend or commend them. Further they offer themselves to favour and to disfavour to praise to dispraise; to the applauding hands or to the exploding hisses of the public. There is then an attraction of fame-bestowing verse towards the stage. And yet does it not seem a pity that the unfortunate bad actors should ""bide the pelting of _this_ pitiless storm "" over and above that of others they are liable to be assailed with? What great-minded Satirist could step down a play-bill from the first rank of performers to the second and the third--hunting out miserable mediocrities--dragging away the culprits of the stage to flagellation and the pillory? Say then at once that the Satirist is not great-minded and his motives are not pure desires for the general benefit. He is by the gift of nature witty and rather ill-natured. He very much enjoys his own wit and he hopes that you have fun enough in you to enjoy his jests and so he breaks them. THE ROSCIAD is we believe by far the best of Churchill's performances; very clever indeed and characteristic; at the head of all theatrical criticism in verse; yet an achievement in spite of the talent and ingenuity it displays not now perusable without an accompanying feeling akin to contempt. ""GOTHAM"" is an irregular poetical whim of which it is easier to describe the procedure than to assign the reasonable purpose. Gotham itself is a country unknown to our geographers which Churchill has discovered and of which in right of that discovery he assumes the sovereignty under his own undisguised name King Churchill. After spiritedly arraigning the exercise in the real world of that right by which he rules in his imaginary kingdom--a right which establishes the civilised in the lands of the enslaved or expatriated uncivilised he spends the rest of his first canto in summoning all creatures rational and irrational to join the happy Gothamites in the universal choral celebration of his mounting the throne. The second canto for some two hundred verses insists upon the necessity of marrying Sense with Art to produce good writing and Learning with Humanity to produce useful writing; and then turns off bitterly to characterise the reigns in succession of the Stuarts by way of warning to his Gothamites against the temptation to admit a vagrant Stuart for their king. The third canto delivers the rules by which he King Churchill who purposes being the father of his people designs to govern his own reign. That is all. What and where is Gotham? What is the meaning of this royalty with which the poet invests himself? What is the drift scope and unity of the poem? Gotham is not and is England. It is not England for he tells us in the poem that he is born in England and that he is not born in Gotham; besides which he expressly distinguishes the two countries by admonishing the Gothamites to search ""England's fair records "" for the sake of imbibing a due hatred for the House of Stuart. It is England for it is an island which ""Freedom's pile by ancient wisdom raised adorns "" making it great and glorious feared abroad and happy at home secure from force or fraud. Moreover her merchants are princes. The conclusion is that Gotham is England herself poetically disidentified by a very thin and transparent disguise. The sovereignty of King Churchill if it mean any thing capable of being said in prose may shadow the influence and authority which a single mind assuming to itself an inborn call to ascendancy wishes and hopes to possess over the intelligence of its own compatriot nation; and this may be conjectured in a writer who principally dedicates himself to the championship of political principles. The rules in the Third Book for the conduct of a prince afford the opportunity of describing the idea of a patriot king of censuring that which is actually done adversely to these rules; and at the same time they acquire something of a peculiar meaning if they are to be construed as a scheme of right political thinking--the intelligence of the general welfare which is obligatory upon the political ruler being equally so upon the political teacher. If this kind of deliberate allegorical design may be mercifully supposed the wild self-imagination and apparently downright nonsense of the First Book may pretend a palliation of its glaring vanity and absurdity; since the blissful reign of King Churchill over Gotham which is extolled very much like the ""Jovis incrementum "" in Virgil's Fourth Eclogue thus comes to mean when translated into the language of men the reign in England of the opinions for which Churchill battles in rhyme. Or this may be too much attribution of plan to a caprice that meant little or nothing. The first book was published by itself and may have aimed at something to which the author found that he could not give shape and consistency. Yet Cowper declares Gotham to be a noble and beautiful poem. THE AUTHOR might almost seem intended for a sequel to MacFlecnoe and the Dunciad. Not that it assumes like them a fanciful vehicle for the satire but it undertakes the lashing of peccant authors and recognises DULNESS as an enthroned power to whose empire the writer is hostile; and where he adverts to his own early life and clerical destination he mentions her as the patroness upon whom his friends had relied for his future church preferment. ""But now when Dulness rears aloft her throne When lordly vassals her wide empire own; When Wit seduced by Envy starts aside And basely leagues with Ignorance and Pride &c. * * * * * Bred to the church and for the gown decreed Ere it was known that I should learn to read; Though that was nothing for my friends who knew What mighty Dulness of itself could do Never design'd me for a working priest But hoped I should have been a dean at least "" &c. The writers more formally and regularly attacked are Smollett Murphy Shebbeare Guthrie and one Kidgell who contrived to earn shame in exposing to shame the printed but unpublished obscenity and blasphemy of Wilkes. Johnson gets a good word as a state-pensioner Francis the translator of Horace for dulness apparently and Mason and even Gray are signalized _en passant_ as artificial rhymesters! The general tenor of the poem complains that in these days true learning genius and the honesty of authorship are of no account; whilst the political profligacy of the pen ensures favour and pay. The first hundred lines forcibly express the inspiring indignation proper to the subject and some of them are still occasionally quoted; but how inferior all to corresponding strains in Dryden and Pope! They were poets indeed--he was not a poet. He has not fancy or imagination--they had both--they were consummate masters in their art: he was but a bold bungler after all. In proof take the best passage in THE AUTHOR. ""Is this--O death to think!--is this the land Where merit and reward went hand in hand? Where heroes parent-like the poet view'd By whom they saw their glorious deeds renew'd? Where poets true to honour tuned their lays And by their patrons sanctified their praise? Is this the land where on our Spenser's tongue Enamour'd of his voice Description hung? Where Jonson rigid Gravity beguiled While Reason through her critic fences smiled? Where Nature listening stood whilst Shakspeare play'd And wonder'd at the work herself had made? Is this the land where mindful of her charge And office high fair Freedom walk'd at large? Where finding in our laws a sure defence She mock'd at all restraints but those of sense? Where Health and Honour trooping by her side She spreads her sacred empire far and wide; Pointed the way Affliction to beguile And bade the face of Sorrow wear a smile-- Bade those who dare obey the generous call Enjoy her blessings which God meant for all? Is this the land where in some tyrant's reign When a weak wicked ministerial train The tools of power the slaves of interest plann'd Their country's ruin and with bribes unmann'd Those wretches who ordain'd in Freedom's cause Gave up our liberties and sold our laws; When Power was taught by Meanness where to go Nor dared to love the virtue of a foe; When like a lep'rous plague from the foul head To the foul heart her sores Corruption spread Her iron arm when stern Oppression rear'd And Virtue from her broad base shaken fear'd The scourge of Vice; when impotent and vain Poor Freedom bow'd the neck to Slavery's chain? Is this the land where in those worst of times The hardy poet raised his honest rhymes To dread rebuke and bade Controlment speak In guilty blushes on the villain's cheek; Bade Power turn pale kept mighty rogues in awe And made hem fear the Muse who fear'd not law? ""How do I laugh when men of narrow souls Whom folly guides and prejudice controls; Who one dull drowsy track of business trod Worship their Mammon and neglect their God; Who breathing by one musty set of rules Dote from their birth and are by system fools; Who form'd to dulness from their very youth Lies of the day prefer to Gospel-truth; Pick up their little knowledge from Reviews And lay out all their stock of faith in news; How do I laugh when creatures form'd like these Whom Reason scorns and I should blush to please Rail at all liberal arts deem verse a crime And hold not truth as truth if told in rhyme?"" These are commendable verses but they are not the verses of a true poet. For instance when he will praise the greatest poets-- ""Is this the land where on our Spenser's _tongue_ Enamour'd of his _voice_ Description hung""-- the intention is good and there is some love in the singling out of the name; but Description is almost the lowest not the highest praise of Spenser. The language too is mean and trite not that of one who is ""_inflammatus amore_"" of the sacred poet whom he praises. How differently does Lucretius praise Epicurus! The words blaze as he names him. How differently does Pope or Gray praise Dryden! Even in Churchill's few words there is the awkward and heavy tautology--tongue and voice. It is more like the tribute of duty than sensibility. The well-known distich on Shakspeare is rather good--it utters with a vigorous turn the general sentiment the nation's wonder of its own idol. But compare Gray who also brings Nature and Shakspeare together; or see him speaking of Dryden or Milton and you see how a poet speaks of a poet--thrilled with recollections--reflecting not merely commemorating the power. Indeed we design to have a few (perhaps twenty) articles entitled Poets on Poets--in which we shall collect chronologically the praises of the brotherhood by the brotherhood. In the mean time we do believe that the one main thing which you miss in Churchill is the true poetical touch and temper of the spirit. He is as far as he succeeds a sort of inferior Junius in verse--sinewy keen--with a good ready use of strong plain English; but he has no rapture. His fire is volcanic not solar. Yet no light praise it is that he rejects frivolous ornament and trusts to the strength of the thought and of the good or il

within. But besides the disparity--which is great--of strength of intellectual rank--this draws an insuperable difference in kind between him and Pope or Dryden that they are essentially poets. The gift of song is on their lips. If they turn Satirists they bring the power to another than its wonted and native vocation. But Churchill obtains the power only in satirizing. As Iago says-- ""For I am nothing if not critical."" Is this merely a repetition of Juvenal's ""_facit indignatio versus_ "" rendered in prose ""Indignation makes _me_ a poet "" who am not a poet by nature? In the first place Juvenal prodigiously transcends Churchill in intellectual strength; and in the second Juvenal has far more of essential poetry although hidden in just vituperation and in the imposed worldliness of his matter. But we must pull up. The so-called ""EPISTLE TO HOGARTH"" is after the wont of Churchill a shapeless undigested performance. It is nothing in the likeness of an epistle; but for three hundred lines a wandering lumbering rhapsody addressed to nobody which after abusing right and left suddenly turns to Hogarth whom it introduces by summoning him to stand forth at the bar in the Court of Conscience an exemplar of iniquities worse than could have been believed of humanity were he not there to sustain the character and authenticate the rightful delineation. Thenceforwards obstreperously railing on overwhelming the great painter with exaggerated reproaches for envy that persecuted all worth for untired self-laudation for painting his unfortunate _Sigismunda_; and oh! shame of song! for the advancing infirmities of old age. The merits of Hogarth as master of comic painting are acknowledged in lines that have been often quoted and are of very moderate merit--not worth a rush. ""The description of his age and infirmities "" as Garrick said at the time ""is too shocking and barbarous."" It nauseates the soul; and unmasks in the Satirist the rancorous and malignant hostility which assumes the disguise of a righteous indignation. ""Hogarth! stand forth.--Nay hang not thus aloof-- Now Candor! now thou shalt receive such proof Such damning proof that henceforth thou shalt fear To tax my wrath and own my conduct clear-- Hogarth! stand forth--I dare thee to be try'd In that great court where Conscience must preside; At that most solemn bar hold up thy hand; Think before whom on what account you stand-- Speak but consider well--from first to last Review thy life weigh ev'ry action past-- Nay you shall have no reason to complain-- Take longer time and view them o'er again-- Canst thou remember from thy earliest youth And as thy God must judge thee speak the truth; A single instance where self laid aside And justice taking place of fear and pride Thou with an equal eye did'st genius view And give to merit what was merit's due? Genius and merit are a sure offence And thy soul sickens at the name of sense. Is any one so foolish to succeed? On Envy's altar he is doom'd to bleed; Hogarth a guilty pleasure in his eyes The place of executioner supplies: See how he glotes enjoys the sacred feast And proves himself by cruelty a priest. ""Whilst the weak artist to thy whims a slave Would bury all those pow'rs which Nature gave; Would suffer black concealment to obscure Those rays thy jealousy could not endure; To feed thy vanity would rust unknown And to secure thy credit blast his own In Hogarth he was sure to find a friend He could not fear and therefore might commend: But when his Spirit rous'd by honest shame Shook off that lethargy and soar'd to fame; When with the pride of man resolv'd and strong He scorn'd those fears which did his honour wrong And on himself determin'd to rely Brought forth his labours to the public eye No friend in thee could such a rebel know; He had desert and Hogarth was his foe. ""Souls of a tim'rous cast of petty name In Envy's court not yet quite dead to shame May some remorse some qualms of conscience feel And suffer honour to abate their zeal; But the man truly and completely great Allows no rule of action but his hate; Thro' ev'ry bar he bravely breaks his way Passion his principle and parts his prey. Mediums in vice and virtue speak a mind Within the pale of temperance confin'd; The daring spirit scorns her narrow schemes And good or bad is always in extremes. ""Man's practice duly weigh'd thro' ev'ry age On the same plan hath Envy form'd her rage 'Gainst those whom fortune hath our rivals made In way of science and in way of trade: Stung with mean jealousy she arms her spite First works then views their ruin with delight. Our Hogarth here a grand improver shines And nobly on the gen'ral plan refines: He like himself o'erleaps the servile bound; Worth is his mark wherever worth is found; Should painters only his vast wrath suffice? Genius in ev'ry walk is lawful prize: 'Tis a gross insult to his o'ergrown state; His love to merit is to feel his hate. ""When Wilkes our countryman our common friend Arose his king his country to defend; When tools of pow'r he bar'd to public view And from their holes the sneaking cowards drew; When Rancour found it far beyond her reach To soil his honour and his truth impeach; What could induce thee at a time and place Where manly foes had blush'd to show their face To make that effort which must damn thy name And sink thee deep deep in thy grave with shame? Did virtue move thee? No; 'twas pride rank pride And if thou had'st not done it thou had'st dy'd. Malice (who disappointed of her end Whether to work the bane of foe or friend Preys on herself and driven to the stake Gives virtue that revenge she scorns to take ) Had kill'd thee tott'ring on life's utmost verge Had Wilkes and Liberty escap'd thy scourge. ""When that Great Charter which our fathers brought; With their best blood was into question bought When big with ruin o'er each English head Vile slav'ry hung suspended by a thread; When Liberty all trembling and aghast Fear'd for the future knowing what was past; When ev'ry breast was chill'd with deep despair Till reason pointed out that Pratt was there; Lurking most ruffian-like behind a screen So plac'd all things to see himself unseen Virtue with due contempt saw Hogarth stand The murd'rous pencil in his palsied hand. What was the cause of Liberty to him Or what was Honour? let them sink or swim So he may gratify without control The mean resentment of his selfish soul; Let freedom perish if to freedom true In the same ruin Wilkes may perish too. ""With all the symptoms of assur'd decay With age and sickness pinch'd and worn away Pale qiuv'ring lips lank cheeks and falt'ring tongue The spirits out of tune the nerves unstrung The body shrivell'd up thy dim eyes sunk Within their sockets deep thy weak hams shrunk The body's weight unable to sustain The stream of life scarce trembling thro' the vein More than half-kill'd by honest truths which fell Thro' thy own fault from men who wish'd thee well Canst thou ev'n thus thy thoughts to vengeance give And dead to all things else to malice live? Hence Dotard! to thy closet; shut thee in; By deep repentance wash away thy sin; From haunts of men to shame and sorrow fly And on the verge of death learn how to die."" What was Hogarth's unpardonable sin? Nature had lodged the unlovely soul of Jack Wilkes in an unlovely and ludicrous person which the wicked and inimitable pencil of Hogarth had made a little unlovelier perhaps and a little more ludicrous. Horace Walpole spoke in his usual clear-cutting style of Mr Charles Pylades and Mr John Orestes. They liked one another and ran the scent strong as a trail of rancid fish-guts of the same pleasures--but let not such hunting in couples profane the name of friendship. ""For me who warm and zealous for my friend In spite of railing thousands will commend And no less warm and zealous 'gainst my foes Spite of commending thousands will oppose-- I dare thy worst with scorn behold thy rage; But with an eye of pity view thy age-- Thy feeble age! in which as in a glass We see how men to dissolution pass. Thou wretched being! whom on reason's plan So chang'd so lost I cannot call a man-- What could persuade thee at this time of life To launch afresh into the sea of strife! Better for thee scarce crawling on the earth Almost as much a child as at thy birth; To have resign'd in peace thy parting breath And sunk unnotic'd in the arms of death. Why would thy gray gray hairs resentment brave Thus to go down with sorrow to the grave? Now by my soul! it makes me blush to know My spirit could descend to such a foe: Whatever cause the vengeance might provoke; It seems rank cowardice to give the stroke. ""Sure 'tis a curse which angry Fates impose To mortify man's arrogance that those Who're fashion'd of some better sort of clay Much sooner than the common herd decay. What bitter pangs must humble Genius feel In their last hours to view a Swift and Steele! How must ill-boding horrors fill her breast When she beholds men mark'd above the rest For qualities most dear plung'd from that height And sunk deep sunk in second childhood's night! Are men indeed such things? and are the best More subject to this evil than the rest; To drivel out whole years of idiot breath And sit the monuments of living Death! O! galling circumstance to human pride! Abasing thought! but not to be deny'd. With curious art the brain too finely wrought Preys on herself and is destroy'd by thought. Constant attention wears the active mind Blots out her pow'rs and leaves a blank behind But let not youth to insolence ally'd In heat of blood in full career of pride Possess'd of genius with unhallow'd rage Mock the infirmities of rev'rend age: The greatest genius to this fate may bow; Reynolds in time may be like Hogarth now."" One makes allowance in reading for the inflamed temper of the times for a judgment disturbed with personal anger and for the self-consciousness which hardly separable from talent stirs and sustains its energies. But--Churchill demolishing Hogarth! It is startling--rather melancholy--and very amusing. One compares fame with fame--the transitory and the imperishable. The wave lashed into fury that comes on mountain-swollen all rage and froth and thunder to dash itself into spray against some Atlas of the Deep--some huge brother of Time whose cheeks the wings of the centuries caress and of whose hand storms that distract heaven and earth are but toys. Of the ""PROPHECY OF FAMINE "" Wilkes before its publication said he ""was sure it would take as it was at once personal poetical and political."" And take it did--going off in thousands and tens of thousands. The Whig coteries of course cried it up to the skies; and the established authorities declared that Pope must now hide his diminished head. Such nonsense Churchill swallowed; for he had tried to take it into his head that Pope was a fool to him and in his cups was wont to vent a wish that little Alec were alive that he might break his heart. That was the delusion of delirium. Inflated with vanity as he was he must when sober have known well he could not with his cudgel readily though he flourished it have lived for five minutes before that Master of the rapier. Scotsmen as we are to the spine it is possible that we may be incapacitated by the strength of our backbone for perceiving the mighty merit of this astonishing satire. Steeped to the lips in national prejudices in favour of Scotland (not against England--heaven forbid!) imbibed with the first gulp of Glenlivet that more than three quarters of a century ago went gurgling down our filial throats--inured to hunger from our tenderest years--""in life's morning march when our spirits were young "" ignorant of shoes though haply not inexpert of sulphur--to us thus born and thus bred it may not be given to behold with our outward eyes and feel with our inward hearts the full glory of ""The Prophecy of Famine."" Boswell with an uneasy smirk rather than a ghastly grin said ""It is indeed falsely applied to Scotland but may on that account be allowed a greater share of invention."" Johnson in his heart loved Scotland as all his jeers show; and perhaps on that account was like ourselves no fair judge of Churchill's genius. ""I called the fellow a blockhead at first--and I call him a blockhead still "" comprehended all his performances in one general contempt. In later times Jeffrey has dismissed him with little ceremony to find his place at the Third Table. Campbell who though a Whig cared nothing about Churchill acknowledges having been amused by the laughable extravagance of the ""Prophecy."" And Lord Mahon says ""that it may yet be read with all the admiration which the most vigorous powers of verse and the most lively touches of wit can earn in the cause of slander and falsehood."" Suppose rough-and-ready Readers that you judge for yourselves. You have not a copy of Churchill--so passing over the first part of the poem--about three hundred lines--as dull as ditchwater in the season of powheads--let us give you the cream or marrow or pith of the famous ""Prophecy of Famine "" before which Scotia ""our auld respectit mither "" bowed down and fell and was thought by some to have given up the ghost or at least ""tined her dam."" ""Two boys whose birth beyond all question springs From great and glorious tho' forgotten kings Shepherds of Scottish lineage born and bred On the same bleak and barren mountain's head; By niggard Nature doom'd on the same rocks To spin out life and starve themselves and flocks; Fresh as the morning which enrob'd in mist The mountain's top with usual dulness kiss'd Jockey and Sawney to their labours rose; Soon clad I ween where Nature needs no clothes Where from their youth inur'd to winter-skies Dress and her vain refinements they despise. ""Jockey whose manly high-bon'd cheeks to crown With freckles spotted flam'd the golden down With meikle art could on the bagpipes play Ev'n from the rising to the setting day: Sawney as long without remorse could bawl Home's madrigals and ditties from Fingal: Oft at his strains all natural tho' rude The Highland lass forgot her want of food; And whilst she scratch'd her lover into rest Sunk pleas'd tho' hungry on her Sawney's breast. ""Far as the eye could reach no tree was seen Earth clad in russet scorn'd the lively green: The plague of locusts they secure defy For in three hours a grasshopper must die: No living thing whate'er its food feasts there But the chameleon who can feast on air. No birds except as birds of passage flew; No bee was known to hum no dove to coo: No streams as amber smooth as amber clear Were seen to glide or heard to warble here: Rebellion's spring which thro' the country ran Furnish'd with bitter draughts the steady clan: No flow'rs embalm'd the air but one White Rose Which on the tenth of June by instinct blows By instinct blows at morn and when the shades Of drizzly eve prevail by instinct fades. ""One and but one poor solitary cave Too sparing of her favours Nature gave; That one alone (hard tax on Scottish pride!) Shelter at once for man and beast supply'd. Their snares without entangling briers spread And thistles arm'd against the invader's head Stood in close ranks all entrance to oppose Thistles! now held more precious than the Rose. All creatures which on Nature's earliest plan Were form'd to loathe and to be loath'd by man Which ow'd their birth to nastiness and spite Deadly to touch and hateful to the sight; Creatures which when admitted in the ark Their saviour shunn'd and rankled in the dark Found place within. Marking her noisome road With poison's trail here crawl'd the bloated toad; There webs were spread of more than common size And half-starv'd spiders prey'd on half-starv'd flies; In quest of food efts strove in vain to crawl; Slugs pinch'd with hunger smear'd the slimy wall: The cave around with hissing serpents rung; On the damp roof unhealthy vapour hung; And Famine by her children always known As proud as poor here fix'd her native throne. ""Here for the sullen sky as overcast And summer shrunk beneath a wintry blast A native blast which arm'd with hail and rain Beat unrelenting on the naked swain The boys for shelter made: behind the sheep Of which those shepherds ev'ry day take keep Sickly crept on and with complainings rude On Nature seem'd to call and bleat for food. ""_Jockey._ Sith to this cave by tempest we're confin'd And within ken our flocks under the wind Safe from the pelting of this per'lous storm Are laid among yon' thistles dry and warm What Sawney! if by shepherds' art we try To mock the rigour of this cruel sky? What if we tune some merry roundelay? Well dost thou sing nor ill doth Jockey play. ""_Sawney._ Ah Jockey ill advisest thou I wis To think of songs at such a time as this; Sooner shall herbage crown these barren rocks Sooner shall fleeces clothe these ragged flocks Sooner shall want seize shepherds of the south And we forget to live from hand to mouth Than Sawney out of season shall impart Tho songs of gladness with an aching heart. ""_Jockey._ Still have I known thee for a silly swain; Of things past help what boots it to complain? Nothing but mirth can conquer Fortune's spite; No sky is heavy if the heart be light: Patience is sorrow's salve: what can't be cur'd So Donald right areeds must be endur'd. ""_Sawney._ Full silly swain I wot is Jockey now; How didst thou bear thy Maggy's falsehood? how When with a foreign loon she stole away Didst thou forswear thy pipe and shepherd's lay? Where was thy boasted wisdom then when I Apply'd those proverbs which you now apply? ""_Jockey._ O she was bonny! all the Highlands round Was there a rival to my Maggy found? More precious (tho' that precious is to all) Than the rare med'cine which we Brimstone call Or that choice plant so grateful to the nose Which in I-know-not-what-far country grows Was Maggy unto me: dear do I rue A lass so fair should ever prove untrue. ""_Sawney._ Whether with pipe or song to charm the ear Thro' all the land did Jamie find a peer? Curs'd be that year by ev'ry honest Scot And in the shepherds' kalendar forgot That fatal year when Jamie hapless swain! In evil hour forsook the peaceful plain: Jamie when our young laird discreetly fled Was seiz'd and hang'd till he was dead dead dead. ""_Jockey._ Full sorely may we all lament that day For all were losers in the deadly fray; Five brothers had I on the Scottish plains Well dost thou know were none more hopeful swains; Five brothers there I lost in manhood's pride Two in the field and three on gibbets dy'd: Ah! silly swains! to follow war's alarms; Ah! what hath shepherd's life to do with arms? ""_Sawney._ Mention it not--There saw I strangers clad In all the honours of our ravish'd Plaid; Saw the Ferrara too our nation's pride Unwilling grace the awkward victor's side. There fell our choicest youth and from that day Mote never Sawney tune the merry lay; Bless'd those which fell! curs'd those which still survive! To mourn Fifteen renew'd in Forty-five."" As our memory of our personal experiences about the period in Scottish history at which the above scene is laid is extremely obscure we cannot take upon ourselves to speak authoritatively of the fidelity of the picture. But Churchill we grieve to say it was a regular--a thorough Cockney. The instant a Cockney opens his mouth or puts pen to paper about Scotland he stands confessed. Here Charles's attempt at the Scottish dialect betrays the taint. Not a single one of the words he chucklingly puts into the lips of Jockey and Sawney as characteristically Scoto-Arcadian was ever heard or seen by the breechless swains of that pastoral realm. Never does an alien look so silly to the natives be they who they may as when instructing them in their own language or mimicking the niceties and delicacies of its dialects. They pardonably think him little better than a fool; nor does he mend the matter much by telling them that he is satirical and a wit. Considerable latitude in the article of language must be allowed to the poet who presents to us engaged in dialogue two natives of a country where clothes and victuals are nearly unknown. ""Rude must they be in speech--and little graced with the set phrase of peace."" Churchill was bound to have conceived for them an utterance natural to their condition as Shakspeare did for Caliban. But over and above the Cockneyisms committed by him he makes them twaddle like middle-aged men in middle-sized towns who had passed all their nights in blankets and all their days in breeches with as liberal an allowance of food as parish paupers. ""To mock the rigour of this cruel sky "" ""In all the honours of our ravish'd plaid""-- ""Unwilling grace the awkward victor's side "" have here no dramatic propriety we opine--and show the slobberer. The Satirist betrays the same poverty of invention in the sentiments as in the language of the Swains. They illustrate no concealed character--they reveal no latent truth. ""Rebellion's spring which through the country ran Furnished with bitter draughts _the steady clan_;"" and yet the swains are averse from war and exclaim-- ""Ah! silly swains! to follow war's alarms; Ah! what hath shepherd's life to do with arms?"" And at the same time they talk of-- ""the Ferrara too our nation's pride."" The dialogue is throughout absolutely stupid. You are not made by it either to hate or despise the Swains nor are you led to laugh at them; but lay down the satire for minute or two peevishly suspecting that you have been reading arrant nonsense. You take up the trash again; and being a Scotsman you are perhaps not altogether quite so well pleased to find that it suddenly waxes into something very like poetry. The description of the cave had made you wince--why you knew not; for nothing the least like it ever existed in Scotland or out of it; and your high cheekbones had tingled. The reprobate can write you are forced to confess while Christopher North holds up to your confusion the picture of Famine. ""Thus plain'd the boys when from her throne of turf With boils emboss'd and overgrown with scurf Vile humours which in life's corrupted well Mix'd at the birth not abstinence could quell Pale Famine rear'd the head; her eager eyes Where hunger ev'n to madness seem'd to rise Speaking aloud her throes and pangs of heart Strain'd to get loose and from their orbs to start. Her hollow cheeks were each a deep sunk cell Where wretchedness and horror lov'd to dwell: With double rows of useless teeth supply'd Her mouth from ear to ear extended wide Which when for want of food her entrails pin'd She op'd and cursing swallow'd nought but wind: All shrivell'd was her skin; and here and there Making their way by force her bones lay bare: Such filthy sight to hide from human view O'er her foul limbs a tatter'd plaid she threw. ""'Cease ' cry'd the goddess 'cease despairing swains! And from a parent hear what Jove ordains. ""'Pent in this barren corner of the isle Where partial Fortune never deign'd to smile Like Nature's bastards reaping for our share What was rejected by the lawful heir; Unknown amongst the nations of the earth Or only known to raise contempt and mirth; Long free because the race of Roman braves Thought it not worth their while to make us slaves Then into bondage by that nation brought Whose ruin we for ages vainly sought Whom still with unslak'd hate we view and still The pow'r of mischief lost retain the will; Consider'd as the refuse of mankind A mass till the last moment left behind Which frugal Nature doubted as it lay Whether to stamp with life or throw away; Which form'd in haste was planted in this nook But never enter'd in Creation's book Branded as traitors who for love of gold Would sell their God as once their king they sold; Long have we borne this mighty weight of ill These vile injurious taunts and bear them still; But times of happier note are now at hand And the full promise of a better land: There like the sons of Isr'el having trode For the fix'd term of years ordain'd by God A barren desert we shall seize rich plains Where milk with honey flows and plenty reigns: With some few natives join'd some pliant few Who worship int'rest and our track pursue; There shall we tho' the wretched people grieve Ravage at large nor ask the owners' leave. ""'For us the earth shall bring forth her increase; For us the flocks shall wear a golden fleece; Fat beeves shall yield us dainties not our own And the grape bleed a nectar yet unknown: For our advantage shall their harvests grow And Scotsmen reap what they disdain'd to sow: For us the sun shall climb the eastern hill; For us the rain shall fall the dew distil: When to our wishes Nature cannot rise Art shall be task'd to grant us fresh supplies; His brawny arm shall drudging Labour strain And for our pleasure suffer daily pain: Trade shall for us exert her utmost pow'rs Hers all the toil and all the profit ours: For us the oak shall from his native steep Descend and fearless travel thro' the deep; The sail of commerce for our use unfurl'd Shall waft the treasures of each distant world; For us sublimer heights shall science reach; For us their statesmen plot their churchmen preach: Their noblest limbs of counsel we'll disjoint And mocking new ones of our own appoint: Devouring War imprison'd in the north Shall at our call in horrid pomp break forth; And when his chariot wheels with thunder hung Fell Discord braying with her brazen tongue Death in the van with Anger Hate and Fear And Desolation stalking in the rear Revenge by Justice guided in his train He drives inpet'ous o'er the trembling plain Shall at our bidding quit his lawful prey And to meek gentle gen'rous Peace give way. ""'Think not my sons! that this so bless'd estate Stands at a distance on the roll of Fate; Already big with hopes of future sway Ev'n from this cave I scent my destin'd prey. Think not that this dominion o'er a race Whose former deeds shall Time's last annals grace In the rough face of peril must be sought And with the lives of thousands dearly bought: No--fool'd by cunning by that happy art Which laughs to scorn the blund'ring hero's heart Into the snare shall our kind neighbours fall With open eyes and fondly give us all."" Alongside of any one of the masterpieces of Dryden or Pope this perhaps the most vigorous thing of Churchill's is seen to be a daub. Yet Cockney connoisseurs still think it a fine picture. When fresh from the easel it was thus praised by a metropolitan critic:-- ""You'll own the great Churchill possesses I hope More fancy than Cowley more numbers than Pope; More strength too than Dryden--for think on what's past He has not only rivall'd but beat them at last."" A hearty national prejudice is no bad foundation for a Poem. It implies one great requisite of success--a secure large sympathy. This ""trusted home"" animates the poet; and a reception answering to the confidence awaits the work. Moreover ungrounded or exaggerated as these depreciations and antipathies are likely to be they usually spring out of some deep-laid element in the character of those who entertain them and have thus the vital warmth and strength that feed poetry and an original truth of nature mixed up amongst fallacies of opinion. Caricatured representation is the proper vehicle. For Censure is then half disarmed when to her exception ""This is not so "" the reply lies upon the face of the performance ""Neither is it offered for true."" The hyperbole of the phrase covers the distortion of the thinking. If we are to find fault with Churchill's ""Prophecy of Famine "" it must be upon some other ground than the injustice or cruelty of the attack upon poor Scotland or the hardness of the hits delivered it may be by a fist gloved in iron. Who grudges the attack? Not Sawney himself if it is made in masterly style. A magnanimous combatant who has the true enthusiasm of the fight admires the skill of the stroke that threatens him with defeat or death. Spite malice aversion enmity are not ingratiating demonstrations. Far from it. Ill-will is naturally met with ill-will. But besides that which is unavoidably self-regarding in such a relation of parties room is open for views of a more general feature of a more generous complexion. John Bull scowls at Sawney and makes mouths at his oatmeal diet with lips to which the memory of his own roast-beef cleaves. The last-mentioned dish is not altogether unknown north of the Tweed. But John Bull knows not the unimaginable fact or knew it not for the barrier is now widely broken down. Sawney has humour enough to be amused by the writhing apprehension of dry and lean fare which deforms the well-fed and jocund face of the bacon-bolter. There is in the description and Amabæan lament of the two gaunt and shivering young Arcadians and in the cave of the tutelary Goddess Famine the intention at least of the picturesque and poetical. The fault is that the thing has no bringing out or completeness. It is incomposite--as a plan unintelligible. Are the _dramatis personæ_ Sawney Jockey and the Goddess with Sawney's love the whole population of Scotland? Do the two lads and their sheep and Famine occupy the same sole cave which is all the houses in Scotland? Is it a comprehensive Allegory under the guise of a pastoral Idyl? A ground is laid; and it is easy to conceive that a Hogarth in verse with his stored eye and that hand mimic and creative which by some unmistaken touch of nature sets upon capricious extravagance the known seal of truth might have finished a picture which experience itself would have half-believed in spite of its conviction that never had there been such an hungered race. But such a Hogarth in verse was not Churchill. Upon the ground laid a Satire might have been made out by such a genius exaggerated witty poetical--pleasing even to the posterity of the victims. But instead of crowded ideas here are but three or four. This writing does in fact not express the national prejudices of South Britain against North Britain. It expresses the zeal of party and of a partizan. One can hardly conceive such an ignorance of Scotland in England as that a man of ability wishing to traduce and ridicule the country should sit down contented under such a paucity of mischievous information. He writes under one simple rule--negation. To deny food to deny clothes to deny houses to deny sunshine grass _rivers_ even requires no mental effort of any kind and is the part of a dunce and an ignoramus. For any thing positive the Scotch are proud have high cheekbones and love brimstone and rebellion. That is the amount of the picture. Famine consoles the two hungry lads who mourn over the Fifteen and the Forty-five with prophesying the invasion and conquest of England by the Bute Administration--a glorious hope a national redress and a private filling of empty purses and stomachs. Churchill was himself poverty-stricken in mind during the composition of this blunder to a degree that never befell any true poet. An Englishman of this day must be puzzled to bring back the time when Scotland was so completely a _terra incognita_ to her sister as that this rude and unlearned caricature could pass. Indeed he hardly understands the hate--he to whom prose and verse from one great hand and poetry profusedly scattered like flowers all over the soil from another have made hallowed the land of romance and of dreams more beautiful than romance and for whom the words ""Caledonia stern and wild "" mean any thing but repulsion. But one must remember that poetry was at the time at a low ebb almost stagnant in England and that any thing that looked like an image was aprodigy. If Gray and Collins now and then struck the lyre they stood apart from the prevailing prosaic and common-place tone of the times. An Englishman of to-day knows the name of Home by one of the most popular tragedies on his stage if not one of the most vigorous yet amongst modern dramas one of the most affecting; and he wonders when that name is introduced by Churchill for the purpose of aggravating the contempt of Scotland represented as a region Boeotian in wit quite as much as by its atmosphere. He understands by what attraction Collins addressed to Home his ""Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands."" Political hatred the dislike the indignation which may have been widely enough diffused through the nation at the interloping of Scotchmen in the high places of power and emolument--this was the sentiment in the national bosom which gave a meaning to the poem and found it a reception. Such a sentiment is not scrupulous or critical--it is passionate merely--and asks not the happinesses of humour wit fa

cy of the graphical and the characteristic. It asks bitter animosity and vile vituperation and is satisfied. The individuality of a nation is curiously made up. The country which they inhabit makes a part of it the most easily understood. Their manners customs and institutions make another part of it much of which is outward picturesque and easily seen. Their history that which they have done and that which they have endured makes a part. And lastly that which runs through all rises out of all animates all their proper personality their intellectual and moral character makes a part--and now you have the whole. We demand of the writer who will in earnest paint the people that he shall know all these things extensively variously profoundly. And of the Satirist who will hold up the nation to dislike and to laughter that he too shall show he knows them their defects and their deformities their crimes and their customs their sins and their sorrows their sufferings and their absurdities their monstrosities and their misfortunes God's curse or of their own consciences that may have stricken their country and their condition and starved the paupers in body and in soul. Such chastisement might be terrible and not undeserved. But to inflict it was far beyond the power of poor Charles Churchill. ""Waft me some Muse to Tweed's enchanting stream Where all the little Loves and Graces dream: _Where slowly winding the dull waters creep _ _And seem themselves to own the power of sleep;_ _Where on the surface lead like feathers swims;_ There let me bathe my yet unhallow'd limbs As once a Syrian bathed in Jordan's flood; Wash off my native stains correct that blood Which mutinies at call of English pride And deaf to prudence rolls a patriot tide."" Ay much the better would he have been of a dip in the Tweed. He was a big burly fellow; but though no great swimmer he would have found it buoyant after a debauch. His native stains washed off would alas! have sadly discoloured the Angler's Delight. Worse than a hundred Sheep-washings. But at one gleam of the showery bow the waters would have resumed their lustre. He was the last man in the world who ought to have abused brimstone; for his soul had the Itch. A wallow in the sweet mould--the pure mire of Cardronna Mains--on a dropping day would have been of service to his body bloated with foul blood. Smeared with that sanative soil he might have been born again--no more a leper. ""I remember well "" says Dr Kippis ""that he dressed his younger son [the son of his wife--not of the mistress for whom he abandoned her] in a Scottish plaid like a little Highlander and carried him every where in that garb. The boy being asked by a gentleman with whom I was in company why he was clothed in such a manner answered _with great vivacity_ --'Sir my father hates the Scotch and does it to plague them.'"" For a father to dress up his son in the garb of a people despised and detested with perpetual scunner seems an odd demonstration either of party spite or of paternal fondness--about as sensible as on the anniversary of his birth-day in compliment to his mother to have dressed him up like a monkey. The Patriot Satirist! The question inevitably obtrudes itself--what is the pointing of destiny which singles out Churchill for the indignant protector in verse of England's freedom and welfare? What calls his hand into the van of battle with the strong lance of justice laid in rest to tilt against the ill-defended breast of poor proud hungry jacobinical place-loving coin-attached and coin-attaching muse-left gibbet-favoured tartan-clad sulphur-scented and thistle-growing Scotland? The hero of liberty the self-offered martyr for the rights and the wrongs of a great people should carry on his front one might suppose some evidence of the over-mastering spirit which like a necessity finds him out and throws him as if a lot-drawn champion alone into the jaws and jeopardy of the war. It should be one of whom if you knew him yet obscure you might divine and say ""This is _his_ hour--_his_ is the mind that consecrates its possessor to a consecrated cause that discriminates essentially as the spirits of light as divided from the spirits of darkness the lover of his country from the factious partizan and from the seditious demagogue."" There should be a private life and character that but repeat themselves in the public ones on a bolder and gigantic scale. Else how ready does the apprehension rise that the professed hostility to unjust men in power is no more than the reluctance of an ill-disciplined spirit under the offence and constraint of institutions which set superiors over his head and gall him by bridling an unruly will;--whilst the clamorous zeal for the general good is purely the choice of the staking gamester between red and black and the preference of the million-headed patron to the cheapener with a few heads or with one. The two known traits which largely comprehend the private life of Churchill do not prepossess one in his favour. He left his profession the church; and he exchanged his wife after many years' cohabitation for a mistress; two paramount desecrations unhappily met. And the trumpet-call to the war-field of patriotism sings but uncheeringly when the blast is winded by the breath of Wilkes. When the shame of England burns in the heart of Cowper you must believe him; for through that heart rolled the best of England's blood. But Churchill! Faugh! _Edinburgh: Printed Ballantyne and Hughes Paul's Work._ Footnotes: [1] _Memoirs of the Life of John Constable Esq. R.A._ Composed chiefly of his Letters. By C. R. LESLIE R.A. Second Edition. Longmans. [2] Even there we see that he viewed the matter as a task and piqued himself only on having succeeded in a _tour-de-force_. Writing to Archdeacon Fisher he says--""It was the most difficult subject in landscape I ever had on my easel. I have not flinched at the windows buttresses &c.; but I have still kept to my grand organ colour and have as usual made my escape in the evanescence of chiaroscuro.""--(P. 109.) [3] ""I cannot but recall here a passage in a letter to Mr Fisher written by Constable nearly ten years before his death in which after speaking of having removed his family to Hampstead he says 'I could gladly exclaim here let me take my everlasting rest!'"" [4] One of the greatest and most memorable of the Turkish princes was Mahmood the Ghaznavide who reigned in the eastern provinces of Persia A.D. 997-1028. His father Sebactagi arose from the condition of a slave to the command of the city and province of Ghazna. In the fall of the dynasty of the Sammanides the fortune of Mahmood was confirmed. For him the title of _sultan_ (signifying _lord_ and _master_) was first invented and his kingdom was enlarged from Transoxiana to the neighbourhood of Ispahan from the shores of the Caspian to the mouth of the Indus. The prowess and magnificence of Mahmood his twelve expeditions into Hindostan and the holy wars he waged against the idol-worship of that country in one of which he destroyed an image of peculiar sanctity at Diu or Du in Guzerat and carried off the gates of Somnauth (so recently once more become a trophy of triumph and defeat ) the vast treasures amassed in his campaigns and the extent and greatness of the Ghaznavide empire have always been favourite subjects with Eastern historians. The instance of his justice recorded in the verses is given by Gibbon from whose history this note is chiefly taken. Ghazna from being the emporium of India and the metropolis of a vast dominion had almost shrunk from the eye of the geographer until under the modified appellation of Ghizni it again emerged into importance in our Affghan war. A curious crowd of associations is suggested by the fact that the town which gave its name to a dynasty that shook the successors of Mahomet on their thrones now confers the dignity of Baron on a native of one of the obscurest villages in Ireland--Lord Keane of Ghizni _and_ of Cappoquin in the county of Waterford. [5] Kaff of late years is considered to have been more a creation of Eastern mythology than a genuine incontestable mountain. Its position is supposed to be at the highest point of the great Hindoo-Kosh range. Such was its astonishing altitude that says D'Herbelot ""vous trouvez souvent dans leurs anciens livres pour exprimer le lever du soleil cette façon de parler _aussitôt que cet astre parût sur la cime du Mont Cáf le monde fut éclairé de sa lumière_: de même pour comprendre toute l'etendue de la terre et de l'eau ils disent _Depuis Cáf à Cáf_--c'est à dire d'une de ses extremités à l'autre."" [6] The name of Sind Attok or Indus is applied indifferently to the mighty stream that forms the western boundary of Hindostan. [7] The tribes of savage warriors inhabiting the Kipchak or table-land of Tartary have been distinguished by the name of the Golden Hordes. There is a magnificent lyric on their Battle-charge by Dr Croly in the _Friendship's Offering_ for 1834. [8] _Essays on Natural History chiefly Ornithology._ By CHARLES WATERTON Esq. author of ""Wanderings in South America."" Second Series; with a continuation of the Autobiography of the Author. [9] ""'I do hereby disclaim disavow and solemnly abjure any intention to subvert the present Church Establishment within this realm ' &c. In framing that abominable oath I don't believe that Sir Robert Peel cared one fig's-end whether the soul of a Catholic went up after death to the King of Brightness or descended to the King of Brimstone. His only aim seems to have been to secure to the Church by law established the full possession of the loaves and fishes.""--_Essays_ 1st series p. 19. [10] A long-protracted lawsuit between this artist and Prince Giustiniani has since attracted much public notice. On cleaning a painting apparently of little value which he had purchased at a sale of the refuse of the prince's gallery Signor Vallati detected traces of a superior production beneath that painted over it on removing which the long-lost duplicate of Correggio's Reading Magdalen was brought to light. A claim was now set up by Prince Giustiniani for the restitution of the picture or payment of its full value:--but the cause after being carried from one tribunal to another was at last decided in favour of the right of Vallati to his prize. [11] A close analogy according to this system existed between pigs and humming-birds--each representing the _gliriform_ type in their respective circles and resembling each other in their small eyes and suctorial propensities!--See SWAINSON'S _Classification of Birds in_ LARDNER'S _Cabinet Cyclopædia_ i. 43. [12] ""Mopso Nisa datur. Quid non speremus amantes? Jungentur jam gryphes equis."" VIRGIL _Eclog._ viii. 26. [13] _A Popular and Practical Introduction to Law Studies_ &c. &c. By SAMUEL WARREN Esq. F.R.S. of the Inner Temple Barrister-at-Law. [14] P. 71. [15] The following extract from a memoir of Lord Wynford written evidently by a lawyer manifests in rather an amusing manner the _esprit de corps_ of the profession and shows how the excitement of the contest between the advocates effaces the dull interest of what are called the merits of the case. Note how combative how military is the style:--""He (Lord Wynford) was a dangerous because he was a most watchful and enterprising adversary. You could not any more sleep in his neighbourhood than could the Duke while Massena was near though he might in the neighbourhood of others enjoy some repose. But if you never could be sure of his not making some venturous move himself and were thus kept on the watch so also you could not venture upon moves in the hope of his eyes being closed. It may almost safely be pronounced that he never failed to see or to profit by the slip of his adversary; to say that he never seldom made slips himself would be very wide of the truth. In fact he was not always a safe leader. Circumspect enough to see when his antagonist failed he took a very narrow or very one-sided view of his own risks. Bold to rashness hasty in his resolutions quick in all his thoughts and all his movements he was often in dangers wholly needless to be encountered; and though he would occasionally by desperate courses escape beyond all calculation from risks both inevitable and of his own seeking he could not be called a successful advocate.""--_Article on_ LORD WYNFORD _No. III. Law Review._ [16] Correspondence between Count MÜNSTER and the Baron VON STEIN in vol. ii. of the _Lebensbilder aus dem Befreiungskriege_ Jena: 1841. Letters of Baron STEIN to Baron GAGERN in Von Gagern's _Antheil an der Politik_ vol. iv. Stuttgart and Tübingen: 1833. [17] Besides the correspondence of Münster and Gagern which refer only to the latter part of Stein's life from 1811 to his death we have only a notice in the _Conversations Lexikon_ and a short biographical sketch by Arndt (the Baron's secretary ) appended to his _Erinnerungen_ (Leipsig 1840 ) to guide us in the early part of Stein's career. There are some notices in the body of _Arndt's Reminiscences_ in Varnhagen's Memoirs and in some others none of which however go further back than the year 1811. [18] _In Prag halten sich die stärksten Mächte und Autriche zum Hassen gegen Napoleon Zugammengehäuft._--VARNHAGEN VON ENSE iii. 195 first edition. [19] ""_Donnerschwangere Fulgurationer._""--HORMAYR in the _Lebensbilder_ i. 63. [20] SCHARNHORST Count DOHNA and President VON SCHOEN mentioned by Stein in a previous letter not translated. [21] _Essai sur les Fictions._ "

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generously made available by The Internet Library of Early Journals.) BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCLX. OCTOBER 1845. Vol. LVIII. CONTENTS. Montesquieu 389 A Reminiscence of Boyhood. By Delta 408 De Burtin on Pictures 413 Manner and Matter 431 Marston; or the Memoirs of a Statesman. Conclusion. 439 How we Got Up the Glenmutchkin Railway 453 The Science of Languages. Kavanagh 467 Scrambles in Monmouthshire 474 Neapolitan Sketches 486 A Meditation 494 On the Old Year 495 Corali _ib._ Biographical Sketch of Frank Abney Hastings 496 EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 45 GEORGE STREET; AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW LONDON. _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed_. SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES EDINBURGH. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCLX. OCTOBER 1845. Vol. LVIII. MONTESQUIEU. Montesquieu is beyond all doubt the founder of the philosophy of history. In many of its most important branches he has carried it to a degree of perfection which has never since been surpassed. He first looked on human affairs with the eye of philosophic observation; he first sought to discover the lasting causes which influence the fate of mankind; he first traced the general laws which in every age determine the rise or decline of nations. Some of his conclusions were hasty; many of his analogies fanciful; but he first turned the human mind in that direction. It is by repeatedly deviating into error that it can alone be discovered where truth really lies: there is an alchemy in the moral not less than in the material world in which a vast amount of genius must be lost before it is discovered that it has taken the wrong direction. But in Montesquieu besides such occasional and unavoidable aberrations there is an invaluable treasure of profound views and original thought--of luminous observation and deep reflection--of philosophic observation and just generalization. His fame has been long established; it has become European; his sayings are quoted and repeated from one end of the world to the other; but to the greater part of English readers his greatness is known rather from the distant echo of continental fame than from any practical acquaintance with the writings from which it has arisen. Though Montesquieu however is the father of the philosophy of history it is due to Tacitus and Machiavel to say that he is not the author of political thought. In the first of these writers is to be found the most profound observations on the working of the human mind whether in individuals or bodies of men that ever were formed by human sagacity: in the latter a series of remarks on Roman history and the corresponding events in the republics of modern Italy which in point of deep political wisdom and penetration never were surpassed. Lord Bacon too had in his Essays put forth may maxims of political truth with that profound sagacity and unerring wisdom by which his thoughts were so preeminently distinguished. But still these men great as they were and much as they added to the materials of the philosophy of history can hardly be said to have mastered that philosophy itself. It was not their object to do so; it did not belong to the age in which they lived to make any such attempt. They gave incomparable observations upon detached points in human annals but they did not take a general view of their tendency. They did not consider whence the world had come or whither it was going. They formed no connected system in regard to the march of human events. They saw clearly the effects of particular measures or systems of government at the time but they did not reflect on the chain of causes which first raised up and afterwards undermined it. Aristotle the most powerful intellect of the ancient world was of the same calibre as a political observer. He considered only the effects of the various forms of government which he saw established around him. In that survey he was admirable but he never went beyond it. Bossuet's _Universal History_ is little more than a history of the Jews; he refers every thing to the direct and immediate agency of Providence irrespective of the freedom of the human will. Montesquieu first fixed his eyes upon the rise progress and decay of nations as worked out by the actions of free agents. The _Grandeur et Décadence des Romains_ is as original as the _Principia_ and laid the foundation of a science as sublime and perhaps still more important to man than the laws of the planetary bodies. Charles Secondat Baron de la Brede and Montesquieu was born at the chateau of La Brede near Bourdeaux on the 18th January 1689. The estate of La Brede had been long in his family which was a very ancient one; it had been erected into a barony in favour of Jacob de Secondat his great-great-grandfather by Henry IV. The office of President of the Parliament (or Local Court of Justice) of Bourdeaux had been acquired by his family in consequence of the marriage of his father with the daughter of the first president of that tribunal. From his earliest years young Montesquieu evinced remarkable readiness and vivacity of mind; a circumstance which determined his father to breed him up to the "magistracy " as it was termed in France--a profession midway as it were between the career of arms peculiar to the noble and the labours of the bar confined to persons of plebeian origin and from which many of the greatest men and nearly all the distinguished statesmen of France took their rise. Montesquieu entered with the characteristic ardour of his disposition into the studies suited for that destination; and at the age of twenty he had already collected the materials of the _Esprit des Loix_ and evinced the characteristic turn of his mind for generalization by an immense digest which he had made of the civil law. But these dry though important studies did not exclusively occupy his mind; he carried on at the same time a great variety of other pursuits. Like all men of an active and intellectual turn of mind his recreation was found not in repose but in change of occupation. Books of voyages and travels were collected and read with avidity; he devoured rather than read the classical remains of Greece and Rome. "That antiquity " said he "enchants me and I am always ready to say with Pliny--You are going to Athens; show respect to the gods." It was under this feeling of devout gratitude to the master minds of the ancient world that he made his first essay in literature which came out in a small work in the form of letters the object of which was to show that the idolatry of most Pagans did of itself not merit eternal damnation. Probably there are few good Christians from Fénélon and Tillotson downwards who will be of an opposite opinion. Even in that juvenile production are to be found traces of the sound judgment correct taste and general thought which characterised his later works. But he was soon thrown into the proper labours of his profession. On the 24th February 1714 he was admitted into the parliament of Bourdeaux as a councillor; and his paternal uncle who held the president's chair having died two years after young Montesquieu was on the 13th July 1716 appointed to that important office though only twenty-seven years of age. Probably his being thrown thus early in life into the discharge of onerous and important duties had an important effect in producing that firmness and maturity of judgment by which his mind was subsequently distinguished. Some years afterwards he gave a convincing proof of his fitness for the situation in the vigour with which he remonstrated against the imposition of a fresh tax on wine which had the effect of procuring its removal at the time though the necessities of government led to its being reimposed some years after. But his ardent mind was not confined to professional pursuits. He concurred in the formation of an academy of sciences at Bourdeaux and read some papers in it on natural history; and his attention being in this way turned to physical science he wrote and published in the journals a project for a "Physical History of the Earth Ancient and Modern." But in no human being was more completely exemplified the famous line-- "The proper study of mankind is man." Montesquieu's genius was essentially moral and political; it was on man himself not the material world with which he was surrounded that his thoughts were fixed. This strong bent soon appeared in his writings. He next read at the academy at Bourdeaux a "Life of the Duke of Berwick " and an "Essay on the Policy of the Romans in Religion " which was the basis of the immortal work which he afterwards composed on the rise and fall of that extraordinary people. These desultory essays gave no indication of the first considerable work which he published which was the famous _Lettres Persanes_. They appeared in 1721 when he was thirty-two years of age. Their success was immediate and prodigious; a certain indication in matters of thought that they were not destined to durable fame. They fell in with the ideas and passions of the time; they were not before it; thence their early popularity and ultimate oblivion. The work was published anonymously; for the keen but delicate satire on French manners and vices which it contained might have endangered the author and as it was he had no small difficulty when it was known he was the writer in escaping from its effects. It consists in a series of letters from an imaginary character Usbeck a Persian traveller detailing the vices manners and customs of the French metropolis. The ingenuity sarcasm and truth which that once celebrated production contains must not make us shut our eyes to its glaring defects; the vices of the age as they mainly contributed to its early popularity have been the chief cause of its subsequent decline. It contains many passages improperly warm and voluptuous and some which under the mask of attacks on the Jesuits had the appearance at least of being levelled at religion itself. No work at that period could attract attention in France which was not disfigured by these blemishes. Even the great mind of Montesquieu in its first essay before the public did not escape the contagion of the age. But erelong the genius of this profound thinker was devoted to more congenial and worthy objects. In 1726 he sold his office of president of the parliament of Bourdeaux partly in order to escape from the toils of legal pursuit and judicial business which in that mercantile and rising community was attended with great labour; partly in order to be enabled to travel and study the institutions and character of different nations--a pursuit of which he was passionately fond and which without doubt had a powerful effect in giving him that vast command of detached facts in political science and that liberal view of institutions habits and manners differing in some degree from his own by which his philosophical writings are so eminently distinguished. Here as in the biography of almost all other really great men it is found that some circumstances apparently trivial or accidental have given a permanent bent to their mind; have stored it with the appropriate knowledge and turned it as it were into the allotted sphere and contributed to form the _matrix_ in which original thought was formed and new truth communicated by Providence to mankind. In the course of his travels which lasted several years he visited successively Austria Hungary Italy Switzerland the Rhine Flanders Holland and England--in the latter of which he lived two years. During these varied travels he made notes on all the countries which he visited which contributed largely to the great stock of political information which he possessed. These notes are still extant; but unfortunately not in such a state of maturity as to admit of publication. On his return to France which took place in 1732 he retired to his native chateau of La Brede and commenced in good earnest the great business of his life. The fruit of his studies and reflections appeared in the _Considerations sur les Causes de la Grandeur et de la Décadence des Romains_ which was published in 1732. Great and original as this work--the most perfect of all his compositions--was it did not give vent to the whole ideas which filled his capacious mind. Rome great as it was was but a single state; it was the comparison with other states the development of the general principles which run through the jurisprudence and institutions of all nations which occupied his thoughts. The success which attended his essay on the institutions and progress of a single people encouraged him to enlarge his views and extend his labours. He came to embrace the whole known world civilized and uncivilized in his plan; and after fourteen years of assiduous labours and toil the immortal "Spirit of Laws" appeared. The history of Montesquieu's mind during the progress of this great work is singularly curious and interesting. At times he wrote to his friends that his great work advanced "à pas de géant;" at others he was depressed by the slow progress which it made and overwhelmed by the prodigious mass of materials which required to be worked into its composition. So distrustful was he of its success even after the vast labour he had employed in its composition that he sent his manuscript before publication to a friend on whose judgment he could rely--Helvetius. That friend notwithstanding all his penetration was so mistaken in his reckoning that he conceived the most serious disquietude as to the ruin of Montesquieu's reputation by the publication of such a work. Such was his alarm that he did not venture to write to the author on the subject but gave the manuscript to another critic Saurin the author of a work entitled _Spartacus_ long since extinct who passed the same judgment upon it. Both concurred in thinking that the reputation of Montesquieu would be entirely ruined by the publication of the new manuscript; the brilliant author of the semi-voluptuous semi-infidel _Lettres Persanes_ would sink into a mere Legist a dull commentator on pandects and statutes if he published the _Esprit des Loix_ "That " said Helvetius "is what afflicts me for him and for humanity which he was so well qualified to have served." It was agreed between them that Helvetius should write to Montesquieu to give him an account of their joint opinion that he should not give the work to the world in its present state. Saurin with some reason was afraid that Montesquieu would be hurt at their communication; but Helvetius wrote to him--"Be not uneasy; he is not hurt at our advice; he loves frankness in his friends. He is willing to bear with discussions but answers only by sallies and rarely changes his opinions. I have not given him ours from any idea that he would either change his conduct or modify his preconceived ideas but from a sense of the duty of sincerity cost what it will with friends. When the light of truth shall have dispelled the illusions of self-love he will at least not be able to reproach us with having been less indulgent than the public." Montesquieu however was not discouraged. He sent his manuscript to the press with hardly any alteration and took for his motto _Prolem sine matre creatam_;[1] in allusion to the originality of his conception and the total want of any previous model on which it had been formed. The work appeared in the month of July 1748; and its success so far as the sale went was prodigious. Before two years had elapsed it had gone through twenty-two editions and been translated into most of the European languages. This early success rare in works of profound and original thought showed that though it was in advance of the age it was but a little in advance; and that it had struck a key which was ready to vibrate in the national mind. Like all distinguished works if it was much read and admired by some it was as keenly criticized and cut to pieces by others. Madame de Deffand said it was not the _Esprit des Loix_ he had written but _Esprit sur les Loix_. This expression made a great noise; it had a certain degree of truth just enough when coupled with epigrammatic brevity to make the fortune of the sayer. Encouraged by its success the enemies of original genius ever ready to assail it united their forces and Montesquieu was soon the object of repeated and envenomed attacks. It was said that to establish certain favourite theories he availed himself of the testimony of travellers obscure and of doubtful credit; that he leapt too rapidly from particulars to general conclusions; that he ascribed to the influence of climate and physical laws what was in fact the result of moral or political causes; that he had split the same subject into small chapters so confusedly arranged that there was no order or system in the work; that it was still incomplete and wanted the master-hand which was to put it together; and that it resembled the detached pieces of a mosaic pavement each of which is fair or brilliant in itself but which have no meaning or expression till disposed by the taste and skill of the artist. There was some truth in all these criticisms; it is rare that it is otherwise with the reproaches made against a work of original thought. Envy generally discovers a blot to hit. Malignity is seldom at a loss for some blemish to point out. It is by exaggerating slight defects and preserving silence on great merits that literary jealousy ever tries to work out its wretched spite. The wisdom of an author is not to resent or overlook but in silence to profit by such sallies; converting thus the industry and envy of his enemies into a source of advantage to himself. Montesquieu in pursuance of these principles passed over in silence the malignant attacks of a herd of critics whose works are now buried in the charnel-house of time but who strove with all the fury of envy and disappointment to extinguish his rising fame. When pressed by some of his friends to answer some of these attacks he replied--"It is unnecessary; I am sufficiently avenged on some by the neglect of the public on others by its indignation." The only instance in which he deviated from this wise resolution was in replying to the attacks of an anonymous critic who in a Journal entitled the _Nouvelles Ecclesiastiques_ had represented him as an atheist. In his _Lettres Persanes_ though he had never assailed the great principles of his religion he had in his sallies against the Jesuits gone far to warrant the belief that he was inclined to do so; and had already done enough in the estimation of the tyrannical and bigoted ecclesiastics who at that period ruled the Church of France to warrant his being included in the class of infidel writers. But his mind chastened by years enlightened by travelling and reflection had come to cast off these prejudices of his age and country the necessary result of the Romish tyranny by which it had been oppressed but unworthy of an intellect of such grasp and candour. In the Protestant countries of Europe particularly Holland and England he had seen the working of Christianity detached from the rigid despotism by which the Church of Rome fetters belief and the well-conceived appliances by which it stimulates imagination and opens a refuge for frailty. Impressed with the new ideas thus awakened in his mind he had in his _Esprit des Loix_ pronounced a studious and sincere eulogium on Christianity; recommending it not only as the most perfect of all systems of religious belief but as the only secure basis of social order and improvement. It was material to correct the impression partly just partly erroneous which his earlier and more indiscreet writings had produced; and with this view he wrote and published his _Defence de l' Esprit des Loix_. This little piece is a model of just and candid reasoning accompanied with a refined and delicate vein of ridicule which disarmed opposition without giving ground for resentment. He congratulated himself on the fine satire with which he had overthrown his enemies.--"What pleases me in my Defence is not so much " said he "to have floored the Ecclesiastics as to have let them fall so gently." Posterity will find a more valuable charm in this little production; it is that the author in it has unconsciously painted himself. His contemporaries have recorded that in reading it they could believe they heard the writer speak; and this proves that his talents in conversation had been equal to those he displayed in writing--a combination very rare in persons of the highest class in literature. The fame of Montesquieu great as it was in his own country was even greater in foreign ones. In Great Britain in particular the _Esprit des Loix_ early acquired a prodigious reputation. It was read and admired by all persons of thought and education. This was partly the consequence of England being so much in advance of France in the career of liberty--alike in matters civil and ecclesiastical. The new ideas hardy thoughts and original conceptions of the great work met with a ready reception and cordial admiration in the land of freedom and the Reformation--in the country where meditation had so long been turned to political subjects contemplation to religious truth. But another cause of lasting influence also contributed to the same effect. Original genius is ever more readily and willingly admired in foreign states than its own: a prophet has no honour in his own country. He interferes too much with existing influences or reputations. To foreigners he is more remote--more like a dead man. Human vanity is less hurt by his elevation. The latter years of Montesquieu's life were spent almost entirely in retirement at his paternal chateau of La Brede varied occasionally by visits to the great world at Paris. He was occupied in agriculture and gardening--tenacious of his seignorial rights but indulgent to the last degree to his tenantry by whom he was adored. Never was exemplified in a more remarkable manner the soothing influence of the recollections of a well-spent life on the felicity of its later years or the fountains of happiness which may be opened in the breast itself from the calm serenity of conscious power and great achievement. He conversed much with the farmers and peasants on his estate whose houses he frequently entered and whose convivialities on occasion of a marriage or a birth he seldom failed to attend. He often preferred their conversation to that of persons their superiors in rank or information--"for " said he "they are not learned enough to enter into argument; they only tell you what they know which frequently you do not know yourself." Though he lived with the great when in Paris partly from necessity partly from inclination yet their society was noways necessary to his happiness. He flew as soon as he could from their brilliant assemblies to the retirement of his estate where he found with joy philosophy books and repose. Surrounded by the people of the country in their hours of leisure after having studied man in the intercourse of the world and the history of nations he studied it in those simple minds which nature alone had taught; and he found something to learn there. He conversed cheerfully with them; like Socrates he drew out their talents and information; he appeared to take as much pleasure in their conversation as in that of the brilliant circles by which he was courted in the capital; he terminated their disputes by his wisdom assuaged their sufferings by his beneficence. In society he was uniformly affable cheerful and considerate. His conversation was light agreeable and instructive abounding with anecdotes of the great number of eminent men with whom he had lived. Like his style in writing it was brief _tranchant_ and epigrammatic full of wit and observation but without a particle of bitterness or satire. In common with all men of the highest class of intellect he was totally devoid of envy or jealousy. None more readily applauded genius or merit in others or was more desirous on all occasions to bring it forward and give it the due reward. No one recounted anecdotes with more vivacity a happier effect or less tedium. He knew that the close of all such narratives contains in general all that is pleasing in them; and therefore he hastened to arrive at it before the patience of his hearers could be exhausted. He had a perfect horror at long stories. He was frequently absent and remained in society for some time wrapt in thought without speaking; but never failed on such occasions to make amends by some unexpected remark or anecdote which revived the languishing conversation. His mind was full: no subject could be mentioned on which he was not informed; but he never brought his knowledge ostentatiously forward and sought rather to draw out those around him and lead the conversation so as to make others shine than to do so himself. He was regular and methodical in his life; and this arose not merely from his character and disposition but the order he had prescribed to himself in his studies. Though capable of long-continued effort and profound meditation he never exhausted his strength; he uniformly changed the subject of his labour or book to some recreation before feeling the sensation of fatigue. Temperate in his habits serene and unruffled in his mind he enjoyed a much larger share of happiness than falls to the lot of most men. He was fortunately married; had affectionate children whose kindness and attentions solaced his declining years; and his remarkable prudence and economy not only preserved him from those pecuniary embarrassments so common to men of genius but enabled him frequently to indulge the benevolence of his disposition by splendid acts of generosity. He frequently said that he had never experienced a chagrin in life which an hour's reading did not dissipate. In his later years when his eyesight was affected he depended chiefly on listening to reading aloud which was done alternately by his secretary and one of his daughters. He had every thing which could make life happy; an ample fortune affectionate family fame never contested the consciousness of great powers nobly applied--"I have never through life " said he in his old age "had a chagrin still less an hour of ennui. I waken in the morning with a secret pleasure at beholding the light. I gaze upon it with species of ravishment. All the day I am content. In the evening when I retire to rest I fall into a sort of reverie which prevents the effort of thought and I pass the night without once waking." No man ever possessed a higher sense of the dignity of intellectual power of its great and glorious mission of its superiority to all the world calls great and of the consequent jealousy and aversion with which it is sure to be regarded by the depositaries of political authority. He was neglected by them; he knew it and expected it; it never gave him a moment's chagrin. "He was not insensible " says D'Alembert "to glory; but he had no desire to win but by deserving it. Never did he attempt to enhance his reputation by the underhand devices and secret machinations by which second-rate men so often strive to sustain their literary fortunes. Worthy of every eloge and of every recompense he asked nothing and was noways surprised at being forgot. But he had courage enough in critical circumstances to solicit the protection at court of men of letters persecuted and unfortunate and he obtained their restoration to favour." What a picture of the first man of his age living in retirement asking nothing noways surprised at being forgot! He knew human nature well who acted thus after writing the _Esprit des Loix_. Power loves talent as long as it serves itself when it is useful but manageable; it hates it when it becomes its instructor. Self-love is gratified by the subservience of genius in the first case; it is mortified by its superiority in the last. But this honoured and happy life was drawing to a close. Shortly after the publication of the _Esprit des Loix_ the strength of Montesquieu rapidly declined; it seemed as if nature had been exhausted by that great production. "I had intended " said he in his journal "to give more extent and depth to some parts of the _Esprit des Loix_ but I have become incapable of it. Reading has weakened my eyes; and it seems as if the little light that still remains to them is but the dawn of the day when they will close for ever." His anticipations were not long of being carried into effect. In February 1755 he was seized with an inflammatory fever when on a visit at Paris. The utmost care and attention was bestowed on him by a number of friends especially the Duc de Nivernois and the Duchesse d'Aiguillon two of his oldest friends; but he sunk under the malady at the end of thirteen days. The sweetness of his temper and serenity of his disposition never deserted him during this illness. From the first he was aware of its dangerous nature but not a groan a complaint or a murmur ever escaped his lips. The Jesuits made strenuous endeavours to get possession of him during his last moments; but though strongly impressed with religions principle he resisted all their efforts to extract from him a declaration in favour of their peculiar tenets. "I have always respected religion " said he; "the morality of the Gospel is the noblest gift ever bestowed by God on man." The Jesuits strenuously urged him to put into their hands a corrected copy of the _Lettres Persanes_ in which he had expunged the passages having an irreligious tendency but he refused to give it to them; but he gave the copy to the Duchesse d'Aiguillon and Madame Dupré de St Maur who were in the apartment with instructions for its publication saying "I will sacrifice every thing to religion but nothing to the Jesuits." Shortly after he received extreme unction from the hands of the curé of the parish. "Sir " said the priest "you now feel how great is God." "Yes " he replied "and how little man." These were his last words. He died on the 10th of February 1755. Montesquieu left a great number of manuscripts and notes; but they were in so incomplete a state that a few detached fragments only have been deemed fit for publication. He had written a journal of his travels and in particular a set of "Notes on England " which would have been of much value had they been worked up to a mature form; but death interrupted him when he was only in the commencement of that great undertaking. He had begun a history of France under Louis XI. which is still extant though very little progress was made in the work. The introduction containing a sketch of the state of Europe at that period is said to equal the most brilliant picture left by his immortal hand. It is written in the terse epigrammatic style which is so characteristic of its author; and a few striking expressions preserved by those who have had access to the manuscript will convey an idea of what the work would have been. "He saw only " said he "in the commencement of his reign the commencement of vengeance." Terminating a parallel of Louis XI. and Richelieu which he drew much to the advantage of the latter he observed "He made the monarch play the second part in the monarchy but the first in Europe--he lowered the king but he raised the Kingdom." These and similar expressions are in Montesquieu's peculiar and nervous style and they prove that the work would have contained if completed many brilliant passages; but they do not warrant the conclusion that the history itself would have been of much value. There is nothing more dangerous to an historian than great powers of epigrammatic expression; it almost inevitably leads to the sacrifice of truth and candour to point and antithesis. It is well for Tacitus that we have not the other side of his story recounted by a writer of equal power but less party spirit and force of expression. In truth it is probable the world has not lost much by Montesquieu's numerous unpublished manuscripts having been left in an incomplete state. There is no end to the writing of romances or the annals of human events but there is a very early limit to the production of original ideas even to the greatest intellects; to Plato Bacon Newton Smith or Montesquieu they are given only in a limited number. Hence their frequent repetition of the same thoughts when their writings become voluminous. Montesquieu has done enough; his mission to man has been amply fulfilled. In common with other men whose thoughts have made a great and wide-spread impression on mankind the originality and value of Montesquieu's c

nceptions cannot be rightly appreciated by subsequent ages. That is the consequence of their very originality and importance. They have sunk so deep and spread so far among mankind that they have become common and almost trite. Like the expressions of Shakspeare Gray or Milton they have become household words; on reading his works we are astonished to find how vast a proportion of our habitual thoughts and expressions have sprung from that source. This however far from being a reproach to an author is his highest commendation; it demonstrates at once the impression his thoughts have made on mankind. If we would discover the step a great man has made we must recur to the authors in the same line who have preceded him and then the change appears great indeed. The highest praise which can be bestowed on an author of original thought is to say that his ideas were unknown to the authors who preceded trite with those who followed him. The great characteristic of Montesquieu's thoughts is the tracing the operation of general and lasting causes on human affairs. Before his time the march of political or social events was ascribed by divines to the immediate and direct agency of the Deity guiding human actions as a general moves an army; by men of the world to chance or the mastering influence of individual energy and talent. Bossuet may be considered as the most eminent of the former class. Voltaire brought the doctrines of the latter to their highest perfection. In opposition to both Montesquieu strenuously asserted the operation of general laws emanating doubtless originally from the institutions of the Deity and the adaptation of the human mind to the circumstances in which man is placed in society but acting at subsequent periods through the instrumentality of free agents and of permanent and lasting operation in all ages of the world. Machiavel had frequently got sight of this sublime theory in his political writings; and in his _Discorsi_ on Roman History many of the most profound observations ever made by man on the working of the human mind under free institutions and of the corresponding effects of similar principles of action in the republics of antiquity and of those of Italy in modern times are to be found. But it was Montesquieu who first carried out the doctrine to its full extent and traced its operation through an infinity of historical events and political institutions. It is to the success with which he has done this and the combined philosophical depth and grasp of details which his writings exhibit that his colossal reputation has been owing. He had prodigious acquaintance with individual facts united to the power of classifying them under their proper heads and deducing from them their general and common principles. Like the steam-engine he could by turns turn a thread round a spindle and elevate a seventy-four in the air. He was the Kepler of science; like the immortal German he had made eighty thousand observations in the social world; but like him he could deduce the few laws of national advance or decline from the regular irregularity of their motion. The expression _Esprit des Loix_ selected as the title of Montesquieu's great work was not happily chosen. What he meant was not the _Spirit of Laws_ but the causes from which laws have arisen; the ""_Leges Legum_ "" as Cicero said to which they were owing and from which they had sprung. He ascribed very little influence to human institutions in moulding the character or determining the felicity of man. On the contrary he thought that these institutions were in general an effect not a cause. He conceived that they arose in every country from something peculiar in the race from which the nature descended or the climate employments or mode of earning subsistence to which it was chained in subsequent times by the physical circumstance in which it was placed. A certain type or character was imprinted on every people either by the ineradicable influence of blood which descends to the remotest generations or the not less irremovable effect of external and physical circumstances which attaches to them through all ages. It was this blood and those circumstances which formed the national character and through it in the course of generations moulded the national customs and institutions. Such customs and institutions were those which having been framed by necessity or the dictates of expedience according to the circumstances in which each people were placed were best adapted to their temper and situation. True wisdom consisted not in altering but following out the spirit of existing laws and customs; and in his own words--""No nation ever yet rose to lasting greatness but from institutions in conformity to its spirit."" No calamities were so great or irremediable as those which arose from disregarding the separate characters stamped on the different races and nations of men by the hand of the Almighty or seeking to force upon one people or one race the institutions which have arisen among and are adapted to another. Such are the fundamental principles which run through Montesquieu's writings and to the elucidation of which he devoted the fifteen best years of his life. It will readily be perceived that they are entirely at variance with the whole doctrines of the French philosophers of the latter part of the eighteenth century and which were practically enforced and carried into effect in their great Revolution. With them institutions were every thing; national character descent employment or physical circumstances nothing. All mankind would be the same if they only enjoyed the same liberty laws and institutions. The differences observable among them were entirely the result of the different governments forced upon men in various stages of their progress by the tyranny of kings the force of conquest or the machinations of priests. One frame of institutions one code of laws one set of government maxims were adapted for all the world and if practically acted upon would every where produce the same pure and upright character in the people. Vice and wickedness were the hateful effect of aristocratic pride kingly lusts or sacerdotal delusion; the human heart was naturally innocent and bent only upon virtue; when the debasing influence of these corrupters of men was removed it would universally resume its natural direction. Hence the maxim of Robespierre--""Le peuple est _toujours bon_ le magistrat toujours corruptible."" Hence the readiness with which the constitution-mongers at Paris set themselves to prepare skeletons of government for all nations and their universal identity with that originally cast during the fervour of the Revolution for the Great Nation. Hence also it may be added their experienced evils short duration and universal sweeping away within a few years before the accumulated suffering and aroused indignation of mankind. It was owing to this fundamental variance between the doctrines of Montesquieu and those of the greater part of his contemporaries and nearly the whole generation which succeeded him that the comparative obscurity of his fame after his death and the neglect which his writings for long experienced in France are to be ascribed. When we contemplate the profound nature of his thoughts the happy terseness and epigrammatic force of his expressions and the great early fame which his writings acquired nothing appears more extraordinary than the subsequent neglect into which for above half a century after his death he fell.[2] Voltaire Rousseau Helvetius Condorcet Turgot and the Encyclopédists were then at the acme of their reputation; and their doctrines as to the natural innocence of man and the universal moulding of human character by political institutions not of political institutions by human character were too much at variance with Montesquieu's deductions and conclusions to admit of their coexisting together. The experience of the Revolution both abroad and at home however erelong spread a doubt among many thinking men whether these doctrines were in reality as well founded as they were universally represented to be by the philosophers of the preceding age. Napoleon who was thoroughly convinced of their erroneous nature had a high admiration for Montesquieu and frequently quoted his sentiments. But still the opposite set of opinions diffused over the world with the tricolor flag maintain their ground with the great majority even of well-informed men at least in all republican states and constitutional monarchies. The policy of England in encouraging the revolutions of Belgium Portugal Spain and the South American republics has for the last thirty years been mainly founded on the principle that institutions similar to those of Britain may with safety be transferred to other states and that it is among them alone that we are to look for durable alliances or cordial support. The wretched fate of all the countries strangers to the Anglo-Saxon blood who have been cursed with these alien constitutions whether in the Spanish or Italian Peninsulas or the South American states--the jealous spirit and frequent undisguised hostility of America--the total failure of English institutions in Ireland have had no effect with the great majority of men in this country in rooting out these fatal errors. More than one generation it is apparent must descend to their graves before they are fairly expelled from general thought by experience and suffering. So obstinately do men cling to doctrines which are flattering to human vanity in opposition alike to the dictates of wisdom and the lessons of experience; and so true in all ages is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic church that pride is the last sin which can be conquered in the human heart. One remarkable instance will illustrate the manner in which Montesquieu supported the opposite principles that institutions are moulded by the character and circumstances of nations not the moulders of them. It is well known that primogeniture though neither the law of succession in the Roman empire nor originally of the nations of Northern Europe in whom the _allodial_ customs at first generally prevailed came to be universally introduced with the feudal system and the thorough establishment of a military aristocracy in every country of Europe. But strange to say there are some places where the rule is just the reverse and the _youngest_ son succeeds to the whole movable estate of the father as is still the custom of some boroughs in England.[3] Montesquieu ascribes and apparently with reason these opposite rules of succession to a similar feeling of expedience and necessity in the different circumstances in which the same race of Northmen were placed in different periods of their progress. The succession of the youngest son to the father's estate was the bequest of the patriarchal ages when the youngest son generally remained last at home with his aged parent his elder brothers having previously hived off with their herds and flocks. He therefore naturally succeeded to the movables of which he was alone in possession jointly with his father at the latter's death. On the other hand the descent of the whole landed estate to the eldest son to the exclusion of his younger brothers and sisters was naturally suggested by the settlement of a brave and martial race of conquerors in extensive districts gained by their valour and which could be maintained only in the lands they had won by the sword. To divide the estate in such circumstances of peril was to expose it to certain destruction; unity of operation in all its forms one head one castle was as indispensable as one general to an army or one sovereign to a kingdom. The old maxim ""divide et impera "" was universally felt to be of fearful application. Empires duchies principalities earldoms baronies private estates could alone be preserved entire amidst the general hostility with which all were surrounded by descending to a single occupant. That occupant was naturally the eldest son the first-born of the family the first who arrived at man's estate and the most capable on that account to render the necessary protection to its various members and dependants. Hence the general establishment of the law of primogeniture in all the countries of Europe. And for a similar reason when the necessity which at first occasioned this general deviation from the feelings of equal affection to offspring was removed by the establishment of regular government and general security and the spread of commerce with the necessity of capital to fit out sons and daughters had been generally felt this custom was silently abrogated at least in the commercial and middle classes and a division of the succession whether in land or money into nearly equal parts very generally took place. It may readily be inferred from these observations that the doctrines of Montesquieu as to the moulding of institutions by external circumstances and the character of nations not of the character of nations by institutions and forms of government is one of the very highest importance not merely to speculative philosophers but practical statesmen. In truth it is the question of questions; the one thing needful to be understood both by the leaders of thought and the rulers of men. Unless correct and rational views are entertained on this subject internal legislation will be perpetually at fault external policy in a false direction. Reform will degenerate into revolution conquest into desolation. The greatest calamities both social and foreign recorded in the history of the last half century have arisen from a neglect of the maxims of Montesquieu as to the indelible influence of race and external circumstances on human character and the adoption in their stead of the doctrines of Voltaire and Rousseau on the paramount influence of political institutions and general education on human felicity. Our policy both social and foreign is still mainly founded on the latter basis. If Montesquieu's principles as to no nation ever arriving at durable greatness but by institutions in harmony with its spirit and origin had been generally adopted the French Revolution which originated in the Anglo and American mania and the desire to transplant English institutions into the soil of France would never have taken place. Had the same views prevailed in the British Cabinet the iniquitous support of the revolt of the South American colonies in 1821 and 1822 and the insidious encouragement of the ruinous revolutions of Spain and Portugal during the Carlist war would not have stained the honour of England and ruined the prospects of the Peninsula. Had they pervaded the British community the two fatal mistakes of policy in our time the sudden emancipation of the negro slaves in the West Indies and the unloosing all the bonds of government in Ireland by the transplantation of Anglo-Saxon institutions and the tempered freedom of England into the midst of the Celtic blood and semi-barbarous passions of Ireland would never have been committed. The great question at issue in short between Montesquieu and the Encyclopédists as to whether man is moulded by institutions or institutions by man is the fundamental question not only speculative but practical of the age; and without correct ideas on which internal legislation and external policy are equally certain to be precipitated into error and benevolence itself to become the parent of unbounded calamities. And yet if the matter be considered dispassionately and without the disturbing influence of human pride and democratic ambition which have obscured the visions of three generations of the ablest men in Europe it seems extraordinary how any doubt could ever have been entertained on the subject. What are laws and institutions but the work of men the concentration of the national will in times past or at the present moment? If so how _could_ they have arisen but from the will of the people? It is only removing the difficulty a step further back to say as has so often been done that they were imposed not by the will of the nation but by the power of the tyrants who had oppressed or the priests who had deluded it. For who were these tyrants or these priests? Not one in twenty thousand to the whole community. If they were empowered and enabled to impose arbitrary or debasing institutions it must have been because the immense majority devolved to them the task; because conscious of inability to govern themselves or wanting the inclination to do so they willingly resigned themselves to the guidance and direction of others. The Czar at St. Petersburg the Sultaun at Constantinople the Emperor at Pekin reign just as much by the national will and in a manner just as conformable to the national wish as the Consuls of Rome the Committee of Public Salvation at Paris or the present constitutional Monarchs of France or England. The proof of this is that when the people are dissatisfied with their administration or displeased with the sovereign they have no difficulty in dispatching him. The twisting of a sash round the neck in Russia the bowstring in Constantinople or Ispahan are very effectual monitors--fully as much so as a hostile Parliamentary majority in the house of Commons or Chamber of Deputies. In a word government in every country being conducted by the few over the many by the hundreds over the hundred thousands it is altogether impossible that the administration or institutions can be for any length of time at variance with the general will; because if it was it would not be submitted to. It may be indeed despotic and tyrannical in the highest degree but that is no indication that it is contrary to the general will; it is only an indication that the general will is to be slaves--no unusual occurrence among men. This fundamental principle of Montesquieu as to the perpetual and ineradicable influence of race climate and physical circumstances in forming national character and moulding national institutions is unquestionably the true doctrine on the subject though probably several generations must pass away and an incalculable amount of suffering be endured by mankind before it is generally admitted. Coupled with the cardinal point of the Christian faith the inherent and _universal_ corruption of the human heart it forms the only foundation of a salutary or durable government. Decisive proof of this may be found in the fact that the revolutionary party all the world over maintain directly the reverse; viz. that free political institutions and general education are all in all; and that if established the native virtue of the human heart affords a sufficient guarantee for general happiness. Montesquieu's principles lead to the conclusion that all reform and amelioration of existing institutions to be either durable or beneficial must be moulded on the old precedents and deviate as little as may be and that only from obvious necessity or expedience from them. They utterly repudiate all transplantation of constitutions or forcing upon one people the institutions or privileges of another. They point to experience as the great and only sure guide in social or political change and for the obvious reason that it alone can tell what has been found to be suitable to the circumstances and adapted to the character and wants of the nation among whom it has taken place. It is not that our ancestors were in the least wiser than we are; doubtless they did many foolish things as we do. It is that time has consigned their foolish things whether laws or measures to the grave; and nothing has descended to our time but those institutions which have been found to be beneficial in their tendency. The portions of our present legislation which are suitable to the country will in like manner descend to posterity and the folly and absurdity will in a few generations be heard of no more. It has been already remarked that the _Grandeur et Décadence des Romains_ is a more complete and in some respects profound work than the _Esprit des Loix_. A few quotations will justify it is thought this high eulogium-- ""The circumstance of all others which contributed most to the _ultimate_ greatness of Rome was the long-continued wars in which its people were early involved. The Italian people had no machines for conducting sieges; and in addition to this as the soldiers every where served without pay it was impossible to retain them long before a fortified town; thus few of their wars were decisive. They fought for the pillage of a camp or the booty of the fields after which victors and vanquished retired alike into their respective cities. It was this circumstance which occasioned the long resistance of the Italian cities and at the same time the obstinacy of the Romans in their endeavours to subjugate them; it was that which gave them victories which did not enervate and conquests which left them their poverty. Had they rapidly conquered the neighbouring cities they would have arrived at their decline before the days of Pyrrhus of the Gauls and of Hannibal; and following the destiny of all the nations in the world they would _too quickly_ have gone through the transition from poverty to riches and from riches to corruption.""--C. 1. What a subject for reflection is presented in this single paragraph! Rome without any knowledge of siege equipage thrown in the midst of the Italian states bristling with strongholds; and slowly learning during centuries of indecisive and often calamitous contests that military art by which she was afterwards to subdue the world! It was in like manner in the long bloody and nearly balanced contests of the Grecian republics with each other that the discipline was learned which gave Alexander and the Macedonian phalanx the empire of Asia; and in the protracted struggles of the Anglo-Saxons first with each other in the Heptarchy and then with the Danes and Normans in defence of their coasts that the foundation was laid of the energy and perseverance which have given the British race their present eminence and dominion among men. ""It has been often observed "" says Montesquieu ""that our armies generally melt away under the fatigue of the soldiers while those of the Romans never failed to preserve their health by it. The reason is that their fatigues were _continued_; whereas our soldiers are destroyed by passing from a life of almost total inactivity to one of vehement exertion--the thing of all others most destructive to health. Not only were the Roman soldiers accustomed during war to incessant marching and fortifying of the camps but in peace they were daily trained to the same active habits. They were all habituated to the military step that is to go twenty miles and sometimes twenty-four in five hours. They did this bearing burdens of sixty pounds. They were daily trained to run and leap with their whole equipment on; in their ordinary drills the swords javelins and arrows were of a weight double of that used in war and the exercises were continued.""--C. 2. There can be no doubt that this passage both explains much of the astonishing conquests of the Roman legions and furnishes ample subject for reflection to a modern observer. The constant employment of these troops in the construction of great public works as highways bridges harbours or the like was at once the best security for the health of the soldiers and the circumstance of all others which rendered their maintenance tolerable to the people. If we examine the inscriptions found in all parts of the world where Roman remains are to be met with we shall find that they were raised by the hands of the legions. It was their persevering and incessant toil which formed the magnificent highways which emanating from the Roman Forum extended to the furthest extremity of the empire. The prodigious labour required for these great undertakings; the vast bridges and viaducts which required to be constructed; the mountains to be levelled; morasses and valleys to be filled up habituated the legionary soldiers to such an amount of daily labour that their engaging in the fatigues of a campaign was felt rather as a recreation than a burden. Hence the dreadful sickness which in modern armies invariably attends the commencement of a campaign and in general halves its numerical strength before a sword has been drawn was for the most part unknown and hence too the extraordinary achievements performed by small bodies of these iron veterans. How great the difference in modern times where the naval and military forces are every where kept up during peace in almost total idleness; and the consequence is that they are at once an eyesore to the citizens whose substance they consume in what is deemed useless ostentation and are deprived of half their numerical strength and more than half their efficiency on first engaging in the fatigues of real warfare. No province hails the arrival of a modern division of troops no seaport longs for the presence of a man-of-war as the signal for the commencement of great and beneficent pacific undertakings as was the case in the Roman empire. Of what incalculable use might the British navy be if even a part of it was employed in transporting the hundred thousand colonists who annually seek in our distant possessions or in the American States that profitable market for their industry which they cannot find amidst our crowded manufactories at home? And this is an instance of the manner in which the reflections of Montesquieu though made in reference only to the Roman empire are in truth applicable to all ages and countries; as the parables in the Gospels though delivered only to the fishermen of Judea contain the rules of conduct for the human race to the end of the world. Regarding the comparative causes of corruption in a military and commercial state Montesquieu makes the following observation. Let him that feels it not applicable to this nation and ourselves throw the first stone:-- ""Carthage having become richer than Rome was also more corrupted. For this reason while at Rome public employments were chiefly awarded to ability and virtue and conferred no advantage but a greater share of fatigues to be endured and dangers incurred every thing which the public had to bestow was sold at Carthage and every service rendered by individuals was paid by the state. The tyranny of a prince does not bring a despotic state nearer its ruin than indifference to the public good does a republic. The advantage of a free state consists in this that its revenues are in general better administered; and even where this is not the case it has at first the advantage of not being governed by court favourites. But on the other hand the corrupting power in a democracy when once brought into action erelong becomes more dissolving than in a despotism; for instead of paying court merely to the friends and relations of the prince it becomes necessary to provide for the friends and relations of the multitude who have a share in political power. All is then lost. The laws are eluded in a more dangerous manner than by the violence of a despot; for they are so by the interests of the changing many not the passions of one whose position at the head of the state being fixed and unchangeable gives him a lasting interest in its preservation.""--C. 4. How many reflections does this passage written in France above a century ago awaken in the breast of a British citizen at this time!--""Si monumentum quæris circumspice!"" So true it is that real political truth belongs to no age or locality--""non alia Romæ alia Athenis;"" it is of eternal application and is destined to receive confirmation from the experience of men and the lessons of history to the end of the world. ""Powers "" says Montesquieu ""which owe their greatness to commerce may exist long in mediocrity but their grandeur can never be of long duration. The reason is that they rise to greatness by little and little without any one being aware of their growth as they have done nothing which attracts attention awakens alarm or indicates their power. But when it has risen to that point that no one can avoid seeing it all the surrounding nations secretly endeavour to deprive the great commercial state of advantages which they all envy and which have taken them as it were by surprise.""--C. 4. Few persons who contemplate the present state of the British empire its astonishing rise to greatness in the space of less than a century--the general it may be said universal jealousy with which it is regarded and the perilous pinnacle on which it now stands will deny the justice of this observation. May the remark as to the short duration of power founded on such a basis not receive an additional and even more memorable confirmation in ourselves! But one thing is perfectly clear. This remark indicates the impossibility of conciliating the adjoining and poorer states while our commercial superiority continues and thus strikes at the very foundation of the reciprocity system on which our whole commercial policy for the last quarter of a century has been founded. That system proceeds on the principle that by opening to the adjoining states a fair communication of advantages it is in the power of a great commercial state not only to conciliate their good-will but obtain with them a great and mutually beneficial mercantile intercourse. Montesquieu's observation points to the undying and universal jealousy by its neighbours with which such a power is ever surrounded and the futility of all attempts while its superiority exists to avert their mercantile hostility or preserve with them any considerable commercial traffic. Which is the better option let the hedge of hostile tariffs with which after boundless concessions to purchase commercial good-will we are surrounded in every direction give the answer. On the comparative value of infantry and cavalry in war Montesquieu though no professional soldier makes the following observation on which those who are so would do well to ponder:-- ""The Carthaginian cavalry was superior to that of the Romans for two reasons. One was that the Numidian and Spanish horses were better than those of Italy; the other that the Roman cavalry was ill armed; for Polybius tells us that it was not till they had carried on war in Greece that they changed their manner of equipping that limb of military strength. In the first Punic war Regulus was beat as soon as the Carthaginians made choice of plains for combat where their cavalry could act to advantage; in the second Hannibal owed to the Numidian horse his principal victories. It was not till whole corps of them began to go over to the Romans in Italy that the latter began to breathe. Scipio having conquered Spain and contracted an alliance with Masinissa deprived the Carthaginians of that advantage. He did more he gained it for himself. It was the Numidian cavalry which gained the battle of Zama and terminated the war in favour of the Romans.""--C. 4. It is impossible to read the admirable account of Hannibal's campaign in the last volume of Arnold's _History of Rome_ without perceiving that this observation as to the decisive effect of the Numidian cavalry upon the fortunes of the war in first giving victory to the Carthaginians when they were entirely on their side and gradually and at length decisively restoring it to that of the Romans when they were won over to their eagles is entirely well-founded. Napoleon was of the same opinion and has repeatedly expressed it in various parts of his works. ""Give me "" said that great man ""the French infantry and the Mameluke horse and I will conquer the world."" It was his constant affirmation that cavalry equally brave and skillfully led should always other things being equal overthrow infantry; and that the contrary opinion which generally prevails was owing to horse considered as the sole strength of war during the feudal ages having been unduly decried since the invention of fire-arms. All the world knows the immense use he made of his heavy cavalry in all his campaigns; how often in circumstances the most critical it chained victory to his standards; how nearly it re-established his affairs and replaced the imperial crown upon his head on the field of Waterloo. How striking a proof of human sagacity that the philosophic sage in the early part of the seventeenth century should have divined a truth which the researches of the historian and the exploits of the conqueror were to confirm in the middle of the eighteenth! ""Those who are governed by a king "" says Montesquieu ""are less tormented by envy and jealousy than tho

e who live under an hereditary aristocracy. The prince is so far distant from his subjects that he is rarely seen by them; he is so far above them that nothing in his situation can mortify his self-love. But the nobles who govern in an aristocracy are under the eyes of all and they are not so elevated but that odious comparisons are made without ceasing. Thus in all ages we have seen the people detest their senators though they frequently love their king. Republics where birth confers no title to power are in that respect in a better situation than aristocracies; for the people feel less jealousy of an authority which they give to whom they please and take from whom they incline.""--C. 8. How many confirmations of this remark have the history of France during the Revolution and of England during the Reform mania afforded! And this affords an illustration of a truth which the more history is studied will be rendered more apparent viz. that the principles which lie at the bottom of the greatest changes in the political world and produce the most devastating evils to society are in reality the same which we see acting every day around us in common life. In the jealousies of the tea-table the animosities of the market-place the envy of trade we may see the passions working which infused into a whole people tear society in pieces. It is only supposing the same malevolent or selfish desires working in every breast directed against one object and rendered irresistible from that very multiplication and we have the envy of the coterie transformed into the fury of revolution. Whoever will closely observe the working of that mainspring of human actions--selfishness--on the society whether in a village a city a country or a metropolis in which he resides will have no difficulty in discerning the real but secret and therefore unobserved spring of the greatest changes that ever occur in the political and social world. Voltaire said the factions at Geneva were storms in a teacup; if any man will study the motion of water in a teacup he will be at no loss to understand the hurricanes of the Atlantic. On the division of the Roman people into centuries and tribes which was the cardinal point of their constitution Montesquieu makes the following important observation:-- ""Servius Tullius was the author of the famous division of the people into centuries which Livy and Dionysius Halicarnassus have so well described. He distributed an hundred and ninety-three centuries into six classes and put the whole lower people into the last century which singly formed the sixth class. It is easy to see that that arrangement virtually excluded the lower classes from the suffrage not _de jure_ but _de facto_. Subsequently it was agreed that except in some particular cases they should in voting follow the division into tribes. There were thirty-five of these tribes who gave each their vote: _four were from the city thirty-one from the country_. The principal citizens being all rural proprietors were naturally classed in the country tribes: the lower people were all massed together in the four urban ones. This circumstance was regarded and with reason as the salvation of the republic. Appius Claudius had distributed the lower people among the whole tribes but Fabius classed then again in the four urban ones and thence acquired the surname of 'Maximus.' The Censors very five years took a survey of the citizens and distributed the people in the tribes to which they legally belonged; so that the ambitious could not render themselves masters of their suffrages nor the people abuse their own power.""--C. 8. The Romans had good reason for styling Fabius ""Maximus "" who discovered this way of preventing the lower classes by their number from acquiring an overwhelming superiority in the government of the state. He achieved as great a good for his country by so doing as by baffling Hannibal after the battle of Cannæ. But for that circumstance the Roman constitution would have become after the change of Appius Claudius a mere prototype of the American democracy; a government constantly swayed by a numerical majority of the lowest class of citizens. There can be no doubt that the matter at issue in this question is the most material which can engage the attention of political philosophers and statesmen in a free country and that on its determination its ultimate fate is entirely dependant. So great is the number of the working-classes in every old and opulent community compared to those who possess the advantages of property and superior education that nothing is more certain than that if the elective franchise be widely diffused and no mode of classifying the votes as at Rome has been discovered the sway of a numerical majority of incompetent electors will erelong become irresistible. Certain ruin then awaits the state. It was that which ruined Athens in ancient which has destroyed Poland in modern times and is fast undermining the foundations of the social union in America. The Roman method of giving every citizen a vote but classifying them in such a way that the paramount influence of a mere numerical majority was prevented and the practical direction of affairs was thrown into the hands of the better class of citizens though not free from objection is the most perfect method of combining universal suffrage in the citizens with the real direction of affairs by those fitted to conduct them which the wit of man has ever divined. In truth it deserves consideration by those who think on human affairs and the probable form of government which may be expected to prevail in future among men whether _universal_ suffrage is the real evil to be dreaded; and whether _equality_ of suffrage is not the real poison which destroys society. Abstractly considered there is much justice in the plea so constantly advanced by the working-classes that being members of the community and contributing to its support or opulence by their labour they are entitled to a certain voice in the direction of its affairs. If no one has a voice at all but the sovereign as in a despotism or no one except a few magnates as in an aristocracy the humbler classes cannot complain at least of inconsistency whatever they may of injustice if they are excluded. But if a vast body of electors as in Great Britain are admitted and still the great bulk of the working-classes are excluded it is not easy to see on what principle the exclusion of some can be rendered consistent with the admission of others. It deserves consideration whether the true principle would not be to give every able-bodied working man major and not receiving parochial relief a vote but a _vote of much less weight than his superiors in intelligence property or station_. This might be done either as the Romans did by making the votes be taken by centuries and classing all the votes of the poorer electors in a limited number of centuries or giving each man a _personal_ vote and giving the holders of property in addition more votes for their property; as one for every pound of direct taxes paid. Louis XVI. proposed a plan of this sort to Turgot before the Revolution; but that minister deeply embued with the principles of democracy rejected it; and Neckar following out his views practically established universal suffrage. Possibly the plan if adopted and honestly carried into execution might have prevented the whole calamities of the Revolution. Of the dangers of such a multiplication of votes without any restriction Roman history affords a memorable example. ""Rome "" says Montesquieu ""had conquered the world with the aid of the Italian cities and in return she had communicated to them a great variety of privileges. At first they cared little for these advantages; but when the rights of Roman citizenship was that of universal empire when no one was any thing in the world if he was not a Roman citizen and with that little he was every thing the Italian people resolved to perish or acquire that envied distinction. Being unable to attain this object by prayers and remonstrances they had recourse to arms: the whole allies on the Eastern coast of the Peninsula revolted those on the Western side were about to follow their example. Rome obliged to combat as it were the hands by which it had conquered the world was lost; it was about to be reduced to its walls when it extricated itself from the difficulty by extending the privilege to the allies who had remained faithful and shortly after to the whole. ""From that moment Rome ceased to be a city of which the people had the same spirit the same interest the same love of freedom the same reverence for the Senate. The people of Italy having become citizens every town brought thither its dispositions its separate interests its dependence on some neighbouring protector. The city torn with divisions formed no longer a whole; and as the vast majority of the citizens were so only by a species of fiction had neither the same magistrates the same walls the same temples the same gods nor the same places of sepulture Rome was no longer seen with the same eyes; the undivided love of country was gone; Rome was no more. The inhabitants of whole provinces and cities were brought up to the capital to give their suffrages or compel others to give them; the popular assemblies degenerated into vast conspiracies a troop or seditious band usurped the sacred name of Comitia; the authority of the people their laws even themselves became a mere chimera; and the anarchy rose to such a point that it became impossible to tell whether the people had made an ordinance or had not. Writers are never tired of descanting on the divisions which ruined Rome; but they have not seen that those divisions always existed and ever must exist in a free community. It was solely the greatness of the republic which was the cause of the evil by changing popular tumults into civil wars. Faction was unavoidable in Rome; its warriors so fierce so proud so terrible abroad would not be moderate at home. To expect in a free state men at once bold in war and timid in peace is to look for an impossibility. It may be assumed as a fixed principle that wherever you see every one tranquil in a state which bears the name of a republic liberty there has been long since extinct.""--C. 9. The representative system has saved Great Britain and America from these terrible popular _comitia_ in which as Montesquieu has truly said the mobs of the people became the convulsions of an empire; and which tore in pieces Poland in modern as it had done Rome in ancient times. But does not the real evil exist despite this liberation from the actual tumult in the representative government of a great empire as much as in the stormy _comitia_ of an overgrown republic? It is not the mere strife in the streets and shedding of blood in civil warfare bad as it is and truly as the ""bellum plusquam civile"" exceeds all others in horror which is the only evil. The separation of interests the disregard of common objects in the struggle for individual elevation the tyranny of one class by another class is the thing which really dissolves the national bonds in every wide-spread and free community. We see this source of discord operating with as much force in the divided representation of great popular states as in the bloody contests of the Roman forum or the plain of Volo in Poland. The nullification of South Carolina the obnoxious tariff of America the fierce demands for the repeal of the union in Ireland the sacrifice of agricultural and producing to commercial and monied interests in Great Britain prove that these evils are in full operation among ourselves as well as our descendants on the other side of the Atlantic. There is a confusion of tongues and separation of mankind from the undue amalgamation of interests as well as individuals. Providence has a sure way to punish the selfishness and presumption of men who seek to build up a Babel of human construction; and that is to leave them to the consequences of their own extravagance. The style of Montesquieu may be judged from the extracts few and imperfect as they are given in the preceding pages. It is not vehement eloquent or forcible; but condensed nervous and epigrammatic. No writer has furnished to succeeding times so many brilliant passages to quote; but there are many who can be read _en suite_ with more satisfaction. This is not unfrequently the case with writers on philosophical subjects of the highest class of intellect; and it arises from the variety and originality of their ideas. The mind of the reader is fatigued by following out the multitude of thoughts which their works engender. At the close of every paragraph almost you involuntarily close the book to reflect on the subjects of meditation which it has presented. The same peculiarity may be remarked in the annals of Tacitus the essays of Bacon the poetry of Milton the _Inferno_ of Dante the _Discorsi_ of Machiavel. In the habit of expansion which has arisen in more recent times from the multiplication of books the profits made by writing and the necessity of satisfying the craving of a voracious public for something new is to be found the cause of the remarkable difference in the modes of composition which has since become prevalent. When men write for the monthly or quarterly press there is no time to be condensed or profound. What has been gained however in animation and fervour has too often been lost in thought; and it may be doubted whether among the many writers of the present day whether in Great Britain or the Continent there is one whose works a century hence will be deemed to contain as much of original and valuable ideas as even the preceding sketch imperfect as it is has presented in Montesquieu. A REMINISCENCE OF BOYHOOD. By Delta. ""Life is a dream whose seeming truth Is moralized in age and youth; When all the comforts man can share As wandering as his fancies are: Till in a mist of dark decay The dreamer vanish quite away."" Bishop King. I. 'Twas a blithe morning in the aureate month Of July when in pride of summer power The sun enliven'd nature: dew-besprent A wilderness of flowers their scent exhaled Into the soft warm zephyr; early a-foot On public roads and by each hedge-way path From the far North and from Hybernia's strand With vestures many-hued and ceaseless chat The reapers to the coming harvest plied-- Father and mother stripling and young child On back or shoulder borne. I trode again A scene of youth bright in its natural lines Even to a stranger's eyes when first time seen But sanctified to mine by many a fond And faithful recognition. O'er the Esk Swoln by nocturnal showers the hawthorn hung Its garland of green berries and the bramble Trail'd 'mid the camomile its ripening fruit. Most lovely was the verdure of the hills-- A rich luxuriant green o'er which the sky Of blue translucent clear without a cloud Outspread its arching amplitude serene. With many a gush of music from each brake Sang forth the choral linnets; and the lark Ascending from the clover field by fits Soar'd as it sang and dwindled from the sight. 'Mid the tall meadow grass the ox reclined Or bent his knee or from beneath the shade Of the broad beech with ruminant mouth gazed forth. Rustling with wealth a tissue of fair fields Outstretch'd to left and right in luxury; And the fir forests on the upland slopes Contrasted darkly with the golden grain. II. Pensively by the river's bank I stray'd-- Now gazing on the corn-fields ripe and rich; Now listening to the carol of the birds From bush and brake that with mellifluous notes Fill'd the wide air; and now in mournful thought-- That yet was full of pleasure--running through The mazy past. I know not how it was But from the sounds--the season--and the scene-- Soften'd my heart; and as the swallow wings In autumn back to softer sunnier climes-- When summer like a bright fallacious dream Hath with its flowers and fragrance pass'd away-- So from the turmoil of maturer years In boyish thoughts my spirit sought relief. III. Embathed in beauty pass'd before my sight Like blossoms that with sunlight shut and ope The half-lost dreams of many a holiday In boyhood spent on that blue river side With those whose names even now as alien sounds Ring in the ear though then our cordial arms Enwreathed each other's necks while on we roam'd Singing or silent pranksome never at rest As life were but a jocund pilgrimage Whose pleasant wanderings found a goal in heaven. But when I reach'd a winding of the stream By hazels overarch'd whose swollen nuts Hung in rich clusters from his marginal bank Of yellow sand ribb'd by receding waves I scared the ousel that like elfin sprite Amid the water-lilies lithe and green Zig-zagg'd from stone to stone; and turning round The sudden jut reveal'd before me stood Silent within that solitary place-- In that green solitude so calm and deep-- An aged angler plying wistfully Amid o'erhanging banks and shelvy rocks Far from the bustle and the din of men His sinless pastime. Silver were his locks His figure lank; his dark eye like a hawk's Glisten'd beneath his hat of whitest straw Lightsome of wear with flies and gut begirt: The osier creel athwart his shoulders slung Became full well his coat of velveteen Square-tail'd four-pocket'd and worn for years As told by weather stains. His quarter-boots Lash'd with stout leather thongs and ankles bare Spoke the adept--and of full many a day Through many a changeable and checquer'd year By mountain torrent or smooth meadow stream To that calm sport devoted. O'er him spread A tall broad sycamore; and at his feet Amid the yellow ragwort rough and high An undisturbing spaniel lay whose lids Half-opening told his master my approach. IV. I turn'd away I could not bear to gaze On that grey angler with his rod and line; I turn'd away--for to my heart the sight Brought back from out the twilight labyrinth Of bypast things the memory of a day So sever'd from the present by the lapse Of many a motley'd life-destroying year That on my thoughts the recognition came Faintly at first--as breaks the timid dawn Above the sea or evening's earliest star Through the pavilion of the twilight dim-- Faintly at first--then kindling to the glow Of that refulgent sunshine only known To boyhood's careless and unclouded hours. V. Even yet I feel around my heart the flush Of that calm windless morning glorified With summer sunshine brilliant and intense! A tiny boy scarcely ten summers old Along blue Esk under the whispering trees And by the crumbling banks daisy-o'ergrown A cloudless livelong day I trode with one Whose soul was in his pastime and whose skill Upon its shores that day no equal saw:-- O'er my small shoulders was the wicker creel Slung proudly and the net whose meshes held The minnow from the shallows deftly raised. Hour after hour augmenting our success Turn'd what was pleasure first to pleasant toil Lent languor to my loitering steps and gave Red to the cheek and dew-damp to the brow: It was a day that cannot be forgot-- A jubilee in childhood's calendar-- A green hill-top seen o'er the billowy waste Of dim oblivion's flood:--and so it is That on my morning couch--what time the sun Tinges the honeysuckle flowers with gold That cluster round the porch--and in the calm Of evening meditation when the past Spontaneously unfolds the treasuries Of half-forgotten and fragmental things To memory's ceaseless roamings--it comes back Fragrant and fresh as if 'twere yesterday. From morn till noon his light assiduous toil The angler plied; and when the mid-day sun Was high in heaven under a spreading tree (Methinks I hear the hum amid its leaves!) Upon a couch of wild-flowers down we sat With healthful palates to our slight repast Of biscuits and of cheese and bottled milk; The sward our table and the boughs our roof: And oh! in banquet hall where richest cates Luxurious woo the pamper'd appetite Never did viands proffer such delight To Sybarite upon his silken couch As did to us our simple fair that day. VI. Bright shone the afternoon say rather burn'd In floods of molten gold with all its rich Array of blossoms by that river's side-- Wild camomile and lychnis in whose cups The bee delights to murmur harebells blue And violets breathing fragrance; nor remote The aureate furze that to the west-winds sigh Lent its peculiar perfume blandly soft. At times we near'd the wild-duck and her brood In the far angle of some dim-seen pool Silent and sable underneath the boughs Of low hung willow; and at times the bleat Of a stray lamb would bid us raise our eyes To where it stood above us on the rock Knee-deep amid the broom--a sportive elf. Enshrined in recollection--sleep those hours So brilliant and so beautiful--the scene So full of pastoral loveliness--the heart With pleasure overflowing--and the sky Pavilion'd over all an arch of peace-- God with his fair creation reconciled: And oh! to be forgotten only with The last fond thoughts of memory I behold That grand and gorgeous evening in whose blaze Homeward with laden paniers we return'd. Through the green woods outshot the level rays Of flooding sunlight tinging the hoar bark Of the old pine-trees and in crimson dyes Bathing the waste of flowers that sprang beneath; It was an hour of Paradise restored-- Eden forth mirror'd to the view again As yet ere Happiness forsook its bowers Or sinless creatures own'd the sway of death. All was repose--and peace--and harmony; The flocks upon the soft knolls resting lay Or straying nibbled at the pastures green; Up from its clovery lurking-place the hare Arose; the pheasant from the coppice stray'd; The cony from its hole disporting leapt; The cattle in the bloomy meadows lay Ruminant; the shy foal scarcely swerved aside At our approach from under the tall tree Of his delight shaking his forelocks long In wanton play; while overhead his hymn As 'twere to herald the approach of night With all her gathering stars the blackbird sang Melodiously mellifluously and Earth Look'd up reflecting back the smiles of Heaven! For Innocence o'er hill and dale again Seem'd to have spread her mantle and the voice Of all but joy in grove and glade was hush'd. VII. Thro' the deep glen of Roslin--where arise Proud castle and chapelle of high St Clair And Scotland's prowess speaking--we had traced The mazy Esk by cavern'd Hawthornden Perch'd like an eagle's nest upon the cliffs And eloquent for aye with Drummond's song-- Through Melville's flowery glades--and down the park Of fair Dalkeith scaring the antler'd deer 'Neath the huge oaks of Morton and of Monk Whispering as stir their boughs the midnight winds. These left behind with purpling evening now We stood beside St Michael's holy fane With its nine centuries of gravestones girt; And from the slopes of Inveresk gazed down Upon the Frith of Forth whose waveless tide Glow'd like a plain of fire. In majesty O'ercanopied with many-vestured clouds The mighty sun low in the farthest west With orb dilated o'er the Grampian chain Mountain up-piled on mountain huge and blue Was shedding his last rays adorn'd the shores Of Fife with all its towns and woods and fields And bathing Ben-Ean and Ben-Ledi's peaks In hues of amethyst. Ray after ray From the twin Lomond's conic heights declined And died away the glory; and at length As sank the last low horizontal beams And Twilight drew her azure curtains round From out the south twinkled the Evening star! VIII. Since then full often hath the snow-drop shown Its early flower--hath summer waved its corn-- Hath autumn shed its leaves--and Arctic gales Brought wintry desolation on their wings! When Memory ponders on that boyish scene Broken seems almost every tie that links That day to this--and to the child the man: The world is alter'd quite in all its thoughts-- In all its works and ways--its sights and sounds-- With the same name it is another sphere And by another race inhabited. The old familiar dwellings with their trees Coeval mouldering wall and dovecot rent-- The old familiar faces from the streets One after one have now all disappear'd And sober sires are they who then were sons Giddy and gay:--a generation new Dwells where they dwelt--whose tongues are silent quite-- Whose bodily forms are reminiscences Fading:--the leaden talisman of Truth Hath disenchanted of its rainbow hues The sky and robb'd the fields of half their bloom. I start to conjure from the gulf of death The myriads that have gone to come no more:-- And where is he the Angler by whose side That livelong day delightedly I roam'd While life to both a sunny pastime seem'd? Ask of the winds that from the Atlantic blow When last they stirr'd the wild-flowers on his grave! DE BURTIN ON PICTURES. The writings of enthusiasts however dry the subjects upon which they employ their pens have always some power of fascination. Many a one who has never hooked a fish has found delight in Isaac Walton. He is still the pleasant companion by river and brooklet and the cause why ""He that has fishing loved should fish the more And he should fish who never fish'd before."" But then the subject is the loveliest of arts Painting--embracing as it does the beautiful the great and the pathetic whatever charms the eye and moves the heart--we are sensible of more than common pleasure and become soothed into dreams and visions of our own even by the gentle garrulity of a connoisseur. Is there any one who pretends to acquaintance with literature however uninitiated he may be in the mysteries of the arts who has not read the _Discourses_ of Sir Joshua Reynolds and who has not wished after reading them to be enabled to say ""anche io son pittore?"" When we are told of picture galleries with their thousand works of art and are warmed by the descriptions feeble though they must be of many of them we seem to be suddenly led by a lamp of more magical power than Aladdin's; for what was his gallery of fruit-trees bearing precious stones to a gallery rich in pictures the still brighter fruits of genius presenting endless variety each one almost a world in itself and all enticing the imagination into regions unbounded of charm and loveliness suggested though not made visible but to the mind's eye? We remember in our school days giving Virgil credit for much tact in endeavouring to make a gentleman of Æneas and succeeding too for a while in raising the more than equivocal character of his hero by placing him in the picture-gallery of the Queen of Carthage and giving him leisure to contemplate and to criticise and poetically to describe to his silent and spiritless lounger-friend many noble and many touching works. In this passage we also obtain the great Latin poet's opinion of the ameliorating effect of ""collections."" The hero of the Æneid knew immediately he was among an amiable people. The picture-gallery was the ""nova res oblata"" which ""timorem leniit""-- ""Hic primum Æneas sperare salutem Ausus et afflictis melius confidere rebus; Namque""---- It is singular that all the courts of Europe have for more than two centuries been earnestly engaged in forming public galleries a national benefit and honour which England had neglected with her great wealth and with opportunities singularly favourable until within a few years; and even now we are making but very slow progress and works of art of the olden and golden time are becoming more rare and immensely rising in value. Had we as a nation collected even fifty years ago--speaking of the transactions as a money speculation in which view according to the taste of the day we must look at every thing--our purchases would now have been worth treble the first cost in money. The unhappy fate of Charles I. was most adverse to the arts here. It not only scattered the collection made by him but by the triumph of Puritanism plunged the country first into a dislike of and for long subsequent periods into an indifference for art. We even doubt if this gross feeling has altogether subsided. We do not yet take a national pride in works of genius unless they immediately bear upon the art of living. No country is so rich as ours in private and none so poor in public collections. And if we progress so slowly in our National Gallery we can scarcely wonder that public institutions of the kind have not been dreamed of in the provinces. We sincerely hope that the movement Mr Ewart is making will be crowned with success and that in time ""collections"" in our cities and towns will be the result. The Musée of Paris in 1844 contained upwards of fifteen hundred pictures. According to the catalogue compiled in 1781 the Imperial Gallery of Vienna then contained twelve hundred and thirty-four. According to the catalogue of 1839 the Dresden gallery contained eighteen hundred and fifty-seven. At Munich the present king has erected a spacious building into which he has draughted a selection from among several thousands of about fifteen hundred. And what have we done to improve the national taste? And strange indeed does it appear that whenever such a subject is brought before the public mind in Parliament it is solely with a view to the connexion of art with manufactures. There must be in the nature of things a certain connexion; but unnecessarily to bind them in union is to bind then unnaturally and to put the shackles upon the higher which cannot bear them without degradation. We hail with great pleasure every publication whose object is to promote a love for the fine arts; and more particularly those which show a due reverence for the old masters; for however unwilling we may be to limit the power of genius no one who has any pretensions to taste and is of a cultivated mind will deny that if their works are not perfection they are at least in a right direction. The novelties which more modern art has sought will pass away we are persuaded as not founded upon true principles and we shall best advance by properly appreciating what has been done before us. We will not here enter into the subject of the _décadence_ of art nor its causes. We believe that if adequate national and provincial galleries were formed more especially at our universities the improved public taste would create a demand which this country would not lack genius to supply. We are not in the exact condition of Italy at the sudden rise of art there. The public in the days of Raffaelle and Michael Angelo had nothing or but little _to unlearn_; the previous aim had fortunately not been very multifarious; the sentiment of art was right and the direction true. It remained only to enlarge the sphere; the principles were in being; they required but confirmation. Grace and power naturally arose; for there was no counteracting education nothing positively bad altogether to lay aside though there was something to correct. Now with us on the contrary art has run into very strange vagaries; the enlargement of the boundaries has been unlimited but it has been in regions far below the Parnassian Mount. We have talked of the High Ideal and practised and encouraged _ad infinitum_ the Low Natural and too often have descended to the worse the Low Unnatural; so that upon the whole we have to unlearn very much before we can be said to be in the rudiments of Real Art. Let us suppose one born with every natural endowment with imagination and a power of imitation. The mind after all is fed with _realities_; there is in it also process of digestion which converts the real into the imaginative. Now in early years how rare it is that the naturally endowed artist is not ill fed--unhealthy diet of the mind entices him every where. If in the country he is sparingly fed--sees little or nothing of Art little perhaps beyond the Sign of an Inn--and is scarcely from other sources of education taught to look with the mind's eye through the undignified appearance to the actual dignity even of the nature he sees:--if he has lived in the city the Print shops are inevitable lures to cheat him by little and little out of his natural taste if there be one; for at first it can be but a mere germ. The works of greatness of goodness will be the last things that he will see; for seldom indeed will they be presented to his sight. For the pure the sweet the graceful the dignified he will have thrust before his eyes gaudy tawdry caricature and grimace; and worse still perhaps wholly vulgar obscenities. Were he in his boyhood given a present in the pictorial line it would be of an Opera-dancer or a race-course or an abomination of London low life. What ""slang"" is to the ear so would it be to the eye; and such is in nine cases out of ten the first education of tho

e aspirants in art who ere they have unlearned any thing set up for themselves--and abuse the old masters. Generally speaking they are brought up in an anti-ideal school; the powers therefore that nature has given them are not only uncultivated but led astray; and similar education and similar tastes in the public find them a market for very low very worthless commodities. We have in fact a great deal to unlearn. The first step with us all is to unlearn. Could we see nothing bad it would not be so. That which would at first view be thought the greatest benefit to art engraving has but spread the wider the pestilence of false taste. It is from all this the earlier and greater painters were free. The evil however having once so spread is not to be easily corrected. Bad taste has claimed a perpetuity of copyright. Good taste must proceed from an opposite source and work in spite of the bad. It must come from publications just criticisms lives of painters [4] familiar treatises on the principles of art; and more especially from national and other public galleries to direct attention and indeed to create a demand for those other auxiliary works. People will seek to understand and feel that which is continually put before them. Could they never see any but fine productions they would soon have a relish for them that now is impossible; but by little and little the sight of what is good will create a liking and the liking will soon reach an adoration and the unlearning process is imperceptibly going on. Corrupted as our eyes now are we would venture to assert that were you to offer either in prints or originals to boys of fourth and fifth forms at our public schools in one hand a vile and gaudy horse and jockey and in the other a pure and lovely picture by Raffaelle the former would be taken. Here is a lamentable neglect in education; the ear must suffer the probing and the torture of metres and verse-making but the eye is left unguarded unprotected to shift for itself or to yield to the fascinations the first pander of evil chooses to offer. The school-boy might be improved at the universities; but there too is the same neglect. In our time it was a rare thing to see a ""man's"" room without many engravings; and that sufficiently shows how much a school of art is wanted in those places and what a hold they would have upon youth. But we cannot say much for the taste of the productions that generally we will not say _graced_ the walls. We had hoped that the Taylor bequest would have established at Oxford not only a picture gallery but a professorship of Painting and Sculpture. A large Building has been erected; and we have heard of an intention to remove to it some rubbish called pictures. If that threat be accomplished we shall despair of seeing them removed to give place to better things. The majority will be satisfied with seeing walls covered and look no further. We have heard likewise that some very valuable pictures have been offered upon very favourable terms to the university. If there be amongst any an intention of forming a gallery we would urge them to use their best endeavours to make as soon as may be a beginning. For every succeeding year not only increases the difficulty in obtaining the concurrence of influential persons but the annually rising value of pictures makes delay an imprudence. Besides if a beginning were once made--were it once shown that the universities are in earnest--valuable bequests might greatly promote the great object. And this is an advantage that admits not of being put off to the morrow. We have digressed from our purpose which was to acknowledge the pleasure we have received from the pages of M. de Burtin's work; or we should rather say from Mr White's translation. We have been some years acquainted with the original work in French. Its value in its present form is not lessened by the number of years that have passed between the original French edition and the translation; for general remarks on art are of all times and there is much in the particular information the volume contains such as lists of prices and some other matters from which useful comparisons may be now made. The author very modestly in his introduction professes not to write ""for artists nor accomplished connoisseurs;"" yet to such we believe the volume in its compressed form will be of most value. He has the honesty to confess that he has learned his connoisseurship at some cost--that he has been victimized into a knowledge of art. And as this is generally the case with most collectors in the beginning and not unfrequently in the end too he thinks he may be of some use to others in showing ""how to judge pictures well""--""what is a good picture;"" and not of the least value how to use it when you have it. His qualification as teacher cannot be denied; for he has not only collected but travelled much visited all the important collections and by comparing picture with picture and style with style he has been enabled to speak with accuracy upon the distinguishing marks of schools and masters. A universal admiration a love that will embrace all schools and all styles is of very rare attainment and perhaps hardly to be desired; for every man of any strength of any fixed tone of character must necessarily have a bias. And besides one man naturally receives more powerfully impressions through form another through colour. It is not inconsistent that a perfect connoisseur should be equally affected by both; but the mind is not allowed the same latitude with regard to subject; the passion will ever be for that which is congenial; whatever is foreign to it will receive but a cold and passing admiration. We should collect from the whole contents of this volume that the author was never an enthusiastic admirer of what is termed high Italian art. He seldom dwells upon ""the sublime and beautiful."" Gifted rather with a complacent acquiescence in what is great than stirred by it to any heat of rapture it is probable that at least the sphere of his pleasures was enlarged; and his nice sense of the beauty touch and colour rendered pictures of subjects of little interest more pleasing to him than they could be to the connoisseur of more exclusive taste. His predilection is however for Colour; and we agree with him ""that without the science of colouring that so difficult science about which the exclusive partisans of ideal beauty trouble themselves so little their antiques and their ideal perfection may produce designs but never can pictures."" Two definitions are laid down which as frequent reference is made to them we copy. Definition of painting--""The art of applying colours without relief upon a plain surface so as to imitate any object in the manner in which it is seen or may be conceived visible in nature."" ""A good picture"" he defines to be ""a good choice of subject well represented."" If we knew precisely what is here meant by ""nature "" a word used by all writers on art in very various senses and commonly very vaguely we might not find fault with the definition; but genius which has ""Exhausted worlds and then imagined new "" is not too strictly to be limited to the actualities of external nature. It is the nature of the mind under certain impulses and impressions to exaggerate to combine from memory not from sight even to the verge of the impossible; for even this extravagance is the product of human passion which by its nature disdains common boundaries; and this in painting is especially the province of Colour which may be said to be the poetical language of art and admits differences of the same kind as exist between common speech and poetical and figurative diction. The painter as well as poet may colour somewhat highly ""And breathe a browner horror o'er the woods."" Critics too often write of art as if it had only to do with what actually exists; whereas it is given to it as to poetry ""to make "" to create--all that is required is a certain connexion with the real sometimes exceedingly slight which shall be sufficiently delusive for present purpose. The agile mind can pass over a deep and formidable chasm upon a slender thread; and when over is too much occupied in the new region to turn back and measure the means of passage. We suspect our author's view of nature is too limited. Upon _""a good choice of subject""_ are some good remarks. Disgusting subjects are justly condemned. ""It is evident that an animal flayed or embowelled entrails meat raw or mangled blood excrements death's-heads carcasses and similar objects if they strike upon the view too much will be as disgusting in a picture as they are in nature; and that grimaces hideous or monstrous deformities whether moral or physical will be as shocking in the one as the other. Events which are sufficiently unnatural barbarous and cruel to shake violently the soul and cause it to tremble with insurmountable horror create an agitation too frightful for it to resist much less to be pleased with. Subjects of so bad a choice (which Horace severely prohibits from being introduced upon the scene ) do little honour to the painter. They become even more insupportable in proportion as they approach nearer to reality by the perfection of their execution."" The translator thinks his ""author has stated this too broadly;"" and instances as pictures of this kind to be admired for their truth _The Lesson of Anatomy_ by Rembrandt; _Prometheus Devoured by the Vulture_ by Salvator Rosa; _Raising of Lazarus_ by Sebastian del Piombo. Of the two first subjects we think they are to be condemned if in the _Prometheus_ the enduring mind of Prometheus be not the subject. But surely the grand picture of Piombo though it is all awful has in it nothing disgusting or that comes within the condemned list. The question to be asked in all these cases is what is the object as well as what is the subject. Is it to teach to improve to soften the mind by human love and sympathy or to excite it to a just and _hopeful_ indignation for therein is a source of pleasure? The rule of tragedy should be applicable here. Undoubtedly we receive pleasure from tragic representations. Isolated barbarism cruelty would be intolerably disgusting. But in every good tragedy there are always good and lovely characters with whom we can sympathise. We are bettered by thus uniting ourselves with what is lovely; and are content to take at second-hand and thus feel only in a safe degree the distresses to which as human nature ourselves we are liable. In pictured representation however we have to guard against the too vivid and at the same time too permanent as being a fixed expression which by the art and power of language we are not allowed to dwell upon too exclusively; and relief is offered in change and diversity. There are some very judicious remarks upon disgusting subjects in ""An Essay on the Choice of Subjects in Painting "" read we believe some years ago by Mr Duncan at the Institution at Bath. We remember an account in the Essay of a very ridiculous burlesque (it is not intended so to be) of some of the horrific legends of the Italian schools. The picture was exhibited in the chapel of Johanna Southcote at Newington Butts near London. St Johanna was represented in a sky-blue dress leading the devil with a long chain like a dancing-bear surrounded by adoring angels. Is not this doubtful? ""I add that excepting man that King of Nature whose head presents to a painter the subject that is most interesting for character grace dignity and expression of the whole mind of which it is the mirror no animal dead or alive affords in any one part of its frame whatever care may be taken in the execution more than a subject for a study or will by any means form what can be called a picture."" This surely is not quite true. There is a very fine picture of a lioness dimly seen at the mouth of her den in grim repose that is very grand. One colour pervades the whole--there is nothing forced; but the very colour is of the stealthiness of the animal's nature; it is so dim that the animal is not strikingly discoverable but grows out upon the sight and we feel the sense of danger with the knowledge of security. And surely this is the sublime of art. Had the author seen some of the noble animals gifted with noble characters by nature and by the hand of our Landseer he would have hesitated ere he pronounced thus strongly. The choice of a subject is considered as belonging solely to invention irrespective of composition or disposition. ""The honour of inventing truly belongs to him whose imagination creates all or almost all of new."" A distinction is made between composition and design: indeed according to our author there are three parts of invention--composition disposition and design. There is a repetition of the charge of disproportion in objects brought against Raffaelle to which we do not implicitly bow. He is considered as having ""committed two striking faults against nature and lineal perspective in his famous picture of the _Transfiguration_ by the ridiculous smallness of his Mount Tabor and by the disproportionable size of the Christ and of the two Prophets."" But we question if the mind in that state of feeling in which it beholds a miraculous and altogether overwhelming subject is not necessarily in a condition to overstep the actual rules of nature and to receive a type of things for the reality admitting the small to stand for the great. Were it conscious of very exact formal truth the power of the subject would be reduced. Actual perspective would have in Raffaelle's case ruined the picture. There was that boldness of genius which Shakspeare when the nature of the subject required it adopted which made the one leap over time and the other space and proportion. Under the head ""disposition of the subject "" there is a somewhat unsatisfactory sentence. ""It contributes to the 'goodness' of the picture "" ""if it avoid uniformity and positions that are too symmetrical; if it distribute the light well; if by means of it the groups _pyramid_ and unite well; and if it give value to all the parts of the picture by means of each other in such a manner as that the result shall be a satisfactory whole."" There is much here that is true; but there is something false. And that which is false in it has often strangely misled artists in their arrangement and grouping. There are some subjects of a perfectly symmetrical character; however rare they may be there are some. Raffaelle in his cartoon of delivering the keys to Peter paints as nearly as may be all the apostles' heads in one line. Is not the _character_ of Gothic architecture symmetrical? Painters of architectural subjects very commonly overlook this and by perspective difference destroy this orderly character. Few make the centre the point of sight; which is however the proper one for representation as it alone shows the exact conformity and order the idea of which it was the purpose of the architect to present and which constitutes _the_ beauty. The ""pyramid"" rule is manifestly absurd and seldom has even a tolerably good effect. It was the quackery of a day.[5] The good masters did not work upon it. It is in fact a little truth taken out of a greater and misapplied--a part of that circular character of composition as it were a principle of reflection by which lines close in upon or recede from each other. We have in a former paper in this Magazine treated of this principle--to dwell on it now would take us far from our purpose. As to the ability of all persons to judge of the naturalness of a picture the translator doubts the correctness of the affirmative opinion of his author. He remarks that ""it requires considerable practice and experience to enable one to judge how much art can do; what is the exact medium between feebleness and exaggeration which constitutes the all-surpassing quality of truth of which he declares himself a partisan; and in what manner one painter differs from or excels another in the representation of it."" It may also be observed that people in general have uncultivated eyes and see not the whole beauties of any one object; they are commonly quite ignorant of ideal and sentimental beauty almost wholly arising out of the _power of art_--the representing the imagination. It is when such persons are called upon to see nature in a picture that they show how imperfect their sight has been. Seeing the representation in a frame they know it to be a work of art and generally object to shadow; whereas could they see the picture placed at an open window or some deceiving position they would be deceived. Many knowing the intention is to deceive them are ready armed with objections which however they make because they have sought them not because they have felt them. What we term local colour is termed by M. de Burtin _proper_ colour; local colour he considers as the colour made variable by space by locality air light and surrounding bodies. The distinction may be useful; but _proper_ colour will itself be difficult to discover for we never can see it entirely separated from some foreign influence. In a picture it would be perhaps best to consider that the _proper_ colour which would be proper to the half-tone whether modified by aerial perspective or not. He considers that _proper_ colour is not shown mostly in objects in the foreground for there the light which destroys it is most powerful; light destroys proper colour and substitutes its own. ""It is the perfect understanding of this interesting principle which renders the works of Rubens and of his best scholars so superior for their magic truth of colour. It is this which explains why they make the colour of the blood to appear through the fine and transparent skin of their Flemings particularly of the women only in proportion as the effect of the light is lost in the retiring parts; and why the red prevails more in these parts in general which are illuminated only by a reflected light too feeble to change the natural colour. The latter may often be even strengthened by the colour of the object from which the reflected light proceeds which happens when one flesh part is reflected upon another as may be remarked more particularly towards the extremities."" The following quotation is well worth considering--the observation it contains is new. ""As to the influence of light upon the local colours one of the plainest proofs of it is that the colour of objects seen in broad day diminishes in force the more that the sun enlightens the distant plain on which they are placed. This observation and many other analogous ones convince me that the light in a picture in general exerts a greater influence upon the local colours than even the air although those who have written upon the art seem to attribute the local colours exclusively to the interposition of the air and the vapours with which it is charged. The above remark though useful to all painters becomes the more indispensable to those who have to do with landscape seeing that without attention to it the aerial perspective would render useless by a false and mannered representation the just proportions and the exact contours dictated by linear perspective. Another remark not less interesting is that the colour of cast shadows depends beyond every thing on that of the light and consequently on the state of the atmosphere and the time of the day as well as the season of the year."" Hence is it that the brown shadows of art which are adopted for the sake of warm are in good painters such as Vandyke always blended with the silvery grey. ""Of the general tone of colour.""--This part of the subject is treated rather with regard to strict observation of nature than its poetical applicability to art. For surely there is a distinction; there should be a tone of colour belonging to the subject irrespective of the actual colour of place or time of day properly belonging to the action represented. It is well observed that the argentine or silvery tone so much admired and sought after by amateurs ""is nothing but the faithful imitation of the tone assumed by nature in countries where the rays of the sun are not too perpendicular every time that the air is in that state of transparency required to temper to the necessary degree the too brilliant blue of a pure sky and itself to receive and transmit this desirable silvery tone which delights the spectator."" By this it would appear that our artists' dreams of countries _alio sub sole_ are not likely to bring beauty of colour to their pictures--that the fables of Eastern skies are with regard to art fables; and though there is now always an attempt and that by no mean powers to drag the spectators at our exhibitions under the very chariot of the sun ""sub curru nimium propinqui solis "" real beauty of colour will be found much nearer home. We are somewhat surprised by as it would appear from the general observations of De Burtin an accidental truth which he has not elsewhere followed to its consequences. ""If pictures offend against nature and become cold by the employment of cold colours upon them such as black white blue and green either pure or bluish and by the omission of the glazings which the tone of the light requires or if they become so from the natural coldness of night and of snow _not remedied by art_ the painter ought to correct the fault in the manner I have previously hinted at."" In the following remark we can see the great defect in the colouring of Murillo's pictures especially in his backgrounds who appears always to have painted on a wet and dingy day. ""But nothing can correct the cold of a sky concealed by the kind of clouds last mentioned or _rendered totally invisible by mist_."" He rescues the clear-obscure from the meaning commonly attached to it as light and shade. ""In the literal sense this word means nothing but the obscure which is at the same time clear."" It should rather be defined to be light in shadow; but it will be difficult to establish any other sense for it than the disposition of the light and shade in a picture. The inventor of it for practical use was Leonardo da Vinci. Of this _chiaroscuro_ he says: ""It is this in fine against which so many renowned Italian masters have sinned but in which the immortal Correggio is so eminently distinguished and which proves how they err who have named Titian the prince of colourists. For how much soever he may possess in a supreme degree very many other parts of colouring he has so misunderstood this one in his general harmony that his grounds are rarely in agreement with the rest of his picture and are often all black. His _Venus_ in the Dresden gallery and his _Ecce Homo_ in that of Vienna two of his most renowned pictures but especially the latter present striking proofs among very many others of the correctness of my opinion on this great colourist."" Those who object as some venture to do to Titian's colour especially in his backgrounds we believe overlook his intention and are not aware how much what they consider defects affect the whole. Objections have been made to the background of the _Peter Martyr_ without considering how appropriate the colouring is to the subject. There are some just observations on the necessity of transparency which should not be confined to shadows and demi-tints ""which cannot do without it."" It has been said that Titian and Correggio glazed over every part of the picture thereby giving even the lights a sort of transparency. Of harmony of colour he says ""Under the pencil of an intelligent artist local colours even the least agreeable and those which have the least affinity among themselves may become very agreeable to the eye and contribute powerfully to the harmony of the picture through the interposition of some other colour as in music discordant tones are happily united by means of intermediate ones."" The translator appends to this a note in which he quotes from Mengs that ""The three primary colours being red blue and yellow when any one of them is prominently used it should be accompanied by one which unites the _other two_. Thus if pure red be used it should be accompanied by green which is a compound of blue and yellow. This compound colour is called the contrasting colour and is always used sparingly. But the harmonizing colour is said to be the compound made by any one colour itself along with the next adjoining to it on either side of the spectrum. Thus red will be harmonized by purple the colour produced by compounding it with blue on the one side of it and it will also be harmonized by orange which is the colour produced by compounding it with the yellow next to it on the other side of the spectrum."" In treating ""of the effect"" of a picture although the author with a kind of reluctance admits or ""will not condemn absolutely"" factitious effects he has no predilection for them and blames for the extravagant use of them Carravagio and others of the Italian schools. Unquestionably they afford a power which should be used with judgment then most applicable when the supernatural of the subject overpowers the familiarity of more natural effects. Of the ""_empasto_ "" so much spoken of by connoisseurs he is an admirer. He directs that the ""colours which compose the _empasto_"" should be perfectly well ground and the ground perfectly smoothed. Yet this was not always the case in the _empasto_ of Paul Veronese whose _empasto_ was often of a broken and mortary surface; and it would appear from an examination of such parts of his pictures as if he had purposely used water with his oil-paint which would have the effect of slightly separating the particles and thereby giving brilliancy from the broken surface of refracting particles. This seems to have escaped the notice of M. de Burtin in this place. It has been said of Michael Angelo that he never painted more than one picture in oil. Like the relics of saints that one has wonderfully multiplied. Our author speaks of one in his own possession which is certainly not described as according to the manner we should expect on that great master. ""A truly unique picture by the great Michael Angelo Buonarroti in my possession proves to what an astonishing degree art can imitate gold silver and stones without using the originals by the magic illusion with which the rare genius has painted them as ornaments. They look as if _relieved_ on the armour of the two cavaliers insomuch that one would believe them to be truly the work of an actual chisel."" He admires the smooth _empasto_; and among the painters who practised it laudably mentions Vander Werff. But he blames others less known for carrying it out to an extreme finish. To our taste the smooth _empasto_ of Vander Werff is most displeasing; rendering flesh ivory and in that master ivory without its true and pleasing colour. This branch of the subject ends with remarks on touch which completes the list of the parts that contribute ""to make a good picture."" The manner of a painter is in nothing so distinguished as in his touch. There must then be great variety in the touch of painters. To be a judge of masters it is necessary as the first step to connoisseurship to be acquainted with this executive part of their art. ""Since it is correct to say that without a good touch there cannot be a good picture one may say likewise that he is not a good master who has not a good touch and _who does not know how to avoid using it too much_."" It is a mark of a defective mind when the painter is too much pleased with the dexterity of his hand. Many however require this hint; their pictures are so overlaid with touch that the autographs supersede the subject. The incipient connoisseur will do well to read the chapter in this volume which will tell him ""how to judge pictures well."" It will tell him even in what position to see a picture. He disapproves of the use of the mirror in which the picture is reflected as giving a softness and harmony not genuine; but as it was the practice of Giorgione and Correggio ""in order to learn the effect of the colours of the masses and of the work as a whole "" he recommends it to _the painter_. He expects however from the amateur an impartiality almost impossible to attain when it is expected to reach such a point that ""all schools all masters all manners and all classes of pictures will be a matter of indifference to him."" We fear that an amateur who could reach this indifference would be rather a general admirer than a good lover. The amateur thus advanced ""will soon be able to weigh impartially the grounds of the dispute between the partisans of ideal beauty on the one hand and the beauty which exists in nature on the other."" But here is a mistake _in initio_; for is not the Ideal too Nature? We should have rather expected a disquisition to elucidate this point; but our author prefers passing away from the real question to indulge in a little severity on the admirers of the Ideal which Ideal we are persuaded he never understood; for he considers evidently that the ""ideal beauties "" with the ""magic truth"" of the Dutch school in execution would be perfection. He would view a work painted under this union as perfection. To us it would we feel quite sure be an intolerable performance. For this little bit of bad taste he is called to account by his translator. The author's taste was after all we suspect rather incomplete; rather the product of an educated eye than of a mind educated to embrace the Ideal. The fact is the Ideal in practice must be the reach of a something which the eye however educated does not altogether find in external nature; but which from the data of external nature the mind creates partly by combination and partly from a power of its own invention altogether. The external senses in educated man are obedient to this inventive direction of the mind and at length receive their greater perhaps often only pleasures from it. It is easy to imagine how the _more evident_ and real beauties of the inferior schools for we do not hesitate to speak of the Italian as the higher more easily captivate especially the incipient lovers of art. They begin by collecting the Dutch; but as they advance in taste and knowledge and acquire the legitimate feeling for art they are sure to end with the Italian. The uninitiated may wonder to be told there is any difficulty in judging ""whether a picture is in good preservation or not."" Yet here is a chapter to teach this ""useful knowledge."" The ""perils that flesh is heir to "" are nothing if compared to the perils that environ the similitudes of flesh. ""_Nos nostraque morti debemur._"" Men and pictures suffer from the doctors as well as from time. Pictures too are often in the ""hand of the spoiler "" and are subject with their owners to a not very dissimilar quackery of potion and lotion undergo as many purifications nor do they escape the knife and scarification; are laid upon their backs rubbed and scrubbed skinned and oftentimes reduced to the very ribs and dead colouring of what they were. It is surprising how great a number of pictures are ruined by the cleaners. We are sorry to read this account of Correggio's celebrated _Notte_. ""Even when they do not destroy the picture entirely they at all events leave the most injurious traces behind depriving it of its transparency and harmony and much of the effect rendering it hard cold and weak. Of this the admirable 'Night' of Correggio at Dresden presents a very sad example."" We look upon the audacious man who dares to repaint upon an old picture unnecessarily and by wholesale as guilty of a crime. It is the murder of another man's offspring and of his name and fame at the same time. We have heard of a man half a century ago going about the country to paint new wigs upon the Vandykes. We would have such a perpetrator bastinadoed on the soles of his feet. ""I was present "" says our author ""at Amsterdam during a dispute between one who had just sold a landscape for several thousand florins and the agent who had made the purchase on commission. The latter required an important change to be made towards the centre of the picture which he contended would be very much improved thereby. It was in vain that the seller with whom I agreed in opinion upon the point persisted in refusing to repaint a work in such good preservation and by so great a master; for the broker closed his lips by protesting that unless the demand were complied with he was instructed to throw up the bargain."" We look with equal horror on buyer and seller. Would not the latter have sold his father mother brothe

s sisters aunts and cousins? It has been said that in compliment to William III. many of the portraits of the ancestors of the courtiers of the day were re-painted with aquiline noses. M. de Burtin very justly observes that the new touches on old pictures do not preserve their tone but he does not give the true reason. He seems to entertain no notion that pictures were painted with any other vehicle than common oil; and in a short discussion upon Van Eyck's discovery he only shows that he takes up what others have said and never himself could have read what the monk Theophilus really wrote; for like M. Merimée he supposes the monk to say what he never did say. It is only surprising that in his numerous cleanings he did not discover the difference between the old paint of one date and of another and how they require different solvents. There is a chapter upon ""the manner of knowing and appreciating copies "" from which the beginner in collecting may take some useful hints. He repeats the well-known anecdote of the copy from Raffaelle by Andrea del Sarto which Julio Romano who had worked upon the picture believed to be the original though assured beforehand by Vasari that it was a copy. With regard to Rubens by far the greater number of pictures said to be by him are by the hands of his scholars to whom he gave the design and outline merely sometimes touching up the pictures with his own hand. This has been a common and a justifiable practice with great painters both ancient and modern or it would have been impossible for any one pair of hands to have done the works which bear the names of some well-employed painters. The few pictures entirely by the hand of Rubens confirm the suspicion as to others by their superiority. Contemporary copies he considers in a very different light from more modern because the modern being from the old after they had deepened deepen still more and in a few years scarcely resemble in tone the originals. It is from such copies that an ill name has been given to all copies. We have very little feeling for amateurs in their annoyances and embarrassments who discover that they have only purchased a copy; for they did not judge according to the merits of the picture but the name under which it was admitted. The sixth chapter upon ""The manner of analysing and describing pictures "" furnishes some good hints to catalogue-makers and auctioneers. The examples are ingeniously worded and with no little precision. The number given is but a selection from about 240 pages. Whoever will try his hand at a descriptive catalogue will find it not so easy a task as he imagined. We should have perhaps entertained a higher opinion of the author's judgment though not a higher of his descriptive power supposing it to have been exercised as a disciple of the noted Mr Puff who took a double first in those arts had the translator kindly omitted an outline of a picture by Poelemburg--_The Adoration of the Shepherds_. It is certainly well described in generality and detail; but never was any thing more like Mr Puff's style than the following:--""Poelemburg has here surpassed himself by the exactness of the design and the fine form of the figures. He has carried to the highest degree their gracious and simple expression. The picture is not less distinguished for the attractive effect of light well distributed for harmony and the clear obscure for the agreeable and sweet tone of the proper colours and for that truth "" &c. &c. &c.--but alas! the outline! ""Look on this picture and on this."" It may have been a pretty picture though the subject is much above Poelemburg; but--shall we pronounce it?--the design is wretched--we cannot help it and would spare it if we could. Strange are the blunders made in descriptive catalogues. An instance is given--an amusing specimen from a well-established manufactory. ""The famous picture of Raffaelle painted for the church of St John at Bologna representing St Cecilia holding a musical instrument in her hands with others at her feet affords an example of the errors alluded to. She listens with rapt attention to a choir of angels borne on the clouds and singing. On her right hand are St Paul and St John the Evangelist strongly characterized; the one by his sword the other by his eagle and both by the airs of the heads. On her left are St Magdalene with her cup and St Augustine with his cross and pontifical garments."" Hitherto all the world had been agreed upon the justness of the description; but the author of the _Manual of the French Museum_ printed in 1803 judged it proper to make one of his own of which behold the title and the substance--_The Martyrdom of St Cecilia_. ""Raffaelle would not represent the martyrdom of a young virgin like the execution of a malefactor. Here Cecilia advances towards the place where the palm of martyrdom awaits her. Her feet only still belong to this earth. Her upraised eyes tell that her thoughts are already in heaven. The man who bears the sword is not an executioner whose stern ferocity augments that of the spectacle. Here the headsman has an air of compassion. Behind the saint walks a priest who assists her. His physiognomy is common but sweet. He applauds the tranquil resignation of the victim who seems already to hear the celestial concert that is going on above. The angels celebrate her coming before hand! One of the companions of Cecilia points them out to her with his finger and seems to do so as an encouragement to her. A young man follows the saint. His action is too expressive to suppose it that of a parent or convert."" This is indeed a very fine specimen both for what is said and what is unsaid--the surmise is perfectly French and the pitying tender familiarity of Cecilia for commiseration's sake robbed of her saintship would be enough to melt an auction-room to tears were the picture to be sold and thus described. The very best auction description of a picture we remember ever to have heard was one most fluently given and with a most winning and gentlemanly manner by Mr Christie the father of the present justly appreciated Mr Christie as true and honourable as unerring in his judgment of pictures. It was many years ago. The picture to be sold was the celebrated one of the three goddesses _The Judgment of Paris_ a large picture. Now the difficulty of the case lay in this that it was well known that there were three pictures of the subject all claiming to be originals. This was well known and talked about. There were in fact three pictures of the judgment of Paris. After minutely and most ably describing the picture Mr Christie came to this delicate acknowledgment. He admitted there were three; the great painter delighted with his subject enamoured of the beauties he had created had as it were thrice thrown himself at the feet of each goddess. The three pictures were an offering and homage to each. None could determine which was best. The subject was the Judgment of Paris--it was an enviable opportunity for a happy purchaser ""to throw the golden apple."" We do not pretend to give with any exactness the eloquent wording of this address; nor can we describe the perfect grace with which it was delivered. Every one in the room seemed to know that he was listening to a scholar and a gentleman and felt a confidence. But to return to De Burtin. The chapter on ""the general schools of painting "" contains both useful information and judicious remarks. He mentions the embarrassment the amateur must feel seeing that authors are not agreed among themselves in the number and classification of schools. Some reckon three some five some eight some extend the number to twelve. Lanzi even makes fourteen of the Italian schools alone. ""In order that the school of a particular city or country may take its place among the general schools it is necessary in my opinion that it shall have produced a great many masters celebrated for their merit and that these shall have in their style and manner something common to them all which particularly characterizes them and which is sufficiently remarkable to distinguish their school from all others. Upon this principle I reckon eight schools in all; and these are the Florentine or Tuscan the Roman the Lombard the Venetian the Flemish the Dutch the French and the German. If it were sufficient to have given to the world artists renowned for their merit the Spanish might likewise claim a place among the general schools were it only from having possessed a Morales a Velasquez and a Murillo. Naples too might enjoy the same privilege from the names of Spagnoletto Calabrese Salvator Rosa and Luca Giordano. Genoa likewise from Castiglione Strozzi Castelli and Cambiasi. But the want of a general distinctive character prevents their being ranked under the general schools and the masters are for the most part placed separately in that one or other of the acknowledged schools to which their manner approaches most nearly or to which their master belonged."" The distinguishing marks of the schools are ably laid down. The author confesses that he feels a difficulty in generalizing the characteristics of the Florentine school. He adopts the somewhat exaggerated (as he allows) account of M. Levesque. His characteristics are--fine movement a certain sombre austerity an expression of vigour which excludes perhaps that of grace a character of design the grandeur of which is in some sort gigantic. They may be reproached with a kind of exaggeration; but it cannot be denied that there is in this exaggeration an ideal majesty which elevates human nature above the weak and perishing nature of reality. The Tuscan artists satisfied with commanding admiration seem to disdain seeking to please. The description of the Roman school we conceive to be not so fortunate. Its excellence is attributed to the antique distinguished ""by great beauty in the forms a composition elegant although often singular and by expressions ideal rather than natural of which a part is often sacrificed to the preservation of beauty."" If we receive as models of these two most celebrated schools Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Raffaelle (though it should be observed if we look to the actual genius of these great men we must not forget the early age at which Raffaelle died ) such distinction as this may be drawn. That the Florentine school had for its object the personal the absolute bodily power and dignity of man and such strong intellect and energy as would be considered in necessary agreement with that perfect condition of the human form. That there is therefore in their vigorous delineations a great and simple and as it were gigantic rudeness very perceptible. On the contrary in the Roman the subordination of the person to the cultivated mind is decidedly marked. It is the delineation of man further off from his ruder state showing in aspect and even in bodily movements the mental cultivation. The one school is of an Antediluvian the other of a Christian race. Hence in the latter under the prerogative of love grace and a nicer beauty are assumed; and a delicacy and purity arising from minds educated to bear to forbear chastened by trial endowed with a new greatness not inconsistent with gentleness. Yet was simplicity strongly marked in the Roman school; nor do we think the blame thrown upon their colouring justly thrown as it was most consistent with the characteristic dignified simplicity; nor do we agree with those who think it inharmonious in itself. Baroccio is praised in that he added somewhat of the colouring of Correggio to the study of the antique and the works of Raffaelle; but it is more than doubtful if the innovation upon the Roman simplicity be not a deterioration of the school. The colouring the chief characteristic of the Venetian school represents mankind in a still further onward (we use not the word advanced because it may be misunderstood) state in the state of more convention of manners and of luxury. Hence even most refined subjects of the Venetian are with regard to purity and moral and intellectual beauty in a grade of inferiority to the Roman and Florentine. They are of the age of a civil government rather than of a religious influence. The countenances indicate the _business_ of the world; the more varied costume the more rich covering of the figures with less of the _nude_ are marks of merchandise and traffic. This is perceptible and possibly somewhat to the disparagement of the full display of the subject in the grand picture of Del Piombo the _Raising of Lazarus_ though perhaps that picture bearing such evidence of the design if not the hand of Michael Angelo may by some not be admitted as belonging to the Venetian school. We mean not to say that the Venetian school did not advance the art by the new power of colour the invention of that school; it opened the way to a new class of subjects which still admitted much of the grand and the pathetic. It certainly did more; it showed that there was a grand and a pathetic in colour alone a principle of art which though first shown and not in its perfect degree by the Venetians has never yet been carried out as a principle. We hear much of its beauty its harmony in a limited sense of its power but seldom of its sentiment. The remarks of M. de Burtin upon the _Peter Martyr_ of Titian are very strange. He must have been much deceived when he saw this wonderful picture either by its position or the state of his own vision. We saw the picture out of its frame and down against the wall and saw no factitious unnatural effect nor any black and white. ""This picture "" he says ""so full of merit in other respects presents a striking example of the factitious and unnatural effect produced by the extraordinary opposition of black and white. I am well aware that gay and brilliant colouring would not be appropriate to a cruel action; but a measure is to be observed in every thing and I cannot be convinced that there could occur in broad day and in the open air a scene in which all was obscure and black except the figures."" Obscurity and blackness in Titian's _Peter Martyr_! Our author has attached the school of Bologne to that of Lombardy as others have done in consideration that the Caracci in forming their school greatly studied Correggio. Yet undoubtedly Correggio stands quite apart from the Caracci. The Bologna was in fact a ""Composite"" school. If the Venetian school was indicative of business of the activities of society as a mass the Lombard school as first distinguished by Correggio assumed more homely grace it was domestic of the hearth--the cherished love the sweet familiar grace. This was its characteristic; it bore a kind of garden luxuriance and richer embellishment of colour not the embellishment of civic pomp as seen in the Venetian but a coloured richness as of the fruit and flower of a new Eden. The _Holy Families_ of Correggio are in fragrant repose. The earth pays the homage of her profusion and as conscious of the presence of him that shall remove her curse puts on her gorgeous apparel. The next descent from this grade of art would be to the pastoral. M. de Burtin objects to the airs of the heads ""graceful and smiling felt not to be altogether appropriate when the action is sad or violent."" We can imagine that he alludes to the picture of the _Martyrdom of St Placidus and Flavia_ at Parma. The smiling saint receiving the sword in her bosom as a boon in thankfulness or that coming bliss which is already hers in vision is perhaps as touching as any expression ever painted by Correggio. Did our author miss the meaning of that devotional and more than hopeful smile? This picture like some others of Correggio is very grey and has probably had much of its glazing removed. In M. de Burtin's notice of the Flemish school we entirely pass over the discussion respecting Van Eyck and his discovery; enough has been said upon that subject. The partiality of our author for Rubens is very perceptible. The characteristics of the Flemish school are confined to Historical painting and even in that class there is scarcely more than one example Rubens. Between Rubens and Vandyke there is certainly affinity beyond that of colouring though in colouring to a limited degree. Between Rubens and Teniers there is surely a gap of many classes. If there be any characteristic mark common to both it must lie in the silvery lightness of colouring distinctness and freedom of touch as if both had used the same vehicle and in the same manner allowance being made for the size and subjects of their pictures. We are not disposed to detract from the reputation of Rubens as a colourist; no painter perhaps better understood theoretically and practically the science of the harmony of colours and their application to natural representation. But he was entirely careless as to sentiment of colouring. Action even to its utmost superiority was his _forte_ and for this one expression his colouring by its vivid power and contrasts was certainly very admirable. The Dutch school is so blended with the Flemish separating from both Rubens and Vandyke and their immediate scholars that it is difficult to speak of them as distinct schools. Fascinating as they undoubtedly are they utterly abandon the power to teach for the art of pleasing. They are not for the public; have little to do with _events_ of any great interest. There is a manifest descent from the high pretensions of art; the aim is to gratify the mere love of exact imitation and to interest by portraiture of manners. ""If then "" says our author ""truth of imitation is the first business of works of art; if without that no picture is in a situation to please; if all that is visible over the whole face of nature be included in the domain of painting how is it that among the exclusive partisans of historical subjects there are persons so blind as not to see that the marvellous productions of this school and of the Flemish have filled with admirable success the immense gaps which their vaunted Italian schools have left in different parts of art?"" The very first sentence of this passage is of very undefined sense; we can guess at what is meant by the sneer upon the ""_vaunted Italian schools_."" There are not only immense gaps but great gulfs over which there is no legitimate passage. If these schools have ""done so much honour to the art of painting "" as M. de Burtin asserts that they have it has rather been in their perpetuating it as a practical art than by adding to its dignity or importance. If however it be allowable to separate Rubens from the Flemish school we may with still greater propriety set apart by himself that extraordinary man Rembrandt who if any had some insight of the sentiment of colour. Very little compliment is paid to the French school by De Burtin. He considers that it has no characteristic but that of the imitation of all schools. It should be observed in justice to more modern French painters that this was written in 1808. The very opposite opinions of M. Levesque against and Lairesse in favour of Simon Vouet the founder of the school are quoted. The opinions of neither will weigh much with modern critics even though it were certain that those ascribed to Lairesse were his. Neither Claude nor Nicolas Poussin are allowed to belong to the French school. We presume De Burtin had but little taste for landscape for he does not mention we believe in this whole work Gaspar Poussin--nor does he dwell much upon Claude. It is extraordinary that in mentioning the one he should take no notice of his great contemporary. And here we may observe that writers on art have ever been neglectful in the extreme with regard to this part of art--we should add this delightful part and so capable of sentiment. They take a vast jump from the high Italian Historic (of Figures) to the low Flemish and Dutch not even in those latter schools discriminating the better portion of the landscape from the lower. There is wanting a new classification one not so much of schools nor of styles _per se_ as of subjects--in which the School of Landscape would require an ample treatment. It is a school which by the neglect of critics has been allowed to descend to its lowest depth; yet is it one which is daily becoming more the public taste--a taste nevertheless which has as yet given to it but little of its former elevation which it had entirely lost before it reached us through the deterioration of the Dutch and Flemish schools. The German school the first in antiquity was extinguished with its masters. It was founded by Albert Durer whose genius was acknowledged and admired by Raffaelle himself. The modern German school was not in existence at the date of this publication in 1808. An entire chapter is given upon ""the causes of the characteristics which distinguish the different schools from each other."" There is however nothing new said upon this subject. Undoubtedly there is much truth in the following passage: ""So much did the liberty which the Dutch had just recovered from the Spaniards by unheard-of efforts become fatal among them to the same class of art the foundations of which they sapped by their resolution to banish their priests and to substitute a religion that suffers neither pictures nor statues of saints in their churches. From that time all the views of their painters were necessarily turned to the other classes of art more susceptible of a small form and therefore more suitable to the private houses of the Dutch which though neat and commodious are not sufficiently large for pictures of great size."" If the dignity of art is to be recovered it will be by national galleries and we might yet perhaps hope by re-opening our churches for the admission of scriptural pictures. The chapter upon the division of pictures into classes is by no means satisfactory. It is admitted by the translator to be incomplete. At its conclusion is a quotation from Pliny which as it is intended to justify De Burtin's taste for the low Flemish and Dutch schools does not indicate a very high taste in either Pliny or himself. Pliny says of Pyreicus that ""few artists deserve to be preferred to him. That he painted in small barbers' and shoemakers' stalls asses bears and such things."" He further adds that his works obtained _larger_ prices than other artists of nobler subjects obtained and that he was not degraded by choosing such low subjects. We beg pardon of Pliny but we would not give three farthings for his pictorial judgment. Indeed had not Lucian given us some most vivid descriptions of some of the ancient pictures we should have had no very high opinion of them. For the well-known anecdotes speak only in favour of mechanical excellence. Our author in his chapter on the art of describing pictures might have taken Lucian for his model with great propriety. There is in this chapter on division into classes much nonsense about beauty Ideal and Physical. De Burtin thinks we have not any instinctive feeling for physical beauty as of moral beauty; that a fixed proportion of parts neither in men nor animals any more than in architecture is the foundation of beauty--which is perfectly ridiculous and not worth an argument. Ideal beauty he here treats with great contempt and points out two truths on this matter demonstrated by comparative anatomy; ""the one of which is that the beauty of the antique heads depends chiefly on the facial line in them making an angle of 100 degrees with the horizontal line; the other is that it is certain that such a head is never found in nature."" In the tenth chapter he treats of ""the causes of the superiority of the pictures of the 16th and 17th centuries over those of the past century."" He looks upon Rome and the Antique as the chief cause and that artists go there before they have established principles of art. It is not he asserts in difference of colours; for ""Giorgione and Titian neither made this themselves nor brought them from afar but bought then uniformly in the shops at Venice."" He appears to entertain no suspicion of loss or deterioration of vehicle; on the contrary thinks some artists have been very successful in copies here rather contradicting his former remarks upon the difference between old copies and new; but above all he attributes this _décadence_ of art to the neglect of colour. That however is evidently only one part of the art. We are almost induced to smile either at his flattery or his simplicity in naming certain exceptions of modern times whose names will be little known to and those known not much in the admiration of the English collector ""all of whom have carried their art to a very high degree of perfection."" In his chapter on the ""different manners of the masters "" it is observable how little he has to say of the Italian schools; almost all the subsequent remarks in the volume are confined to the Flemish and Dutch. He greatly praises Dietrici for his manner which to us is not pleasing and which we should term an imitating flippancy. He tells an anecdote of Titian which if it rest upon any good authority tends to prove that Titian's medium must have been one which admitted the mixture of water with oil. Of Titian he says that at the end of his life ""he used to daub his best works anew with red paint because he thought the colour too feeble. But happily his pupils had the address to prevent the fatal effects of his foolishness _by making up his colours with water only_ or with an oil that was not of a drying nature."" With colours ground Titian could not have mixed his pencil in oil alone and unmixed--and he would himself have immediately discovered the cheat for it would have dried as distemper dead and crumbled away under his hand. He might have so painted if oil and water had been combined and the vehicle rendered saponaceous which it probably was. Many artists have been led he observes to change the manner from good to bad. We have a remarkable instance in our Gainsborough whose latter scratchy slovenly manner is most displeasing; nor had he at any time an imagination to justify it or rather to qualify it by the power of his compositions. It is strange that he attributes slovenliness of manner to Rembrandt ""from Avarice."" Documents have recently been produced showing that Rembrandt's goods were seized for payment of no very large debt. But is not M. de Burtin altogether mistaken in this manner of Rembrandt? Any of his pictures that show this slovenliness are we should suspect in those parts merely sketched in--a method agreeable to his practice which was to work upon and upon glazing and heaping colour--a method which required in the first instance a loose and undefined sketchy manner. Some few years ago there was a picture by him exhibited at the Institution Pall-Mall--dead game wonderfully painted and evidently unfinished; a boy in the background was as we might term it daubed in in a very slovenly manner and with a greenish colour evidently for the sake of that colour as an underground. Under the head ""Historical"" in this chapter it is strange to find but seven names Rubens Vandyke Rembrandt Lairesse Poelemburg Albert Durer and Hans Holbein. Even with some of these names it is too much honour to place Lairesse and Poelemburg. In reference to the lower classes of subjects we think justice is hardly done to Jan Steen of whom considering him even as a colourist more should have been said than that he ""is distinguished by the drollery of his subjects and by the most true and ingeniously simple expression of the feelings of common life."" All this might be said of many others; the characteristic of Jan Steen is still wanting. So we think as to Philip Wouverman; no notice is taken of his too great softness the evident fault of his manner. Nor are we satisfied with the description of Backhuysen. It should have been noticed in what he is distinguished from Vandervelde. His defect in composition is so striking as frequently to show a want of perspective in design and often he has no principal object in his picture. His vessels are either too large or too small for the scene; and his execution was likewise too softened. He winds up this part of the subject with a quotation from Diderot that ""he cannot be manner'd either in design or colouring who imitates nature scrupulously and that mannerism comes of the master of the academy of the school and of the Antique "" which we very much doubt for the mannerism is often in the mind the peculiar the autographic character of the painter which he stamps even upon nature. Were a Wynantz and a Claude or Poussin put down before the same scene how different would be their pictures how different the vision in the eye of the three! A Claude would see the distances a Gaspar Poussin the middle distances and flowing lines and Wynantz the docks and thistles. The chapter ""on the signatures of the Masters "" will be found useful to collectors. He says that where there is a false signature it is removed by spirits of wine and that is the proof that it is false. He does not draw the inference that as spirits of wine destroy the one vehicle and not the other the old and original they must differ. Another chapter is devoted to ""The famous balance composed by De Piles for estimating the different degrees of merit in the principal historical painters."" This famous balance is a piece of critical coxcombry with which we never could have tolerable patience. It is an absurd assumption of superiority in the critic over all the masters that ever were; as if he alone were able to conceive perfection to which no painter has ever been able to advance; that perfection on which the critic or rather De Piles had his eye is Number 20; that no Painter has approached it nearer than nineteen. It commences with a falsehood in supposition that the critic is above the Painter or Art or the only one really cognisant of it. The fact being quite the reverse for _we know nothing that we have not been absolutely taught by genius_. It is genius that precedes; it is the maker the worker the inventor who alone sees the step beyond. Did the critic see this step he would cease to be the critic and become the maker. He would become the genius. In the arts whether of poetry painting or music we know nothing but what practical genius tells us shows us teaches us; seldom is it indeed that the scholar critic comprehends fully the lessons taught; but to pretend to go before the _masters_ and to set up a post with his Number 20 marked upon it and to bid his master reach it if he can is the puerile play of an infantine intellect or very conceited mind! And so we give M. De Piles and all his followers a slap in the face and bid them go packing with Number 20. We will not condescend to pull to pieces this fantastic scheme which is in its distinctions and weighings and calculations appreciations and depreciations as false as it must necessarily be arising from a mind capable of laying down any such scheme at all. The chapter on prices and the lists contained will be consulted with advantage by collectors. It contains valuable documents showing the fluctuations of public taste. There is much useful information upon cleaning pictures and on varnishes. Something has been recently said to bring into practice again the varnishing with white of egg. M. de Burtin is decidedly against the practice. ""As to the varnishes of water isinglass and white of egg every prudent amateur will attack them the instant that he discovers such dangerous enemies and will use every effort to free his pictures from them."" We think him utterly mistaken in the following passage. ""In operating upon a work of art whether to clean it or to raise the varnish it ought to be remembered that the colours grow hard only by the lapse of time."" If so surely a hundred years would be time enough to harden--but the chemical tests which touch the hard paint if it be hard of a century old will not be applicable to those of still older date and of better time. He had shown this unconsciously in what he had said of spirits of wine. We have taken some pains in the pages of Maga to disabuse the public with regard to the imaginary benefit of painting in varnish--a most pernicious practice; and that it is so we have elsewhere given both proof and authorities. We are glad to find our author on our side. ""Besides no one at the present day (1808) is ignorant of their absurd method of painting in varnish which corrupts the colours and prevents them ever attaining the requisite hardness."" There is much useful matter upon varnishing which it will be well that collectors and keepers of public galleries

should read with attention. We do not say follow but read; for it is indeed a very serious matter to recommend a varnish seeing how many pictures are totally ruined by bad applications. We have been told that drying oil mixed with mastic varnish has been though not very recently used in our National Gallery. We hope it is a mistake and that there has been no such practice. The effect must be to make them dull and horny and to destroy all brilliancy in time. We say no more upon that subject believing that our National Gallery is intrusted to good hands and that whatever is done will be done with judgment and not without much reflection. A new varnish has appeared ""Bentley's."" We believe it is copal but rendered removable as mastic. It is certainly very brilliant not or but slightly subject to chill and is more permanent as well as almost colourless. De Burtin not only denounces the use of oil in varnishes but speaks of a more disgusting practice common in Italy of rubbing pictures ""with fat oil or lard or other animal grease.... So destructive a practice comes in process of time to rot the picture so that it will not hold together."" We should scarcely have thought it worth while to notice this had we not seen pictures so treated in this country. Behold a specimen of folly and hazardous experiment:--""At that time I frequented the Dresden gallery every morning and got from M. Riedal all the details of his practice. He informed me that amongst others the chief works of Correggio Raffaelle Titian and Procaccini after having undergone his preparatory operations had got a coat of his 'oil of flowers ' which he would repeat until every part became 'perfectly bright.' And on my remarking that in the admirable 'Venus' of Titian the carnations alone were bright and all the rest flat he told me with perfect coolness that 'having only as yet given it three coats of his oil that it was not astonishing but that he would put it all in unison by multiplying the coats.'"" The man should have been suffocated in his ""oil of flowers "" preserved in them and hung up in the gallery _in terrorem_. Could ghosts walk and punish we would not have been in his skin though perfumed with his preservative oil of flowers under the visitations of the ghosts of Correggio Raffaelle Titian and Procaccini. ""Such "" adds M. de Burtin ""was his threat at the very moment that I felt overpowered with chagrin to see the superb carnations of Titian acquiring a yellowish sad and monotonous tone through the coats that he had already given to it."" We have noticed at considerable length this work and have been led on by the interest of the subject. The perusal of this translation will repay the connoisseur and we think the artist. The former in this country will be surprised to find names of artists whose works will not be found in our collections at least with their titles. The artist will find some useful information and will always find his flame of enthusiasm fed by reading works upon the subject of art though they should be very inferior to the present useful volume. We recommend it as not unamusing to all who wish to think upon art and to acquire the now almost necessary accomplishment of a taste for pictures. MANNER AND MATTER. A TALE. CHAPTER I. Along the dusty highway and underneath a July sun a man about fifty tending somewhat to the corpulent and dressed in heavy parsonic black might have been seen treading slowly--treading with all that quiet caution which one uses who conscious of fat trusts his person to the influence of a summer sky. Mr Simpson such was the name of this worthy pedestrian passed under the denomination of a mathematical tutor though it was now some time since he had been known to have any pupil. He was now bent from the village of ------ to the country-seat of Sir John Steventon which lay in its neighbourhood. He had received the unusual honour of an invitation to dinner at the great man's house and it was evidently necessary that he should present himself both his visage and his toilet in a state of as much composure as possible. The dust upon his very shining boot this a touch from his pocket-handkerchief before entering the house could remove and so far all traces of the road would be obliterated; but should this wicked perspiration once fairly break its bounds he well knew that nothing but the lapse of time and the fall of night would recover him from this palpable disorder. Therefore it was that he walked with wonderful placidity making no one movement of body or mind that was not absolutely necessary to the task of progression and holding himself up so to speak _within_ his habiliments as if he and they though unavoidably companions on the same journey were by no means intimate or willing associates. There was a narrow strip of shade from the hedge that ran beside the road and although the shadow still left the nobler half of his person exposed to the rays of the sun he kept carefully within such shelter as it afforded. If he encountered any one he stood still and examined the foliage of the hedge. To dispute the path in any other manner with the merest urchin he might meet was out of the question. It would have caused excitement. Moreover he was a meek man and in all doubtful points yielded to the claim of others. Grocery-boys and barrow-women always had the wall of him. Our traveller proceeded so tranquilly that a sparrow boldly hopped down upon the ground before him; he was so resolved to enter into conflict with no living creature that he paused till it had hopped off again. Mr Simpson's toilet though it had been that day a subject of great anxiety with him presented we fear to the eyes of the world nothing remarkable. A careless observer if questioned on the apparition he had met with would have replied very briefly that it was the figure of an old pedant dressed in a suit of rusty black. Suit of rusty black! And so he would dismiss the aggregate of all that was choice reserved and precious in the wardrobe of Mr Simpson. Rusty black indeed! Why that dress coat which had been set apart for years for high and solemn occasions had contracted a fresh dignity and importance from every solemnity with which it had been associated. And those respectable nether-garments had they not always been dismissed from service the moment he re-entered his own dusty apartment? Had they not been religiously preserved from all abrasion of the surface whether from cane-bottomed chair or that under portion of the library table which to students who cross their legs is found to be so peculiarly pernicious to the nap of cloth? What _could_ have made them worse for wear? Would a thoughtless world confound the influence of the all-embracing atmosphere with the wear and tear proper to cloth habiliments? And then his linen--would a careless public refuse to take notice that not a single button was missing from the shirt which in general had but one solitary button remaining--just one at the neck probably fastened by his own hand? Above all was it not noticeable that he was not to-day under the necessity of hiding one hand behind him under the lappets of his coat and slipping the other down his half-open umbrella to conceal the dilapidated gloves but could display both hands with perfect candour to public scrutiny? Were all these singular merits to pass unacknowledged to be seen by no one or seen only by himself? It was an excellent wish of Burns'-- ""Oh would some power the giftie gie us To see ourselves as others see us!"" But it would be a still more convenient thing if some power would give the rest of the world the faculty of seeing us as we see ourselves. It would produce a most comfortable state of public opinion; and on no subject would it operate more favourably than on that of dress. Could we spread over beholders the same happy delusion that rests on ourselves what a magical change would take place in the external appearance of society! Mr Simpson is not the only person who might complain that the world will not regard his several articles of attire from the same _point of view_ as himself. We know a very charming lady who when she examines her kid gloves doubles her little fist and then pronounces--they will do--forgetful that she is not in the habit of doubling her pretty fist in the face of every one that she speaks to--and that therefore others will not take exactly the same point of view as herself. Notwithstanding the heat of the sun our mathematician contrived to deliver himself in a tolerable state of preservation at the mansion of Sir John Steventon. We pass over the ceremony of dinner and draw up the curtain just at that time when the ladies and gentlemen have re-assembled in the drawing-room. We look round the well-dressed circle and it is some time before we can discover our worthy friend. At length after a minute research we find him standing alone in the remotest corner of the room. He is apparently engaged in examining the bust of the proprietor of the mansion which stands there upon its marble pedestal. He has almost turned his back upon the company. Any one from his attitude might take him for a connoisseur perhaps an artist absorbed in his critical survey. But so far is he from being at the present moment drawn away by his admiration of the fine arts that we question whether he even _sees_ the bust that is standing upright face to face before him. He has got into that corner and knows not how to move from it. He knows not where else to put himself or what else to be looking at. The scene in which he finds himself has from the solitude of his later years become strange and embarrassing. The longer he stands there the more impossible does it seem for him to get away or even to turn round and face the company. The position of the valorous Schmelzle who having read upon a board the notice ""that spring guns were set upon the premises "" trembled as much to retreat as to advance to move a foot backwards or forwards or in any direction but stood gazing at the formidable announcement was scarcely more painful than that of Simpson. Although probably not a single person in the room was taking the least notice of his movements he _felt_ that every eye was upon him. The colour was mounting in his cheek. Every moment his situation was becoming more intolerable. We are afraid that he would soon have committed something very absurd--have broken from his moorings with a shout--or dispelled the sort of nightmare that was stifling him by some violent gesture perhaps by dealing a blow at that bust which stood there so placidly before him just as the poor youth did at the British Museum who threw a stone at the Portland vase to prove that he also was a man and had volition and was not to be looked into stone by the Gorgon of society. Fortunately however Sir John Steventon himself came to the rescue. ""Well Mr Simpson "" said the baronet pointing to the bust ""do you trace a resemblance?"" Mr Simpson was so overjoyed to have at length some one at hand to whom he might speak or seem to be speaking and so connect himself with the society around him that to the simple question he made not one only but several answers and very dissimilar ones too. In the same breath he found it a likeness yet not very like and ended with asking for whom it was intended. Sir John Steventon smiled and after one or two indifferent observations led Mr Simpson apart into a little study or _sanctum_ of his own which communicated with the drawing-room. It will be naturally concluded that there existed some peculiar reason for the invitation passed on our humble mathematician who was not altogether the person under ordinary circumstances to find himself a guest at rich men's tables. The following conversation will explain this departure from the usual course of things and the respectable conventions of society. ""You were some years "" said Sir John ""a tutor in the family of the late Mr Scott?"" ""I was "" responded Mr Simpson ""and prepared his son for Cambridge. Had the young man lived""---- ""He would I am sure "" politely interrupted Sir John ""have borne testimony to the value of your instruction. I am as you may be aware the executor of Mr Scott. That gentleman was so well satisfied with the exertions you made and the interest you took in his son that on your quitting him he presented you I believe with an annuity of fifty pounds to be enjoyed during your life. This is if I may be allowed to say so the chief source of your income."" ""The only one "" answered Mr Simpson. ""For although I willingly proclaim myself tutor of mathematics because a title no matter what is a protection from the idle curiosity of neighbours; yet if I may venture to say so my life is indeed devoted to science for the love of science itself and with the hope of enrolling my name although the very last and humblest amongst those who have perfected our knowledge of the mathematics and extended their application. I have already conceived and in part executed a work."" Mr Simpson was launching on the full tide of his favourite subject. He thought as good simple creatures always do that he could not make a better return for the hospitalities of the rich man than by pouring out his whole heart before him. Sad mistake which these simple people fall into! The rich man cares nothing for their heart and is very susceptible to ennui. ""Very good "" interrupted Sir John ""very good; but with regard to this annuity. I have not yet looked over the papers relating to it and I hope for your sake I shall find it properly secured."" ""I have a deed formally drawn up."" ""True true; and I hope all will be found straightforward in this and in other affairs of the testator and that nothing will compel me to call in the assistance or sanction of the Court of Chancery in administering the estate. In that case although your claim might be ultimately substantiated yet the payment of your annuity might for some years be suspended."" ""I pray God not!"" exclaimed our man of science with some trepidation. ""I have lived so much alone so entirely amongst my figures and diagrams that I have not a friend in the world of whom I could borrow sixpence."" ""Well I trust "" resumed Sir John after a short pause ""that there will be no occasion for applying to a Court of Chancery. There ought to be none. There is but one child Mrs Vincent whom you have seen this evening in the drawing-room. The great essential is to keep prying and meddlesome attorneys from thrusting themselves into the business. You acted as confidential secretary as well as tutor while you were domiciled with Mr Scott."" ""I did."" ""There was a pecuniary transaction between myself and Mr Scott to which I think you were privy."" ""A loan of ten thousand pounds for which you gave your bond."" ""Exactly. I see you are informed of that circumstance. You are not perhaps equally well informed that that bond was cancelled; that the debt in short was paid. This happened after you had left Mr Scott. But although as I tell you this debt no longer exists yet it might create a great embarrassment to me and to every person interested in the estate of the testator if it were known that such a debt ever had existed. Mrs Vincent has just returned from India expecting a very considerable fortune from her late father. To her in general terms the whole property is left. She will be disappointed. There is much less than she anticipates. However not to make a long story of this matter all I have to request of you is this if any one should question you as to the property of your late patron and especially as to this transaction be you silent--know nothing. You have ever been a man of books buried in abstractions the answer will appear quite natural. This will save you be assured from much vexation disquietude and grievous interruption to your studies and I shall rest your debtor for your considerate behaviour. A contrary course will create embarrassment to all parties and put in jeopardy your own annuity on which as you say you depend for subsistence and the carrying out of your scientific projects."" As Mr Simpson sat silent during this communication Sir John continued some time longer in the same strain. He made no doubt that the simple mathematician before him was quite under his influence--was completely in his power. That simple person however who lived in obscurity almost in penury--to society an object of its wisely directed ridicule--was a man of honour. Little had he to do with the world; even its good opinion was scarcely of any importance to him. What to him was the fastidiousness of virtue--to him whom poverty excluded from the refined portion of society and knowledge and education from the vulgar and illiterate? What could he profit by it? Nothing absolutely nothing. And yet there was no power on earth could have made this man false to his honour. Partly perhaps from his very estrangement from the business of the world his sense of virtue had retained its fresh and youthful susceptibility. As is the case with all such men he was slow to attribute villany to others. This it was had kept him silent; he waited to be quite convinced that he understood Sir John. When the truth stood plainly revealed when it became evident to him that this debt of ten thousand pounds was _not_ paid and that he was brought there to be bribed or intimidated into a guilty secrecy his whole soul fired up with indignation. He had listened as we say in silence. When satisfied that he perfectly comprehended Sir John he rose from his seat and briefly intimating that he should not leave him long in doubt as to the manner in which he should act turned and abruptly left the apartment. Sir John had no time to arrest him and could only follow and be a witness to his movements. He re-entered the drawing-room. Where were now all the terrors of that scene? Where the awe which its easy elegant ceremonial inspired? Gone utterly gone. He had now a duty to fulfil. You would have said it was another man. Had he been the proprietor of the mansion he could not have entered with a more assured and unembarrassed air. There was a perfect freedom and dignity in his demeanour as he stepped across the room. In the centre of the room throned as it were upon the sofa sat two ladies remarkable above all the others for the finished elegance of their manner and the splendour of their toilet. The one was Lady Steventon the other Mrs Vincent. Some minutes ago not for all the world would he have stood alone upon that piece of carpet in front of this sofa. No courtier assured of the most smiling reception could have drawn his chair with more ease to the vacant spot beside Mrs Vincent than did now Mr Simpson. He immediately entered into conversation on the subject that at the moment engrossed all his thoughts; he reminded her of the confidential intimacy which had subsisted between himself and her late father; proffered his assistance to aid her in the arrangement of her affairs; and in particular gave a succinct account of the transaction which Sir John had manifested so great anxiety to conceal. The manner in which all this was said so entirely took Sir John Steventon by surprise that he was unable to interfere with a single word. Mrs Vincent to whom the information was evidently quite new concealed the embarrassment she felt in some general expressions of thanks to Mr Simpson. He when he had fulfilled his object rose and making a profound bow to his host and hostess quitted the house. His demeanour was such that his host involuntarily returned his salutation with one of marked deference and respect. CHAPTER II. A year had rolled round and Mrs Vincent was established in all her rights. Sir John Steventon had been disappointed in the fraudulent scheme he had devised; not disappointed however as he deemed in the revenge he had taken on the man who had frustrated it. Payment of Mr Simpson's annuity was resisted and the poor mathematician was in great straits for those necessaries of life which necessary as they may be are often with a great portion of the human family very fortuitous. Ask not on what legal pretexts Sir John had been successful in inflicting this revenge. Such pretexts are ""thick as blackberries."" _Facilis est descensus_--No rich suitor ever sought long for admission into the Court of Chancery however difficult even he may have found the escape from it. Neither do we apprehend is there any remedy for this abuse of law in the legal reforms usually contemplated by our legislators. The only effective remedy if we may be here permitted to give a remark would be this--that the state administer civil justice at its own expense to rich and poor alike--that as it protects each man's life and limb so it should protect each man's property which is the means of life which is often as essential to him as the limbs by which he moves. This is the only mode of realizing that ""equal justice"" which at present is the vain boast of every system of jurisprudence when the suitor has to pay for protection to his property. Poor Simpson who had lived for some years on his scanty annuity and had lived content for his wants were few and his mind utterly absorbed in his science now found himself without the simplest means of subsistence. He had escaped as he thought for ever from the necessity of applying his science to satisfy mere animal wants; he began to think he should be very fortunate if all his science would procure for him the commonest ""board and lodging!"" When a man has ceased to cultivate his relationship with society and wishes after a time to return to them he will find that a blank wall has been built up between him and the world. There is not even a door to knock at let alone the chance of its opening when he knocks. Our mathematician knew not where to look for a pupil nor for a friend who would recommend him. Some unavailing attempts he made to obtain his rights through litigation; but he soon found that to the loss of his money he was adding only the loss of all tranquillity of mind. The lawyer he employed neglected (and very naturally) a suit which would have required on his part large advances the repayment of which was very precarious. In this predicament he bethought himself of making an appeal to Mrs Vincent the lady whom he had benefited by his simple and straightforward honesty; not that he held her under any peculiar obligation to him; what he had done was by no means to oblige her; it was strictly a self-obligation; he could not have acted otherwise let the consequences have been what they might. But he reasoned with himself that the annuity of which he was deprived would fall into the general residue of the estate and be in fact paid to her; and as he could not believe that she would wish to profit by the villany of Sir John he thought there could be nothing derogatory to him nor exacting upon her if he proposed to relinquish entirely his legal claim upon the estate and receive the annuity from her hands. She must surely be desirous he thought to fulfil the solemn engagements of her deceased parent. Full of these cogitations he betook himself to London where Mrs Vincent had established herself. The reader must imagine himself introduced into an elegantly furnished drawing-room in one of the most fashionable quarters of the metropolis. Had we any talent for the description of the miracles of upholstery it would be a sin to pass over so superb and tasteful a scene without a word. But the little descriptive power we possess must be reserved for the lady who was sitting in the midst of one of those domestic miniature palaces of which the ""interiors"" of London could present so great a number. Mrs Vincent had lately become a widow at the opening of our narrative and was therefore still dressed in black. But though in black or rather perhaps on that very account her attire was peculiarly costly. In black only can magnificence of apparel be perfectly allied with purity of taste. And certainly nothing could harmonize better than the rich satin dress and the superb scarf of lace which fell over it with such a gorgeous levity. A pope in his highest day of festival might have coveted that lace. Between the black satin and the light folds of the scarf relieved by the one and tempered and sometimes half hidden by the other played a diamond cross which might have been the ransom of a Great Mogul. The features of Mrs Vincent were remarkably delicate and her pale beauty was of that order which especially interests the imagination. She wore her hair plainly parted upon either side revealing the charming contour of her well-shaped head. A patriarch would have gloried in his age if it gave him the privilege to take that dear head between his hands and imprint his holy kiss upon the forehead. Her little girl her sole companion and chief treasure in the world stood prattling before her; and the beauty of the young mother was tenfold increased by the utter forgetfulness of herself which she manifested as she bent over her child absorbed in the beauty of that dear little image which she was never weary of caressing. Mrs Vincent was even more fascinating in manner than in appearance. She was one of those charming little personages whom every one idolizes whom men and women alike consent to _pet_. It was impossible to be in the same room with her half an hour without being perfectly ready to do every thing reasonable or unreasonable that she could request of you. The charm of her conversation or rather of her society was irresistible; there was a sweet subdued gaiety in her speech accent and gestures which made you happy you knew not why; and though by no means a wit nor laying the least claim to be a clever person there was a sprightly music in her tones and a spontaneous vivacity in her language which left a far more delightful impression than the most decided wit. Where shall we find a more beautiful picture than that of a young mother and that mother a widow bending over the glossy tresses of her child? Never is woman so attractive so subduing; never does she so tenderly claim our protection; never is she so completely protected so unassailable so predominant. Poor Simpson felt his heart penetrated with the holiest love and veneration when he entered the room. Nothing could exceed the graceful and benevolent manner in which Mrs Vincent received him. He had been the tried friend of her father the beloved tutor of her brother; he had lately been of signal service to herself. Mr Simpson was overpowered with his reception. The object of his visit seemed already accomplished. Hardly did it appear necessary to proceed with any verbal statement; surely she knew his position and this was enough. She had been restored to her rights; she would not she could not allow him to suffer by an act which led to that restoration; still less would she consent to reap herself the benefit of an injustice perpetrated upon him. Some explanation however of the object of his visit he found it necessary to make. When he had concluded the brief statement which he thought sufficient the lady answered in the softest voice in the world--that she was sorry she could not enter upon that subject as she had promised Sir John Steventon not to interfere between him and Mr Simpson--that Sir John had exacted this promise and she had given it as necessary to facilitate the arrangement of her affairs. What could she do an unprotected woman with the interests of her child depending upon her? She was bound therefore she regretted to say not to intermeddle in the business. But then Mr Simpson could proceed with his legal remedies. She did not presume to pass an opinion upon the justice of his claim or to advise him not to prosecute it. In brief she had given up the brave and honourable man who had befriended her at the peril of his fortune to the revenge of the wealthy unscrupulous baronet who had intended to defraud her. It was so agreeable to be on amicable terms with her father's executor. Our mathematician doubted his ears. Yet so it was. And it was all repeated to him in the blandest manner in the world. She seemed to think that a duty to any one else but her child was out of the question. We believe that many interesting and beautiful mothers have the same idea. Mr Simpson gasped for breath. Some quite general remark was the only one that rose to his lip. ""You are angels--to look upon "" he half-murmured to himself. It was not in his disposition to play the petitioner and still less to give vent to feelings of indignation which would be thought to have their origin only in his own personal injuries. It was still surprise that was predominant in him as at length he exclaimed--""But surely madam you do not understand this matter. This annuity was honestly won by long services rendered to your father and to his son. Instead of receiving other payments I had preferred to be finally remunerated in this form--it was my desire to obtain what in my humble ideas was an independence that I might devote my life to science. Well this annuity it is my all--it stands between me and absolute penury--it is the plank on which I sail over the waters of life. I have too an object for my existence which this alone renders possible. I have studies to pursue discoveries to make. This sum of money is more than my life it is my license to study and to think."" ""Oh but Mr Simpson "" interrupted the lady with a smile ""I understand nothing of mathematics."" Mr Simpson checked himself. No she did _not_ understand him. What was his love of science or his hope of fame to her? What to her was any one of the pains and pleasures that constituted _his_ existence? ""Besides "" added the lady ""you are a bachelor Mr Simpson. You have no children. It can matter little""---- A grim smile played upon the features of the mathematician. He was probably about to prove to her that as children are destined to become men the interests of a man may not be an unworthy subject of anxiety. However important a person a child may be a man is something more. But at this moment a servant entered and announced Sir John Steventon! On perceiving Mr Simpson that gentleman was about to retreat and with a look of something like distrust at Mrs Vincent he said that he would call again. ""Nay come in!"" exclaimed the mathematician with a clear voice. ""Come in! The lady has not broken her word nor by me shall she be petitioned to do so. It is I who will quit this place. You have succeeded Sir John in your revenge--you have succeeded and yet perhaps it is an imperfect success. You shall not rack the heart though you should starve the body. You think perhaps I shall pursue you with objurgation or entreaty. You are mistaken. I leave you to the enjoyment of your triumph and to the peace which a blunted conscience will I know bestow upon you."" Sir John muttered in reply that he could not debate matters of business but must refer him to his solicitor. ""Neither personally "" continued Mr Simpson ""nor by your solicitor will you hear more of me. I shall forget you Sir John. Whatever sufferings you may inflict you shall not fill my heart with bitterness. Your memory shall not call forth a single curse from me. Approach. Be friendly to this lady. Be mutually courteous bland and affable--what other virtues do you know?"" He strode out of the room. His parting word was no idle boast. Sir John heard of him and of his just claims no more; and the brave-hearted man swept the memory of the villain from his soul. He would not have it there. The baronet soothed his conscience if it ever gave him any uneasiness by the supposition that the aged mathematician had found some pupils--that probably he eked out as comfortable a subsistence as before and had only exchanged the dreamy pursuit of scientific fame for the more practical labours of tuition. But no such fortune attended Mr Simpson. He had lived too long out of the world to find either friends or pupils and the more manifest his poverty the more hopeless became his applications. Meanwhile utter destitution stood face to face before him. Did he spend his last coin in the purchase of the mortal dose? Did he leap at night from any of the bridges of the metropolis? He was built of stouter stuff. He collected together his manuscripts a book or two which had happily for him been unsaleable his ink-bottle and an iron pen and marched straight--to the parish workhouse. There was no refusing his claim here. Poverty and famine were legible in every garment and on every feature. In that asylum he ended his days unknown unsought for. One of his companions dressed like himself in the workhouse co

tume who had gathered that he was the sufferer by some act of injustice of a rich oppressor thought on one occasion to console him by the reflection that his wrongdoer would certainly suffer for it in the next world--in his own energetic language that he would certainly be d----d. ""Not on my account--not I hope on my account "" said the mathematician with the greatest simplicity in the world. ""No revenge either here or hereafter. But if civil government deserved the name it would have given me justice now. Had I been robbed of sixpence on the highway there would have been hue and cry--the officers of government would not have rested till they had found and punished the culprit. I am robbed of all; and because I am poor and unfriended--circumstances which make the loss irremediable--the law puts forth no hand to help me. Men will prate about the expense--the burden on the national revenue--as if justice to all were not the very first object of government--as if--but truce to this. My good friend you see these fragments of snuff that I have collected--could you get them exchanged for me for a little ink?"" MARSTON; OR THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. Part XX. ""Have I not in my time heard lions roar? Have I not heard the sea puft up with wind Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in the pitched battle heard Loud 'larums neighing steeds and trumpets clang?"" Shakspeare. As my mission was but temporary and might be attended with personal hazard I had left Clotilde in England much to her regret and travelled with as small a retinue as possible; and in general by unfrequented ways to avoid the French patroles which were already spread through the neighbourhood of the high-roads. But at Burgos the Spanish commandant on the delivery of my passport insisted so strongly on the necessity for an escort placing the wish on a feeling of his personal responsibility in case of my falling into the enemy's hands that to save the señor's conscience or his commission I consented to take a few troopers with one of his aides-de-camp to see me in safety through the Sierra Morena. The aide-de-camp was a _character_; a little meagre being who after a long life of idleness and half-pay was suddenly called into service; and now figured in a staff-coat and feather. His first commission had been in the luckless expedition of Count O'Reilly against the Moors; and it had probably served him as a topic from that time to the moment when he pledged his renown for my safe delivery into the hands of the junta of Castile. He had three leading ideas which formed the elements of his body and soul --his exploits in the Moorish campaign; his contempt for the monks; and his value for the talents courage and fame of Don Ignacio Trueno Relampago the illustrious appellative of the little aide-de-camp himself. He talked without mercy as we rode along; and gave his opinions with all the easy conviction of an ""officer on the staff "" and all the freedom of the wilderness. The expedition to Africa had failed solely for want of adopting ""the tactics which _he_ would have advised;"" and his public services in securing the retreat would have done honour to the Cid or to Alexander the Great had not ""military jealousy refused to transmit them to the national ear."" His opinion of Spanish politics was that they owed their occasional mistakes solely to the culpable negligence of the war-minister ""in overlooking the gallant subalterns of the national army."" Spain he regarded as the natural sovereign of Europe; and of course of all mankind--its falling occasionally into the background being satisfactorily accounted for by the French descent of her existing dynasty by the visible deterioration in the royal manufacture of cigars and more than either ""by the tardiness of military promotion."" This last grievance was the sting. ""If justice had been done "" exclaimed the new-feathered warrior rising in his stirrups and waving his hand as if he was in the act of cleaving down a Moor ""_I_ should long since have been a general. If I had been a general the armies of Spain would long since have been on a very different footing. Men of merit would have been placed in their proper positions; the troops would have emulated the exploits of their forefathers in the age of Ferdinand and Isabella; and instead of receiving a king from France we should have given her one; while instead of seeing a French emperor carrying off our princes as the hawk carries off pigeons or as a gipsy picks your pocket under pretence of telling your fortune we should have been garrisoning Paris with our battalions and sending a viceroy to the Tuileries."" I laughed; but my ill-timed mirth had nearly cost me an ""affair of honour"" with the little regenerator. His hand was instantly on the hilt of his sword and every wrinkle on his brown visage was swelling with wrath; when my better genius prevailed He probably recollected that he was sent as my protector and that the office would not have been fulfilled according to his instructions by running me through the midriff. But with all his pomposity he had the national good-nature; and when we sat down to our chicken and bottle of Tinto in one of those delicious valleys he was full of remorse for his burst of patriotic temper. The day had been a continued blaze of sunshine the road a burning sand and the contrast of the spot where we made our halt was tempting. The scene was rich and _riant_ the evening lovely and the wine good. I could have reposed there for a month or a year or for ever. It would have been enough to make a man turn hermit; and I instinctively gazed round to look for the convent which ""must lie"" in so luxurious a site. My companion informed me that I was perfectly right in my conjecture that spot having been the position of one of the richest brotherhoods of Spain. But its opulence had been unluckily displayed in rather too ostentatious a style in the eyes of a French brigade; who in consequence packed up the plate in their baggage and in the course of a tumult which followed with the peasantry burned the building to the ground. Yet this misfortune was the source of but slight condolence on the part of my friend. He was perfectly of the new school. ""They were Theatines "" said he--""as bad as the Jesuits in every thing but hypocrisy--powerful insolent bold-faced knaves; and after their robbing me of the inheritance of my old rich uncle which one of those crafty _padres_ contrived to make the old devotee give them on his death-bed I had dry eyes for their ill luck. But I suppose "" added he ""you know their creed?"" I acknowledged my ignorance. ""Well you shall hear it. It is incomparably true; though whether written for them by Moratin or Calderon I leave to the antiquarians."" He then chanted it in the style of the monkish service and with gesticulations groans and upturning of eyes which strongly gave me the idea that he had employed his leisure if not relieved his sense of the war-minister's neglect by exerting his talents as the ""Gracioso"" of some strolling company. The troopers gathered round us with that odd mixture of familiarity and respect which belongs to all the lower ranks of Spain; and the performer evidently acquired new spirits from the laughter of his audience as he dashingly sang his burlesque:-- Cancion. Los mandamientos de los Teatinos [6]. Mas humanos son que divinos. _Coro_.--Tra lara tra lara. _Primo_--Adquirir mucho dinero. Tra lara &c. _Segundo_--Sujetar todo il mondo. Tra lara &c. _Tercero_--Buen capon buen carnero. Tra lara &c. _Quarto_--Comprar barato y vender caro. Tra lara &c. _Quinto_--Con el blanco aguar el tinto. Tra lara &c. _Sexto_--Tener siempre el lomo en siesto. Tra lara &c. _Septimo_--Guardase bien del sereno. Tra lara &c. _Octavo_--Obrar la suya y lo ageno. Tra lara &c. _Nono_--Hazar del penitente esclavo. Tra lara &c. _Decimo_--Mesclarse en cosas d'estado. Tra lara &c. _Coro_.--Estes diez mandamientos se encierran en dos-- Todo para mi y nada para vos. Tra lara tra lara &c. The whole performance was received with an applause which awoke the little aide-de-camp's genius to such an extent that he volunteered to sing some stanzas of his own immeasurably more poignant. He was in the act of filling a bumper to the ""downfall of all monkery on the face of the earth "" when the report of a musket was heard and the bottle was shivered in his hand. The honour of Don Ignacio Trueno Relampago was never in greater danger for he instantly turned much whiter than his own pocket-handkerchief: but the Spaniard is a brave fellow after all; and seeing that I drew out my pistols he drew his sword ordered his troopers to mount and prepared for battle. But who can fight against fortune? Our horses which had been picketed at a few yards' distance in the depth of the shade were gone. A French battalion of tirailleurs accidentally coming on our route had surrounded the grove and carried off the horses unperceived while our gallant troopers were chorusing the songster. The sentinel left in charge of them had of course given way to the allurements of ""sweet nature's kind restorer balmy sleep "" and awoke only to find himself in French hands. Don Ignacio would have fought a legion of fiends; but seven hundred and fifty sharpshooters were a much more unmanageable affair; and on our holding a council of war (which never fights ) and with a whole circle of bayonets glittering at our breasts I advised a surrender without loss of time. The troopers were already disarmed and the Don appealing to me as evidence that he had done all that could be required by the most punctilious valour surrendered his sword with the grace of a hero of romance. The Frenchmen enjoyed the entire scene prodigiously laughed a great deal drank our healths in our own bottles and finished by a general request that the Don would indulge them with an encore of the chant which had so tickled their ears during their advance in the wood. The Don complied _malgrè_ _bongrè_; and at the conclusion of this feat the French colonel resolved not to be outdone in any thing called on one of his subalterns for a song. The subaltern hopelessly searched his memory for its lyrical stores; but after half a dozen snatches of ""chansons "" and breaking down in them all he volunteered in despair what he pronounced ""the most popular love-song in all Italy."" Probably not a syllable of it was understood by any one present but myself; yet this did not prevent its being applauded to the skies and pronounced one of the most brilliant specimens of Italian sensibility. It was in _Latin_ and a fierce attack on the Jesuits which the young officer a palpable _philosophe_ had brought with him from the _symposia_ of the ""Ecole Polytechnique:""-- Mortem norunt animare[7] Et tumultus suscitare Inter reges et sedare. Tanquam sancti adorantur Tanquam reges dominantur Tanquam fures deprædantur. Dominantur temporale Dominantur spirituale Dominantur omnia male. Hos igitur Jesuitas Heluones hypocritas Fuge si cælestia quæras. Vita namque Christiana Abhorret ab hac doctrinâ Tanquam fictâ et insanâ. The colonel of the tirailleurs was a complete specimen of the revolutionary soldier. He was a dashing figure with a bronzed face; at least so much of it as I could discover through the most inordinate pair of mustaches ever worn by a warrior. He was ignorant of every thing on earth but his profession and laughed at the waste of time in poring over books; his travelling-library consisting of but two--the imperial army-list and the muster-roll of his regiment. His family recollections went no higher than his father a cobbler in Languedoc. But he was a capital officer and the very material for a _chef-de-bataillon_--rough brave quick and as hardy as iron. Half a dozen scars gave evidence of his having shared the glories of France on the Rhine the Po and the Danube; and a cross of the Legion of Honour showed that his emperor was a different person from the object of Don Ignacio's cureless wrath the war-minister who ""made a point of neglecting all possible merit below that of a field-marshal."" The Frenchman with all his _brusquerie_ was civil enough to regret my capture ""peculiarly as it laid him under the necessity of taking me far from my route;"" his regiment then making forced marches to Andalusia to join Dupont's division; and for the purpose of secrecy the strictest orders having been given that the prisoners which they might make in the way should be carried along with them. As I had forwarded my official papers from Galicia to Castile and was regarded simply as an English tourist I had no sense of personal hazard; and putting the best complexion which I could upon my misadventure I rode along with the column over hill and dale enjoying the various aspects of one of the most varied and picturesque countries in the world. Our marches were rapid but chiefly by night; thus evading at once the intolerable heat of the Spanish day and collisions with the people. We bivouacked in the shelter of woods or in the shade of hills during the sultry hours; and recommenced our march in the cool of the eve with short halts until sunrise. Then we flung ourselves again under the shelter of the trees and enjoyed those delights of rest and appetite which are unknown to all but to the marchers and fasters for twelve hours together. But on our crossing the Sierra Morena and taking the direction of Andalusia the scene was wholly changed. The country was like one vast field of battle. The peasants were every where in arms villages were seen burning along the horizon and our constant vigilance was necessary to guard against a surprise. Every soldier who lay down to rest but a few yards from the column or who attempted to forage in the villages was sure to be shot or stilettoed; provisions were burned before our faces; and even where we were not actually fired on the frowns of the population showed sufficiently that the evil day was at hand. At length we reached the range of hills which surround the plain of Cordova; yet only just in time to see the army of Dupont marching out from the city gates in the direction of Andujar. As I stood beside the colonel I could observe by the knitting of his brow that the movement did not satisfy his military sagacity. ""What a quantity of baggage!"" he murmured: ""how will it be possible to carry such a train through the country or how to fight with such an encumbrance embarrassing every step? Unless the Spanish generals are the greatest fools on earth or unless Dupont has a miracle worked for him he must either abandon three-fourths of his waggons or be ruined."" But I was now to have a nearer interest in the expedition. The battalion had no sooner joined the army on its advance than I was ordered to appear before the chief of the staff. The language of this officer was brief but expressive. ""You are a spy."" ""You are misinformed. I am a gentleman and an Englishman."" ""Look here."" He produced a copy of my letter to the junta of Castile which some clerk in the French pay had treacherously transmitted from Madrid. ""What answer have you to this?"" I flung the letter on the table. ""What right have you to require an answer? I have not come voluntarily to the quarters of the French army; I am a prisoner; I am not even in a military capacity. You would only act in conformity to the law of nations by giving me my liberty this moment; and I demand that you shall do your duty."" ""I shall do it! If you have any arrangements to make you had better lose no time; for I wait only the general's signature to my report to have you shot."" He turned on his heel. A sergeant with a couple of grenadiers entered and I was consigned for the night to the provost-marshal. How anxiously I spent that night I need not say. I was in the hands of violent men exasperated by the popular resistance and accustomed to disregard life. I braced myself up to meet my untoward catastrophe and determined at least not to disgrace my country by helpless solicitation. I wrote a few letters committed myself to a protection above the passions and vices of man wrapped my cloak round me and sank into a sound slumber. I was aroused by a discharge of cannon and found the camp in commotion. The Spaniards under Reding and Castanos had as the colonel anticipated fallen upon our line of march at daybreak and cut off a large portion of the baggage-train. It had been loaded with the church-plate and general plunder of Cordova; and the avarice of the French had obviously involved them in formidable difficulty. But even in the universal tumult the importance of my seizure was not forgotten; and I was ordered to the rear in charge of a guard. The action now began on all sides; the cannonade rapidly deepening on the flank and centre of the French position and the musketry already beginning to rattle on various points of the line. From the height on which I stood the whole scene lay beneath my eye; and nothing could have been better worth the speculation of any man--who was not under sentence of being shot as soon as the struggle was over! I was aware of the reputation of the French general. He held a high name among the _braves_ of the imperial army for the last ten years and he had been foremost everywhere. In the desperate Italian campaign against the Austrians and Russians; in the victorious campaign of Austerlitz; in the sanguinary campaign of Eylau--Dupont was one of the most daring of generals of brigade. But his pillage of Cordova had roused the Spanish wrath into fury; and the effort to carry off his plunder made it impossible for him to resist a vigorous attack even with his twenty thousand veterans. He had indulged himself in Cordova until the broken armies of the south had found time to rally; and a force of fifty thousand men was now rushing down upon his centre. The hills as far as the eye could range were covered with the armed peasantry moving like dark clouds over their sides and descending by thousands to the field. The battle now raged furiously in the centre and the charges of the French cavalry made fearful gaps in the Spanish battalions. At length the rising of the dust on the right showed that a strong column was approaching which might decide the day. My heart beat slow as I saw the tricolor floating above its bayonets. It was the advanced guard with Dupont at its head--a force of three thousand men which had returned rapidly on its steps as soon as the sound of the attack had reached it. It was boldly resisted by the Swiss and Walloon brigades of the Spanish line: but the French fire was heavy its manoeuvre was daring and I began to fear for the fate of the day; when a loud explosion and a hurried movement at the extreme of the French position turned my eyes to the left wing. There the Spanish attack had swept every thing before it. Brigade after brigade was giving way and the country was covered with scattered horsemen infantry retiring in disorder and broken and captured guns. The peasantry too had joined in the pursuit and the wing seemed utterly ruined. To retrieve this disorder was now hopeless for the French general had extended his line to the extraordinary length of ten miles. His baggage-train was his ruin. The whole Spanish line now advanced shouting and only halting at intervals to cannonade the enemy. The French returned a feeble fire and began to retreat. But retreat was now impossible and they must fight or be massacred. At this moment I saw an officer from the spot where Dupont sat on his charger surrounded by his staff gallop between the two armies. He was met by a Spanish officer. The firing ceased. Dupont had surrendered with all the troops in Andalusia! I was now at liberty and I was received by the Spanish commander-in-chief with the honours due to my mission and my country. After mutual congratulations on this most brilliant day I expressed my wish to set off for Madrid without delay. An escort of cavalry was ordered for me and by midnight I had left behind me the slaughter and the triumph the noblest of Spanish fields the immortal Baylen! The night was singularly dark; and as the by-roads of the Peninsula are confessedly among the most original specimens of the road-making art our attention was chiefly occupied for the first hour in finding our way in Indian file. At length on the country's opening I rode forward to the head of the troops and addressed some questions on our distance from the next town to the officer. He at once pronounced my name and my astonishment was not less than his own. In the commandant of the escort I found my gallant though most wayward young friend Mariamne's lover Lafontaine! His story was brief. In despair of removing her father's reluctance to their marriage and wholly unable to bring over Mariamne to his own opinion that she would act the wiser part in taking the chances of the world along with himself he had resolved to enter the Russian or the Turkish service or any other in which he had the speediest probability of ending his career by a bullet or a sabre-blow. The accidental rencontre of one of his relations an officer high in the Spanish service had led him into the Peninsula; where as a Royalist he was warmly received by a people devoted to their kings; and had just received a commission in the cavalry of the guard when the French war broke out. He felt no scruples in acting as a soldier of Spain; for with the death of Louis he had regarded all ties as broken and he was now a citizen of the world. I ventured to mention the name of Mariamne; and I found that there at least the inconstancy charged on his nation had no place. He spoke of her with eloquent tenderness and it was evident that with all his despair of ever seeing her again she still held the first place in his heart. In this wandering yet by no means painful interchange of thoughts we moved on for some hours; when one of the advanced troopers rode back to tell us that he had heard shots in the distance and other sounds of struggle. We galloped forward and from the brow of the next hill saw flames rising from a village in the valley beneath and a skirmish going on between some marauding troops and the peasantry. Lafontaine instantly ordered an advance; and our whole troop were soon in the centre of the village busily employed with the pistol and sabre. The French taken by surprise made but a slight resistance and after a few random shots ran to a neighbouring wood. But as I was looking round to congratulate my friend on his success I saw him to my infinite alarm reel in his saddle and had only time to save him from falling to the ground. The accommodation of the Ventas and Posadas is habitually wretched and I demanded whether there was not a house of some hidalgo in the neighbourhood to which the wounded officer might be carried. One of the last shots of the skirmish had struck him in the arm and he was now fainting with pain. The house was pointed out and we carried my unfortunate friend there in a swoon. Even in that moment of anxiety and with scarcely more than the first dawn to guide us I could not help being struck with the cultivated beauty of the avenue through which we passed and the profusion and variety of the flowers which now began to breathe their opening incense to the dawn. The house was old but large and handsome and the furniture of the apartment into which we were shown was singularly tasteful and costly. Who the owner was was scarcely known among the bold fellows who accompanied us; but by their pointings to their foreheads and their making the sign of the cross at every repetition of my enquiries I was inclined to think him some escaped lunatic. I shortly however received a message from him to tell me that so soon as the crowd should be dismissed he would visit the officer. The apartment was cleared and he came. This was a new wonder for me. It was Mordecai that entered the room. The light was still so imperfect that for awhile he could not recognise either of us; and when I advanced to take his hand and addressed him by his name he started back as if he had trod upon a snake. However his habitual presence of mind soon enabled him to answer all my enquiries and among the first one for the health and happiness of his daughter. Fearful of the effects of his intelligence whether good or evil on the nerves of Lafontaine who still lay on the sofa almost invisible in the dusk I begged to follow him to another room and there I listened to his whole anxious history since our parting.--Mariamne had suddenly grown discontented with Poland; which to Mordecai himself had become a weary residence from the ravages of the French war. For some reason unaccountable to me said the old man she set her heart upon Spain and had now been domiciled in this secluded spot for a year. But she was visibly fading away. She read and wrote much and was even more attached to her harp and her flowers than ever; yet declared that she had bid farewell to the world. The father wept as he spoke but his were the tears of sorrow rather than of anguish. They stole quietly down his cheeks and showed that the stern and haughty spirit was subdued within him. I had not ventured to allude to Lafontaine; but the current of his own thoughts at length led to that forbidden topic. ""I am afraid Mr Marston "" said he ""that I have been too harsh with my child. I looked for her alliance with some of the opulent among my own kindred; or I should have rejoiced if your regards had been fixed on her and hers on you. And in those dreams I forgot that the affections must choose for themselves. I had no objection to the young Frenchman but that he was a stranger and was poor.--Yet are not we ourselves strangers? and if he was poor was not I rich? But all is over now; and I shall only have to follow my poor Mariamne where I should have much rather preceded her --to the grave."" I now requested to see Mariamne. She met me with almost a cry of joy and with a cheek of sudden crimson; but when the first flush passed away her looks gave painful proof of the effect of solitude and sorrow. The rounded beauty of her cheek was gone her eyes once dancing with every emotion were fixed and hollow and her frame once remarkable for symmetry was thin and feeble. But her heart was buoyant still and when I talked of past scenes and recollections her eye sparkled once more. Still her manner was changed--it was softer and less capricious; her language even her voice was subdued; and more than once I saw a tear stealing on her eye. At length after hearing some slight detail of her wanderings and her fears that the troubles of Spain might drive her from a country in whose genial climate and flowery fields ""she had hoped to end her days;"" I incidentally asked--whether in all her wanderings she had heard of ""my friend Lafontaine."" How impossible is it to deceive the instinct of the female heart! The look which she gave me the searching glance of her fine eyes which flashed with all their former lustre and the sudden quivering of her lip told me how deeply his image was fixed in her recollection. She saw at once that I had tidings of her lover; and she hung upon the hand which I held out to her with breathless and beseeching anxiety. After some precautions I revealed to her the facts--that he was as faithfully devoted to her as ever and--that he was even under her roof! I leave the rest of her story to be conjectured. I shall only say that I saw her made happy; the burden taken off her spirits which had exhausted her frame; her former vivacity restored her eye sparkling once more; and even the heart of her father cheered and acknowledging ""that there was happiness in the world if men did not mar it for themselves."" The ""course of true love"" had at last ""run smooth."" I was present at the marriage of Lafontaine. The trials of fortune had been of infinite service to _him_; they had sobered his eccentricity taught him the value of a quiet mind and prepared him for that manlier career which belongs to the husband and the father. I left them thanking me in all the language of gratitude promising to visit me in England. * * * * * My mission to the junta was speedily and successfully accomplished. Spain in want of every thing but that which no subsidy could supply a determination to die in the last intrenchment was offered arms ammunition and the aid of an English army. In her pride and yet a pride which none could blame she professed herself able to conquer by her own intrepidity. Later experience showed her by many a suffering the value of England as the guide sustainer and example of her national strength. But Spain had still the gallant distinction of being the first nation which as one man dared to defy the conqueror of all the great military powers of the Continent. The sieges of Saragossa and Gerona will immortalize the courage of the Spanish soldier; the guerilla campaigns will immortalize the courage of the Spanish peasant; and the memorable confession of the French Emperor that ""Spain was his greatest error and his ultimate ruin "" is a testimonial more lasting than the proudest trophy to the magnanimous warfare of the Peninsula. This was the Crisis. The spirit of the whole European war now assumed a bolder loftier and more triumphant form. A sudden conviction filled the general heart that the fortunes of the field were about to change. Nations which had till then been only emulous in prostration to the universal conqueror now assumed the port of courage prepared their arms and longed to try their cause again in battle. The outcry of Spain answered by the trumpet of England pierced to the depths of that dungeon in which the intrigue and the power of France had laboured to inclose the continental nations. The war of the Revolution has already found historians of eloquence and knowledge worthy of so magnificent an era of human change. But to me the chief interest arose from its successive developments of the European mind. The whole period was a continued awakening of faculties hitherto almost unknown in the great body of the people. The first burst of the Revolution like the first use of gunpowder had only shown the boundless force of a new element of destruction. The Spanish insurrection showed its protecting and preservative power. The tremendous energy which seemed to defy all control was there seen effecting the highest results of national defence and giving proof of the irresistible strength provided in the population of _every_ land. What nation of Europe does not possess a million of men for its defence; and what invader could confront a million of men on their own soil? Let this truth be felt and aggression becomes hopeless and war ceases to exist among men. For the first time in the history of war it was discovered that the true force of kingdoms had been mistaken--a mistake which had lasted for a thousand years; that armies were but splendid machines; and that while they might be crushed by the impulse of machines more rapid stronger and more skilfully urged nothing could crush the vigour of defence while it was supplied by a people. The _levée en masse_ of France was but the rudest as it was the earliest form of the new discovery. There terror was the moving principle. The conscription was the recruiting-officer. The guillotine was the commander who manoeuvred the generals the troops and the nation. Yet the revolutionary armies differed in nothing from the monarchical but in the superiority of their numbers and the inferiority of their discipline. The war of Spain was another and a nobler advance. It was the war of a nation. In France the war was the conspiracy of a faction. In Spain the loss of the capital only inflamed the hostility of the provinces. In France the loss of the capital would have extinguished the Revolution; as it afterwards extinguished the Empire. I think that I can see the provision for a still bolder and more beneficent advance even in those powerful developments of national capabilities. It will perhaps be left to other nations. Spain and France have a yoke upon their minds which will disqualify them both from acting the nobler part of guides to Europe. Superstition contains in itself the canker of slavery; perfect freedom is essential to perfect power; and the nation which from the cradle prostrates itself to the priest must retain the early flexure of its spine. The great experiment must be reserved for a nobler public mind; for a people religious without fanaticism and free without licentiousness; honouring

the wisdom of their fathers without rejecting the wisdom of the living age; aspiring but to the ministration of universal good and feeling that its opulence knowledge and grandeur are only gifts for mankind. The system of the war was now fully established. All the feelings of England were fixed on the Peninsula and all the politics of her statesmen and their rivals were alike guided by the course of the conflict. The prediction was gallantly fulfilled--that the French empire would there expose its flank to English intrepidity; that the breaching battery which was to open the way to Paris would be fixed on the Pyrenees; that the true sign of conquest was the banner of England. The battle of the Ministry was fought in Spain and as victoriously as the battle of our army. We saw Opposition gradually throw away its arms and gradually diminish in the popular view until its existence was scarcely visible. Successive changes varied the cabinet but none shook its stability. Successive ministers sank into the grave but the ministry stood. The spirit of the nation justly proud of its triumphs disdained to listen to the whispers of a party who murmured defeat with victory before their eyes; who conjured up visions of ruin only to be rebuked by realities of triumph; and to whom the national scorn of pusillanimity and the national rejoicing in the proudest success could not unteach the language of despair. Perceval the overthrower of the Foxite ministry perished; but the political system of the cabinet remained unchanged. Castlereaghperished--Liverpool perished; but the political system still remained. The successive pilots might give up the helm but the course of the great vessel continued the same--guided by the same science and making her way through sunshine and through storm to the same point of destination. The three successive ministers were men of high ability for government though their character of ability exhibited the most remarkable distinctions. Perceval had been a lawyer and had risen to the rank of attorney-general. In the House he carried the acuteness the logic and even the manner of his profession with him. Without pretending to the power of eloquence he singularly possessed the power of conviction; without effecting changes in the theory of the constitution he put its truths in a new light; and without a trace of bigotry he defended with conscientious vigour the rights of the national religion. Sustaining a bold struggle at the head of the feeblest minority perhaps ever known in Parliament he had shown unshaken courage and undismayed principle in the day of the Foxite supremacy. This defence was at length turned into assault and his opponents were driven from power. His ministry was too brief for his fame. But when he fell by the hand of a maniac he left a universal impression on the mind of the empire that the blow had deprived it of a great ministerial mind. Lord Castlereagh exhibited a character of a totally different order yet equally fitted for his time. An Irishman he had the habitual intrepidity of his countrymen combined with the indefatigable diligence of England. Nobly connected and placed high in public life by that connexion he showed himself capable of sustaining his ministerial rank by personal capacity. Careless of the style of his speeches he was yet a grave solid and fully-informed debater. But it was in the council that his value to the country was most acknowledged. His conception of the rights the influence and the services of England was lofty; and when the period came for deciding on her rank in the presence of continental diplomacy he was her chosen and her successful representative. His natural place was among the councils of camps where sovereigns were the soldiers. The ""march to Paris"" was due to his courage; and the first fall of Napoleon was effected by the ambassador of England. Lord Liverpool was a man equally fitted for his time. The war had triumphantly closed. But a period of perturbed feelings and financial necessities followed. It required in the minister a combination of sound sense and practical vigour--of deference for the public feelings yet respect for the laws--of promptitude in discovering national resources and yet of firmness in repelling factious change. The head of the cabinet possessed those qualities. Without brilliancy without eloquence without accomplished literature; still no man formed his views with a clearer intelligence; and no man pursued them with more steady determination. Perhaps disdaining the glitter of popularity no minister for the last half century had been so singularly exempt from all the sarcasms of public opinion. The nation relied on his sincerity honoured his purity of principle and willingly confided its safety to hands which none believed capable of a stain. But the characters of those three ministers were striking in a still higher point of view. Their qualities seem to have been expressly constructed to meet the peculiar exigency of their times. Perceval--acute strict and with strong religious conceptions--to meet a period when religious laxity in the cabinet had already enfeebled the defence of the national religion. Castlereagh--stately bold and high-toned--to meet a period when the fate of Europe was to be removed from cabinets to the field and when he was to carry the will of England among assembled monarchs. Liverpool--calm rational and practical; the man of conscience and common sense--for the period when the great questions of religion had been quieted the great questions of the war had died with the war and when the supreme difficulty of government was to reconcile the pressure of financial exigency with the progress of the people--to invigorate the public frame without inflaming it by dangerous innovation--and to reconstruct the whole commercial constitution without infringing on those principles which had founded the prosperity of the empire. At length the consummation came: the French empire fell on the field by the hand of England. All the sovereigns of Europe rushed in to strip the corpse and each carried back a portion of the spoils. But the conqueror was content with the triumph and asked no more of glory than the liberation of mankind. While all was public exultation for this crowning event fortune had not neglected to reward the gentler virtues of one worthy of its noblest gifts. In my first campaign with the Prussian troops in France I had intrusted to the care of the old domestic whom I found in the Chateau de Montauban an escritoire and a picture belonging to the family of Clotilde. The old man had disappeared; and I took it for granted that he had been plundered or had died. But one day after my return from one of those splendid entertainments with which the Regent welcomed the Allied sovereigns I found Clotilde deeply agitated. The picture of her relative was before her and she was gazing at its singularly expressive and lovely countenance with intense interest. She flew into my arms. ""I have longed for your coming "" said she with glowing lips and tearful eyes ""to offer at least one proof of gratitude for years of the truest protection and the most generous love. Michelle the husband of my nurse has arrived; and he tells me that this escritoire contains the title-deeds of my family. I was resolved that you alone should open it. In the frame of that picture in a secret drawer is the key."" The spring was touched the key was found; and in the little chest was discovered untouched by chance or time the document entitling my beautiful and high-hearted wife to one of the finest possessions in France. By a singular instance of good fortune the property had not been alienated like so many of the estates of the noblesse; and it now lay open to the claims of the original proprietorship. I hastened to Paris. My claim was acknowledged by the returned Bourbon and Clotilde had the delight of once more sitting under the vine and the fig-tree of her ancestors. The old domestic had made it the business of years to obtain the means of reaching England. But the war had placed obstacles in his way every where and he devoted himself thenceforth to the guardianship of his precious deposit as the duty of his life. He was almost pathetic in his narration of the hazards to which it had been exposed in the perpetual convulsions of the country and in the rejoicing with which he felt himself at last enabled to place it in the hands of its rightful mistress the last descendant of the noble house of De Tourville.--But I had still to experience another gift of fortune. On the evening of my birth-day Clotilde had given a rustic fête to the children of her tenantry; and all were dancing in front of the chateau with the gaiety and with the grace which nature seems to have conferred as an especial gift on even the humblest classes of France. The day was one of the luxury of summer. The landscape before me was a rich extent of plain and hill; the fragrance of the vast gardens of the chateau as rising as the twilight approached; my infants were clustering round my knee; and in that thankfulness of heart which is not less sincere for its not being expressed in words I came to the conclusion that no access of wealth or of honours could add to my substantial happiness at that hour. My reverie was broken by the sound of a _calèche_ driving up the avenue. A courier alighted from it who brought a letter with a black seal addressed to me. It was from the family solicitor. My noble brother had died in Madeira; where he had gone in the hopeless attempt to recruit a frame which he had exhausted by a life of excess. In that hour I gave him the regrets which belonged to the tie of blood. I forgot his selfishness and forgave his alienation. I thought of him only as the remembered playfellow of my early days; and could say in heart--""Alas my brother!"" The landscape before me at last sank into night; and with feelings darkened like it yet calm and still I saw the closing of a day which painful as was the cause yet called me to new duties gave me a stronger hold upon society and placed me in that position which I fully believe to combine more of the true materials of happiness and honour than any other on earth--that of an opulent English nobleman. My brother dying childless had devolved the family estates to me disburdened of the results of his prodigality; but I had still much to occupy me in restoring them from the neglect of years. The life of the member of government was now to alternate with the life of the country gentleman; and my transfer to the House of Peers gave me the comparative leisure essential to the fulfilment of the large and liberal duties which belong to the English landholder. To cheer the country life by rational hospitality; to make friends of those whom nature had made dependents; to sustain those laws which had turned England into a garden; and to protect that ""bold peasantry "" who ought to be the pride as they are the strength of their country; to excite the country gentlemen to the scientific study of the noblest of all arts as it was the first the cultivation of the soil; to maintain among that gallant race a high sense of their purposes their powers and their position; to invigorate the principles which had made them the surest defenders of the throne in its day of adversity; and to fix in their minds by example more effectual than precept a solemn fidelity to the faith and to the freedom of their forefathers:--these were the objects which I proposed to myself and which the loftiest intellect or the amplest opulence might be well employed in attempting to fulfil. Those objects had been placed before England from the day when the light of the Reformation broke through the darkness of a thousand years and her brow was first designed for the diadem. By those she was made the universal protector of Europe in its day of fugitive princes and falling thrones; and by those alone will be erected round her if she shall remain true to her allegiance a wall of fire in the days of that approaching contest which shall bring the powers of good and evil front to front in strength and hostility unknown before and consummate the wars of the world. Yet with those tranquil and retired pursuits I still took my share in the activity of public life. I was still minister and bore my part in the discussions of the legislature. But the great questions which had once sounded in my ear like the call to battle in the ear of the warrior had passed away. The minds that ""rode in the whirlwind and ruled the storm "" had vanished with the storm. The surge had gone down; and neither the dangers of my earlier day nor the powers which were summoned to resist them were to be found in the living generation. Yet let it not be thought that I regard the mind of England as exhausted or even as exhaustible. The only distinction between the periods is that one gave the impulse and that the other only continues it. When peril comes again we shall again see the development of power. We might as well doubt the existence of lightning because the day is serene the sun shining and no cloud rolls across the heaven. But when the balance of the elements demands to be restored we shall again be dazzled by the flash and awed by the thunder. But time has taught me additional lessons. I have learned to see a hand in all its clouds which guides man and kingdoms with more than human power. In these remembrances I have spoken but little of religion. It belongs to the chamber more than to the council; and it is less honoured than humiliated by being brought idly before men. But by that light I have been able to see where subtler minds have been blind. The man may be bewildered by the glare of the torch in his hand who would have found his way by trusting to the milder lustre of the stars. In the great war of our time the greatest since the fall of the Roman empire--the war of the French Revolution--I think that I can trace a divine protection distinctly given to England as the champion of justice honour and religion. I offer but the outline of this view; but to me the proof is demonstrative.--In every instance in which France aimed an especial blow at England that blow was retorted by an especial retribution; while her assaults on the continental kingdoms were made with triumphant impunity. I give the examples.--The French expedition to Egypt was formed with the express object of breaking down the influence of England in the East and ultimately subverting her Indian empire--that expedition was the _first_ which tarnished the military renown of the Republic cost her a fleet and lost her an army. Of the army which Napoleon led to Egypt not a battalion returned to Europe but as the prisoners of England! The French invasion of Spain was a blow aimed _expressly_ at England. Its object was the invasion of England--the Spanish war broke down the military renown of the Empire and was pronounced by Napoleon to be the origin of his ruin! The invasion of Russia was a blow aimed _expressly_ at England. Its object was the extinction of English commerce in the whole sea-line of the north--that invasion was punished by the ruin of the whole veteran army of France! Napoleon himself at length met the troops of England. He met them with an arrogant assumption of victory--""Ah! je les tiens ces Anglais."" Never was presumption more deeply punished. This single conflict _destroyed_ him; his laurels his diadem and his dynasty were blasted together! It is not less memorable that during the entire Revolutionary war France was never suffered to inflict an injury on England; with one exception--the perfidious seizure of the English travelling in the French territories under the safeguard of the Imperial passports. But this too had its punishment--and one of the most especial and characteristic retribution--Napoleon himself was sent to a dungeon! By a fate unheard of even among fallen princes the man who had treacherously made prisoners of the English was himself made a prisoner was delivered into English hands was consigned to captivity in an English island and died the prisoner of England! I speak of events like these not in the spirit of superstition nor in the fond presumption of being an interpreter of the mysterious ways of Providence. I record them in a full consciousness of the immeasurable distance between the intellect of man and the wisdom of the supreme Disposer. But they convey at least to my own feelings a confidence a solemn security a calm yet ardent conviction that chance has no share in the government of the world; that the great tide of things in its rise and fall has laws which if unapproached by the feebleness of human faculties are not the less true vast and imperishable; that if like the air the agency of that ruling and boundless authority is invisible we may yet feel its existence in its effects rejoice in the acknowledgment of a power which nothing can exhaust and take to our bosoms the high consolation that the good of man is the supreme principle of the system. * * * * * Men actively employed in public life are strangely apt to think that there is no progress outside their circle. But on my return to Mortimer Castle I found this conception amply confuted. The world had moved as rapidly in those shades as in the centre of cabinets and courts. Time had done its work in changing the condition of almost every human being whom I had known in my early days. The brothers and sisters whom I had left children were now in the full beauty of their prime; my brothers showy and stirring youths; my sisters fair and gentle girls just reaching that period of life when the countenance and mind are in their bloom together and the highborn woman of England is the loveliest perhaps in the world. The extravagance of my elder brother had dilapidated the provision intended for the younger branches of his house. My habits learned in a sterner school enabled me to retrieve their fortunes and I thus secured a new tie to their regards. Justice is essential to all gratitude and I found them ready to pay the tribute to the full. Among my first visits was one to my old friend and tutor Vincent. I found him still resident on his living; and with spirits on which time had wrought no change. Years had passed lightly over his head. His eye was as vivid and his mind as active as ever. He perhaps stooped a little more and his frame had lost something of that elasticity of step which had so often tried my young nerves in our ramblings over the hills. But he was the same cordial animated and high-toned being in all his feelings that I had seen him from the first hour. I found him in his garden arranging selecting and enjoying his flower-beds with all the spirit of a horticulturist. But he apologised for what he termed ""its disorder."" ""For "" said he ""I have lost all my gardeners."" On my looking doubtful ""All my girls "" said he ""are gone; all married; all wedded to one neighbour or another. Such is the way in which I have been left alone."" I made my condolences on his solitude in due form. ""Yet I am not quite solitary "" added the gay old man ""after all; or my solitude depends upon myself. My girls are all married to our squires honest fellows and some of them well enough off in the world. But I made a stipulation that none of them should marry out of sight from the gazebo on the top of yonder hill; and when I want their company I have only to hoist a flag. You see that I have not altogether forgotten my days of the sabre and the signal-post; my telegraph works well and I have them all trooping over here with the regularity of a squadron."" The approach of winter made the castle a scene of increased liveliness. I had always looked with strong distaste on the habit of flying to watering-places at the season when the presence of the leading families of a county is most important to the comforts of the tenantry and to the intelligent and social intercourse of the higher ranks. I sent a request to Lafontaine and his wife that they should perform their ""covenant "" and venture to see ""how English life contrived to get through the dulness of its Decembers."" My request was countersigned by Clotilde and this was irresistible. They came and were received with a joyous welcome. They too had undergone a change. Lafontaine was graver and was much the better for his gravity. He was now the sincere and kind-hearted being for which nature had intended him. The coxcombry of French early life had disappeared and left behind it only that general grace and spirit which makes the maturity of a foreign life its most interesting portion. Mariamne was still more advantageously changed. Her wild vivacity was less subdued than transformed into elegance of manner; her features were still handsome travel had given her knowledge and her natural talents had been cultivated by the solitary hours in which but for that cultivation she might have sunk into the grave. She had brought with her too another remembrance and one of that order which produces the most powerful effect upon the whole character of woman. She had brought her first-born a lovely infant in which her whole soul seemed to be absorbed and in which she already discovered more beauties and good qualities than fate or fortune had ever given to human nature. But the centre of our circle and the admiration and love of all sat my wife my generous noble pure-spirited Clotilde. Time too had wrought its change on her; but it was only to give her deeper claims on the feelings of a heart which could not imagine happiness without her. The heroine had wholly disappeared and given place to the woman; the character of resistance to the shocks and frowns of fortune which adversity had made essential perhaps to her being had passed away with her day of suffering. She was now soft mild tender and confiding. She often reminded me of some of those plants which when exposed to the storm contract and diminish their form and foliage; but when sheltered resume their original luxuriance and loveliness. Clotilde in the sufferings of the emigration in the terrors of the Revolution and in the march through the Vendée might have perished but for that loftiness of soul which was awakened by the exigency of the trial. But now surrounded with all the security of rank and with opulence for her enjoyment and with love to cherish her she displayed the force of her nature only in the fondness of her affections. Thus surrounded thus cheered thus looked up to by beings whom I loved; what had I to ask for more? Nothing. I here close my page of life. I still vividly retain all the sense of duty all the feeling of patriotism and all the consciousness that age will neither dull my heart towards those whom I have so long loved nor shut up theirs to me. I believe in the possibility of friendship untainted by selfishness and I am firm in the faith of love that knows no decline. I look round me and am serenely happy. I look above me and am sacredly thankful. HOW WE GOT UP THE GLENMUTCHKIN RAILWAY AND HOW WE GOT OUT OF IT. I was confoundedly hard up. My patrimony never of the largest had been for the last year on the decrease--a herald would have emblazoned it ""ARGENT a money-bag improper in detriment""--and though the attenuating process was not excessively rapid it was nevertheless proceeding at a steady ratio. As for the ordinary means and appliances by which men contrive to recruit their exhausted exchequers I knew none of them. Work I abhorred with a detestation worthy of a scion of nobility; and I believe you could just as soon have persuaded the lineal representative of the Howards or Percys to exhibit himself in the character of a mountebank as have got me to trust my person on the pinnacle of a three-legged stool. The rule of three is all very well for base mechanical souls; but I flatter myself I have an intellect too large to be limited to a ledger. ""Augustus "" said my poor mother to me one day while stroking my hyacinthine tresses--""Augustus my dear boy whatever you do never forget that you are a gentleman."" The maternal maxim sunk deeply into my heart and I never for a moment have forgotten it. Notwithstanding this aristocratical resolution the great practical question ""How am I to live?"" began to thrust itself unpleasantly before me. I am one of that unfortunate class who have neither uncles nor aunts. For me no yellow liverless individual with characteristic bamboo and pigtail--emblems of half a million--returned to his native shores from Ceylon or remote Penang. For me no venerable spinster hoarded in the Trongate permitting herself few luxuries during a long-protracted life save a lass and a lanthorn a parrot and the invariable baudrons of antiquity. No such luck was mine. Had all Glasgow perished by some vast epidemic I should not have found myself one farthing the richer. There would have been no golden balsam for me in the accumulated woes of Tradestown Shettleston and Camlachie. The time has been when--according to Washington Irving and other veracious historians--a young man had no sooner got into difficulties than a guardian angel appeared to him in a dream with the information that at such and such a bridge or under such and such a tree he might find at a slight expenditure of labour a gallipot secured with bladder and filled with glittering tomauns; or in the extremity of despair the youth had only to append himself to a cord and straightaway the other end thereof forsaking its staple in the roof would disclose amidst the fractured ceiling the glories of a profitable pose. These blessed days have long since gone by--at any rate no such luck was mine. My guardian angel was either woefully ignorant of metallurgy or the stores had been surreptitiously ransacked; and as to the other expedient I frankly confess I should have liked some better security for its result than the precedent of the ""Heir of Lynn."" It is a great consolation amidst all the evils of life to know that however bad your circumstances may be there is always somebody else in nearly the same predicament. My chosen friend and ally Bob M'Corkindale was equally hard up with myself and if possible more averse to exertion. Bob was essentially a speculative man--that is in a philosophical sense. He had once got hold of a stray volume of Adam Smith and muddled his brains for a whole week over the intricacies of the _Wealth of Nations_. The result was a crude farrago of notions regarding the true nature of money the soundness of currency and relative value of capital with which he nightly favoured an admiring audience at ""The Crow;"" for Bob was by no means--in the literal acceptation of the word--a dry philosopher. On the contrary he perfectly appreciated the merits of each distinct distillery; and was understood to be the compiler of a statistical work entitled _A Tour through the Alcoholic Districts of Scotland_. It had very early occurred to me who knew as much of political economy as of the bagpipes that a gentleman so well versed in the art of accumulating national wealth must have some remote ideas of applying his principles profitably on a smaller scale. Accordingly I gave M'Corkindale an unlimited invitation to my lodgings; and like a good hearty fellow as he was he availed himself every evening of the license; for I had laid in a fourteen gallon cask of Oban whisky and the quality of the malt was undeniable. These were the first glorious days of general speculation. Railroads were emerging from the hands of the greater into the fingers of the lesser capitalists. Two successful harvests had given a fearful stimulus to the national energy; and it appeared perfectly certain that all the populous towns would be united and the rich agricultural districts intersected by the magical bands of iron. The columns of the newspapers teemed every week with the parturition of novel schemes; and the shares were no sooner announced than they were rapidly subscribed for. But what is the use of my saying any thing more about the history of last year? Every one of us remembers it perfectly well. It was a capital year on the whole and put money into many a pocket. About that time Bob and I commenced operations. Our available capital or negotiable bullion in the language of my friend amounted to about three hundred pounds which we set aside as a joint fund for speculation. Bob in a series of learned discourses had convinced me that it was not only folly but a positive sin to leave this sum lying in the bank at a pitiful rate of interest and otherwise unemployed whilst every one else in the kingdom was having a pluck at the public pigeon. Somehow or other we were unlucky in our first attempts. Speculators are like wasps; for when they have once got hold of a ripening and peach-like project they keep it rigidly for their own swarm and repel the approach of interlopers. Notwithstanding all our efforts and very ingenious ones they were we never in a single instance succeeded in procuring an allocation of original shares; and though we did now and then make a hit by purchase we more frequently bought at a premium and parted with our scrip at a discount. At the end of six months we were not twenty pounds richer than before. ""This will never do "" said Bob as he sat one evening in my rooms compounding his second tumbler. ""I thought we were living in an enlightened age; but I find I was mistaken. That brutal spirit of monopoly is still abroad and uncurbed. The principles; of free-trade are utterly forgotten or misunderstood. Else how comes it that David Spreul received but yesterday an allocation of two hundred shares in the Westermidden Junction; whilst your application and mine for a thousand each were overlooked? Is this a state of things to be tolerated? Why should he with his fifty thousand pounds receive a slapping premium whilst our three hundred of available capital remains unrepresented? The fact is monstrous and demands the immediate and serious interference of the legislature."" ""It is a bloody shame "" said I fully alive to the manifold advantages of a premium. ""I'll tell you what Dunshunner "" rejoined M'Corkindale ""it's no use going on in this way. We haven't shown half pluck enough. These fellows consider us as snobs because we don't take the bull by the horns. Now's the time for a bold stroke. The public are quite ready to subscribe for any thing--and we'll start a railway for ourselves."" ""Start a railway with three hundred pounds of capital!"" ""Pshaw man! you don't know what you're talking about--we've a great deal more capital than that. Have not I told you seventy times over that every thing a man has--his coat his hat the tumblers he drinks from nay his very corporeal existence--is absolute marketable capital? What do you call that fourteen-gallon cask I should like to know?"" ""A compound of hoops and staves containing about a quart and a half of spirits--you have effectually accounted for the rest."" ""Then it has gone to the fund of profit and loss that's all. Never let me hear you sport those old theories again. Capital is indestructible as I am ready to prove to you any day in half an hour. But let us sit down seriously to business. We are rich enough to pay for the advertisements and that is all we need care for in the mean time. The public is sure to step in and bear us out handsomely with the rest."" ""But where in the face of the habitable globe shall the railway be? England is out of the question and I hardly know a spot in the Lowlands that is not occupied already."" ""What do you say to a Spanish scheme--the Alcantara Union? Hang me if I know whether Alcantara is in Spain or Portugal; but nobody else does and the one is quite as good as the other. Or what would you think of the Palermo Railway with a branch to the sulphur mines?--that would be popular in the North--or the Pyrenees Direct? They would all go to a premium."" ""I must confess I should prefer a line at home."" ""Well then why not try the Highlands? There must be lots of traffic there in the shape of sheep grouse and Cockney tourists not to mention salmon and other et ceteras. Couldn't we tip them a railway somewhere in the west?"" ""There's Glenmutchkin for instance""---- ""Capital my dear fellow! Glorious! By Jove first-rate!"" shouted Bob in an ecstasy of delight. ""There's a distillery there you know and a fishing village at the foot; at least there used to be six years ago when I was living with the exciseman. There may be some bother about the population though. The last laird shipped every mother's son of the original Celts to America; but after all

that's not of much consequence. I see the whole thing! Unrivalled scenery--stupendous waterfalls--herds of black cattle--spot where Prince Charles Edward met Macgrugar of Glengrugar and his clan! We could not possibly have lighted on a more promising place. Hand us over that sheet of paper like a good fellow and a pen. There is no time to be lost and the sooner we get out the prospectus the better."" ""But Heaven bless you Bob there's a great deal to be thought of first. Who are we to get for a provisional committee?"" ""That's very true "" said Bob musingly. ""We _must_ treat them to some respectable names that is good sounding ones. I'm afraid there is little chance of our producing a Peer to begin with?"" ""None whatever--unless we could invent one and that's hardly safe--_Burke's Peerage_ has gone through too many editions. Couldn't we try the Dormants?"" ""That would be rather dangerous in the teeth of the standing orders. But what do you say to a baronet? There's Sir Polloxfen Tremens. He got himself served the other day to a Nova Scotia baronetcy with just as much title as you or I have; and he has sported the riband and dined out on the strength of it ever since. He'll join us at once for he has not a sixpence to lose."" ""Down with him then "" and we headed the Provisional list with the pseudo Orange-tawney. ""Now "" said Bob ""it's quite indispensable as this is a Highland line that we should put forward a Chief or two. That has always a great effect upon the English whose feudal notions are rather of the mistiest and principally derived from Waverley."" ""Why not write yourself down as the Laird of M'Corkindale?"" said I. ""I daresay you would not be negatived by a counter-claim."" ""That would hardly do "" replied Bob ""as I intend to be Secretary. After all what's the use of thinking about it? Here goes for an extempore Chief "" and the villain wrote down the name of Tavish M'Tavish of Invertavish. ""I say though "" said I ""we must have a real Highlander on the list. If we go on this way it will become a Justiciary matter."" ""You're devilish scrupulous Gus "" said Bob who if left to himself would have stuck in the names of the heathen gods and godesses or borrowed his directors from the Ossianic chronicles rather than have delayed the prospectus. ""Where the mischief are we to find the men? I can think of no others likely to go the whole hog; can you?"" ""I don't know a single Celt in Glasgow except old M'Closkie the drunken porter at the corner of Jamaica Street."" ""He's the very man! I suppose after the manner of his tribe he will do any thing for a pint of whisky. But what shall we call him? Jamaica Street I fear will hardly do for a designation."" ""Call him THE M'CLOSKIE. It will be sonorous in the ears of the Saxon!"" ""Bravo!"" and another Chief was added to the roll of the clans. ""Now "" said Bob ""we must put you down. Recollect all the management--that is the allocation--will be entrusted to you. Augustus--you haven't a middle name I think?--well then suppose we interpolate 'Reginald;' it has a smack of the Crusades. Augustus Reginald Dunshunner Esq. of ---- where in the name of Munchausen?"" ""I'm sure I don't know. I never had any land beyond the contents of a flower-pot. Stay--I rather think I have a superiority somewhere about Paisley."" ""Just the thing "" cried Bob. ""It's heritable property and therefore titular. What's the denomination?"" ""St Mirrens."" ""Beautiful! Dunshunner of St Mirrens I give you joy! Had you discovered that a little sooner--and I wonder you did not think of it--we might both of us have had lots of allocations. These are not the times to conceal hereditary distinctions. But now comes the serious work. We must have one or two men of known wealth upon the list. The chaff is nothing without a decoy-bird. Now can't you help me with a name?"" ""In that case "" said I ""the game is up and the whole scheme exploded. I would as soon undertake to evoke the ghost of Croesus."" ""Dunshunner "" said Bob very seriously ""to be a man of information you are possessed of marvellous few resources. I am quite ashamed of you. Now listen to me. I have thought deeply upon this subject and am quite convinced that with some little trouble we may secure the co-operation of a most wealthy and influential body--one too that is generally supposed to have stood aloof from all speculation of the kind and whose name would be a tower of strength in the monied quarters. I allude "" continued Bob reaching across for the kettle ""to the great Dissenting Interest."" ""The what?"" cried I aghast. ""The great Dissenting Interest. You can't have failed to observe the row they have lately been making about Sunday travelling and education. Old Sam Sawley the coffin-maker is their principal spokesman here; and wherever he goes the rest will follow like a flock of sheep bounding after a patriarchal ram. I propose therefore to wait upon him to-morrow and request his co-operation in a scheme which is not only to prove profitable but to make head against the lax principles of the present age. Leave me alone to tickle him. I consider his name and those of one or two others belonging to the same meeting-house--fellows with bank-stock and all sorts of tin--as perfectly secure. These dissenters smell a premium from an almost incredible distance. We can fill up the rest of the committee with ciphers and the whole thing is done. ""But the engineer--we must announce such an officer as a matter of course."" ""I never thought of that "" said Bob. ""Couldn't we hire a fellow from one of the steam-boats?"" ""I fear that might get us into trouble: You know there are such things as gradients and sections to be prepared. But there's Watty Solder the gasfitter who failed the other day. He's a sort of civil engineer by trade and will jump at the proposal like a trout at the tail of a May fly."" ""Agreed. Now then let's fix the number of shares. This is our first experiment and I think we ought to be moderate. No sound political economist is avaricious. Let us say twelve thousand at twenty pounds a-piece."" ""So be it."" ""Well then that's arranged. I'll see Sawley and the rest to-morrow; settle with Solder and then write out the prospectus. You look in upon me in the evening and we'll revise it together. Now by your leave let's have in the Welsh rabbit and another tumbler to drink success and prosperity to the Glenmutchkin railway."" I confess that when I rose on the morrow with a slight headache and a tongue indifferently parched I recalled to memory not without perturbation of conscience and some internal qualms the conversation of the previous evening. I felt relieved however after two spoonfuls of carbonate of soda and a glance at the newspaper wherein I perceived the announcement of no less than four other schemes equally preposterous with our own. But after all what right had I to assume that the Glenmutchkin project would prove an ultimate failure? I had not a scrap of statistical information that might entitle me to form such an opinion. At any rate Parliament by substituting the Board of Trade as an initiating body of enquiry had created a responsible tribunal and freed us from the chance of obloquy. I saw before me a vision of six months' steady gambling at manifest advantage in the shares before a report could possibly be pronounced or our proceedings in any way overhauled. Of course I attended that evening punctually at my friend M'Corkindale's. Bob was in high feather; for Sawley no sooner heard of the principles upon which the railway was to be conducted and his own nomination as a director than he gave in his adhesion and promised his unflinching support to the uttermost. The Prospectus ran as follows:-- ""DIRECT GLENMUTCHKIN RAILWAY. In 12 000 Shares of L.20 each. Deposit L.1 per Share. _Provisional Committee._ SIR POLLOXFEN TREMENS Bart. of Toddymains. TAVISH M'TAVISH of Invertavish. THE M'CLOSKIE. AUGUSTUS REGINALD DUNSHUNNER Esq. of St Mirrens. SAMUEL SAWLEY Esq. Merchant. MHIC-MHAC-VICH-INDUIBH. PHELIM O'FINLAN Esq. of Castle-rook Ireland. THE CAPTAIN of M'ALCOHOL. FACTOR for GLENTUMBLERS. JOHN JOB JOBSON Esq. Manufacturer. EVAN M'CLAW of Glenscart and Inveryewky. JOSEPH HECKLES Esq. HABBAKUK GRABBIE Portioner in Ramoth-Drumclog. _Engineer_--WALTER SOLDER Esq. _Interim Secretary_--ROBERT M'CORKINDALE Esq. ""The necessity of a direct line of Railway communication through the fertile and populous district known as the VALLEY of GLENMUTCHKIN has been long felt and universally acknowledged. Independent of the surpassing grandeur of its mountain scenery which shall immediately be referred to and other considerations of even greater importance GLENMUTCHKIN is known to the capitalist as the most important BREEDING STATION in the Highlands of Scotland and indeed as the great emporium from which the southern markets are supplied. It has been calculated by a most eminent authority that every acre in the strath is capable of rearing twenty head of cattle; and as has been ascertained after a careful admeasurement that there are not less than TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND improvable acres immediately contiguous to the proposed line of Railway it may confidently be assumed that the number of cattle to be conveyed along the line will amount to FOUR MILLIONS annually which at the lowest estimate would yield a revenue larger in proportion to the capital subscribed than that of any Railway as yet completed within the United Kingdom. From this estimate the traffic in Sheep and Goats with which the mountains are literally covered has been carefully excluded it having been found quite impossible (from its extent) to compute the actual revenue to be drawn from that most important branch. It may however be roughly assumed as from seventeen to nineteen _per cent_ upon the whole after deduction of the working expenses. ""The population of Glenmutchkin is extremely dense. Its situation on the west coast has afforded it the means of direct communication with America of which for many years the inhabitants have actively availed themselves. Indeed the amount of exportation of live stock from this part of the Highlands to the Western continent has more than once attracted the attention of Parliament. The Manufactures are large and comprehensive and include the most famous distilleries in the world. The Minerals are most abundant and amongst these may be reckoned quartz porphyry felspar malachite manganese and basalt. ""At the foot of the valley and close to the sea lies the important village known as the CLACHAN of INVERSTARVE. It is supposed by various eminent antiquaries to have been the capital of the Picts and amongst the busy inroads of commercial prosperity it still retains some interesting traces of its former grandeur. There is a large fishing station here to which vessels from every nation resort and the demand for foreign produce is daily and steadily increasing. ""As a sporting country Glenmutchkin is unrivalled; but it is by the tourists that its beauties will most greedily be sought. These consist of every combination which plastic nature can afford--cliffs of unusual magnitude and grandeur--waterfalls only second to the sublime cascades of Norway--woods of which the bark is a remarkably valuable commodity. It need scarcely be added to rouse the enthusiasm inseparable from this glorious glen that here in 1745 Prince Charles Edward Stuart then in the zenith of his hopes was joined by the brave Sir Grugar M'Grugar at the head of his devoted clan. ""The Railway will be twelve miles long and can be completed within six months after the Act of Parliament is obtained. The gradients are easy and the curves obtuse. There are no viaducts of any importance and only four tunnels along the whole length of the line. The shortest of those does not exceed a mile and a half. ""In conclusion the projectors of this Railway beg to state that they have determined as a principle to set their face AGAINST ALL SUNDAY TRAVELLING WHATSOEVER and to oppose EVERY BILL which may hereafter be brought into Parliament unless it shall contain a clause to that effect. It is also their intention to take up the cause of the poor and neglected STOKER for whose accommodation and social moral religious and intellectual improvement a large stock of evangelical tracts will speedily be required. Tenders of these in quantities of not less than 12 000 may be sent in to the interim secretary. Shares must be applied for within ten days from the present date. ""By order of the Provisional Committee ""ROBT. M'CORKINDALE _Secretary_."" ""There!"" said Bob slapping down the prospectus on the table with the jauntiness of a Cockney vouchsafing a pint of Hermitage to his guests--""What do you think of that? If it doesn't do the business effectually I shall submit to be called a Dutchman. That last touch about the stoker will bring us in the subscriptions of the old ladies by the score."" ""Very masterly indeed "" said I. ""But who the deuce is Mhic-Mhac-vich-Induibh?"" ""A _bona-fide_ chief I assure you though a little reduced: I picked him up upon the Broomielaw. His grandfather had an island somewhere to the west of the Hebrides; but it is not laid down in the maps."" ""And the Captain of M'Alcohol?"" ""A crack distiller."" ""And the Factor for Glentumblers?"" ""His principal customer. But bless you my dear St Mirrens! don't trouble yourself any more about the committee. They are as respectable a set--on paper at least--as you would wish to see of a summer's morning and the beauty of it is that they will give us no manner of trouble. Now about the allocation. You and I must restrict ourselves to a couple of thousand shares a-piece. That's only a third of the whole but it wont do to be greedy."" ""But Bob consider! Where on earth are we to find the money to pay up the deposits?"" ""Can you the principal director of the Glenmutchkin Railway ask me the secretary such a question? Don't you know that any of the banks will give us tick to the amount 'of half the deposits.' All that is settled already and you can get your two thousand pounds whenever you please merely for the signing of a bill. Sawley must get a thousand according to stipulation--Jobson Heckles and Grabbie at least five hundred a-piece and another five hundred I should think will exhaust the remaining means of the committee. So that out of our whole stock there remain just five thousand shares to be allocated to the speculative and evangelical public. My eyes! won't there be a scramble for them?"" Next day our prospectus appeared in the newspapers. It was read canvassed and generally approved of. During the afternoon I took an opportunity of looking into the Tontine and whilst under shelter of the _Glasgow Herald_ my ears were solaced with such ejaculations as the following:-- ""I say Jimsy hae ye seen this grand new prospectus for a railway tae Glenmutchkin?"" ""Ay--it looks no that ill. The Hieland lairds are pitting their best fit foremost. Will ye apply for shares?"" ""I think I'll tak' twa hundred. Wha's Sir Polloxfen Tremens?"" ""He'll be yin o' the Ayrshire folk. He used to rin horses at the Paisley races."" (""The devil he did!"" thought I.) ""D'ye ken ony o' the directors Jimsy?"" ""I ken Sawley fine. Ye may depend on't it's a gude thing if he's in't for he's a howkin' body."" ""Then it's sure to gae up. What prem. d'ye think it will bring?"" ""Twa pund a share and maybe mair."" ""'Od I'll apply for three hundred!"" ""Heaven bless you my dear countrymen!"" thought I as I sallied forth to refresh myself with a basin of soup ""do but maintain this liberal and patriotic feeling--this thirst for national improvement internal communication and premiums--a short while longer and I know whose fortune will be made."" On the following morning my breakfast-table was covered with shoals of letters from fellows whom I scarcely ever had spoken to--or who to use a franker phraseology had scarcely ever condescended to speak to me--entreating my influence as a director to obtain them shares in the new undertaking. I never bore malice in my life so I chalked them down without favouritism for a certain proportion. Whilst engaged in this charitable work the door flew open and M'Corkindale looking utterly haggard with excitement rushed in. ""You may buy an estate whenever you please Dunshunner "" cried he ""the world's gone perfectly mad. I have been to Blazes the broker and he tells me that the whole amount of the stock has been subscribed for four times over already and he has not yet got in the returns from Edinburgh and Liverpool!"" ""Are they good names though Bob--sure cards--none of your M'Closkies and M'Alcohols?"" ""The first names in the city I assure you and most of them holders for investment. I wouldn't take ten millions for their capital."" ""Then the sooner we close the list the better."" ""I think so too. I suspect a rival company will be out before long. Blazes says the shares are selling already conditionally on allotment at seven and sixpence premium."" ""The deuce they are! I say Bob since we have the cards in our hands would it not be wise to favour them with a few hundreds at that rate? A bird in the hand you know is worth two in the bush eh?"" ""I know no such maxim in political economy "" replied the secretary. ""Are you mad Dunshunner? How are the shares ever to go up if it gets wind that the directors are selling already? Our business just now is to _bull_ the line not to _bear_ it; and if you will trust me I shall show them such an operation on the ascending scale as the Stock Exchange has not witnessed for this long and many a-day. Then to-morrow I shall advertise in the papers that the committee having received applications for ten times the amount of stock have been compelled unwillingly to close the lists. That will be a slap in the face to the dilatory gentlemen and send up the shares like wildfire."" Bob was right. No sooner did the advertisement appear than a simultaneous groan was uttered by some hundreds of disappointed speculators who with unwonted and unnecessary caution had been anxious to see their way a little before committing themselves to our splendid enterprise. In consequence they rushed into the market with intense anxiety to make what terms they could at the earliest stage and the seven-and-sixpence of premium was doubled in the course of a forenoon. The allocation passed over very peaceably. Sawley Heckles Jobson Grabbie and the Captain of M'Alcohol besides myself attended and took part in the business. We were also threatened with the presence of the M'Closkie and Vich-Induibh; but M'Corkindale entertaining some reasonable doubts as to the effect which their corporeal appearance might have upon the representatives of the dissenting interest had taken the precaution to get them snugly housed in a tavern where an unbounded supply of gratuitous Ferntosh deprived us of the benefit of their experience. We however allotted them twenty shares a-piece. Sir Polloxfen Tremens sent a handsome though rather illegible letter of apology dated from an island in Lochlomond where he was said to be detained on particular business. Mr Sawley who officiated as our chairman was kind enough before parting to pass a very flattering eulogium upon the excellence and candour of all the preliminary arrangements. It would now he said go forth to the public that this line was not like some others he could mention a mere bubble emanating from the stank of private interest but a solid lasting superstructure based upon the principles of sound return for capital and serious evangelical truth (hear hear.) The time was fast approaching when the gravestone with the words ""HIC OBIIT"" chiselled upon it would be placed at the head of all the other lines which rejected the grand opportunity of conveying education to the stoker. The stoker in his (Mr Sawley's) opinion had a right to ask the all important question ""Am I not a man and a brother?"" (Cheers.) Much had been said and written lately about a work called _Tracts for the Times_. With the opinions contained in that publication he was not conversant as it was conducted by persons of another community from that to which he (Mr Sawley) had the privilege to belong. But he hoped very soon under the auspices of the Glenmutchkin Railway Company to see a new periodical established under the title of _Tracts for the Trains_. He never for a moment would relax his efforts to knock a nail into the coffin which he might say was already made and measured and cloth-covered for the reception of all establishments; and with these sentiments and the conviction that the shares must rise could it be doubted that he would remain a fast friend to the interests of this Company for ever? (Much cheering.) After having delivered this address Mr Sawley affectionately squeezed the hands of his brother directors and departed leaving several of us much overcome. As however M'Corkindale had told me that every one of Sawley's shares had been disposed of in the market the day before I felt less compunction at having refused to allow that excellent man an extra thousand beyond the amount he had applied for notwithstanding of his broadest hints and even private entreaties. ""Confound the greedy hypocrite!"" said Bob; ""does he think we shall let him Burke the line for nothing? No--no! let him go to the brokers and buy his shares back if he thinks they are likely to rise. I'll be bound he has made a cool five hundred out of them already."" On the day which succeeded the allocation the following entry appeared in the Glasgow share lists. ""Direct Glenmutchkin Railway. 15s. 15s.6d. 15s.6d. 16s. 15s.6d. 16s. 16s.6d. 16s.6d. 16s. 17s 18s. 18s. 19s.6d. 21s. 21s. 22s.6d. 24s. 25s. 6d. 27s. 29s. 29s.6d. 30s. 31s. pm."" ""They might go higher and they ought to go higher "" said Bob musingly; ""but there's not much more stock to come and go upon and these two share-sharks Jobson and Grabbie I know will be in the market to-morrow. We must not let them have the whip-hand of us. I think upon the whole Dunshunner though it's letting them go dog cheap that we ought to sell half our shares at the present premium whilst there is a certainty of getting it."" ""Why not sell the whole? I'm sure I have no objections to part with every stiver of the scrip on such terms."" ""Perhaps "" said Bob ""upon general principles you may be right; but then remember that we have a vested interest in the line."" ""Vested interest be hanged!"" ""That's very well--at the same time it is no use to kill your salmon in a hurry. The bulls have done their work pretty well for us and we ought to keep something on hand for the bears; they are snuffling at it already. I could almost swear that some of those fellows who have sold to-day are working for a time-bargain."" We accordingly got rid of a couple of thousand shares the proceeds of which not only enabled us to discharge the deposit loan but left us a material surplus. Under these circumstances a two-handed banquet was proposed and unanimously carried the commencement of which I distinctly remember but am rather dubious as to the end. So many stories have lately been circulated to the prejudice of railway directors that I think it my duty to state that this entertainment was scrupulously defrayed by ourselves and _not_ carried to account either of the preliminary survey or the expenses of the provisional committee. Nothing effects so great a metamorphosis in the bearing of the outer man as a sudden change of fortune. The anemone of the garden differs scarcely more from its unpretending prototype of the woods than Robert M'Corkindale Esq. Secretary and Projector of the Glenmutchkin Railway differed from Bob M'Corkindale the seedy frequenter of ""The Crow."" In the days of yore men eyed the surtout--napless at the velvet collar and preternaturally white at the seams--which Bob vouchsafed to wear with looks of dim suspicion as if some faint reminiscence similar to that which is said to recall the memory of a former state of existence suggested to them a vision that the garment had once been their own. Indeed his whole appearance was then wonderfully second-hand. Now he had cast his slough. A most undeniable Taglioni with trimmings just bordering upon frogs gave dignity to his demeanour and twofold amplitude to his chest. The horn eyeglass was exchanged for one of purest gold the dingy high-lows for well-waxed Wellingtons the Paisley fogle for the fabric of the China loom. Moreover he walked with a swagger and affected in common conversation a peculiar dialect which he opined to be the purest English but which no one--except a bagman--could be reasonably expected to understand. His pockets were invariably crammed with share lists; and he quoted if he did not comprehend the money article from the _Times_. This sort of assumption though very ludicrous in itself goes down wonderfully. Bob gradually became a sort of authority and his opinions got quoted on 'Change. He was no ass notwithstanding his peculiarities and made good use of his opportunity. For myself I bore my new dignities with an air of modest meekness. A certain degree of starchness is indispensable for a railway director if he means to go forward in his high calling and prosper; he must abandon all juvenile eccentricities and aim at the appearance of a decided enemy to free trade in the article of Wild Oats. Accordingly as the first step towards respectability I eschewed coloured waistcoats and gave out that I was a marrying man. No man under forty unless he is a positive idiot will stand forth as a theoretical bachelor. It is all nonsense to say that there is any thing unpleasant in being courted. Attention whether from male or female tickles the vanity and although I have a reasonable and I hope not unwholesome regard for the gratification of my other appetites I confess that this same vanity is by far the most poignant of the whole. I therefore surrendered myself freely to the soft allurements thrown in my way by such matronly denizens of Glasgow as were possessed of stock in the shape of marriageable daughters; and walked the more readily into their toils because every party though nominally for the purposes of tea wound up with a hot supper and something hotter still by way of assisting the digestion. I don't know whether it was my determined conduct at the allocation my territorial title or a most exaggerated idea of my circumstances that worked upon the mind of Mr Sawley. Possibly it was a combination of the three; but sure enough few days had elapsed before I received a formal card of invitation to a tea and serious conversation. Now serious conversation is a sort of thing that I never shone in possibly because my early studies were framed in a different direction; but as I really was unwilling to offend the respectable coffin-maker and as I found that the Captain of M'Alcohol--a decided trump in his way--had also received a summons I notified my acceptance. M'Alcohol and I went together. The Captain an enormous brawny Celt with superhuman whiskers and a shock of the fieriest hair had figged himself out _more majorum_ in the full Highland costume. I never saw Rob Roy on the stage look half so dignified or ferocious. He glittered from head to foot with dirk pistol and skean-dhu and at least a hundred-weight of cairngorums cast a prismatic glory around his person. I felt quite abashed beside him. We were ushered into Mr Sawley's drawing-room. Round the walls and at considerable distances from each other were seated about a dozen characters male and female all of them dressed in sable and wearing countenances of woe. Sawley advanced and wrung me by the hand with so piteous an expression of visage that I could not help thinking some awful catastrophe had just befallen his family. ""You are welcome Mr Dunshunner welcome to my humble tabernacle. Let me present you to Mrs Sawley""--and a lady who seemed to have bathed in the Yellow Sea rose from her seat and favoured me with a profound curtsy. ""My daughter--Miss Selina Sawley."" I felt in my brain the scorching glance of the two darkest eyes it ever was my fortune to behold as the beauteous Selina looked up from the perusal of her handkerchief hem. It was a pity that the other features were not corresponding; for the nose was flat and the mouth of such dimensions that a Harlequin might have jumped down it with impunity--but the eyes _were_ splendid. In obedience to a sign from the hostess I sank into a chair beside Selina; and not knowing exactly what to say hazarded some observation about the weather. ""Yes it is indeed a suggestive season. How deeply Mr Dunshunner we ought to feel the pensive progress of autumn towards a soft and premature decay! I always think about this time of the year that nature is falling into a consumption!"" ""To be sure ma'am "" said I rather taken aback by this style of colloquy ""the trees are looking devilishly hectic."" ""Ah you have remarked that too! Strange! it was but yesterday that I was wandering through Kelvin Grove and as the phantom breeze brought down the withered foliage from the spray I thought how probable it was that they might erelong rustle over young and glowing hearts deposited prematurely in the tomb!"" This which struck me as a very passable imitation of Dickens's pathetic writings was a poser. In default of language I looked Miss Sawley straight in the face and attempted a substitute for a sigh. I was rewarded with a tender glance. ""Ah!"" said she ""I see you are a congenial spirit. How delightful and yet how rare it is to meet with any one who thinks in unison with yourself! Do you ever walk in the Necropolis Mr Dunshunner? It is my favourite haunt of a morning. There we can wean ourselves as it were from life and beneath the melancholy yew and cypress anticipate the setting star. How often there have I seen the procession--the funeral of some very _very_ little child""---- ""Selina my love "" said Mrs Sawley ""have the kindness to ring for the cookies."" I as in duty bound started up to save the fair enthusiast the trouble and was not sorry to observe my seat immediately occupied by a very cadaverous gentleman who was evidently jealous of the progress I was rapidly making. Sawley with an air of great mystery informed me that this was a Mr Dalgleish of Raxmathrapple the representative of an ancient Scottish family who claimed an important heritable office. The name I thought was familiar to me but there was something in the appearance of Mr Dalgleish which notwithstanding the smiles of Miss Selina rendered a rivalship in that quarter utterly out of the question. I hate injustice so let me do due honour in description to the Sawley banquet. The tea-urn most literally corresponded to its name. The table was decked out with divers platters containing seed-cakes cut into rhomboids almond biscuits and ratafia drops; but somehow or other they all looked clammy and damp and for the life of me I could not divest myself of the idea that the selfsame viands had figured not long before as funeral refreshments at a dirgie. No such suspicion seemed to cross the mind of M'Alcohol who hitherto had remained uneasily surveying his nails in a corner but at the first symptom of food started forwards and was in the act of making a clean sweep of the china when Sawley proposed the singular preliminary of a hymn. The hymn was accordingly sung. I am thankful to say it was such a one as I never heard before or expect to hear again; and unless it was composed by the Reverend Saunders Peden in an hour of paroxysm on the moors I cannot conjecture the author. After this original symphony tea was discussed and after tea to my amazement more hot brandy and water than I ever remember to have seen circulated at the most convivial party. Of course this effected a radical change in the spirits and conversation of the circle. It was again my lot to be placed by the side of the fascinating Selina whose sentimentality gradually thawed away beneath the influence of sundry sips which she accepted with a delicate reluctance. This time Dalgleish of Raxmathrapple had not the remotest chance. M'Alcohol got furious sang Gaelic songs and even delivered a sermon in genuine Erse without incurring a rebuke; whilst for my own part I must needs confess that I waxed unnecessarily amorous and the last thing I recollect was the pressure of Mr Sawley's hand at the door as he denominated me his dear boy and hoped I would soon come back and visit Mrs Sawley and Selina. The recollection of these passages next morning was the surest antidote to my return. Three weeks had elapsed and

still the Glenmutchkin Railway shares were at a premium though rather lower than when we sold. Our engineer Watty Solder returned from his first survey of the line along with an assistant who really appeared to have some remote glimmerings of the science and practice of mensuration. It seemed from a verbal report that the line was actually practicable; and the survey would have been completed in a very short time--""If "" according to the account of Solder ""there had been ae hoos in the glen. But ever sin' the distillery stoppit--and that was twa year last Martinmas--there wasna a hole whaur a Christian could lay his head muckle less get white sugar to his toddy forbye the change-house at the clachan; and the auld luckie that keepit it was sair forfochten wi' the palsy and maist in the dead-thraws. There was naebody else living within twal miles o' the line barring a tacksman a lamiter and a bauldie."" We had some difficulty in preventing Mr Solder from making this report open and patent to the public which premature disclosure might have interfered materially with the preparation of our traffic tables not to mention the marketable value of the shares. We therefore kept him steadily at work out of Glasgow upon a very liberal allowance to which apparently he did not object. ""Dunshunner "" said M'Corkindale to me one day ""I suspect that there is something going on about our railway more than we are aware of. Have you observed that the shares are preternaturally high just now?"" ""So much the better. Let's sell."" ""I did so this morning--both yours and mine at two pounds ten shillings premium."" ""The deuce you did! Then we're out of the whole concern."" ""Not quite. If my suspicions are correct there's a good deal more money yet to be got from the speculation. Somebody has been bulling the stock without orders; and as they can have no information which we are not perfectly up to depend upon it it is done for a purpose. I suspect Sawley and his friends. They have never been quite happy since the allocation; and I caught him yesterday pumping our broker in the back shop. We'll see in a day or two. If they are beginning a bearing operation I know how to catch them."" And in effect the bearing operation commenced. Next day heavy sales were effected for delivery in three weeks; and the stock as if water-logged began to sink. The same thing continued for the following two days until the premium became nearly nominal. In the mean time Bob and I in conjunction with two leading capitalists whom we let into the secret bought up steadily every share that was offered; and at the end of a fortnight we found that we had purchased rather more than double the amount of the whole original stock. Sawley and his disciples who as M'Corkindale suspected were at the bottom of the whole transaction having beared to their heart's content now came into the market to purchase in order to redeem their engagements. The following extract from the weekly share-lists will show the result of their endeavours to regain their lost position:-- Sat. Mon. Tues. Wed. Thurs. Glenmutchkin Rail L.1 paid . 1 2/8 | 2 1/4 | 4 3/8 | 7 1/2 | 10 3/4 Frid. Sat. 15 3/8 | 17 and Monday was the day of delivery. I have no means of knowing in what frame of mind Mr Sawley spent the Sunday or whether he had recourse for mental consolation to Peden; but on Monday morning he presented himself at my door in full funeral costume with about a quarter of a mile of crape swathed round his hat black gloves and a countenance infinitely more doleful than if he had been attending the interment of his beloved wife. ""Walk in Mr Sawley "" said I cheerfully. ""What a long time it is since I have had the pleasure of seeing you--too long indeed for brother directors. How are Mrs Sawley and Miss Selina--won't you take a cup of coffee?"" ""Grass sir grass!"" said Mr Sawley with a sigh like the groan of a furnace-bellows. ""We are all flowers of the oven--weak erring creatures every one of us. Ah! Mr Dunshunner! you have been a great stranger at Lykewake Terrace!"" ""Take a muffin Mr Sawley. Any thing new in the railway world?"" ""Ah my dear sir--my good Mr Augustus Reginald--I wanted to have some serious conversation with you on that very point. I am afraid there is something far wrong indeed in the present state of our stock."" ""Why to be sure it is high; but that you know is a token of the public confidence in the line. After all the rise is nothing compared to that of several English railways; and individually I suppose neither of us have any reason to complain."" ""I don't like it "" said Sawley watching me over the margin of his coffee-cup. ""I don't like it. It savours too much of gambling for a man of my habits. Selina who is a sensible girl has serious qualms on the subject."" ""Then why not get out of it? I have no objection to run the risk and if you like to transact with me I will pay you ready money for every share you have at the present market price."" Sawley writhed uneasily in his chair. ""Will you sell me five hundred Mr Sawley? Say the word and it is a bargain."" ""A time bargain?"" quavered the coffin-maker. ""No. Money down and scrip handed over."" ""I--I can't. The fact is my dear young friend I have sold all my stock already!"" ""Then permit me to ask Mr Sawley what possible objection you can have to the present aspect of affairs? You do not surely suppose that we are going to issue new shares and bring down the market simply because you have realized at a handsome premium?"" ""A handsome premium! O Lord!"" moaned Sawley. ""Why what did you get for them?"" ""Four three and two and a half."" ""A very considerable profit indeed "" said I; ""and you ought to be abundantly thankful. We shall talk this matter over at another time Mr Sawley but just now I must beg you to excuse me. I have a particular engagement this morning with my broker--rather a heavy transaction to settle--and so""---- ""It's no use beating about the bush any longer "" said Mr Sawley in an excited tone at the same time dashing down his crape-covered castor on the floor. ""Did you ever see a ruined man with a large family? Look at me Mr Dunshunner--I'm one and you've done it!"" ""Mr Sawley! are you in your senses?"" ""That depends on circumstances. Haven't you been buying stock lately?"" ""I am glad to say I have--two thousand Glenmutchkins I think and this is the day of delivery."" ""Well then--can't you see how the matter stands? It was I who sold them!"" ""Well!"" ""Mother of Moses sir! don't you see I'm ruined? ""By no means--but you must not swear. I pay over the money for your scrip and you pocket a premium. It seems to me a very simple transaction."" ""But I tell you I haven't got the scrip!"" cried Sawley gnashing his teeth whilst the cold beads of perspiration gathered largely on his brow. ""That is very unfortunate! Have you lost it?"" ""No!--the devil tempted me and I oversold!"" There was a very long pause during which I assumed an aspect of serious and dignified rebuke. ""Is it possible?"" said I in a low tone after the manner of Kean's offended fathers. ""What! you Mr Sawley--the stoker's friend--the enemy of gambling--the father of Selina--condescend to so equivocal a transaction? You amaze me! But I never was the man to press heavily on a friend""--here Sawley brightened up--""your secret is safe with me and it shall be your own fault if it reaches the ears of the Session. Pay me over the difference at the present market price and I release you of your obligation."" ""Then I'm in the Gazette that's all "" said Sawley doggedly ""and a wife and nine beautiful babes upon the parish! I had hoped other things from you Mr Dunshunner--I thought you and Selina""---- ""Nonsense man! Nobody goes into the Gazette just now--it will be time enough when the general crash comes. Out with your checque-book and write me an order for four-and-twenty thousand. Confound fractions! in these days one can afford to be liberal."" ""I haven't got it "" said Sawley. ""You have no idea how bad our trade has been of late for nobody seems to think of dying. I have not sold a gross of coffins this fortnight. But I'll tell what--I'll give you five thousand down in cash and ten thousand in shares--further I can't go."" ""Now Mr Sawley' "" said I ""I may be blamed by worldly-minded persons for what I am going to do; but I am a man of principle and feel deeply for the situation of your amiable wife and family. I bear no malice though it is quite clear that you intended to make me the sufferer. Pay me fifteen thousand over the counter and we cry quits for ever."" ""Won't you take Camlachie Cemetery shares? They are sure to go up."" ""No."" ""Twelve hundred Cowcaddens' Water with an issue of new stock next week?"" ""Not if they disseminated the Ganges."" ""A thousand Ramshorn Gas--four per cent guaranteed until the act?"" ""Not if they promised twenty and melted down the sun in their retort!"" ""Blawweary Iron? Best spec. going."" ""No I tell you once for all. If you don't like my offer--and it is an uncommonly liberal one--say so and I'll expose you this afternoon upon 'Change."" ""Well then--there's a checque. But may the""---- ""Stop sir! Any such profane expressions and I shall insist upon the original bargain. So then--now we're quits. I wish you a very good-morning Mr Sawley and better luck next time. Pray remember me to your amiable family."" The door had hardly closed upon the discomfited coffin-maker and I was still in the preliminary steps of an extempore _pas seul_ intended as the outward demonstration of exceeding inward joy when Bob M'Corkindale entered. I told him the result of the morning's conference. ""You have let him off too easily "" said the Political Economist. ""Had I been his creditor I certainly should have sacked the shares into the bargain. There is nothing like rigid dealing between man and man."" ""I am contented with moderate profits "" said I; ""besides the image of Selina overcame me. How goes it with Jobson and Grabbie?"" ""Jobson has paid and Grabbie compounded. Heckles--may he die an evil death!--has repudiated become a lame duck and waddled; but no doubt his estate will pay a dividend."" ""So then we are clear of the whole Glenmutchkin business and at a handsome profit."" ""A fair interest for the outlay of capital--nothing more. But I'm not quite done with the concern yet."" ""How so? not another bearing operation?"" ""No; that cock would hardly fight. But you forget that I am secretary to the company and have a small account against them for services already rendered. I must do what I can to carry the bill through Parliament; and as you have now sold your whole shares I advise you to resign from the direction go down straight to Glenmutchkin and qualify yourself for a witness. We shall give you five guineas a-day and pay all your expenses."" ""Not a bad notion. But what has become of M'Closkie and the other fellow with the jaw-breaking name?"" ""Vich-Induibh? I have looked after their interests as in duty bound sold their shares at a large premium and dispatched them to their native hills on annuities."" ""And Sir Polloxfen?"" ""Died yesterday of spontaneous combustion."" As the company seemed breaking up I thought I could not do better than take M'Corkindale's hint and accordingly betook myself to Glenmutchkin along with the Captain of M'Alcohol and we quartered ourselves upon the Factor for Glentumblers. We found Watty Solder very shakey and his assistant also lapsing into habits of painful inebriety. We saw little of them except of an evening for we shot and fished the whole day and made ourselves remarkably comfortable. By singular good-luck the plans and sections were lodged in time and the Board of Trade very handsomely reported in our favour with a recommendation of what they were pleased to call ""the Glenmutchkin system "" and a hope that it might generally be carried out. What this system was I never clearly understood; but of course none of us had any objections. This circumstance gave an additional impetus to the shares and they once more went up. I was however too cautious to plunge a second time into Charybdis but M'Corkindale did and again emerged with plunder. When the time came for the parliamentary contest we all emigrated to London. I still recollect with lively satisfaction the many pleasant days we spent in the metropolis at the company's expense. There were just a neat fifty of us and we occupied the whole of an hotel. The discussion before the committee was long and formidable. We were opposed by four other companies who patronised lines of which the nearest was at least a hundred miles distant from Glenmutchkin; but as they founded their opposition upon dissent from ""the Glenmutchkin system"" generally the committee allowed them to be heard. We fought for three weeks a most desperate battle and might in the end have been victorious had not our last antagonist at the very close of his case pointed out no less than seventy-three fatal errors in the parliamentary plan deposited by the unfortunate Solder. Why this was not done earlier I never exactly understood; it may be that our opponents with gentlemanly consideration were unwilling to curtail our sojourn in London--and their own. The drama was now finally closed and after all preliminary expenses were paid sixpence per share was returned to the holders upon surrender of their scrip. Such is an accurate history of the Origin Rise Progress and Fall of the Direct Glenmutchkin Railway. It contains a deep moral if any body has sense enough to see it; if not I have a new project in my eye for next session of which timely notice shall be given. THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGES.[8] The past history of Mr Morgan Kavanagh is probably as little known to our readers as it is to ourselves. But his future destiny is not equally obscure. We have it on his own authority that he has made a discovery of unparalleled merit and magnitude as simple as it is surprising and calculated in an equal degree to benefit mankind and immortalize its author. He has discovered the science of languages--a science in which the wisest hitherto have been smatterers but in which the most shallow may henceforward be profound. In the prophetic spirit of conscious genius Horace Ovid and other great men have boasted of the perpetuity of fame achieved by their efforts; and Kavanagh apparently under a similar inspiration indulges the pleasing anticipation that he has completed a monument more lasting than brass--of which material it may be observed he does not appear to have a deficient supply. He confesses that on so trite a subject the presumption is against him of so great an achievement; but he sticks to his point and is sure that he has attained an undying name by his inestimable disclosures:-- ""A discovery equalling in magnitude the one to which I lay claim must appear to all before examining its accompanying proofs just about as probable as the discovery in the neighbourhood of the British Channel of some rich and extensive island that had escaped till now the mariner's notice. Then am I either egregiously in error or through my humble means one of the greatest and most important discoveries on record has been made."" The alternative here allowed us is irresistible--_either_ our author is egregiously in error _or_ he has made a great discovery. Who can doubt it? We feel at once driven to the wall by the horns of so dexterous a dilemma; and unable as we are in the kindness of our hearts to adopt the more uncivil supposition we succumb without a struggle to the only choice left us and concede to such a disputant all that he can demand. Mr Kavanagh is determined that the importance of his discovery shall lose nothing from his reluctance to put it in the strongest light:-- ""If from having taken a view of the human mind different from any other hitherto taken and from having founded a rational principle in conformity with this view I can offer such a definition of words as may bear the strictest investigation and which all may understand; and if a child by adhering to this principle may be able to account for words with all their changes and variations and show them such as they must have been not only ages before the Bible and the Iliad had been written but even as they were at their very birth; then it will I dare hope be admitted that I shall not only have surmounted innumerable difficulties but have discovered the real science of languages. Yet all this and a great deal more may be done by the application of the principle by which I am guided."" Again he says:-- ""I am sorry that the resolution I have formed of frankly speaking my mind throughout this work obliges me to express myself as I do here and elsewhere with such an apparent want of modesty; but were I to adopt with regard to this discovery and the knowledge we have hitherto had of the science of grammar what is understood by a more becoming and humble tone I should by doing so lose in truth what I might gain by affected modesty since I should not only be speaking falsely but be leading the reader into error by concealing from him my real opinion which I should by no means do. And if while it be allowed as I am sure it must that though I do well to speak as I think it be observed that this is not a reason why I should think as I do--that is so presumptuously--I beg to reply that if I had never _thought so_ this discovery had never been attempted and much less made; for notwithstanding what the world may say about the modesty of certain great men I do in my heart believe that such modesty has been ever affected and that it is wholly impossible that any thing great may be undertaken or achieved but where there is at bottom great presumption which is after all nothing more than a consciousness of one's own strength."" This is all right and no apology was necessary. Why should a man be modest who in the six thousandth year of the creation has found out for the first time the science of languages? Though entirely devoid of originality ourselves we can sympathize with the proud exultation of those who have produced a new and ""glorious birth."" From the cackling of the hen when she has laid an egg to the [Greek: heurêcha] of Archimedes when he discovered hydrostatics we see the instinctive impulse under which those who have brought to light a great result are constrained to proclaim it aloud; and we should be thankful when the mighty inventor can refrain from rushing out in native nudity into the public way. The discoverer of the science of languages however does not come forth upon us like Archimedes in a state of dishabille. Attired in the same fashionable garb rejoicing in the same paper and type and issuing from the shelves of the same respectable publishers Mr Kavanagh's two goodly octavos may fitly range as far as exterior is concerned with the collected productions of Jeffrey and Macaulay who will no doubt feel honoured by such good company. The fly-leaf at the beginning of the work warns all pirates and poachers ""that it is private property protected by the late Copyright Act;"" and a foot-note seems to inform us that a French edition is simultaneously to appear in Paris. Who could doubt that such mighty notes of preparation were to usher in some _magnum opus_ worthy of the expectations thus excited? Mr Kavanagh appears to us to have lived for some time in France and if so he has not lived there in vain. He has acquired the knack of framing a bill of fare that would do honour to the reigning prince of restaurateurs whoever he may be and would create an appetite under the ribs of death. Take the following excerpts from the contents:-- ""What the author should do before attempting to prove the discovery of the science of languages. This he does and a great deal more."" ""View of the human mind. That taken by eminent philosophers inquired into and found to be erroneous. The author's view of it."" ""Proof that there are no such words as substantives or nouns."" ""Pronouns supposed like nouns but erroneously to represent substances. They never represent nouns as they have been supposed to do. Proof that they never stand for substances nor can be any more than nouns the subject of propositions. Their real nature shown and difficulties and locutions connected with them accounted for. The original form of _oh me_! and _ah me_!"" ""Thus far the author pretends to have shown that there is but one part of speech."" ""The author's account of the verb. Why it cannot be compared like the adjective. The verb is an adjective or name in the fourth degree. It does not represent an action. TO and DO. Shown how it does not represent an action and how grammarians have been led to suppose that it does."" ""How men expressed themselves in the beginning of the world when they had occasion to make use of the verb TO BE."" ""The nature of a past participle in English and French. This knowledge of a past participle in French leads to a precious discovery."" ""How to find the etymology of words. Instances given: the meaning of _friend_ _mind_ _blind_ &c. shown."" ""The origin of the termination _ish_ discovered. The etymology of the words _Ireland_ _Scotland_ _Dublin_ with many other etymologies."" ""The feminine and plural of _mon_ _ton_ _son_ explained. _Mes_ _tes_ and _ses_ not plural numbers. _Notre_ and _votre_ do not come from the Latin words _noster_ and _vester_. No language derived from another."" ""The first names man ever had for his own dwelling with several other etymologies such as _barrack_ _good-by_ _property_ _coin_ _copper_ _maistre_ _castor_ _out-cast_ _caserne_ _quoit_ _cat_ _quiet_ _discus_ _Apollo_ _tranquil_ _keel_ _cuisse_ &c."" ""The delicate meaning of certain words."" ""The extraordinary wisdom displayed in the formation of words: different accounts of the words _man_ _woman_ _Adam_ &c. The meanings of _animare_ _animal_ _animation_ _beget_ _amo_ _Venus_ _shame_ _honte_ &c. ""The etymology of _squat_ _cower_ _square_ _four_ _year_ _fair_ _faire_ &c."" ""In the account given of the letters of the Greek alphabet are to be found explained the letters of all languages. To what this knowledge may lead. Shown how the twenty-four letters make but one. The dot over the _i_. A straight line a circle &c."" ""The _ing_ in _being_ accounted for. Meaning of _big_ _wig_ _mig_ &c.; of _hat_ _oyster_ &c.; of _eight_ _octo_ &c.; of _nigh_ _near_ _night_ &c. The literal meaning of negatives and affirmatives. What man's first oaths were."" ""_Big_ once a name for the Divinity."" ""How all numbers make but one. No such thing as a plural number. Examination of the ten figures 1 2 3 &c. Each of them means _one_."" ""Concluding observations resumed. The difficulty of believing in this discovery. The great wisdom it contains. The language supposed to be spoken in heaven."" ""The advantages to be derived from this discovery. How Mathematicians Theologians Grammarians Lexicographers Logicians and Philosophers are likely to consider this discovery. Other works proposed."" ""The members of the press. Bookmaking. The many important discoveries in this work lie in the way of its immediate success with such minds as cannot receive new ideas. The view which the man of enlarged ideas is likely to take of it. The author's pretensions. His confidence in the ultimate success of this discovery."" We confess we felt our mouth water at the glimpses thus afforded of the coming feast; and we are happy to acknowledge that what we expected was fully realized. It must not be imagined that we are going to furnish in these trivial pages a full disclosure of Mr Kavanagh's discovery. There are several reasons for our not doing so. First we could not in common justice think of spoiling the sale of Mr Kavanagh's book. Secondly we are not sanguine that in the space allowed us we could make the discovery understood by our readers. And thirdly we are not sure that we understand it ourselves. But as far as consistent with these considerations we shall endeavour to give such a view of it as may excite without satiating curiosity and may give the means of conjecturing what the book itself must be of which we are enabled to offer such specimens. It is a common and allowable artifice in those attempting to lead us up the hill of science to point to some attractive object that is to be reached at the summit. Mr Kavanagh employs this expedient with great effect. He shows us near the outset of our journey one astonishing result to which it is to conduct us and which necessarily inflames our eagerness to get over the ground:-- ""That the reader may have in advance some notion of this manner of analysing words and discovering their hidden meaning I beg here to give for the present the contents of the analysis of the English alphabet _collectively_ considered; that is not as to what each letter means when read by itself but as to what they all mean when read together in the following order:-- A B C D E F G H I (or J) K L M N O P Q R S T U (or V) W X Y Z; of which the literal meaning in modern English is--_This first book is had of the Jews; it opens the mind and is good breeding and wisdom._ I shall show in the proper place how this meaning may be found in the above characters."" The steps by which we are to reach a mighty secret like this are given by our author in great detail; for as he candidly observes-- ""Though my discoveries are mostly about as evident as any thing in Euclid still as they are new to the world and require previous to their being received as truths the disagreeable admission that we have been hitherto in error; some art besides down-right logical persuasion will be necessary towards bringing the mind friendly to them."" The first discovery Mr Kavanagh seems to have made is that he knew nothing of grammar; and had he stopped here he would have been entitled to no small praise for discernment. But this was but a stepping-stone to greater things. Mr Kavanagh seems by and by to have found out that ""there are no such words as substantives or nouns; that is to say words standing for substances or representing substances in any manner."" He discovered that such words and indeed all words are whether it be true or not sounds to our ears not altogether new. We had a notion that at least the term _noun_ _nom_ and _nomen_ meant properly a _name_ but of course Mr Kavanagh must know better. We must decline however to follow him through his explanation on this footing of the real presence. But then comes an announcement of undoubted originality ""that all words called substantives are but names _in the fourth degree of comparison_; that is to say in a degree above the one commonly called the superlative."" We durst not doubt that Mr Kavanagh is here right; but for persons of slow perception like ourselves we should have liked to see a little more fully explained what are the first second and third degrees of comparison of those names of which _hat_ _stick_ _thing_ _hand_ _foot_ &c. are the fourth degrees. Discoverers should bear a little with beginners; and we suggest that in a second edition a full table should be given of what we desiderate. The view thus taken of nouns leads it seems to important results and in particular enables us to explain what Mr Kavanagh had been puzzling himself about for half his lifetime--the meaning of the expressions ""This is John's book "" and ""this is a book of John's."" We had always thought that the first of these phrases was plain sailing and that the second meant ""this a book of John's books--or one of John's books "" _ex libris Joannis_. But these simple suppositions cannot satisfy men of science who require a discovery to explain what other men think they understand without one:-- ""We can now account for what has hitherto puzzled all grammarians namely the double possessive. This book of John's means this book of all John's; that is this book forming a part of all John's of all things belonging to John."" ""And how rich and full the meaning of this new possessive! What an image it brings before the mind compared to the wretched meaning our ignorance of this noble science has hitherto taught us to allow it to have! This book is John's means we have been told this book is John's book. How frivolous how poor compared to 'this book is part of all things corporeal and ideal belonging to John.' How useless this repetition of the same word book! and how incorrect! since if John possessed only one book and that we said 'this book of John's is better than mine ' we were immediately stopt as we cannot say this book of John's book is better than mine. But now we know that this book of John's &c. means 'this book is a part of all John's ' &c."" Our discoverer thereafter proceeds to analyse the personal terminations of verbs of which he seems to give an elucidation highly satisfactory to himself and which we hope will be equally so to his readers. It is obviously of oriental origin being analogous to the astronomical theory of the elephant and tortoise by which the Hindoos are said so clearly to account for the support of our terrestrial planet. ""_Love_ _lovest_ _loveth_ or _loves_ "" &c. have been formed by combining the root with the inflections of the auxiliary verb _to have_. He gives a very distinct table by which ""We see that _love hast_ has been shortened to _lovest_; _love has_ to _loves_; _love hath_ to _loveth_; _love had_ to _loved_; and _love hadst_ to _lovedst_. The _ha_ has been omitted throughout as love [ha]st; love [ha]s; love [ha]th; love [ha]d; love [ha]dst."" This is remarkably ingenious and it must be from a very unphilosophical curiosity that ignorant persons like ourselves are tempted to ask how Mr Kavanagh explains the origin of the inflections _have_ _hast_ _hath_ _had_ &c. We have been accustomed to regard these terminations though in a contracted form as having the same origin as those of other verbs; and we doubt if it would command general acquiescence to say that ""hath"" was a compound of ""have hath."" But these are probably foolish doubts only showing the small progress of our scientific enlightenment; and we feel assured that they would occur to no one who was once fully imbued with Mr Kavanagh's principles. A similar theory is applied by Mr Kavanagh with equal success to the Latin system of conjugation; but we think it better to refer our readers to the book itself than weaken its effect by any attempt at an abstract of it. We cannot however resist quoting Mr Kavanagh's account of the advantages to which his theories directly tend. ""And this inquiry has led me to the most important of all my discoveries; since it not only showed me the original of the endings of the Latin verbs but also those of the several declensions of Latin nouns adjectives pronouns participles &c. with their several cases genders numbers &c. And this knowledge will not only apply to the Latin language but of course to all the languages in the world. From this I have been also led to discover the real nature of a pronoun and how words have been made in the beginning of time and how they have increased from a single letter or at most from two to all which they have at present: by which means we may see the state of languages at different periods of the world even such as they must have been ages before the building of the tower of Babel; which knowledge will it is presumed throw great light on the ancient history of the world since men must in the composition of words have ever made allusion to things already known and such as might serve to explain the words they made. Thus is it even in our own times and thus has it ever been. I intend towards the end of this work to give numerous instances of how words were at first formed and the various forms they bore at different times; so that no doubt may remain on any man's mind either as to the truth of this the most important part of my discovery or as to the advantages which may from our following it up arise from it."" In pursuing this interesting subject Mr Kavanagh shows the important part in etymology played by the Latin verb _esse_. ""Nothing of this has however been known. The greatest lexicographers have not even suspected that _sagesse_ was for _sage-esse_ (sage-étre ) so short-sighted is man without the light of science; then much less did they suspect that for _to be_ and _to go_ there was whilst languages were yet in their infancy but one word. The learned from their not knowing that _sagesse_ is for _sage-esse_ must have lost discovering the etymology of a vast number of words in all languages. Thus all the French words ending in _esse_ as caresse fine

se paresse &c. have never been accounted for; and in like manner the etymology of all English words ending in _ess_ and _ness_ as car_ess_ happi_ness_ &c. has been unknown. But here the reader as he has not yet seen how we are to discover in words their own definitions may say that though he can admit _caress_ and _caresse_ to be for _cara_ or _carus esse_ (to be dear ) and _finesse_ to be for _fin-esse_ (être fin ) he cannot so readily allow _paresse_ and _happiness_ to be accounted for after a similar manner since _paresse_ must hence become _par-esse_ and _happiness_ _happin-esse_ which words _par_ and _happin_ here offer no meaning. But a little farther on he will know that _par_ here signifies _on the ground_; so that _paresse_ literally means _on the ground to be_ that is to be lying down or doing nothing. He will also see that the termination _ness_ has not the ridiculous meaning assigned it by the learned namely ""the top or the foot of a hill"" (I forget which ) but that it literally means _the being_ (_en-esse_ ) so that _happiness_ was first _en-esse-happy_ (the being happy the thing happy ) after which _en-esse_ became contracted to _ness_ and so fell behind happy making _happiness_. ""Here not to perplex the reader's and my own mind by the considering of too many things at once I am really obliged to turn my view from the many important discoveries that rush upon me all emanating out of this little word _be_ or _go_ (no matter which we call it ) in order merely to show how verbs in Latin have from this single word formed their endings."" By and by it appears that if we are so much indebted to the Latin for their verb _esse_ the Latin is no less indebted to us for our verb _am_. ""But I have not shown by what artifice this past time (ibam) of _eo_ is formed. It is we may see composed of two words _ib_ and _am_; yet the latter word _am_ has all the appearance of a present time or a future; as we may see it in e_am_ leg_am_ and audi_am_. Then it is evidently to the word _ib_ we are indebted for this word _ibam_ having a past signification; and as there is now no such Latin word we are led to believe that _ib_ must be a contraction and this at once leads us upon _ibi_ which means _then_ or _at that time_. Hence _ibam_ is a contraction of _ibi am_ there being only the letter _i_ omitted. Now as _am_ is evidently a present time and the same _am_ we have in English it means ""I existence;"" so that when _ibi_ is added to it both words mean ""I existence then "" or ""at that time;"" and it is in this manner that men in the beginning made a past time. If we now turn to the past time of _sum_ (_eram_ _eras_ _erat_ &c.) we shall find that the same method has been adhered to. The _am_ here is the _am_ in ib_am_; and now we have to look to the word _er_ by which it is preceded in order to find its past signification. This brings us to _era_ or as it is now written in Latin _æra_ which like _ibi_ refers also to a past time meaning _that epoch_. Then _eram_ which might as well be written _æram_ is a contraction of ær_a_am there being as before but a single letter omitted (the _a_ ) and the meaning is as before ""I existence _then_ or _at that epoch_."" Certainly if ever there was a man who ""existenced"" at an era or epoch or rather who was himself the era Mr Kavanagh may claim the distinction. We are informed by the printer that our space is nearly out and we must therefore draw to a close. We cannot better fill up the limits allowed us than by selecting a few examples of our author's successful treatment of etymology. It will be seen that in the zoological department of this subject he is particularly happy. ""The third person plural _étoient_ is a very curious word: it literally means _the great lives_--and there is for this a very wise reason. When this word first received this name persons were not referred to but the winds of heaven; and hence the propriety of the name _great lives_ or _great beings_; and also of making this name signify afterwards _persons_ or _beings gone_ since nothing can to all appearance be more gone than the winds that have passed by. When _oient_ means _the great lives_ it is to be thus analysed: _oi-iv-it_; or thus _ii-iv-it_; or thus _iv-iv-it_. But when considered as meaning but a single idea it may be indifferently written _went_ or _ivent_. It is easy to perceive that _ivent_ is no other than _vent_ the French of wind the _i_ having been dropped. Thus we discover the origin of the English word _went_: we see that it is the same as _vent_ or _wind_."" ""As the French word _souvent_ means when analysed _all the wind_ (_is-oii-vent_) it would appear that men in the beginning of time received also the idea of frequency from the winds. But in a country rarely visited by them this idea must have been borrowed from some other natural object. Thus the Latin word for _often_ (_sæepè_) takes when analysed this form _is-æ-ip-é_ which literally means _is the bees_. Here the word _bees_ is represented by _ip-è_ of which the meaning is _bee_ _bee_; but to avoid the repetition of the second _bee_ a pronoun that is _è_ and which means life or being has been put in its place. When it is remarked that this pronoun might as well be _is_ or _es_ as what it is it will be admitted that _sæpè_ might as well be written _sæpes_. I make this remark to show how slight the difference between _apes_ the Latin of _bees_ and _apè_ in _is-apè_ which means also the _bees_. Now the English word _often_ becomes when analysed _en-ov-it_ of which the literal meaning is _the sheep-sheep_; the pronoun _it_ serving here as in the last instance and for the same reason as a substitute for the second word _sheep_; but this _it_ might as well be _es_ or _is_. In Latin the word for _sheep_ is _ov is_ which must have first been _is ov_; that is _the sheep_: but when the _is_ fell behind it became _ovis_ and it has no other meaning than _the one life_ (_is-o-vie_). Thus we perceive that _the winds bees_ and _sheep_ have in three different countries given birth to the same idea."" Mr Kavanagh adds in a foot-note as to the word sheep-- ""This is for she-bay; that is _the female-bay_ this animal being so called from its crying _bay_. Hence it would appear that the word sheep (_she-bay_) did not in the beginning apply equally to both genders but that it was only in the feminine. When we recollect that the _b_ and the _p_ are frequently confounded it can be easily admitted that with our great love for contraction _sheep_ should be used instead of _sheeb_. An analysis of the French word for sheep (_brebis_) confirms what I have here stated with regard to this animal's being called after its bleat. When analysed it is _is-bre-be_; of which the literal meaning is the _bray bay_; that is the _cry bay_ or _the breath bay_ for the word _breath (bray the)_ is no other than _the bray_ which became _breath_ from the article _the_ falling behind _bray_. And this again is confirmed by an analysis of the word _bleat_ which makes _it_-BE-_il-ea_ or _it bay il é_ and means _the bay it is_ that is it is the cry of the sheep."" ""_Mons_ "" says Mr Kavanagh ""is the original of _monster_ in English of _monstre_ in French and _monstrum_ in Latin. Then the literal meaning of these words is--_monster it is to be a mountain; est er_ literally means 'it is the thing ' and of course these two words first preceded _mon_ thus _est er mon_ (it is the thing mountain.) _Monstre_ is for _mon estre_ this _estre_ being the infinitive _être_ and the same as _est re_ (it is the thing.) _Monstrum_ is more modern in its form than either the English word _monster_ or the French word _monstre_ since it has in its composition the pronoun _um_ besides what these two words have. Then the Latins had _monstre_ or _monster_ before they had _monstrum_; and they must have said _um monstre_ or _um monster_ just as the French say now _le monstre_."" ""The word _chien_ becomes when analysed (and the explanation of the alphabet will show how this happens) _ic iv ien_; or as _ien_ can be reduced to _iv_ we may say it is equal to _ic iv iv_. No matter which of these two forms we adopt the analysis of _chien_ will be still the same since both are expressive of haste. _Ic iv ien_ means _the thing come_ or _go_ or _life life_. Thus if we contract _iv ien_ to one word we have _vien_ so that _ic vien_ will mean _the come_; and this word is we know expressive of haste since _venir_ as we have seen in the account given of _oient_ means the wind (_ir ven_). In like manner _ic iv iv_ may mean _the life life_ which we know from the repetition of _life_ must imply quickness. And hence it is that _iv iv_ become when contracted _vive_ that is _be alive_. Now when we contract _iv ien_ to _vien_ if we give to _ic_ its primitive meaning which is that of _here_ we shall by allowing that _vien_ in the beginning went before _ic_ have for the meaning of both words come here (_vien ic_). Hence it is we still hear a dog called upon in English by _Here! here!_ and in French by the word _Ici_ with the dog's name attached to it. The English word _dog_ is also when analysed expressive of haste since it makes _id eo ge_ or _id-o-ge _ which implies _the thing go_ or _the go go_."" We conclude this brief and we fear imperfect notice of so great a work by suggesting for the author's consideration whether in a revisal of his views he might not bestow some attention on one or two other languages than English and French. His attainments in these seem to be of a superior order and he seems also to have made considerable progress in the Latin rudiments. We do not hold that Greek is essential but we respectfully submit that the acquisition of Anglo-Saxon and some other older dialects of Europe with which English is generally supposed to have some connexion might with advantage be attempted. Not that we imagine Mr Kavanagh's views would then be changed or improved. The etymologist's eye ""in a fine frenzy rolling "" may have intuitive perceptions of results such as no course of study could attain. But still there is a vulgar prejudice to which we think it prudent to pay some deference and which recommends that before writing on a subject we should know something about it. This however is a secondary matter which we merely submit in passing. As it is Mr Kavanagh has taken his place as a philologist on an elevation which only a few can hope to attain. He may be said to have done for language in general what has hitherto only been attempted in the field of Celtic speculation; but it is no light matter to have followed and outstripped in their course the illustrious men who have excelled in that more limited province. Henceforth the name of Morgan Kavanagh will be entwined in the same undying wreath with those of Lachlan Maclean and Sir William Betham. SCRAMBLES IN MONMOUTHSHIRE. A SEQUEL TO HOUSE-HUNTING IN WALES. As we sat in the state of mind which has become characteristic of the gallant Widdrington--in the large room at the Angel inn at Abergavenny wondering when our pilgrimage among the hotels would come to an end--a messenger of joyful tidings made his appearance in the person of our friendly landlord. He had just remembered that a house about three miles off was occasionally let--he thought it was unlet at that moment--it was the larger portion of a farm-house originally occupied by the 'squire but now in the hands of a most respectable farmer. We would hear no more; in ten minutes from this communication we were careering along in a one-horse car to judge for ourselves--our imaginations filled with the same celestial visions that blest the slumbers of the friar in the song-- ""All night long of heaven I dream-- But that is fat pullets and clouted cream""-- and before we had conjured up one-half the delights of a residence in a real farm-house we turned in at some iron gates drove up a gravelled avenue and stood at the door of a very nice comfortable-looking house that in many advertisements would pass very well for ""a quiet and gentlemanly mansion fit for a family of the first distinction."" The rooms were of good size--a beautiful lawn before the door--a well-filled garden behind--fields hedges trees all round--and the river winding through brushwood a few hundred yards in front. It did not take long to settle about terms. We were installed the very next day; and after our ten days' wanderings it was no little satisfaction to find once more ""All that the heart can dream of heaven --a home!"" Trunks were unpacked books laid on the table and in spite of the season of the year a roaring fire went rushing up the chimney; and as we looked round after candles were brought in and the novel skies and unaccustomed earth shut out we could hardly believe we had gone through such a succession of coaches and cars boats busses and flies--Yorks Westerns Beauforts Angels Swans Lions and other beasts of hospitable inclinations--but that we had long been completely settled in our present quarters while all these conveyances and hotels were the phantasmata of a dreadful dream. Even in the best furnished houses in Aladdin's palace itself new-comers always discover some deficiency; and a few things were wanting in this to complete our felicity;--but Fate which had frowned from every sign-board on us for a long time was now determined to make up for her bad behaviour and at that moment put into our hands a catalogue of household goods to be sold the very next day a few miles off at Oakfield Lodge. The one-horse car was again put in requisition and our hostess--the kindest of women--accompanied us to the sale and by nodding at intervals to the auctioneer procured all the articles required. A sale is always a melancholy event. A house looks so miserable with all its carpets and chairs and tables piled in useless heaps--the beds dismantled--and the rooms filled with a staring crowd handling every thing and passing its vulgar judgment upon curtains and drapery that the proprietor perhaps thought finer than those of a Grecian statue--on pier-glasses which had reflected shapes of love or beauty--on the polish of mahogany that had been set in a roar with wit --a low mean savage-hearted crowd bent on making bargains and caring nothing for the associations that make commonest furniture more valuable than cedar and ebony. The auction on this occasion lasted nearly a week; and day after day the whole population of the neighbourhood streamed to it like a fair. It was a handsome house and the arrangement of the rooms spoke audibly of taste and comfort. Selling the things that agreed together so well to go into separate situations--the library table to one town--the library chairs to another--seemed very like selling a family of slaves to different masters; so after a cursory glance at the dwelling we betook ourselves in solitary rumination to the banks of the river. And a quiet steady calm respectable kind of river the Usk is--not of the high aristocratic appearance of the Wye with wild outbursts of youthful petulance softened immediately into grace and elegance--but a sedate individual like a retired citizen well to do in the world and glad to jog on as uninterruptedly as he can. The grounds of Oakfield slope down to the water--and beautiful grounds they are--a line of rich meadows shaded with stately trees and divided into numerous portions by invisible wires stretches for several miles along the banks; and the abrupt elevation bounding this level sweep of grass and stream affords an admirable site for two or three of the moderate-sized and tasteful villas that seem the characteristics of this vicinity. On pursuing our way through field and fell towards the suspension bridge over the river we saw emerging from a wood a figure that Isaac Walton would have adopted immediately for his son and heir. He was a good-looking young man but so piscatorially habilimented that there was no making out his order or degree from his external sophistications. Round his hat were twined spare lines; on his back as Paris's quiver hung over his shoulder broad was suspended a fish-basket; an iron blade of a foot or so in length formed the end of his rod; and as if he had been afraid of the disciples of the gentle Rebecca he bore an instrument something between a Highland claymore and a reaping-hook; and as we looked on his accoutrements we thought we would not be a trout in such a neighbourhood on any consideration. Escape must be impossible for everything with fins from a thirty-pound salmon to a minnow. As we got near him he handled his rod with a skill and dexterity that left the young waterman far behind in the management of his oars; and after a whisk or too in the upper air he deposited the hook and line not on the ripple in the middle of the Usk but on the bough of an elm-tree. ""Here's a mess!"" he said with a half-despairing half-angry look at the entanglement. He pulled and it seemed firmer at every tug. We approached to render what aid we could. ""Here's a mess!"" again he said. ""You can scarcely call it a kettle of fish "" was our sympathizing reply; and by the aid of crooked sticks to hold the bough with and the warlike weapon which cut off some of the branches the hook was regained the fly found uninjured and with mutual good wishes we each took off his several way. There seems a good deal of amateur fishing in this country. In the course of our walk to the bridge we saw three or four individuals flogging the water with great energy who had evidently been fitted out in Bond Street or who were perhaps taking out the value of the dresses in which they had enacted piscators at the fancy ball; but their success we are sorry to say was in no degree proportioned to the completeness of their preparations; and we suspect that people with less adornments and a much more scanty apparatus of flies and fish-baskets are the real discoverers of the treasures of the deep in the shape of trout and sewin. This latter fish the sewin we may add in passing is a luxury of which the Usk has great reason to boast; for it is better than any thing we remember of the salmon kind except the inimitable grilses at Stirling. On returning from the sale with the carriage loaded with our purchases we disposed our new acquisitions in the different rooms and laid ourselves out for a few weeks' enjoyment of the blest retirement--friend to life's decline--which we had struggled so hard to gain and which now looked so satisfying in every point. There is nothing to be compared for comfort and beauty to a dairy-farm. Arable lands are detestable; and the windows of the house generally look into a horrible yard where the present agonies of the nose are made tolerable only by the hope of the rich crop to come. Here our windows looked upon a sloping green field bounded from the road by a good thick hedge at the distance of seventy or eighty yards. Beyond the road stretched fine luxuriant meadows each bordered with its fence of noble elms down to the river; so that we had nothing to do but cross the road and wander among fields and hedgerows miles and miles either east or west--always within hearing of the gentle voice of the Usk and often in sight of the long still reaches of the river that looked like beautiful lakes fringed to the water side with willows and flowering shrubs. Seventeen or eighteen cows were our fellow-lodgers at the farm; and no sight is more fascinating especially if you are fond of warm milk than the long majestic march and musical invocations of the milky mothers as they come home at evening from the pastures. Before three days were over the names of all the cows were household words among the young ones; their very voices were distinguished; and it was decided that the flower of the flock as to beauty was Glo'ster though some of us stoutly maintained that the whiteness of Handsome entitled her to the prize. Then there were about thirty sheep; but with them (in spite of frequent intercourse) we could only make out a general acquaintance--for we disbelieve altogether in the possibility of distinguishing one of the flock from the others. It must be the easiest thing in the world for a sheep to establish an _alibi_; and we are rather surprised that the impossibility of detection does not encourage some of the bolder of the woolly-sided heroes to some desperate outrage. There could be no identifying the culprit. But we saw no instance of spirit among them except a wicked attempt on the part of a young lamb to overthrow authorities and powers; and we are sorry to say it was successful. Our friend the farmer discovered the presence of some insects in the wool or rather in the body of one of the yearlings. He proceeded attended by us all to extirpate this fatal enemy with his shears; and having seized the sufferer put its head between his knees and proceeded to lay bare the hiding-place of the devouring grub. By some unlucky chance the lamb got its head loose pushed forward with two or three tremendous jumps and the operator was thrown on his back his feet in the air and the shears held helplessly up in his discomfited hands. It created great consternation among the spectators; and the two younger children after looking on in speechless amazement thought probably that the assailant was a tiger in disguise and sought safety ignominiously in flight. The patient--the lamb we mean--was again submitted to the shears the grub extirpated and the cure we believe effected. The muscular power of a sheep is tremendous; and if it were to get its head between the ankles of the brazen Achilles down would fall the glory of Hyde Park. It is lucky they have not found out the secret of their strength as they might take such a dangerous attitude as materially to raise the price of mutton--a consummation by no means to be wished. In addition to the cows and sheep and innumerable multitudes of chickens and turkeys the farm boasted a goodly array of horses. These would have made a poor figure at Newmarket as they were no kin to Godolphin or Eclipse--but in plough or harrow they looked respectable. There was an old mare and her daughter and her daughter's daughter--Grannie and Polly and Rose by name. There were also another mare and her foal; but our acquaintance was confined to the three generations--or rather to the two--for Grannie was old and stupid; and as the farmer sported a fine old-fashioned strong rough gig we occasionally pressed Polly into the service put two or three children on footstools in the front brandished a whip that had done duty at the plough and trotted off with the easy dignity of four miles an hour and lionized the whole neighbourhood. Amidst bumps and thumps and bursts of laughter at the unwieldy turn-out the excursion was pleasanter than if made in a chariot and four. One day we started off to visit Ragland Castle; the distance was five or six miles the day beautiful the mare in splendid order and the whip ornamented with a new lash. Disregarding the whinnyings and neighings with which the family received our steed as we passed the field where they were all assembled to see us at the gate from Grannie down to the foal we applied the thong vigorously and chirruped and whistled and cried ""Gee!"" and ""Hither!"" and got fairly into a trot; and an easy thing it is to maintain the pace after you have once got into it--in fact you find some difficulty in getting into a slower rate; and if by any chance we pulled up altogether to see a view Polly who was no judge of the picturesque was very apt to turn round and run away home--if the word ""run away"" can be applied to a very determined walk with no regard whatever to bit and rein. A struggle of this sort was very apt to occur at Llansaintfraed Lodge meaning we are told in the original the Church of St Bridget--and a pretty church it is. It is in a park of moderate size crowning a gentle elevation; a carriage-drive leads to it nicely gravelled for it is the approach to Llansaintfraed House. The church when we saw it was all festooned over the porch and a portion of the walls with honeysuckle in full show; roses and other flowers were planted all round and a fine solid stone cross threw its beautiful shadow over the graves. The church is very small and very old and owes a part of its good condition to the good fortune of having had the late Bishop of Llandaff for a parishioner. Some years ago he occupied Llansaintfraed House and rescued the parish from the disgrace of a ruinous and neglected church. It is only to be wished that every parish had its manor occupied so well--for a district with churches so shamefully fallen into disrepair we never saw. In all the churchyards for instance the piety of our forefathers had raised a cross; and it surely does not argue a man to be a Puseyite if he thinks highly of such an emblem in such a place; and in every instance except this one of Llansaintfraed the hand of the spoiler hath been upon it. The cross in every instance is broken and only a portion of the broken pillar remaining. If the archdeacon disapproves of the cross let it be removed altogether; but if not let it be repaired and not left to affront the parishioners with the daily spectacle of the rate-payers' meanness and the clergyman's neglect. So having managed to get Polly's head round again--for she had availed herself of our pause to whisk homeward--we proceed on our way to Ragland. Welsh precisians we perceive call it Rhaglan--and probably attach a nobler meaning to the name than can be forced out of the Saxon Rag and Land; but as novelists and historians have agreed in calling it Ragland we shall keep to the old spelling in spite of sennachie and bard. A short way beyond Llansaintfraed is the handsome gate and beautiful park of Clytha; the gate surmounted by a magnificent and highly ornamented Gothic arch and the mansion-house pure Grecian--an allegory perhaps of the gradual civilization of mankind or the process by which chivalrous knights are turned into Christian gentlemen. The house is modern and even the arch without much pretension to antiquity; but the family stretching far back into the gloom of ages and lineal ancestors of the antediluvian patriarchs. Since the Deluge however they have restricted themselves to this part of Monmouthshire; and judging from the number of Joneses--which is the great name in the neighbourhood--there seems no great chance of the genealogical tree being in want of branches. There is nothing so strange in a new vicinity as the different weight attached to family names. We have known districts where the word Smith itself even without the fictitious dignity of _y_ in the middle and _e_ at the end was pronounced with great veneration. Jones--elsewhere sacred to the comic muse--is of as potent syllable--unluckily it has only one--along the banks of the Usk as Scott or Douglas on the Nith and Yarrow. And such is the effect of territorial or moral association that we shall willingly withdraw an objection we made to a line in the tragedy of our late friend J---- S---- where some one speaking of the patriot Pym--to eye and ear the most pithless and contemptible of cognomens--says ""There is a sound of thunder in the name."" We have no doubt there was a very distinct peal of heaven's dread artillery in the ear of that bitter-hearted Roundhead every time he heard the magic word--Pym. The family highest in mere antiquity in Monmouthshire we are told rejoices in the curious-looking name of Progers. From them are descended the noble Beauforts and even the Joneses of Clytha. For hundreds of years the Progerses had kept going down-hill; estate after estate had disappeared; farm after farm took to flight; till thirty or forty years ago the blood of the Progerses flowed in the veins of a poor gentleman with about two hundred a-year a house in very bad repair and family pride that seemed to flourish in proportion as every thing else decayed. Some tourist in the course of his researches encountered this Monmouthshire Marins sitting among the ruins of his former state. The tourist was of a genealogical turn of mind and the Desdichado poured forth his hoarded boasts in his sympathizing ear. ""Out of this house "" he said pointing mechanically to the tottering walls of his family mansion but metaphorically alluding to the House of Progers ""came the Joneses of Clytha and Llanerth--out of this house came the noble Somersets now Dukes of Beaufort;"" and so he went on relating all the great and powerful names that had owed their origin to his house. The tourist seems also to have had some knowledge of architecture for his answer to the catalogue was--""Well sir it's my advice to you to come out of this house yourself as quickly as you can or it will be down upon you some of these days to a certainty."" On passing Clytha we enter into a territory which might more justly be called Somersetshire than the county the other side of the channel. The Dukes of Beaufort seem paramount wherever you go; and in every town and even in all the villages there is sure to be a house of entertainment with the royal portcullis on the signpost and the name of the Beaufort Arms. The domains of the family must be larger than half a dozen foreign principalities; and from all we heard the conduct of the present noble Somerset is worthy of his high position--liberal kind-hearted magnificent. One thing very pleasant to see was the little garden-ground taken from the road and attached to nice clean cottages almost all the way. Little portions about thirty feet in depth and considerable length formed the wealth and ornament of the wayside dwellings. They were all well filled with apple and other fruit-trees and stocked with useful vegetables. If this is the plan of enclosing commons we wish we were in Parliament to give Lord Worsley our aid; for a few perches well hedged and carefully kept are worth all the rights of pasture whether of cows geese or donkeys that ever the poor possessed. Inside of this fringe of rustic independencies snug farm-houses rose up in all directions; but with a perverseness which seems characteristic of the whole county and not limited to farm-houses or even semi-genteel villas no sooner does a man fix on a nice situation--a rising knoll beside a river--a gentle slope--or beautiful level green--no sooner does he rear a modest or perhaps an ornamental mansion on the site than his next care is to plant as thick round it as the trees will stand. Elms poplars oaks and larches in a few years block up the view; and arbutus rododendrons and enormous Portugal laurels stand as an impenetrable screen before every window; so that a house which by its architecture ought to be an ornament to the neighbourhood and should command noble hills and rich valleys might as well be a wigwam in an Indian forest. There seems a greater tendency to rheumatism than romance among the inhabitants; and by the by we observed on all the walls Welsh placards of Parr's pills. But in spite of the large letters and the populousness of the towns and villages where they were posted up we did not see a single individual reading the announcements. Query can the Welsh peasantry read Welsh? or is their book-learning limited to English and their native tongue left to its oral freedom untrammeled with A B C? In addition to the usual fence of impenetrable trees and shrubs we noticed one pretty little dwelling newly built a mile or two from the village of Ragland tastefully ornamented with an immense heap of compost which nearly barricaded the drawing-room window. The inhabitant must have been a prodigious agriculturist; and probably preferred the useful but unromantic heap to any other object in the view. We gave it the name of Guano Hall. But where all this while is Ragland Castle and when will the old mare jiggle joggle to the end of our course? All eyes were kept in constant motion to catch a glimpse of the towers and pinnacles of which we felt sure we were now within a mile. Trees trees and nothing but trees with sometimes a glimpse of blue hills far off and wreaths of smoke from cottages or farms rising above the wilderness of leaves. At last on a little elevation on the left hand rising solemnly into the silent air we caught sight of the old ruin with great ponderous walls covered with ivy and the sky seen through the open arches of its immense windows. A beautiful mass of building with such rents and fissures in it that you wondered whether it was ever entire; and the walls so thick and massive that you wondered again how it ever fell into decay. We hobbled into the village keeping the castle in view the whole time got good quarters for the mar

at the first hostel we encountered and proceeded up a country lane to spend an hour or two among the ruins. The entrance is very fine and might give rise to grand historic emotions in people fond of the feudal and sublime; but in our instance such a train of thought would have been impossible for just inside of the majestic portal sat an old harper thrumming away at the pathetic melody of Jenny Jones. He might as well have played Jim Crow at once for romance was put to flight and we speedily got as far as we could from the descendant of Talessin. The Duke of Beaufort has fitted up the ruins in a way that would have gratified the heart of Mrs Radcliffe. Winding stairs lead in the thickness of the walls from tower to tower and the dim corridors and dizzying bartizans are made safe to the most timid of Cockneys by stout wooden banisters that enable you to stand as securely on a crumbling battlement as on the top of Salisbury plain. We saw the courts and quadrangles admired the splendid windows and only wondered at the lowness of the ceilings of some of the principal rooms as from floor to floor could not have been more than seven feet and a half. There were fountain courts without a fountain; and chapel-yards with no chapel; why should we speak of kitchens conjuring up visions of roasted oxen and butteries suggestive of hogsheads of home-brewed ale when fire-places are now choked up and nothing is left of the buttery but a pile of broken stones? At first on going in we dilated on the grand things we should do in the way of restoration if we were the lord of the castle. First we would fit it up exactly as it was in the brave days of old: we should have new floors put in the audience-chamber; a roof on the great dining-hall; a stately dais at the upper end and get it from the hands of Pugin--the identical castle of the days of Elizabeth. But on closer inspection we came to the conclusion that the natural condition of such buildings is that of interesting remains. The rooms are low the passages are dark the bed-rooms dog-kennels the stairs ladders the court-yards damp the windows all turned the wrong way and in short the sixteenth century an excellent trimmer of popes and conqueror of armadas but a very bad architect. In one of the court-yards was a flock of sheep nibbling at the grass that had been trodden by the great marquis as he walked down after his noble defence to deliver his sword to the Parliamentarian Fairfax. Has Cattermole or Charles Landseer never thought of the brave old cavalier at the age of eighty-five surrendering his ancestral home --surrounded by his sorrowing garrison and bearing himself with the true dignity of a heroic noble? Let them think of this and send us a proof print. Leader of the sheep was the most beautiful ram that ever was seen since Aries was made a star. All our common-place muttons at home sank into insignificance at once. The children patted it and fed it and kissed it --and to all their endearments it answered in the most bewitching manner. It followed them like a dog and rubbed its head against them and it was soon very evident that the greatest beauty of Ragland Castle in certain eyes was thickly cased in wool. The ancient gardener told us it had once taken such a fancy to one of the visitors that it had followed her up a hundred and sixty steps to the very top of the signal tower --and the old lady was so pleased with it she wished to take it home with her though she lived two or three hundred miles off. And certainly if ever a pet of such a size was allowable it must have been the gentle creature before us. But all things are deceitful--gentle-looking rams among the number --for on the discontinuance of our gifts he waxed all of a sudden very wroth and favoured the youngest of the party with a butt that made her not know whether she was on her head or her heels--which is an extraordinary specimen of ignorance for she was exactly half-way between both. So converting our admiration of the golden fleece into a kick we raised the astonished victim of his anger and after a delightful stroll got into our gig again and in due time arrived at our comfortable home. We have heard of people being a month at Cairo and never going to see the Pyramids --a circumstance which does not give a very lofty idea of their activity. We determined to show those stay-at-homes a good example and not remain a week in Monmouthshire without visiting the Wye. Again the old gig was put in requisition; but on this occasion we succeeded in borrowing a horse of a neighbouring farmer that trotted merrily up and down hill at a reasonable pace; and away we started on one of the few warm days of this hyperborean summer on our way to the town of Monmouth. Great is the enjoyment of passing through a beautiful country on a fine clear day in June. There was no dust--the sun was not too hot--the hedges were in full leaf and no drawback to our felicity except a preternatural dread of stone heaps by the roadside on the part of our steed which: kept us on the alert to try and pull in the proper direction the moment he shied to the side. All other objects in nature or art it passed with the equanimity of a sage; tilted waggons with the wind flapping their canvass coverings with a sound and motion that would justify a little tremor in the heart of Bucephalus--stagecoaches loaded with men and luggage rushing down-hill at fifteen miles an hour and apparently determined to force their way over our very heads. Against all these it showed the most unflinching courage; but if it came to a heap of stones large or small broken or entire it lost its presence of mind in a moment and would have jumped for safety into the ditch at the other side of the road if not restrained by a pull at the rein and a good cut of the whip scientifically applied. Even the milestone was an object of great alarm; and as there were twelve of them on the way and the cowardly creature never by any chance missed seeing them however deep they were sunk in hedges or buried in grassy banks we never required to distinguish the figures on the stones but calculated the progress we made by the number of starts and struggles. After a dozen of these debates which created great amusement among the juveniles of the party we arrived at the clean delightful town of Monmouth--and here let us make amends for the disparaging mention of this place in our former narrative of House-Hunting in Wales. The weather on that occasion was very bad and the inn we lunched at a very poor and uncomfortable one. When a person's principal acquaintance with a town consists in his experience of its wet streets and tough beef steaks it is no wonder that his impressions are not of the most agreeable kind. On the present occasion we drove to the Beaufort Arms and in imitation of the Marquis of Exeter ""we pulled at the bell with a lordly air."" The hostler and his curates rushed zealously from the further end of the yard and received us with astonishing command of face--not a grin was visible even the waiters stood with decorous solemnity while child after child was lifted down and all out of one gig. They rather looked on with the pleased expression we have seen on the countenances of a rural audience when Mr Ingilby or other juggler produced out of some unaccountably prolific hat a stewing-pan a salt cellar a couple of eggs a brood of chickens and finally the maternal hen. We ordered a cold dinner to be put into baskets with a moderate accompaniment of bottles and glasses--enquired if a boat was to be had to take us up the Wye--were recommended to a certain barge-master of the name of Williams; and in a very short space of time were safely stowed in a beautiful clipper thirty feet long with only nine inches draught of water with a gorgeous morning over our heads luxurious cushions on the seats a tug in the shape of a most strong active fellow pulling us by the towing-path and seated at the helm the most civil the most polite the most communicative and the most talkative man that it ever was our fortune to meet. He united in his own person a vast multiplicity of trades and offices. He was innkeeper boat-builder boat-owner pilot turner Bristol-trader wood-merchant coracle-maker fisherman historian and above all a warrior of the most tremendous courage. In all of these capacities he had no rival; and as it was his own boat his native town his own river and we were merely his passengers he had it all his own way. He stood up in the excitement of his discourse and talked without a moment's intermission--sometimes to us--sometimes to a little boy he had brought on board to look after the baskets--sometimes to the man on the towing-path--and sometimes to himself; but at all times there fell thick and fast about our ears the words of Thomas Williams; and of all his words Thomas Williams was the hero. As people get used to the noise of a waterfall at last we stood the perpetual sound without any inconvenience and carried on quiet conversation or sank into silent admiration as we floated past the bold cliffs or soft-wooded shores of the sylvan Wye. For the first mile or two from Monmouth the hermit of the woods is nothing to boast of. The banks are low; the water sluggish; and the scenery common-place. The beauties begin at a bend of the river where Mr Blakemore has built a large and comfortable-looking house. On a high conical hill above the mansion there stands a lofty gazebo of open iron-work commanding a view of we don't remember how many counties; but before our _cicerone_ had got half-way into an account of each of them with their capital towns the names of the present mayors and the noble families he had supplied with cricket-bats we had passed far away among the noble scenery of the oak district; and our friend launched into a description of oak plantations in general--the value of oaks per acre--the sum paid to Lord George for his estate which was bought by government fourteen years ago the last time the duke was in power-- ""What duke?"" An unlucky question for it led into a disquisition o all dukes ancient and modern and an encomium on the late Duke of Beaufort as the best soldier that England had ever produced. ""He was a true soldier's friend and flogged every soul that came on parade-ground with a dirty shirt. I don't think there was ever seen such a militia regiment--there was a sight more flogging in it than the reg'lars--so it was quite a comfort to some fellers that didn't like it to go into the line. I was in it myself; but I liked the duke though he would have flogged me as soon as look at me. And such dinners he gave us when our time was over--it was dreadful--six of our corporals died of drinking in one month. He was certainly the greatest officer ever _I_ see. I was threatened myself with a thing they call _delirium tremens_ for he dined us in tents for a fortnight at a time. It's a pity the French never landed; we would have licked them like sacks. I hates a Frenchman and hope to have a fling at 'em yet."" In the mean time we had glided further and further into the leafy recesses of the river. Such banks are nowhere else to be seen--high perpendicular cliffs broken off in all manner of fantastic shapes; sometimes a great rock standing up bare smooth and majestic like a vast tower of some gigantic cathedral; sometimes a solitary column higher and more massive than any of an architect's designing with its capital ornamented with self-sown shrubs and its base washed by the rippling water. Each of these called forth an anecdote from our guide philosopher and friend--one was ""the scene of the great fight between Characterus and the Romans. The Romans licked 'em; for them Welsh was never no great shakes. I could lick any three ancient Britons I ever saw myself--and they knows it. And as to Characterus he could be no great general or he never would have fought on that side of the water. He should have come across to the other side and he would have licked them Romans to a certainty."" We thought it was a pity Mr Williams who in spite of his contempt for the ancient Britons was as true a Welshman as ever ate his leek had not been of the council of war of Caractacus--for it _was_ the scene of his great struggle we were passing. The ground still bears the name of Slaughter Field and was a fit altar on which to offer the last victims to national freedom. The scenery all round it is of the noblest character--rock and wood and the mountain chain that they hoped had shut out the invader. The river bends round it and enables you to keep for a long time in view the plain where the battle was fought and the rude remains of what is considered to have been the Roman encampment. After an hour or two delightfully spent in gliding under enormous cliffs and winding among woods of all hues and sizes hanging over the precipice and waving their branches almost down to the water's edge we arrived at our point of destination a high rock called Simon's Yatt which our agreeable companion described as the finest thing in the world. On bringing to at the landing-place we found we had nearly a mile to walk up a steep road newly escarped on the side of the hill; and setting ourselves manfully to the effort we began our march--Williams insisted on being the useful member of the party. He offered in the plenitude of his strength to carry the shawls to carry a couple of children to carry ourselves; he thought nothing of weights; he was used to hard labour; he rather liked some difficult thing to do; and finally nearly broke down under the burden of one of the provision baskets; stopping every now and then to rest and evidently over-tasked. The day was very hot--the soil was a red ironstone--there was no shelter from the pervading sun--and the ascent was on an inclination of at least one foot in six; at last however urged on by a desire to enjoy the prospect--and the lunch--and also with a malicious intention shared by the whole party to walk our companion to death we surmounted all difficulties wound round a rocky eminence at the top and suddenly found ourselves on a beautifully wooded platform six or seven hundred feet above the river and in the enjoyment of the most surprising view we ever saw. The river Wye takes a sharp turn round the foot of this enormous projection not only winding round the extremity but actually flowing down on one side exactly as it flowed up on the other leaving Simon's Yatt as a sort of wedge inserted in its course; and presents the extraordinary effect of the same river at the same moment running both north and south. The summit of Simon's Yatt is not above fifty feet wide and the descent on one side is perpendicular showing the river directly under your feet and on the other is nearly precipitous leaving only room between its base and the river for a most picturesque assemblage of cottages called the New-Weir village. Directly in front is the rich level champaign containing the town of Ross at a considerable distance Goodrich Priory and many other residences from the feudal Castle to the undated Grange. On the horizon-line you recognise Ledbury the Malvern hills; and the whole outline of the Black mountains. On the right where the river careers along in its backward course you see the interminable foliage of the forest of Dean and the rich valleys of Glo'stershire. A very handsome house about a mile down the river attracted our attention. ""It's a reg'lar good billet "" said Mr Williams breaking off from some other piece of information with which he was regaling the idle wind for by this time we had acquired a power of not hearing a word he said; ""and it's a great shame the gent as owns it never lives in it. He is a very great man in foreign parts; and the Pope is his uncle. So in course he always lives in France to be near his great relations."" No cross-examination could shake his statement of this genealogical curiosity; so we looked with increased interest on the mansion of the Pope's nephew whose principal merit by the by in Mr William's eyes was that he had once furnished him with a coracle. After gratifying our eyes for a long time with the surprising prospect we found a nice shady spot in a plantation at a little distance; spread shawls and cloaks upon the grass and were soon engaged in the mysteries of cold meat hard-boiled eggs an excellent salad and Guinness's porter--not to mention a beautiful gooseberry tart and sparkling ginger-beer. Some feasts have been more splendid and some perhaps more seasoned with eloquence and wisdom--but as the Vicar of Wakefield says of the united party of the Primroses and the Flamboroughs ""If there was not much wit among the company there was a great deal of laughter and that did just as well."" So we laughed a good hour among the shady walks at Simon's Yatt--managed for five whole minutes to stop our companion's conversation by filling his mouth with beef and porter distributed the fragments among a hungry and admiring population of young coal-heavers who looked on--like a group starting out of Murillo's pictures--and with empty baskets and joyous hearts set off on our homeward way. We glided at our own sweet will down the river exchanged the bark for our plethoric gig and in due course of time after twelve starts at the twelve milestones arrived in safety at our home. By this time there were no symptoms left of deficient health and strength--the invalid would have done for an honorary member of the club of fat people recorded in the _Spectator_; and we looked with disdain on the level territory on the banks of the Usk and longed for hills to climb and walls to get over and rocks to overcome like knights-errant in search of adventures. No walk was too great for us. We thought of challenging Captain Barclay to a match against time or of travelling through England as the Pedestrian Wonders. Walker the twopenny postman would have had no chance against us. So merely by way of practice we started off one day with straw-hats and short summer frocks and every other accompaniment of a professed pedestrian's turn-out and away we went on a pilgrimage to the churchyard of Llanvair Kilgiden. Through rich fields of grass we sauntered--over stiles we leapt--through hedges we dashed--and occasionally became prosaic enough to walk on for half a mile or so in a country lane but generally we preferred trespassing through a corn-field and losing our way in searching for a short cut across a plantation; and at last after many hairbreadth 'scapes--after being terrified by the bellowing of a bull which turned out to be a sentimental cow giving vent to her agitated feelings in what somebody calls a ""gentle voice and low""--after nearly losing half the party by the faithlessness of a plank that crossed a ditch that swarmed with an innumerable multitude of tadpoles--after surpassing these and many other perils we at last got into the quiet road that leads from Penty Goitre bridge down to the church of Llanvair--a large solemn-looking churchyard ornamented with a goodly array of splendid yew-trees and boasting at some former period a majestic stone cross now of course defaced and the very square it stood upon moss-grown and in ruins. The church itself is a plain quiet structure but the sylvan beauty and peaceful seclusion of the situation cannot be surpassed. We measured the great yews and several of them were twenty-four or twenty-five feet in circumference at four feet from the ground. There were some graves enclosed in railings and surrounded by evergreens and rose-trees; and the sentiment of the place was not destroyed by a few nibbling sheep that cropped the short grass on the graves where the rude forefathers of the hamlet slept. Can the sepulchral muses have found their way to so remote a district as this? Have ""afflictions sore"" and ""vain physicians"" obtained a sculptor among the headstones of this out-of-the-way place? We made a survey of the inscriptions as a very sure guide to the state of education among the peasantry and are compelled to confess that the schoolmaster had decidedly gone abroad. Even monuments of some pretension to grandeur with full-cheeked cherubs on the sides and solid stones on the top offered no better specimens of spelling and composition that this:-- ""Laden with age my years they flew-- The Lord is holy just and trew."" And on the slab over a child of three years old the following pithy observation:-- ""If life and care could death p_er_vent My days would not so soon been spent."" The sculptor in many instances (being tired probably of chiselling the same words over and over ) had attempted an improvement by altering the arrangement of the lines --an ingenious device on his part and a pleasing puzzle to the spectator:-- ""A tender husband and a father dear a faithful friend lies buried hear he was true and just in all his ways he do deserve this worthey praise."" To the memory of Margaret wife of John Hall appeared some lines of a superior kind with which we never met elsewhere:-- ""You see around me richer neighbours lie As deep and still in this cold ground as I; From ease and plenty they were called away-- Could I in lingering sickness wish to stay? When faith supports the body worn with pain To live is nothing but to die is gain."" But as if to show that the muse had made a very flying visit to the hamlet and had left the mason on the next occasion to his own unassisted genius the epitaph on two other members of the same family runs thus:-- ""When in the world we did remain Our latter days was grief and pain But God above he thought it best To take _we_ to a place of rest."" What can it be that induces people who were probably as unpoetical as Audrey in their lives to wish the ornament of verse upon their tombstones? The effect must be almost ludicrous upon those who were acquainted with the living individual to hear ""the long resounding march and energy divine"" of heroics and Alexandrines proceeding from him now he is dead. Philosophy put by the epitaph-writer in the mouths of a chaw-bacon--moral reflections on the loveliness of virtue in the mouth of a poor-law overseer--and noble incitements to follow a good example in the mouth of the bully or drunkard of the parish must be far from useful to the surviving generation. We therefore highly approve of the remarks of a sententious gentleman in this churchyard who seems to lay no great claim to extraordinary merit himself but favours his co-parishioners with very useful advice:-- ""Farewell vain world I've seen enough of thee And now am careless what thou say'st of me -- Thy smiles I court not nor thy frowns I fear; My cares are past; my head lies quiet here-- What faults thou see'st in me take care to shun-- Look well at home; enough there's to be done."" By the time we had transferred these and other inscriptions to our note-book the party were refreshed and ready for the homeward walk. We got over the same stiles and underwent the same dangers as before and happily completed our voyage of discovery to the beautiful churchyard of Llanvair. Day after day saw us all busy in ferreting out fine views or old manor-houses--the little Skirrid or old Llangattock. Sometimes we crossed the river and wandered through the delicious lanes of Llanover or passed through Llanellen on our way to the Blorenge. As our courage and strength expanded we tried bolder flights--spent a day among the smoke and thunder of the Nantiglo ironworks--with processions of thousands of men hurrying off amidst music and shouts of the most tremendous loudness to a dinner at their club. Great hard-featured savage-looking fellows they were though in their holiday attire and accompanied by one or two of the Bailey family--the real iron kings of the neighbourhood; and a sight of their grim features and brawny arms gave us a more vivid respect for the courage of Sir Thomas Philips who drove them back from the sack and massacre of Newport; and also a clearer idea of the almost justifiable hardihood of the worshipful Mister Frost in thinking that with ten or twelve thousand souls made of fire and children of the mine he could upset Old England and be himself the legitimate successor of King Coal. Another day we spent among the ruins of Llantony Abbey one of the finest remains of ecclesiastical architecture in the kingdom. The person who owns the ground and the ruins is a poet a philosopher a scholar so at least he wishes to be thought; but from the condition of the abbey (a small pot-house protruding its vulgar sign from one of the noble entrances and a skittle-ground being established in the main aisle--desolation neglect and dirtiness all around ) we formed no very high estimate of the taste or feeling of Mr Walter Savage Landor. If he had no higher object than merely to keep up the beauty of the building you might expect that he would have guarded it from the degradation of beer tobacco and British spirits. A man of a poetical mind would have taken care to prevent such miserable associations as are supplied by a tap and skittle-ground;--a person of loftier and purer sentiments would have shown more reverence for the _genius loci_ and would have remembered that the walls were once vocal with Christian prayers and that what in other instances would be only negligence is profanation here. But probably the innkeeper pays his rent regularly and we hope will be made the interlocutor in an imaginary conversation with the last abbot of Llantony. The object we had in coming into Wales was now entirely gained; and after ten weeks most happy wanderings over hill and dale and constantly breathing the clear fresh air of Monmouthshire we packed up bag and baggage and returned to our home with a stock of health laid in for winter use which will keep us constantly in mind of the benefits we derived from change of scene. NEAPOLITAN SKETCHES. GARDEN OF THE VILLA REALE. This garden--which during the winter months is the lounge of the English idler at Naples and then looks as flowerless and dingy as Kensington in an east wind--assumes a very different appearance in spring. On the 7th of May we who had passed the winter at Rome were at once struck with the brilliancy of unusual blossoms and the number of distinguished vegetable foreigners who lifted their heads out of parterres of the very existence of which in winter one is scarcely conscious. The formal line of clipt _Ilex_ that looks towards the sea had changed its dusky hue for a warmer tint; statues that had been doing sentinel all the winter without relief now seem to bend delighted over fragrant flower-beds and enjoy the spring. Two high shrubs in flower (_Metresiglias_) hoist from opposite beds the one its _white_ the other its _red_ banner. Two of the _Muses_ the _Speciosa_ and _Paravisogna_ or bread-tree plant were raising their light spiry trunks out of a _corbeille_ taller than a life-guardsman. They want no hothouse in Naples:--would you shade your face from the sun an elsewhere exotic the Brazilian _Camarotta_ at your feet furnishes you with a _screen_. The _white flocks_ of the _Acacia verticillata_ are peeping out from the ranks of those small _triangular leaves_ which are so singularly attached without stalks by one of these angles to the stem. Amidst these pleasant perfumes camphor would be unwelcome but there is the _laurel_ that yields it. _Fennel_ has here become a tree in which like the _mustard_ of the Gospels the fowls of the air may lodge; we are dwarfs beside it! Three kinds of the soft slimy Mallow of the Marsh are here so much WOODY and so tall that we must pick their flowers on tiptoe. The _flattened disk_ of the sky-blue _Nana arborea_ contrasts with the _Betula sanguinea_ glowing deeply in the flower-bed of many lighter-coloured petals; the sweet-scented _African laurel_ grows against the long-leafed Babylonian willow which _susurrates_ droopingly over your head as if it were ""by _the waters of Babylon_."" The fountains with their _hydrophilous_ tribes add to the charm; and many a beautiful _Launaria aquatica_ had already buoyed himself up on his large _cordate leaves_ on the surface of the _tazza_ and was filling his vegetable skin with water. All these beauties and peculiarities a mere scantling of the whole of the Villa Reale escape the lounger and the nurserymaids and children and those of either sex who have appointments to keep or to look out for; and the soldiers and the police and the Neapolitan nobility and gentry and the pickpockets and others:--to the nurseryman and botanist things not to be forgotten; and at present the weather is not too hot to interfere with their enjoyment. SERVI DI PENA. At Castel Nuovo a penal settlement of Naples we held conversation with a man sentenced to the galleys and wearing accordingly a _yellow_ jacket; but yellow is not here as at Leghorn the deepest dye. Here it is _red cloth_ and manacles that go together. We asked him his crime. ""Un _piccolo_ omicidio."" ""A small homicide provoked by a dispute for a single ducat! I quarrelled with a man _now in paradise_. I killed him at one stab but the devil possessed me to give him another _colpo di coltello_ after he had fallen; and as the judges asked me _why_ I did this and I could not perfectly satisfy them they concluded I was a sanguinary fellow and gave me eighteen years galleys--but as you see I have no chains; nor ever had--_mai! mai_!"" and he extended his hands in somewhat of the attitude of Raphael's _Paul before Festus_ to suit the action to the word. ""No! he was of a very different order of criminals to a boatful of _birboni_ in red jackets all _bad cases_ of homicide and _robbery!_"" ""What do you call _bad_ cases?"" ""Why I call it a bad case to kill a man for NOTHING."" ""Well but _theft_ to any amount is not so bad as taking away _life_."" ""Oh! as to that the police are _quite right!_ A decent and a devout man does not commit homicides every day: but he that steals at all steals always!"" So that our culprit reasoned like _Paley_ on the _tendency_ of crimes. It was his _Chapter of the Silver Spoon_ with a new exposition from the mouth of a Galeote! And they pluck men at Cambridge for _not_ getting up their Paley! Our philosophical criminal seemed satisfied with his lot. ""We are not so badly off after all: we walk out with an obliging escort who let us do pretty much as we like; and all our work is confined to sweeping the courts in front of the king's palace. We are free of the castle and allowed to conduct strangers over it as in your case. Oh! for the fellows at _St Stefano_ it is quite another matter; as a part of their punishment they are _compelled to be idle!_"" Our rascal was allowed a new coat once every eighteen months with two pair of drawers and as many shirts and a penny a-day for pocket-money! These _piccoli omicidii_ at home do not get off so cheap but stabbing is endemic at Naples. When a queen of Naples brings the Neapolitans a new prince--great joy of course!--all the penal settlements _except_ St Stefano receive _three_ years' mitigation of their sentence; but the crimes that consign to that island are _senza grazia_--the rays of royal bounty do not reach those dark and solitary cells. The St Stefano convicts form a body of three hundred doomed men incorrigible housebreakers or systematic assassins. The food of all classes of criminals is the same whatever the offence and consists of twenty-four ounces of bread with half-a-pint measure of beans and some oil--a basin of cabbage soup without meat for dinner and meat once in fourteen days: there are eight thousand out-of-doors convicts many of whom being under sentence for a less space _than two years_ work in their own clothes--which is of course a considerable saving to government. Although all the galley-slave establishments are full no place swarms like Naples with so many meritorious candidates for the _red_ and _yellow_ liveries of the state. ST CARLO &c. St Carlo is as the guide-books tell us ""a very fine theatre."" What we particularly like is the absence of all _side-lights round its boxes_. Two hundred burners arranged in three rows round a small chandelier give just light enough to set off the fine chastened white and gold and the one quiet fresco which embellishes the ceiling. A pit of vast size divided into comfortable sittings six tiers of boxes and an orchestra of great space suited to the extraordinary size of the house secure a far less adulterated playhouse atmosphere than we are used to; and so exempt from the ordinary inconveniences that we were able to sit out the _Semiramide_ even with Ronzi di Begnis now old and out of keeping for the heroine. Surely _she neve

_ should have been Semiramis even in her palmy day! Actors and actresses _will_ not know that words written for them scenery and dresses adapted for them and attitudes invented for them can never _make_ them the personages mentioned in the playbill. On returning home we stood at our balcony gazing on the lovely face of a true Naples night--a night beyond description!--the whole vault of heaven lighted by one light: a full moon like a subdued sunshine over earth and water. A world of light that shone on a world of darkness tinging the air gilding the mountain-tops and making the sea run like melted phosphorus. And what a silence abroad! not the perilous cessation of sound which so often only anticipates the storm; nor the sultry stillness of an exhausting noon; but a mighty and godlike display as it were of the first full moon after creation shining on an entranced world! POZZUOLI. An _amphitheatre_ is one of those few ruins that leave no problem to solve. Here we have a grey antiquity without any mutilation of form and merely spoliated of its benches. The patron saint of Naples was they say imprisoned here. A little chapel ascertains the spot but he does no miracles on this _arena_. When we come to _temples_ we are always at a great loss for proprietors. The very large one here is called of Jupiter Serapis. The remaining columns of this temple whatever it was exhibit a very remarkable appearance. Three pillars forty-two feet in height up to about twelve feet above their pedestals have the surface of the marble as smooth as any in the Forum; then comes a portion of nine or ten feet of which the marble has been bored drilled in all directions by that persevering bivalve the _Lithodomus;_ the perforations are so considerable and go so deep as to prove ""the long-continued abode"" of these animals within the stone and by consequence as Mr Lyell observes ""a long-continued immersion of the columns in the sea at some period recent comparatively with that of its erection."" Indeed there is abundant evidence adduced in the fourth volume of his _Geology_ to show that all this ground was at a no very distant period _under the sea_ like Monte Nuovo in its neighbourhood and was thrust out of the water to its present level. When the ground on which this temple stood collapsed the _bottom part of its columns_ was protected by ""the rubbish of decayed buildings and strata of turf;"" the _middle_ or perforated part was left exposed to the action of the sea bivalves above alluded to; and the _upper part_ which was never under the water remained smooth and free from perforation. But these columns not only prove by internal evidence the general fact of the ground on which they stand having been submerged--they also furnish an exact _measure_ of the degree to which it sunk; viz. twenty feet--_i.e._ the height where these perforations terminate at present. You can only cross the floor of this building on stepping-stones; and as you do so you see shoals of small sea-fish darting about in the shallow water which occupies its area into which the sea has been _admitted_ on purpose to prevent the accumulation of the stagnant water that had infected this particular spot with intense malaria. BAIÆ. We took a hot bath under the _soi-disant_ villa of Lucullus. Steam sulphur and hot water may be had cheap any where along this coast. An awful place it was to enter naked and be kept in the dark stifling as we were for some seconds which seemed minutes till our guide returned with a _milord's_ dressing-gown which he assured us had been hung up as a votive offering for cured rheumatism. Being candidates ourselves for a similar benefit we desired to be rubbed down like _milord_ till _aluminous_ perspiration stood thick upon us the alum being deposited from the walls and atmosphere of the place. We were soon obliged to beg for quarter. The _milord_ whose dressing-gown we were possessed of was so bad as to be obliged to be rubbed sitting; but so powerful is the remedy that after fifteen such sittings he walked round the lake (two miles) and went home in his carriage ""_guerito!_"" ""Such baths!"" that had cured _he_ knew not how many persons:-- ""Men who'd spent _all_ upon physician's fees Who'd _never_ slept nor had a _moment's_ ease Were now as _roaches sound_ and all as _brisk as bees!_""--CRABBE. What with its hot water sulphur vapour and alum we too should have fancied Naples might have been comparatively exempt from rheumatisms and skin diseases in both of which it abounds. LUCRINE AND AVERNUS LAKES. From the sea and its inlet called the Lucrine _Lake_ we pass along a pleasant green lane about a mile long which issues on _Avernus_ whose waters we find both limpid and clear; but are instructed that two months later will change them to a dark-red colour and that the neighbourhood will then become very malarious and unsafe. A piece of semicircular wall on one side of the lake indicates the whereabouts of a temple of Proserpine or Apollo or any god or goddess you please. We were so absurd as to pay a scudo to be taken through a vile tunnel accompanied by two torch-bearers and two other dirty wretches who often carry us pick-a-back through one black hole into another splashing us through dark pools putting us down here and there as they pleased picking us up again grinning like demons and by dint of shaking their torches above and disturbing the water below raising foul smells enough to intoxicate fifty Sybils. At length half suffocated by those classical delights we cry Enough! enough! and beg to be put into our saddles again. The _Stufa di Nerone_ a little further on the high-road is another volcanic _calidarium_ in full activity where you may boil eggs or scald yourself in a dark cavern. There you may deposit your mattrass and yourself in any one of a store of _berths_ wrought into that most unpicturesque tufa of which the exterior face constitutes the whole of the sea view of _Baiæ._ If ever there were decorations in these caverns they are gone; but there probably never were. Diana Mercury Venus and Apollo all claim brick tenements called temples in this little bay all close together on the seaside and none having any claim at present either on the artist or the poet. We quit the seaside at this spot and reach the summit of the hill above where there is more torch-work and more disappointment for those that go a Sybil-seeking with the sixth book of Virgil for a guide. Those who like it may also grope their way through _Nero's prisons_ and descend into the _Piscina Mirabilis_ that vast pilastered cellar like an underground dissenting chapel. They say the Roman fleet was supplied with water from this huge tank; but if this had been the intention of its construction why obstruct it with more pillars or supports of square masonry than the roof absolutely required without which incumbrances a reservoir of half its size would have held more water --and for water it was evidently meant? Ascending the hill we see a man or two working away at a newly-discovered _tomb_ from which he told us he had removed several skulls in perfect preservation even to the teeth of both jaws together with some small sepulchral lamps and old copper coins. We dine on the summit of a low hill immediately opposite a cape better known to fame than the Cape of Good Hope--the promontory of _Misenum_ with _Procida_ and _Ischia_ on our right and _Nisida_ with its white lazaretto and _Puteoli_ (Pozzuoli ) where St Paul landed on our left. We took to _plant_ collecting after dinner and were glad to learn that we should find at Puzzuoli a celebrated botanist of the locality who could declare to us the _unknown_ of all we should collect. On our return therefore the man of science was fetched to look at our wild nose-gay and at us. We show him a specimen; he calls it by some outlandish name; we tell him what we want is its _Latin_ one. It _is_ Latin he says which he is actually speaking! _We_ thought _not_. A crowd of fishermen and rustics are fast collecting around us; we try him with another one of the grasses. ""_Questo è asparago_ "" cries a bumpkin unasked from behind. ""_Che asparagi?_"" says _il mio Maestro_ ""_è Pimpinella._"" We show him a _Cytisus_ and he calls it a _Campanula._ Seeing that so great a difference exists between our friend and Linnæus we ask no further questions. Tench and eels abound in _Avernus_ and coot and teal also blunder here occasionally as if to contradict Virgil and confute etymology--for Avernus is [Greek: aornos] (birdless ) and Latinised as every one knows. However few birds are to be found here. The _Lucrine_ is now a mere salt-water pond of small extent affording the little sea fish in rough weather a sort of playground. No Lucrine oysters now though these dainties are of excellent quality at Naples and might have satisfied _Montanus_ himself. As to the _Mare Mortuum_ it is another rank unwholesome unpicturesque pond. We walked all round it and have a right to say so; and if we had done so _twice_ after sunset might perchance have had to say _more_. PROCIDA. ""_Ego vel Prochytam præpono Suburræ_ "" says Juvenal and so would we if compelled to live in that nasty St Giles's beyond the Coliseum; but as the ""_vel_"" seems strangely misapplied--for the _situation_ of Procida must always have been delightful--the poet's preference must be understood as of a dull unlively place with few inhabitants or resources to a dense and dangerous population. Baiæ itself is not three miles from Procida; but the Roman Baiæ was thronged with good society and this little island was doubtless then as unpeopled as it is now populous. Procida is about three-fourths of an hour's fair rowing from Miniseolæ on the Baian side; but you may run your boat over on a fine day in half an hour. As you approach the houses you discern the not unpicturesque frontage of a little fishing town; but all is as revolting within as fair without. Something of the Greek or Albanese costume is still preserved here and they offer to dress up one of their families in full _parure_ for our further satisfaction if we will pay them. The view from the leads of the fort (under which the galley-slaves are confined) is fine indeed! Ischia and Vesuvius and the whole stretch of the bay and _Sorrento_ and the promontory of Minerva. Procida builds good enough trading vessels. We saw two in the harbour of Baiæ as we rowed back on a delicious evening towards sunset; they were going on a first voyage bound for our London docks;--and _à propos_ of the London docks all this country is as it always was rich in productive vineyards and bad wine. Every hill once gave its own epithet to wines celebrated in _longs and shorts_ of immortal celebrity whereas the land round Rome could never have been viniferous. You may still drink _Falernian_ if so minded on its native seat of St Agatha. The wine of _Gaurus_ has not deserted Monte Babaro and _Lachryma_ though not classical has its own celebrity; and the islands of Ischia and Procida also produce a strong heating white wine. But there is not any wine from the Alps to Messina to be compared to those of the _Garonne_ and the _Rhine_ or the _Moselle_. The _Barbarians_ subdued by the Roman legions have long had it all their own way not only in this but in every other good thing _except sunshine_; but the vine growing as it grows suspended as it is suspended and wreathed round the hills of Italy is still the _plant_ which secures the loudest admiration of the foreigner. ""The vine of Italy for ever!""--so we join the chorus of all travellers and say-""_till_ it lies bruised bleeding fermenting in the vat! _then_ commend us to the Bacchus of lands far nearer home."" And here feeling ourselves called upon for a _song_ we will sing one. A VINTAGE SONG. ABRIDGED FROM BÉRANGER. ""Amidst the Celtic hordes of old That gather'd round his wayworn band The cumbrous booty to behold Brought from Ausonia's sunny land Thus _Brennus_ spake--'This lance of mine Bears Rome's best gift--Behold--the Vine! Plant plant the Vine to whose fair reign belong The arts of Peace and all the realms of Song! ""'They told us of its wondrous juice; We fought to taste it and have won! Now o'er your hills new wealth diffuse And cherish well the warrior's boon. Plant plant the Vine &c. ""'Nor for ourselves alone we tore That stem away; your ships shall bear The freighted joy to many a shore And spread the unknown gladness there. Plant plant the Vine &c.' ""He ended and in face of all While deep in earth he strikes the lance And plants the shoot--_unconscious Gaul Prepares the world's vast vineyard--France!_""[9] THE PALACE OF CASERTA. About thirteen miles from Naples is one of the finest kingly residences in Europe--so say all the guide-books and they are right. Vanvitelli is the very Michael Angelo of palace-rearing! Its shape is a parallelogram approaching to a square. Counting mezzanines it has six stories besides the attics; and is pierced with no less than 1700 windows. Its stair the very perfection of that sort of construction is vast in all its dimensions and so very easy that you look down from its summit admiring with untried lungs the enormous height you have reached. It starts double from the ground and twenty persons might ascent either branch abreast and meet one another at the spot where it begins to return upon itself; so that the noble octagonal landing above finds itself just over the starting-place below. From this post four large windows command four spacious courts and the simple construction of this gigantic edifice stands unveiled. You now begin your journey through vast lofty magnificently marbled and very ill-furnished apartments of which before you have completed the half circuit of a single floor you are heartily tired for beyond the architecture there is nothing to see. The commonest broker's shop would furnish better pictures. Boar-hunts of course to represent how Neapolitan kings kill boars at Portici and shoot wild-ducks on the _Lago di Fusina_. There is also an ample historical fresco on the ceiling of the antechamber to the throne-room on which Murat _had_ caused to be represented some notable _charge_ where he proved victorious; but after he was shot Ferdinand with great taste judgment and good feeling _erased_ _interpolated_ and _altered_ the picture into a harmless battle of Trojans against Greeks or some such thing! The palace has two theatres and a chapel; and you must change your conductor four times if you would be led through the whole. For this enormous edifice boasts of only twelve servants at eleven dollars a-month from the privy purse. Caserta which even in its present imperfect state has cost 7 000 000 scudi is raised amidst a swarm of paupers who are permitted to besiege the stranger and impede his progress with an importunity such as could be shown by none but men on the eve of famishing. We _never_ saw such a population of beggars as those which infest the walls of this most sumptuous palace and its park--but the park is a park indeed! It may have something of the formality of Versailles or Chantilly; but its leading features are essentially English; its thickets and copses abound in hares and pheasants. The ilex attains twice the height we remember to have seen it reach elsewhere. Its islands and fishponds its kitchen and flower-gardens put one in mind of a first-rate English country-seat. The ornamental water is fetched by an aqueduct worthy of old Rome from mountains seven miles off first emptying its whole charge over a high ledge of rock making a waterfall (which you see from the drawing-room window) over a series of steps and terraces which get wider as they get lower till they terminate in a superb basin within a quarter of a mile of the palace where the water makes its last bound and forms a broad lake fit for Diana and her nymphs amidst woods fit for Actaeon and his dogs. Of course we asked to be conducted to these stone terraces over which the dash of the mountain stream into the lake is effected: but as we passed the latter we were surprised by our guide approaching the water and beginning to whistle he begs us to observe the water begins to be troubled at a distance and the more he whistles the more the commotion increases. Ten twenty and in half a second hundreds of _immense_ fish come trooping up and undeterred by our presence approach as near as they dare to the surface of the water where he stands; they swim backwards and forwards and lash the water with their tails. What is the matter? Why! they come to be fed! and such is the ferocious impatience of this aquatic _menagerie_ that we long to assist in quelling it; and so we dip our hand into the man's basket of frogs and drop a few right over the swarm--and now the water is bubbling and lathering with the workings and plungings of these mad fish; and so large are they so strong so numerous that all angler as we are we really felt unpleasantly nor would we after what we saw have trusted hand or foot in the domain of such shark-like rapacity. They consume five basketsful of frogs and minnows a-day. Except that of the Caserta beggars we never saw any thing like the hunger of the Caserta fish. THE SILK MANUFACTORY. The silk manufactory at Caserta is worth a visit. The labour is chiefly accomplished by the hand as is all labour in Naples. Silk is wound off into skeins by a mill turned by the artificial falls of the aqueduct. At one extremity you see the unpromising _cocoons_; at the other the most rare and beautiful velvets and _gros de Naples_. The locality of this manufactory is delightful and the old queen preferred its comforts and cheerfulness to the solitary grandeur of the palace in the plain. In place of occupying and paying the poor round his palace to make silk and satins for his court and the Pope the present king spends his money in _gunpowder and soldiering_. They accuse him of having less compassion for the misfortunes of the poor than even his father Francis or his grandfather Ferdinand of blessed memory. The view from this spot of the huge palace itself with Vesuvius smoking to our right and Capri shining before it is one of those not to be forgotten. THE SNAKE TAMER. Behold the old snake-finder with his sack! ""_Ola! vecchio che cosa avete pigliato quest' oggi?_"" was a question put from our one-horse cart till then going at a great rate through the village of Somma to a little old man with a humpback a sack and a large shallow box. He was dressed in a queer costume had a wolf's brush in his hat and remarkably tight-fitting leather leggings. ""Tre! fra altri una vipera meschia."" ""Oh! oh! aspetta "" added we--we must see the viper. Upon which there was a broad grin all round the circle; but the driver stopped and down we got. The old man seeing our intention to be serious got a chair for us from a cottage and putting his box on his knee looked knowing and thus began. ""Gentlemen you have all seen a viper _basta feroce_--a reptile that every one runs from _except_ me and those who know as I do how to humour him. I have a viper in this box whom I have so perfectly tamed that he lives with two others and never quarrels with them. I will open the box and as you will see they will all lie as if they were dead until I notice _one_ when he will put up his head that I may take him out."" He opened the box where lay coiled and perfectly still a spotted viper an immense black snake and one very light and silvery like an eel. ""Here's my family "" said the old man; and catching the viper round the middle brought him out while the others wriggled a little as if in expectation of being caressed in their turn. ""This animal signor is not so bad in his temper as you have been told. It is only when he is making love that he is poisonous--to all but his females; but in this gentlemen he is scarcely worse than many of yourselves whom it is not safe then to approach."" ""Bravo bravo _vecchaccio_! ancora! Go it again!"" sounds every where from the circle collected round the old snake-charmer. ""If you tread upon his tail gentlemen what can you expect but a bite? Would not _you_ bite if you had your tails trodden on?"" The viper now raised his head and darted it out with about half of his body behind it at the crowd. The two nearest peasants fell back. The viper missing his spring turns round to bite the hand that is holding him but no sooner touches it than off it glides from the horny finger wriggling both head and tail at a great rate. ""He has been warmed by my hand sirs and wants to escape! _Ingrato!_ Come I have something to tell you that these gentlemen must not hear!"" And he opened his month and the viper thrust his head between his lips; upon which the old man closes them and makes believe to mumble the horrid head the body appearing violently convulsed as if it really suffered violence. ""He has lost his teeth "" said one ""and can't bite."" ""_Sicuro_ "" said another and began to yawn. ""No "" said the old man ""his teeth are all in his head. You doubt it do you? See here then."" And catching him by the head and drawing down his lower jaw having forced the mouth to its full stretch he drew the red surface of his upper-jaw smartly over the back of his own hand two or three times so as to bring blood from six or seven orifices. Then drying the blood off his hand he returns his viper to the box and asks a _baiocco_ for the exhibition. ""What's the price of your viper?"" ask we. ""Two _carlines_ excellenza."" ""Here tie him up for me in my handkerchief."" Which was accordingly done and we popped him into spirits of wine as a _souvenir_ of Monte Somma and of the old man whom we saw handling him. ""Does he gain a livelihood by his trade?"" we enquired. ""He teaches people how to catch serpents; and by familiarizing them with the danger they work in greater comfort and are not afraid of going over any part of Monte Somma which as it abounds in vipers and snakes still deters the unpractised a little. Besides they like to see the snake caught and exhibited and every body gives him something."" A MEDITATION. Some hidden disappointment clings To all of man--to all his schemes And life has little fair it brings Save idle dreams. The peace that may be ours to-day Scarce heed we looking for the morrow; The slighted moments steal away And then comes sorrow. The light of promise that may glow Where life shines fair in bud or bloom Ere fruit hath ripen'd forth to show Is quench'd in gloom. The rapture softest blush imparts Dies with the bloom that fades away And glory from the wave departs At close of day. Where we have garner'd up our hearts And fixed our earnest love and trust The very life-blood thence departs And all is dust. Then Nature let us turn to thee; For in thy countless changes thou Still bearest immortality Upon they brow. Thy seasons in their endless round Of sunshine tempest calm or blight Yet leave thee like an empress crown'd With jewels bright. Thy very storms are life to thee 'Tis but a sleep thy seeming death; We see thee wake in flower and tree At spring's soft breath. We view the ruin of our youth Decay's wan trace on all we cherish; But thou in thine unfailing truth Canst never perish. J.D. ON THE OLD YEAR. With mournful tone I hear thee say ""Alas another year hath sped!"" As if within that circlet lay Life's garland dead. Vain thought! Thy measure is not Time's; Not thus yields life each glowing hue; Fair fruit may fall--the tendril climbs And clasps anew. Time hath mute landmarks of his own; They are not such as man may raise; Not his the rudely number'd stone On life's broad ways. The record measuring his speed Is but a shadow softer spread-- A browner leaf--a broken reed Or mildew shed. And if his footfall crush the flower How sweet the spicy perfume springs! His mildew stain upon the tower A glory brings. Then let the murmuring voice be still The heart hold fast its treasure bright; The hearth glows warm when sunbeams chill; Life hath no night. J.D. CORALI. Soft-brow'd majestic Corali! Thou like a memory serene Seemest to me--or melody Or moonlight scene. With thee life in soft plumage glides As on the ruffled lake the swan Whose downy breast the struggle hides That speeds it on. In thy fair presence wakes no care; Harsh discords into music melt; Thy harmony alone is there-- Alone is felt. The heart unsway'd by hope or dread Safe haven'd in a clime of balm Nor chain'd in ice nor tempest-sped Lies rock'd in calm. J.D. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF FRANK ABNEY HASTINGS. ""Man wrongs and time avenges and my name May form a monument not all obscure."" The success of the Greek insurrection against the Turks is the event in contemporary history concerning which it is most difficult to form a precise and correct idea. Causes and effects seem to the ordinary observer to be utterly disproportionate. Its progress set the calculations of statesmen at defiance; and while congresses ambassadors and protocols were attempting to fetter it in one direction it generally advanced with increased speed in some other totally unexpected. It was very natural that the Greeks should take up arms to emancipate themselves from Turkish oppression the moment a favourable opportunity presented itself; but certainly few foreigners conceived that the time they selected afforded them much chance of success. Kolocotroni however appears to have understood the internal condition of the Ottoman empire rather better than Metternich. The unwarlike habits of the majority of the Greek population contrasted with the military feelings of the Turks and with the numbers and valour of the Ottoman armies rendered their cause desperate for some years even in the opinion of their most enthusiastic friends. The whole progress of the Revolution was filled with anomalous occurrences; and the wisdom of the statesman and the skill of the warrior were constantly set at nought by events the causes of which have still been too generally overlooked by the professional politicians of all nations who mix in the affairs of Greece. Unquestionably therefore there exists much in the condition of the Greek nation and in the character of the people which has been completely misunderstood by foreigners. Nor do we entertain any hope of seeing the affairs of Greece placed on a better footing until the Greeks themselves collect and publish detailed information concerning the statistics and the administration of the kingdom. Hitherto not a single report of any value has been published on any branch of the public service; so that the foreign ministers at Athens are from absolute want of materials compelled to confine their active exertions for the good of Greece to recommending King Otho to choose particular individuals devoted to the English French or Russian party as the case may be to the office of cabinet ministers. Not even an army list has yet been published in Greece though the Hellenic kingdom is in the twelfth year of its existence. But as the publication of an army list would put some restraint on political jobbing and ministerial patronage each minister leaves it to be done by his successor. The fate of all the foreigners who have taken an active part in the Greek Revolution is worthy of notice. Many persons of high and of deservedly high reputation embarked in the cause yet not one of the number added to his previous fame by his exploits. Although the names of Byron Cochrane and Capo d'Istrias appear in the annals of Greece it is doubtful whether their actions in the country exercised any direct influence on the course of events. We think we may safely assert that they did not and that these distinguished and able men were all carried along by the current of events. To us it appears that the fate of Greece would have undergone no change if these great men had changed places;--if Capo d'Istrias had enacted the part of lord high admiral Lord Cochrane that of commander-in-chief at Missolonghi and Lord Byron in his day that of president of the Greek republic things would have been little better and no worse. The ambassadors with their treaties and protocols at London and the admirals with their _untoward event_ at Navarin were almost as unfortunate as all other volunteers in the Greek cause. The ambassadors were occupied for years in trying to hinder the Greek state from attaining the form it ultimately assumed; and in spite of the battle of Navarin Ibrahim Pasha carried away from the Peloponnesus an immense number of Greek prisoners in the very fleet the allied admirals supposed they had destroyed. The insignificance of individual exertions in this truly national Revolution has been equally remarkable among the Greeks themselves. Indeed it has been made a capital charge against them by strangers that no man of distinguished talent has arisen to direct the destinies of the country. Perhaps there is a worse feature than this prominent in the Greek community and this is a disposition to calumniate whatever little merit may exist. Here again however we cannot refrain from remarking that a singular resemblance may be traced between the conduct of the strangers in Greece and the Greeks themselves. A vice so predominant must doubtless be nourished by some inherent defect in the constitution of society in Greece rather than in the characters of individuals. If no Greek has succeeded in gaining a glorious pre-eminence by the Revolution we must recollect that the foreigners who have visited the country have contrived to bury there all the fame they brought with them. Singular too as it may appear a love of quarrelling and a passion for calumny have been found to be as decidedly characteristic of the foreigners in Greece as of the natives. The Philhellenes were notoriously a most insubordinate body; the English in Greece have never been able to live together in amity and concord; the three European powers who signed a treaty to aid and protect Greece have rarely been able to agree on the means of carrying their good intentions into execution on a systematic plan. The Regency sent to civilize the country during King Otho's minority though consisting of only three members set the Greeks an example of what the Litany calls ""blindness of heart pride vain-glory and hypocrisy envy hatred and malice and all uncharitableness."" The _corps diplomatique_ has often astounded the Greeks by its feuds and dissensions. The Bavarians made their sojourn in the country one prolonged _querelle d'Allemande._ Even the American missionaries at Athens have not escaped severe attacks of the universal epidemic and during the paroxysms of the malady have made all Greece spectators of their quarrels.[10] The single exception which so often occurs to confirm the general ruler exists in this case as in so many others. One European officer rendered very important services to Greece and so conducted himself as to acquire the respect and esteem of every party in that singularly factious land. This officer was Frank Abney Hastings; but he always made it his rule of life to act amidst the license and anarchy of society in Greece precisely as he would have felt himself called upon to act in similar circumstances could they have occurred in England. We shall now attempt to erect a humble monument to his memory. The pages of Maga have frequently rescued much that is good from the shadow of oblivion; and in this instance we hope that a short account of the actions of the best of the Philhellenes will not only do honour to his memory but will likewise throw some new light on the history of the Greek Revolution. Frank Abney Hastings was the younger son of the late Lieutenant-general Sir Charles Hastings Bart. and his elder brother Sir Charles Abney Hastings inherited the baronetcy. The late Sir Charles Hastings was colonel of the 12th foot and knight grand cross of the Guelphic order; he possessed a large fortune and he was well known for his singularity at Carlton House and in the fashionable circles of London about the beginning of the present century. The present baronet Sir Charles Abney Hastings entered the army when young but retired after having served some time in the Mediterranean. Frank was born on the 14th of February 1794 and was placed in the navy when about eleven years old. Hardly six months after he became a midshipman he was present at the battle of Trafalgar on board the Neptune. An explosion of powder between the decks of the Neptune during the action by which several men were killed and wounded early directed his attention to the service of artillery on board ship; and the science of gunnery became his favourite study. Hastings was subsequently serving in the Seahorse when t

at frigate engaged two Turkish men-of-war and captured one of them which proved to be a frigate much larger than herself. During his career of service he visited every quarter of the globe. After having served nearly fifteen years he was sent to the West Indies in command of the Kangaroo a vessel destined for the surveying service carrying out his commission as commander. On arriving in the harbour of Port-Royal in Jamaica he was supposed to have brought the Kangaroo to an anchor in an improper manner. The flag-captain of the admiral's ship then in the harbour considered this offence so extraordinary that he took a still more extraordinary manner of expressing his dissatisfaction. We cannot give our readers a better idea of the circumstance than by transcribing the words of a letter which Hastings on his return to England addressed to Lord Melville then first lord of the Admiralty. ""He thought proper to hail me in a voice that rang through the whole of Port-Royal saying--'You have overlayed our anchor--you ought to be ashamed of yourself--you damned lubber you--who are you?'"" Of course such an insult both personal and professional could never be overlooked. Hastings however feeling the importance of any step he might take to his future reputation both as a sailor and a gentleman waited until he had delivered up the command of the Kangaroo to the officer appointed to conduct the survey; and having received his commission as commander and being ready to return to England on half-pay he sent a challenge to the flag-captain who had thus insulted him. The admiral on the station was by some circumstance informed of this challenge and on his representation of the affair to the Admiralty Hastings was dismissed the service. We shall conclude our mention of this most unfortunate business by quoting a few more words from the letter of Hastings to Lord Melville which we have already alluded to:--""I have served fourteen years under various captains and on almost all stations. I have certainly seen greater errors committed before; yet I never was witness to such language used to the commander of a British vessel bearing a pendant."" ""Your lordship may perhaps find officers that will submit to such language but I do not envy them their dearly purchased rank; and God forbid that the British navy should have no better supporters of its character than such spiritless creatures."" These words express the deep attachment he always felt to the service. ""Alas! how bitter is his country's curse To him who for that country would expire."" Hastings now found that all his hopes of advancement at home were blasted and without any loss of time he determined to qualify himself for foreign service. He flattered himself that he might acquire a reputation abroad which would one day obtain for him the restoration of his rank in the navy in a distinguished manner. He resided in France for some time in order to acquire a thorough knowledge of the French language which by dint of close application he soon spoke and wrote with ease and correctness. About three years after his dismissal from the navy the position of the Greeks induced him to believe that in Greece he should find an opportunity of putting in practice several plans for the improvement of maritime warfare which he had long meditated. He embarked at Marseilles on the 12th of March 1822 and arrived at Hydra on the 3d of April. Here he was kindly received by the two brothers Jakomaki and Manoli Tombazis and their acquaintance soon ripened into friendship. The Greek fleet was preparing to sail from Hydra to encounter the Turks and Hastings was anxious to accompany it in order to witness the manner in which the Greeks and Turks conducted their naval warfare. As it was necessary for a stranger to receive an authorization from the general government before embarking in the fleet Hastings repaired to Corinth which was then the seat of the executive power. The hostility displayed to the Greek cause by Sir Thomas Maitland the lord high commissioner in the Ionian islands had rendered the British name exceedingly unpopular at this time in Greece and Alexander Maurocordatos (called at that period Prince Maurocordatos ) who was president of the Greek Republic partook of the popular prejudice against Englishmen. On arriving at Corinth Hastings met with a very cool reception and spies were placed to watch his conduct; for though the president had made no progress in organizing the naval military or financial administration he had already established a numerous and active secret police. For several days Hastings was unable to obtain an audience of Maurocordatos; but an American Mr Jarvis (afterwards a lieutenant-general in the Greek service ) to whom Hastings had given a passage from Marseilles was received with great attention. Jarvis as well as Hastings observed ""that the police was very severe and vigilant in Corinth;"" and on the 15th of April he wrote thus:--""I paid my respects to the prince and was invited to come in the evening. I had a long conversation with him and he was particularly kind to me and liked me the more as he said for being an American. He told me many of the bad actions of the English and plainly told me he and the rest took my friend and companion for a spy. I then answered what was necessary--approved his dislike of the English and his foresight but showed him that he was in the wrong in this case."" These suspicions being mentioned to Hastings he immediately addressed a letter to the president demanding that his offer of serving on board the fleet should be either definitely refused or accepted by the Greek government. He at the same time pointed out to Maurocordatos the absurdity of suspecting him as a spy. We translate his own letter which is in French. ""I am suspected by your excellency of being an English spy. Considering the conduct of the British government to Greece I expected to meet with some prejudice against the English among the ignorant; but I own I was not prepared to find this illiberality among men of rank and education. If the English government required a spy in Greece it would not address itself to a person of my condition. I am the younger son of Sir Charles Hastings Baronet a general in the army and who was educated in his youth with the Marquis of Hastings governor-general of India; so that I could surely find a more lucrative less dangerous and more respectable employment in India than that of a spy in Greece. I quitted England because I considered the government treated me with injustice in arbitrarily dismissing me from the navy after more than fourteen years of active service for an affair of honour while I was on half-pay."" This letter obtained for Hastings an audience of the president and his services were at length accepted. On the 3d of May 1822 the Greek fleet began to get under weigh at Hydra and Hastings embarked as a volunteer on board the Themistocles a corvette belonging to the brothers Tombazis. The scene presented by the Hydriote ships hauling out of harbour was calculated to depress the hopes of the most sanguine friend of Greece. Those of the crew who chose to come on board did so; the rest remained on shore and came off as it suited their convenience. When it became necessary to make sail the men loosed the sails but shortly found that no sheets were rove and the bow-lines bent to the bunt line cringles. At last sheets were rove. But as the ships were getting clear of the harbour a squall came on; then every man on board shouted to take in sail; but there were no clue-lines bent and the men were obliged to go out on the jib-boom to haul down the sail by hand. The same thing occurred with the topgallant sails. The crews however were gradually collected; things assumed some slight appearance of order; and after this singular exhibition of anarchy and confusion the fleet bore up for Psara. It is needless to describe the scenes of misery Hastings witnessed when the fleet arrived at Scio as the particulars of the frightful manner in which that island had been devastated by the Turks are generally known. The war was at this period carried on with unexampled barbarity both by the Greeks and Turks. As an illustration of the manner in which naval warfare had been previously conducted in the Levant we shall quote the account given by an English sailor of the conduct of the Russo-Greek privateers in 1788. The modern atrocities were not perpetrated on so large a scale and the officers rarely countenanced them but still it would be too invidious to cite single examples. We shall therefore copy a short extract from Davidson's narrative of a cruise on board one of the vessels connected with the expedition of the famous Greek privateer and pirate Lambro. ""The prize had on board eighty-five hands which we took on board us and confined in the hold until next day; when they were called up one by one and had their heads cut off in the same manner as we cut off ducks' heads at home and we then threw them overboard. This was the first time we were obliged to take it by turns to put them to death. The English when called upon at first refused it; but when the captain told them they were cowards and that he could not believe they were Englishmen they went and did the same as the rest; and afterwards were even worse than the others for they always were first when such work was going on. Sometimes we had three or four in a day to put to death for each man's share."" Things are certainly better than this in our times; but the statesmen who have constituted the kingdom of Greece should recollect that these occurrences took place in the dominions of King Otho on the 21st of May 1789 and that similar scenes though not on so extensive a scale were witnessed by Hastings in the month of May 1822. The Greek naval force at this period consisted entirely of merchant ships fitted out at the private expense of their owners. These vessels were generally commanded either by the owners or their near relations whose whole fortune frequently consisted in the vessel they were to lead into action. It is not surprising that under such circumstances many brave men who would willingly have exposed their lives felt some hesitation in risking their property. The Greek ships previously to the breaking out of the Revolution had been navigated by crews interested in certain fixed proportions in the profits of the cargo. As the proprietor of the ship the captain and the sailors formed a kind of joint-stock company they were in the habit of deliberating together on the measures to be adopted and in discussing the destination of the vessel. The disorder and want of discipline naturally arising from such habits were greatly increased by the practice which was introduced at the breaking out of the Revolution of always paying the sailors their wages in advance. In a fleet so composed and manned Hastings soon perceived that there was no hope of executing any of his projects for the improvement of naval artillery. After fitting locks and sights to the guns in the Themistocles and building up a furnace for heating shot in her hold he found that all his arrangements were of no avail. Some order was absolutely necessary but he discovered by experience that there was nothing the Albanians of Hydra held in so much honour as disorder. The naval campaign of 1822 was signalized by the successful attack of the Greek fire-ships on the fleet of the Capitan Pasha off Scio. Kanaris who conducted his vessel with admirable courage and presence of mind set fire to the ship bearing the pasha's flag which was completely destroyed. Pepinos who commanded the Hydriot fire-ship was not so fortunate in his attack on the ship of the Reala Bey. His vessel was disengaged and though it drifted on board another line-of-battle ship the Turks succeeded in extinguishing the flames in both. Hastings having failed to persuade the Greeks to fit out one or two gun-boats with long guns of large calibre and furnaces for heating shot became disgusted with the service on board the fleet which was confined to sending marauding parties to the coast of Asia Minor where the plunder was oftener taken from the poor Greek villagers than from their Ottoman masters. These expeditions were conducted with unparalleled disorder and without any plan. Before quitting the fleet Hastings made a last attempt to inspire the councils of the admiral with some of his own energy. He waited on the celebrated Admiral Miaoulis with a plan for capturing a Turkish frigate then anchored at Tenedos. This interview between these two remarkable men is of great importance for the appreciation of their respective characters and views at this period. In order to convey to our readers as vividly as possible the impression which it produced on the mind of Hastings we shall transcribe the account of it in his own words. ""I proposed to direct a fire-ship and three other vessels upon the frigate and when near the enemy to set fire to certain combustibles which should throw out a great flame; the enemy would naturally conclude they were all fire-ships. The vessels were then to attach themselves to the frigate fire broadsides double-shotted throwing on board the enemy at the same time combustible balls which give a great smoke without flame. This would doubtless induce him to believe he was on fire and give a most favourable opportunity for boarding him. However the admiral returned my plan saying only [Greek: chalho] without asking a single question or wishing me to explain its details; and I observed a kind of insolent contempt in his manner which no doubt arose from the late success of Kanaris. This interview with the admiral disgusted me. They place you in a position in which it is impossible to render any service and then they boast of their own superiority and of the uselessness of the Franks (as they call us) in Turkish warfare."" It must be recollected in justification of Miaoulis that he had not then had time to avail himself of the enlarged experience he subsequently acquired in his capacity of admiral of the Greek fleet. He was then little more than a judicious and courageous captain of a merchant brig just elected by the suffrage of his equals to lead them. As one of the owners of the ships hired by government his attention was naturally rather directed to the destruction than to the capture of the large Turkish men-of-war; and it is probable that he considered the total want of discipline among the Hydriotes as presenting insuperable difficulties to the execution of the plan and as likely to render the Turkish frigate even if captured utterly useless to the Greeks who would doubtless have allowed her to rot in port. Shortly after this disagreeable affair Hastings had an opportunity of acquiring considerable personal reputation among the Hydriote sailors by saving the corvette of Tombazis in circumstances of great danger. In pursuing some Turkish _sakolevas_ off the north of Mytilene they ran in near Cape Baba and made for the shore under a cliff where a considerable number of armed men soon collected from the neighbouring town. The captain and crew of the Themistocles eager for prizes pursued them; when the ship was suddenly becalmed within gun-shot of a battery at the town which opened a well-directed fire on the corvette. In getting from under the fire of the battery a baffling wind and strong current drove the ship within sixty yards of the high rocky cliff where the Turkish soldiers were posted. These troops opened a sharp but ill-directed fire of musketry on the deck of the Themistocles; and on this occasion the total want of order and the disrespect habitually shown to the officers had very nearly caused the loss of the vessel. The whole crew sought shelter from the Turkish fire under the bulwarks and no one could be induced to obey the orders which every one issued. A single man would spring forward for a few seconds at intervals to execute the most necessary manoeuvre. Hastings was the only person on deck who remained silently watching the ship slowly drifting towards the rocks. He was fortunately the first to perceive the change in the direction of a light breeze which sprang up and by immediately springing forward on the bowsprit he succeeded in getting the ship's head round. Her sails soon filled and she moved out of her awkward position. As upwards of two hundred and fifty Turks were assembled on the rocks above and fresh men were arriving every moment there can be no doubt that in a short time the enemy would have brought a piece of artillery to bear on the Themistocles from a position inaccessible to her fire; so that even if she had escaped going on shore on the rocks her destruction seemed inevitable had she remained an hour within gun-shot of the cliff. Thus the finest vessel in the Greek fleet was in imminent danger of being lost through the carelessness and obstinacy of the captain who though repeatedly entreated by Hastings to have a small anchor constantly in readiness could never be induced to take this necessary precaution. On this occasion however both the captain and the crew of the Themistocles did Hastings ample justice. Though they had refused to avail themselves of his skill and neglected his advice they now showed no jealousy in acknowledging his gallant conduct and he became a permanent favourite with the crew ever after this exploit. Though he treated all with great reserve and coldness as a means of insuring respect there was not a man on board that was not always ready to do him any service. Indeed the candid and hearty way in which they acknowledged the courage of Hastings and blamed their own conduct in allowing a stranger to expose his life in so dangerous a manner to save them afforded unquestionable proof that so much real generosity was inseparable from courage and that with proper discipline and good officers the sailors of the Greek fleet would have had few superiors. When the naval campaign was concluded Hastings joined the troops engaged in the siege of Nauplia. That force was exposed to the greatest danger by the irruption of a large Turkish army into the Morea commanded by Dramali Pasha. While engaged in defending the little fort of Bourdzi in the port of Nauplia and under the guns of that fortress he became intimately acquainted with Mr Hane a young artillery officer who subsequently served under his orders with great distinction. At this time Hastings raised a company of fifty men whom he armed and equipped at his own expense. But as his actions on shore are not immediately connected with the great results of his services to Greece we shall confine this sketch exclusively to the share he took in the naval warfare. He served the campaign of 1823 in Crete as commander of the artillery; but a violent fever compelling him to quit that island in autumn he found on his return to Hydra that Lord Byron had arrived at Cephalonia. It was of great importance to the Greek cause that the services of Lord Byron should be usefully directed and it was equally necessary that the funds collected by the Greek committee in London should be expended in the way most likely to be of permanent advantage to Greece. The moment appeared suitable for one who like Hastings had acquired some experience by active service both with the fleet and army to offer his advice. He accordingly drew up a project for the construction and armament of a steam-vessel which he recommended as the most effectual mode of advancing the Greek cause by giving the fleet a decided superiority over the Turks at sea. It appeared to Hastings that it was only by the introduction of a well-disciplined naval force directly dependent on the central government that order could be introduced into the administration as well as a superiority secured over the enemy. It is not necessary to enter into all the professional details of this memoir as we shall have occasion to state the manner in which Hastings carried his views into execution a few years later. Its conclusion was to recommend Lord Byron to direct his attention to the purchase or construction of a steam-vessel armed with heavy guns and fitted up for the use of hot shot and shells as its ordinary projectiles. Neither Lord Byron nor Colonel Stanhope the agent of the Greek committee seem to have appreciated the military science of Hastings and the plan met with little support from either. The Greek government shortly after this obtained its first loan in England; and during the summer of 1824 Hastings endeavoured to impress its members with the necessity of rendering the national cause not entirely dependent on the disorderly and tumultuous merchant marine which it was compelled to hire at an exorbitant price. It is needless to record all the difficulties and opposition he met with from a government consisting in part of shipowners eager to obtain a share of the loan as hire for their ships. These ships were in some danger of rotting in harbour in case a national navy should be formed. The loan however appeared inexhaustible; and in the autumn of 1824 Hastings returned to England with a promise that the Greek government would lose no time in instructing their deputies in London to procure a steam-vessel to be armed under his inspection and of which he was promised the command. This promise was soon forgotten; a number of favourable accidents deluded the members of the Greek government into the belief that their deliverance from the Turkish yoke was already achieved and they began to neglect the dictates of common prudence. The Greek committee in London emulated the example of the Greek government at Nauplia; and in place of acting according to the suggestions of common sense and common honesty that body engaged in a number of tortuous transactions ending in the concoction of a dish called ""the Greek pie."" Ibrahim Pasha awakened the heroes at Nauplia from their dreams and Cobbett disturbed the reveries of the sages in London. The success which attended Ibrahim Pasha on his landing in the Peloponnesus in 1825 and the improvement displayed by the Turks in their naval operations seriously alarmed the Greeks. The advice of Hastings occurred to their remembrance; but even then it required the active exertions of two judicious friends of Greece in London to induce the Greek deputies to take the necessary measures for fitting out a steamer. Hastings in a letter addressed to the Greeks which he wrote on his return to Greece declared distinctly that the gratitude of the Greek nation was due to the Right Honourable Edward Ellice and to Sir John Hobhouse and not to the Greek deputies in London if the steam-vessel he commanded proved of any service to the cause. Greece was then in a desperate condition. Navarin was taken by Ibrahim Pasha the Romeliat army was completely defeated and the Egyptians encamped in the centre of the Peloponnesus after routing every body of troops which attempted to arrest their progress. The Turkish and Egyptian fleets kept the sea in spite of the gallant attacks of Miaoulis; and the partial successes of the Greeks were more honourable to their courage than injurious to the real strength of their enemies. In the mean time the Greek government had lost all power of commanding either respect or obedience at home in consequence of the civil wars which prevailed previously to the arrival of the Egyptians and the intrigues of Maurocordatos and Kolettis to obtain the sole direction of affairs. At this conjuncture Lord Cochrane's name excited universal attention in England and he was engaged by the Greek deputies and some friends of the cause to enter the Greek service. He received for his services £37 000 sterling in cash; and an additional sum of £20 000 was paid into the hands of Sir Francis Burdett to be given to Lord Cochrane whenever the independence of Greece should be secured. This transaction happened in the month of August 1825; but in the month of March a steam-vessel called the Perseverance of about four hundred tons had already been ordered; and Hastings had been named to command her and received authority to arm her with sixty-eight pounders according to the plan he had submitted to the Greek government. When Lord Cochrane was appointed commander-in-chief of the Greek fleet five more steam-vessels were ordered to be built; but it may be observed that only two of these ever reached Greece. The equipment of the Perseverance was then kept back in order that the whole squadron might sail together under the auspices of Lord Cochrane. The news of the taking of Missolonghi by the Turks at last threw the friends of Greece into such a state of alarm and the outcry against the dilatory manner in which the steam-boat expedition in the Thames was fitting out became so violent over all Europe that the Perseverance was hastily completed and allowed to sail alone. After a series of difficulties and disappointments which it required all the extraordinary perseverance and energy of Hastings to overcome he was hurried away from Deptford on the twenty-sixth of May 1826 though the engine of the Perseverance was evidently in a very defective state. The boiler burst in the Mediterranean; and the ship was detained at Cagliari reconstructing a boiler until the twenty-eighth of August. She arrived in Greece too late to be of any use in the naval campaign of that year. The winter was spent in aiding the operations of the army which was endeavouring to raise the siege of Athens. The Karteria which was the name of the Perseverance in the Greek navy was armed on the principle which Hastings had laid down as necessary to place the Greeks with small vessels on some degree of equality with the line-of-battle ships and large frigates of the Turks: namely that of using projectiles more destructive than the shot of the enemy. These projectiles were hot shot and shells instead of the cold round-shot of the Turks. We have already mentioned that the Karteria was armed with sixty-eight pounders. Of these she mounted eight; four were carronades of the government pattern and four were guns of a new form cast after a model prepared by Hastings himself. These guns were seven feet four inches long in the bore and weighed fifty-eight hundred-weight. They had the form of carronades in every thing but the addition of trunnions to mount them like long guns; these trunnions however were contrary to the usual practice placed so that their centre intersected a line through the centre of the bore of the gun. They were mounted on ten-inch howitzer carriages which answered the purpose admirably. The shells used were generally strapped to wooden bottoms; but they were more than once employed without any precaution except that of putting them in the gun with the fusees towards the muzzle. The hot shot were heated in the engine fires and were brought on deck by two men in a machine resembling a double coal-box which was easily tilted up at the muzzle of the gun to be loaded. Hastings fired about eighteen thousand shells from the Karteria in the years 1826 and 1827 with a miscellaneous crew composed of Englishmen Swedes and Greeks and never had a single accident from explosion. As a very small number of hot shot can be heated at once and as an iron ball of eight inches diameter loses its spherical form if kept for any length of time red hot this projectile could only be used in particular circumstances. It happened more than once on board the Karteria that shot which had remained for some time in the engine fires had so lost their form as not to enter the muzzle of the guns. With regard to the great danger which is supposed to attend the use of hot shot on board ships Hastings thus states his opinion in a ""Memoir on the use of Shells Hot Shot and Carcass Shells from ship artillery:""[11] ""I have continually used hot shot with perfect safety; my people having become so familiar with them that they employ them with as little apprehension as if using cold shot."" We shall now give a regular account of the career of active service in which Hastings was engaged as captain of the Greek steam-frigate Karteria extracted in part from his own official reports and private letters and drawn in part from the testimony of eyewitnesses of all his actions. In February 1827 Captain Hastings was ordered by the Greek government to co-operate with the troops under General Gordon destined to relieve Athens. Captain Hastings sailing from Egina passed round the island of Salamis and entering the western strait between it and Megara arrived unobserved by the Turks in the bay where the battle of Salamis was fought--now called the port of Ambelaki. This was the first time the passage had ever been attempted by a modern man-of-war. During the presidency of Count Capo-d'Istrias Sir Edmund Lyons carried H.M.S. Blonde through the same passage. The troops under General Gordon were landed in the night and they occupied and fortified the hill of Munychia without any loss of time. It was then resolved to drive the Turks from a monastery at the Piræus in which they kept a garrison to command the port. The troops were ordered to attack the building on the land side and Hastings entered the Piræus to bombard it from the sea. A practicable breach was soon made; but the Greek troops though supported by the fire of a couple of field-pieces were completely defeated in their feeble attempts to storm this monastery. The Turks on the other hand displayed the greatest activity; and the Seraskier Kutayhi Pasha who commanded the army besieging Athens soon arrived with a powerful escort of cavalry and bringing with him two long five-inch howitzers with shells boasting that with these he would sink the Karteria. As the object of the Greek attack had completely failed and the troops had retired the Karteria quitted the port just as the Turks opened their fire on her. A few days after this the Turks having defeated a division of the Greek army destined to make a diversion from the plain of Eleusis attempted to carry the camp of General Gordon by storm. Captain Hastings now entered the Piræus again even at the risk of exposing the Karteria to the Turkish shells; as he saw that by his powerful fire of grape he could prevent the Turks from forming in any force to attack the most vulnerable part of the camp. The fire of the Karteria soon produced its effect; but it drew all the attention of the Pasha to the vessel as he perceived it was vain to persist in attacking the troops until he compelled the steamer to quit the Piræus. Five guns directed their fire against her and though three were either dismounted by her fire or rendered useless by their carriages breaking still two elongated five-inch howitzers being placed between the monastery and an adjoining tower which covered them from the fire of the Karteria contrived to keep up a well-supported fire. The effect produced by the shells from the Turkish guns was soon considerable though several of those which struck the Karteria did not explode. One however fixed in the carriage of a long sixty-eight pounder and exploded there though fortunately without injuring either Captain Hane the artillery-officer engaged in pointing the gun or any of the men who were working it. Another exploded in the Karteria's counter and tore out the planking of two streaks for a length of six feet and started out the planking from the two adjacent streaks. As this shell struck the vessel on the water's edge a ship built in the ordinary manner would have been sunk by this explosion of about nine ounces of powder; but the Karteria was in no danger as she was built with her timbers close and caulked together. She was also constructed with two solid bulkheads enclosing the engine-room caulked and lined so as to be water-tight; consequently any one of her compartments might have filled with water from a shot-hole without her sinking. The attack of the Turks on the Greek camp having been repulsed nothing remained for Hastings but to retreat from his dangerous position in the Piræus as speedily as possible. This however he did not effect without loss; all his boats were shot through and he had to encounter a severe fire of musketry from the Turks stationed on each side as he moved through the pillars at the entrance of the port. In the month of March an expedition was planned by General Heideck who was afterwards one of the members of the unhappy regency which misgoverned Greece during the minority of King Otho. The object of this expedition was to destroy the magazines of provisions and stores which the Turks possessed at Oropos and by occupying their lines of communication wit

Negropont to compel them to raise the siege of Athens. This was the only feasible method by which the Greeks could ever have hoped to defeat the Turks; but when the execution of it was proposed it always met with some opposition. When it was at last undertaken by a foreigner the operation was conducted in so weak and desultory a manner as to end in complete disgrace. The naval force which accompanied General Heideck was unusually powerful as he was then the acknowledged agent of the King of Bavaria. It consisted of the frigate Hellas of sixty-four guns with the flag of Admiral Miaoulis the Karteria and some smaller vessels as transports. The Greek vessels arrived before Oropos in the afternoon and as the Hellas was compelled to anchor about a mile from the Turkish camp Captain Hastings immediately steamed into the port. He captured two transports laden with grain and flour which had just arrived from Negropont; and having anchored within two hundred yards of the Turkish batteries he opened on them a fire which in a short time dismounted every gun which they could bring to bear on his ship. A carcass-shell lodging in the fascines of which the principal battery was constructed soon enveloped the whole in flames--the powder-magazine exploded and the carriages of the guns were rendered useless. At this moment the Greek troops of whom one hundred and fifty were on board the Karteria loudly demanded to be led to attack the camp; and an officer from General Heideck who had remained on board the Hellas was expected every moment to place himself at their head. No orders however arrived. Hastings remained all night in the port and it was not until dawn next morning that the troops were landed. The Turks in the mean time had been more active; they had also received considerable reinforcements; the day was consumed without General Heideck going on shore and a large body of Turkish cavalry making its appearance in the afternoon he issued orders to re-embark the troops and sailed back to Egina. The public attention was suddenly diverted from this disgraceful exhibition of European military science by the arrival of Lord Cochrane in Greece. He came however in an English yacht which had been purchased to expedite his departure but unaccompanied by a single one of the five steamers which were still unfinished in the Thames. His lordship was soon after appointed lord high admiral of Greece; General Church was at the same time named generalissimo of the land forces; and both officers directed all their attention to raising the siege of Athens which Kutayhi continued to attack with the greatest constancy. Captain Hastings was now detached for the first time with an independent naval command. The Turks drew their supplies for carrying on the siege of Athens from a great distance in their rear as all the provinces of Greece were in a state of desolation. This circumstance exposed their lines of communication both by land and sea to be attacked by the Greeks in many different points. Volo was one of the principal depots at which the supplies transmitted from Thessalonica and Constantinople were secured; and from this station they were forwarded by the channel of Euboea to the fortress of Negropont and thence to Oropos. From Oropos these supplies were transported on horses and mules to the camp of the Pasha at Patissia near Athens. Captain Hastings was now charged with the duty of cutting off the communications of the Turks between Volo and Oropos and instructed to use every exertion to capture their transports and destroy their magazines. For this purpose he sailed from Poros with a small squadron consisting of the Karteria and four hired vessels--the corvette Themistocles belonging to the Tombazis; the Ares belonging to the Admiral Miaoulis; and two small schooners. On the afternoon of a beautiful clear day the little fleet entered the bay of Volo in which eight Turkish transports were seen at anchor. It was some time before the enemy was persuaded that the Greek vessels were bearing down to attack them for they considered the anchorage perfectly defended by two batteries which they had erected on the cape enclosing the harbour opposite the castle of Volo. The castle itself is a square fort in a dilapidated condition with only a few guns mounted. At half-past four o'clock the Themistocles and Ares received orders to anchor before the batteries just out of the reach of musketry and not to waste a single shot before they had taken up their positions. They were then directed to open a heavy fire of grape and round shot on the enemy. While they were executing these orders Hastings entered the port and opened his fire of shells on the intrenchments of the Turks and of grape on the transports which were filled with men to prevent their capture. The heavy fire of the Karteria which poured on the enemy three hundred two-ounce balls from each of its guns soon threw the Turks into confusion; and the boats were manned and sent to board the transports. Five vessels being heavily laden though they had been run aground were not close to the shore and these were soon captured; but two brigs being empty were placed close under the fire of the troops in the intrenchments. Though they were attacked by all the boats of the squadron they were not taken until after an obstinate resistance. The English boatswain of the Karteria who was the first to mount the side of one was wounded; but he succeeded in gaining the deck and hauling down the Turkish flag. A Turk however who had no idea of surrendering to an infidel rushed at him and fired a pistol at his head. The ball fortunately only grazed his forehead. The Turk then leaped overboard and endeavoured to swim on shore; but one of the English sailors considering his conduct so unfair as to merit death jumped into the sea after him and having overtaken him deliberately cut his throat with a clasp-knife as he had no other weapon and then returned on board. The Greek Revolution too often gave occasions for displaying ""The instinct of the first-born Cain Which ever lurks somewhere in human hearts."" It was found impossible to get the two brigs afloat; and as their sails had been landed it would have been impossible to navigate them. They were therefore burnt; and another smaller vessel which was so placed that Hastings would not expose his men by attempting to take possession of her was destroyed by shells. A shell exploding in her hull blew her fore-mast into the water. For four hours the Karteria remained in the harbour of Volo. The corvette and brig had so completely silenced the fire of the batteries that they appeared to be abandoned; while the guns of the castle only kept up an irregular and ill-directed fire on the Karteria. The magazines were all in flames from the effect of the red-hot shot fired into them; and as night approached the Karteria made the signal for all the vessels to make sail out of the harbour with a light breeze from the land. The spectacle offered by the bay as it grew dark was peculiarly grand. On the sombre outline of the hills round the gulf innumerable fires were seen; and a continued discharge of musketry was heard proclaiming the arrival of each little band of troops which reached the camp at Volo. The lurid light thrown out by the flames from the burning magazines and the reflection of the blazing transports which were quickly consumed to the water's edge enabled the steamer in departing to destroy the carriages of two guns which the Turks were endeavouring to get ready to salute the departing squadron. Hastings had expected to find at Volo a large Turkish man-of-war mounting sixteen heavy guns and two mortars which had been constructed for the siege of Missolonghi but which had not even got so far as Volo until after the fall of that place. This vessel was now waiting until the Turks should require her to bombard some seaport in the possession of the Greeks. A Greek fishing-boat came alongside to inform Hastings that the Pasha had ordered this vessel to Tricheri for greater security where she was moored with three schooners taken from the Greeks at Psara in a small bay protected by a battery of twelve guns. In this position she was considered perfectly safe from the attacks of the whole Greek fleet aided by the fire-frigate herself as the Turks called the Karteria. Hastings proceeded immediately to Tricheri hoping to surprise the enemy by an attack during the night; but he found the Turks on the alert and their well-directed fire of musketry rendered it impossible to continue the attack with the smallest chance of success. At daylight next morning Hastings examined the position of the enemy with care but he saw there was no hope of capturing the bomb-ketch or any of the schooners; he therefore determined to confine his operations to destroying them. After getting up the steam and heating a few shot he stood in to about three-quarters of a mile of the Turkish ship and going slowly round in a large circle he brought his long guns to bear successively and fired them with the greatest deliberation. He then moved out of gun-shot of the Turkish battery to observe the effect of his fire. In about half an hour a quantity of smoke was observed to issue from the large Turkish vessel which the enemy appeared at first to disregard; but in a short time they seemed to discover that their ship was on fire for they were seen hurrying down and rushing on board in great numbers. The carronades were now reloaded with shells and the long guns with large grape and the Karteria stood in to prevent the enemy from continuing his endeavours to extinguish the fire. The attention of the Turks was thus distracted; the flames soon burst through the decks of the ship and catching the rigging rendered all approach to her impossible. In a short time she was a mass of flame; and her guns to the land-side having been loaded went off discharging their shot into the battery formed for her protection. As her upper works burned away she drifted from her station; but getting again on shore against the rocks her magazine exploded and the remains of her hull with all her guns sank in deep water. The three schooners also received several shells and were so injured as to be rendered unable to put to sea without undergoing great repairs. The loss of the Greek squadron in this expedition was very small; only three men were killed and two wounded. But one of the killed was James Hall an Englishman on board the Karteria--an old sailor of a most excellent character and possessed of considerable knowledge in every branch of his profession. He was killed by a twelve-pound shot from the battery at Tricheri. This shot after breaking the claw of an anchor rebounded and in falling struck Hall in the pit of the stomach and rolled on the deck as if it had hardly touched his clothes. He fell instantly and was taken up quite dead--the usual tranquil smile his features bore still lingering on his lips. Hall was not only a most excellent sailor but a truly honest man and he was long remembered and deeply regretted by all on board the Karteria. His remains were committed to the deep Captain Hastings reading the funeral service; for the English insisted that he would have preferred a sailor's funeral to being interred on shore in a Greek churchyard. James Hall was the only human spirit among the rude crew of the Karteria and after his death most of the English sailors displayed the feelings of savages. One old man-of-war's man who had served in many a well-fought action declared that he would kill every Turkish prisoner taken in the prizes at Volo; and he attempted one night to break into the cabin abaft the larboard paddle-box in which some of these Turks were confined. Armed with a large knife he proclaimed that he was determined to kill the prisoners and he called on the other sailors to assist him. He argued that the war with the Turks was an irregular warfare; and as the Turks killed their prisoners on the ground that they were either rebels or outlaws it was the duty of the Greeks to kill every Turk who fell into their power. When brought before Captain Hastings he persisted in his determination; and though he was perfectly sober he at last declared that he would quit the service unless the English were allowed in future to kill the prisoners. Hastings tried to reason with him but in vain. It was necessary to put him under arrest and when the Kateria returned to Poros he demanded his discharge and quitted Greece. The Karteria suffered very severely in her hull and rigging from the fire of the castle at Volo and the battery at Tricheri. She lost her jib-boom main-topmast gaff and larboard cat-head and received much other damage; so that it was necessary to proceed to Poros to give her a thorough repair. On her way she was fortunate enough to capture four vessels laden with stores and provisions for the Turks of Negropont. At Poros Hastings found the affairs of the navy very little improved by Lord Cochrane's presence in Greece; and we think that we cannot convey a better idea of their state than is contained in a letter which he addressed to his lordship on the 30th of April 1827. ""It is with deep regret I see the extreme discontent on board the Sauveur brig which seems to me to be greatly increased by if not entirely owing to the Greeks being paid in advance and the English being in arrears of wages. In this country I must repeat my lord nothing can be done without regular payments. By paying out of my own funds when others could not be obtained I have established the confidence both of Greeks and English in this vessel as far as money is concerned; but I cannot continue to pay out of my own pocket. If funds are not forthcoming I beg leave to resign. Whilst I am on board the people will always consider me personally responsible for their wages; and I must again remark I have suffered already much too severely in my private fortune in this service to admit of my making further sacrifices. Besides wages for the crew I have various expenses to repair damages sustained in the late actions at Volo and Tricheri."" Captain Hastings was however at this time easily induced to continue his services on board the Karteria as the defeat of the Greek army before Athens on the 6th of May and the departure of General Gordon Count Porro and several other Philhellenes who considered the cause utterly hopeless rendered the moment unsuitable for his resignation. The Karteria was again fitted for sea with the greatest expedition and joined Lord Cochrane when he made an unsuccessful attempt to surprise and capture Ibrahim Pasha at Clarenza. Hastings was separated from the Hellas by bad weather and in returning to the rendezvous at Spetzia he lost two of his masts and two men in a hurricane off Cape Malea. Shortly after his return to Poros where he was again compelled to refit he received the following laconic communication from Lord Cochrane in which all mention of a rendezvous was omitted. ""_Memo._--If the Perseverance is fit for service please join the squadron without delay. ""COCHRANE. ""_Hellas 7th June 1827._ ""Captain Hastings _Perseverance_."" In consequence of this order Captain Hastings set out in search of Lord Cochrane. A series of fruitless cruises followed in which every division of the Turkish fleet contrived to escape the Greeks. At last it was resolved that an attack should be made on Vasiladhi the little fort which commands the entrance into the lagoons of Missolonghi; and the whole fleet under the command of Lord Cochrane in person appeared off that place. The attempt was only persisted in for a short time and it failed. The treaty of the 6th of July 1827 for the pacification of the affairs of Greece between Great Britain France and Russia now became known to the Greeks; and the news stimulated both them and their friends to make increased exertions in order that the Allies might find as much of the country as possible already delivered from the Turkish yoke. A small squadron of ten Turkish brigs having entered the Gulf of Lepanto Lord Cochrane gave Hastings an order to pursue them conceived in the following flattering terms:-- _Off Missolonghi 18th Sept. 1827._ ""You have been good enough to volunteer to proceed into the Gulf of Lepanto into which under existing circumstances I should not have ordered the Perseverance (Karteria.) I therefore leave all the proceedings to your judgment intimating only that the transporting of General Church's troops to the north of the gulf and the destruction or capture of the enemy's vessels will be services of high importance to the cause of Greece."" Captain Hastings immediately entered the gulf passing through the formidable strait between the castles of the Morea and Roumelia called the Dardanelles of Lepanto during the night. On the 29th of September having collected his little squadron consisting of the Karteria the brig Sauveur of eighteen guns commanded by Captain Thomas and two gun-boats each mounting a long thirty-two pounder; Hastings stood into the bay of Salona (Amphissa) to attack a Turkish squadron consisting of nine vessels anchored under the protection of batteries and a large body of troops placed at the Scala of Salona. Three Austrian merchantmen in the port were also filled with armed men in spite of the remonstrances of their masters and assisted in defending the squadron at anchor. About ten o'clock A.M. the Karteria followed by the Sauveur and the two gun-boats stood into the bay to attack this formidable position. The Turks were so confident of victory that they were eager to see the Greek ships anchor as near them as possible. They therefore withheld their fire until Captain Hastings made the signal for anchoring. The Karteria proceeded much nearer the shore than the sailing vessels and having anchored within five hundred yards opposite the vessel which bore the flag of the Turkish commodore she opened her fire. The Turks then commenced a furious cannonade from upwards of sixty pieces of artillery; but they had hardly time to reload the greater part of the guns on board their ships. Captain Hastings before going into action had heated several shells thinking that sixty-eight pound shot might pass through both sides of the vessels he was about to engage so near as they were principally constructed of fir. After firing one broadside of cold shot to make sure of the range his second consisted of two hot shells from the long guns and two carcass-shells from the carronades. One of these lodged in the hull of the Turkish commodore and reaching the powder-magazine the action commenced by blowing up his ship.[12] A carcass-shell exploding in the bows of the brig anchored next to the commodore she sank forward while a hot shell striking her stern which stood up in the shallow water it was soon enveloped in flames. In a few minutes another vessel was perceived to be on fire; and a fine Algerine schooner mounting twenty long brass guns having received a shell which exploded between her decks was abandoned by her crew. The battle of Salona afforded the most satisfactory proofs of the efficiency of the armament of steam-boats with heavy guns which Captain Hastings had so long and so warmly advocated. The terrific and rapid manner in which a force so greatly superior to his own was utterly annihilated by the hot shot and shells of the Karteria silenced the opponents of Captain Hastings' plan throughout all Europe. From that day it became evident to all who studied the progress of naval warfare that every nation in Europe must adopt his principles of marine artillery and arm some vessels in their fleets on the model he had given them. In Greece the question of continuing to hire merchant ships to form a fleet was put to rest; and the necessity of commencing the formation of a national navy was now admitted by Hydriotes Spetziotes and Psariotes. The services of the other vessels in the Greek squadron at Salona though eclipsed by the superior armament of the Karteria ought not to be overlooked. Captain Thomas who commanded the Sauveur displayed all the courage activity and skill of an experienced English officer; he silenced the two batteries on which the Turks had placed great dependence as alone sufficient to prevent the Greeks from entering the port; and by a well-directed fire of grape he compelled the troops which lined the shore to get under the cover of the irregular ground in the neighbourhood. Hastings then made the signal for all the boats of the squadron to take possession of the Algerine schooner and the two other brigs which were not on fire. A severe contest took place in order to gain possession of the schooner; for the fire of the Greek ships being suspended as the boats approached her the Turkish troops sprang from their hiding-places and rushed to the edge of the rocks which commanded a view of her deck. From this position they opened a heavy fire of musketry on those who had mounted her sides. The fire of the gun-boats again cleared the beach; but the Turks contrived to keep up a severe fire at intervals and Mr Scanlan the first lieutenant of the Sauveur was killed and several others wounded in attempting to get her under weigh. Captain Hastings steamed up to the schooner at last and having got her stream-cable made fast attempted to move her; but the cable broke and it became evident that the falling tide in the bay had fixed her firmly on the ground. With incredible exertions her long brass guns were all saved and she was then set on fire. Mr Phalangas a Greek officer the first lieutenant of the Karteria was also wounded in setting fire to a brig anchored at some distance from the rest. The boats then concluded the day by driving the Turks from the Austrian merchantmen and bringing out these vessels as prizes. In this engagement nine Turkish vessels were destroyed though defended by batteries on shore and upwards of 500 veteran troops; yet it cost the assailants only six men killed and a few wounded. In the despatch of Captain Hastings announcing the victory he pays a high tribute to the merits of Captain Hane who had served with him at the siege of Nauplia in 1822 and in Crete during the campaign of 1823. ""The services of Captain Hane of the artillery serving on board this vessel are too well known on every former occasion to make it necessary for me to say more than that I am equally indebted to him now as on other occasions."" Ibrahim Pasha was at Navarin with an immense fleet when he heard of the destruction of his ships in the bay of Salona. Sir Edward Codrington and Admiral de Rigny had on the 25th of September entered into convention with him to suspend all hostilities against the Greeks until he should receive answers from Constantinople and Alexandria to the communications made on the part of the three allied powers; but neither Hastings nor the Turkish commodore in the Gulf of Lepanto were aware of this circumstance. The rage of Ibrahim when he heard of the result of the affair at Salona knew no bounds and he determined to inflict the severest vengeance on Hastings whose little squadron he thought he could easily annihilate. Sir Edward Codrington after arranging the terms of the convention had repaired to Zante to wait the arrival of several vessels he expected and Admiral de Rigny had left Navarin to collect the French force in the Archipelago. Ibrahim seeing that there were no ships of the allies at Navarin capable of stopping his fleet ordered twenty-six men-of-war to put to sea on the 30th of September. He embarked himself with this division of his fleet determined to witness the destruction of the Greek squadron. A violent gale however compelled him to put back on the 3d of October; but a part of his fleet under the command of the Patrona Bey persisting in its endeavours to enter the Gulf of Lepanto was pursued by Admiral Codrington who forced it to return to Navarin but not until he had found himself obliged to fire into several of the Ottoman ships. As the English admiral had at the time a very small force at Zante many of the Turkish ships might in spite of all his exertions have escaped into the gulf unless he had been aided in arresting their progress by a succession of gales which blew on the 4th 5th and 6th of October. These gales assisted Sir Edward Codrington in compelling the whole of the dispersed fleet of the Patrona Bey to seek refuge in the port of Navarin. In the mean time the position of Captain Hastings was one of extreme danger and Lord Cochrane who addressed his last official communication to him on the 12th of October conveys his parting words of praise and confidence in the following terms:--""You have done so much good and so much is anticipated from your keeping open the communications between the shores of the gulf that I think you would do well to remain for a while where you are. You occupy however a position of risk if the reports are true regarding the fleet being off Patras; and therefore I leave you to act in all things as you judge best for the public service."" Hastings as soon as he was informed of Ibrahim Pasha's intention to attack him and before he had received the news of his deliverance by the movement of Sir Edward Codrington's squadron had selected the spot in which he hoped to be able to defy the attacks of the whole fleet sent against him. He chose a small bay at the eastern extremity of the Gulf of Corinth formed in the rocky precipices of Mount Geranion and open to the Alcyonian sea. This little bay or port is called Stravá. Its entrance is protected by two rocky islands and it is bounded on the continent by a succession of precipices covered by pine woods which render the debarkation of a large force in the neighbourhood very difficult. Hastings proposed to defend this position by landing four of his guns on the mainland and the islands; and he made every preparation for receiving the Egyptians with a well-sustained fire of hot shot while a number of Greek troops were assembled to man the rocks around. There can be no doubt that Ibrahim Pasha committed a blunder in violating the convention into which he had just entered and his attempt at taking vengeance into his own hands instead of appealing to the three allied powers created great distrust on the part of the admirals. They naturally enough conceived that he would always hold himself ready to take every advantage of their absence and their only method of effectually watching the immense fleet assembled at Navarin was by bringing their own squadrons to an anchor in that immense harbour. The battle of Navarin on the 20th of October was the natural consequence of the distrust on the one side and the eager desire of revenge on the other which rendered the proximity of the different fleets necessary. The affair of Captain Hastings at Salona as one of the proximate causes of this great naval engagement acquires an historical importance far exceeding its mere military results. In the eyes of the Greeks and Turks it very justly occupies a prominent place in the history of the Greek war as it is by them always viewed as the link which connects their military operations with the celebrated battle of Navarin. The destruction of the Turkish and Egyptian fleets delivered Greece from imminent peril; but in the exultation created by the assurance that their independence was firmly established the Greek government began to forget the services which the Karteria had rendered in the days of their despair. No supplies of any kind were forwarded to Captain Hastings who remained in the gulf; both Lord Cochrane and the government allowed him to remain without provisions and his crew would have in great part quitted him unless he had paid the men their wages from his own fortune. On the 17th of November he wrote to Lord Cochrane urging the necessity of sending him some assistance. This letter which remained unanswered contains the following passages:--""I am now seven thousand pounds out of pocket by my services in Greece and I am daily expending my own money for the public service. Our prizes are serving as transports for the army and we must either shortly abandon this position or be paid. Without money I cannot any longer maintain this vessel. I will do all I can; but I must repeat that it is not quite fair I should end a beggar after all the labour vexation and disappointment I have experienced for so many years."" The only body of troops available for any national purpose which had been kept together after the loss of Athens with the exception of the corps of regular troops under General Fabvier was that assembled by General Church on the southern shores of the Gulf of Lepanto. As soon as the battle of Navarin had paralysed the movements of the Turks General Church determined to transport his troops from the Morea into Acarnania where the Greek captains who had submitted to the Turks offered again to take up arms if an adequate force appeared in the province to support them. The principal object which detained the Karteria in the gulf had been to assist the movements of General Church who now resolved to cross over to Acarnania from Cape Papas. On the evening of the 17th of November Captain Hastings received a communication from General Church requesting him to appear off Cape Papas next day. In order to arrive at the rendezvous in time Hastings was compelled to quit the gulf in the daytime and consequently to expose his own ship and the three prizes to the fire of the castles of the Morea and Romelia--an act of rashness of which he would not willingly have been guilty. The castle of the Morea mounted about sixty guns and that of Romelia twenty-seven; those commanding the straights were of large calibre. As their fire crossed the passage of the Dardanelles of Lepanto was always considered a dangerous enterprise; and certainly if the batteries had been served by good artillerymen no ship could have ventured under their fire without being destroyed. Even with the gunners of Ibrahim Pasha's army the passage was attended with considerable risk. The little squadron of Captain Hastings approached the castles about noon on a beautiful day. The Karteria leading with a favourable wind and spreading an immense extent of canvass from her four low masts glided along with the aid of her steam at an amazing rate. Her three prizes followed with every sail set and two Greek misticos availed themselves of the opportunity of quitting the gulf in order to cruise as privateers between Patras and Missolonghi. The moment the Karteria came within gun-shot of the Turkish castles they opened their fire; and for some time the balls fell thick around her--those of both castles passing over her hull and falling beyond their mark. Several shot however struck her sails and the slow and regular manner in which each gun was discharged as it came to bear indicated that the passage was not likely to be effected without some loss. Fortunately very few shot struck the hull of the Karteria yet the damage she received was not inconsiderable. The funnel was shot through a patent windlass was broken to pieces and the fragments of the iron wheels scattered about the decks like a shower of grape. Several paddles were wrenched off the starboard paddle-wheel and one shot passed through the side near the water's edge. Two of the best sailors on board were killed by a twenty-four pound shot while working a gun on the quarter-deck. The hand of a boy was carried away by another and yet all this loss was sustained ere the Karteria had reached the centre of the passage. At the moment when every shot was taking effect the Turks suddenly lost the range. Every succeeding shot passed over the steamer and she proceeded along under the fire of more than half the guns without receiving any additional damage. The Turks were only able to reload a few guns to discharge at the rest of the squadron which escaped uninjured. The loss of two men killed and one wounded distressed Captain Hastings. He was sure the Turks at Patras would soon receive an exaggerated account of the damage he had sustained from their spies at Zante; and as this would embolden those who furnished their camp with provisions he was extremely anxious to destroy any vessels that might be anchored at Patras in order to convince the enemy that the Karteria was to be dreaded even after receiving the greatest injury. A favourable opportunity fortunately offered itself of displaying the power of the steamer to Ibrahim Pasha's camp at Patras. On approaching the roadstead a brig heavily laden was seen at anchor which had evidently arrived the preceding night little expecting that

the Greek squadron would quit the gulf in the daytime. Hastings immediately made every preparation for cutting her out but the Austrian consul was seen approaching in a small boat with a flag like the ensign of a three-decker. The following dialogue took place between him and Hastings alongside the Karteria while the Austrians in the brig were actively engaged in getting every thing ready to haul their vessel at a moment's warning under a battery of Turkish field-pieces placed on the beach. _Hastings._--""As Austrian consul you must be aware that the Greek government have been blockading Patras for some time and that there is now a gun-boat cruising off the port."" _Austrian Consul._--""My government acknowledges no such authority as a Greek government and consequently does not admit the validity of its acts."" _Hastings._--""My orders however are to enforce those acts. I must therefore request you to proceed immediately to the Austrian brig at anchor in the Harbour and order the master to come on board with his papers."" _Austrian Consul._--""I believe I am speaking to an Englishman; and neither Austria nor Turkey being at war with England you are bound to respect the Austrian flag."" _Hastings._--""You are speaking sir to an officer in the Greek service commanding the squadron blockading Patras; and if the Austrian brig does not place itself under my protection in five minutes I shall fire into the Turkish camp and it will be destroyed."" In saying this Captain Hastings took out his watch and left the consul who vainly endeavoured to renew the conversation in order to gain time. When he quitted the Karteria he pulled towards the shore instead of proceeding to communicate Hastings' orders to the master of the brig. This being apparently a concerted signal the greatest exertions were suddenly commence to haul the Austrian vessel under the guns of the battery. Hastings allowed the Austrian consul five minutes to reach the shore; and as he was not inclined to expose his crew to any loss in taking possession of a prize which he could easily destroy without danger he directed his fire against the Austrian brig. As soon as he found that he was approaching the range of the Turkish battery he fired a few shells into it and the Austrian vessel. One of these exploding in her hull near the water's edge tore out great part of her side and she sank almost instantaneously barely leaving time for the crew to escape in the long-boat. On the 28th of November General Church reached Cape Papas with the first division of his army consisting of only six hundred men which was embarked and transported to Dragomestré. Two days after the squadron returned and conveyed over to Romelia the remainder of the Greek troops not exceeding seven hundred soldiers; so that General Church opened his winter campaign in Acarnania which led to the conquest of that province with a force of only one thousand three hundred fighting men. While the Greek army was engaged in fortifying its position at Dragomestré Captain Hastings resolved to attack Vasiladhi--the small insular fort commanding the entrance into the lagoons of Missolonghi and Anatolikon which Lord Cochrane had attempted in vain to capture about three months before. On the 22d of December he anchored about three thousand yards from the fort finding that it was impossible to bring the Karteria any nearer. For nearly a mile round Vasiladhi the depth of the water does not exceed three feet and the fort itself rises little more than six feet above the level of the sea. The bombardment of such a place was a delicate operation requiring the most favourable weather and the very best artillery practice. The first day the attempt was made two hundred shells were fired without producing any effect. When fired _en ricochet_ they diverged to the right and left in a manner which gave Vasiladhi the appearance of an enchanted spot. Captain Hastings conjectured that this singular circumstance was owing to the shallowness of the water; the mud approaching the surface close to the fort afforded so much more resistance to the shells which fell in its immediate vicinity as to cause a more marked deviation in the line of their primary direction. At the same time it was found that those shells which were fired with a charge of eight pounds of powder at twenty-three degrees of elevation--the highest elevation that could be given to the long guns--all varied to the right though the day was perfectly calm. This variation appeared to be caused by a strong current of air at some height above the earth's surface; but it was so irregular that it was found impossible to make any correct allowance for it; and it was singular that any wind perceptible on the deck of the Karteria blew in the contrary direction. For some days after this unsuccessful attempt the weather was too stormy to think of renewing the attack; but on the 29th of December the day was perfectly calm and the atmosphere of that transparent clearness which characterises the climate of Greece. Hastings determined to bombard Vasiladhi a second time. The first shell fired indicated that the circumstances were now favourable; and the fourth which Captain Hastings fired with his own hand exploded in the powder-magazine. All the boats were instantly ordered out to storm the place; but the Turks were thrown into such a state of confusion by the explosion of the powder and the fire which burst out in their huts that they were unable to offer any resistance; and the assailants commanded by Captain Hane of the artillery entered the place seized the arms of the Turks and set them to work at extinguishing the fire which was spreading to the magazine of provisions as if they had only arrived to assist their friends. There were fifty-one Turks in the fort; twelve had been killed by the explosion. Captain Hastings ordered all the prisoners to be transported on board the Karteria; and as he could ill spare any of his provisions and could not encumber his vessel with enemies who required to be guarded he resolved to release them immediately. He therefore informed the Turkish commandant that he would send him to Missolonghi in a monoxylon or canoe used in the lagoons in order to procure two large flat-bottomed boats to take away the prisoners. The Turk who considered this was only a polite way of letting him know that he was to be drowned or suffocated in the mud showed nevertheless no signs of fear or anger. He thanked Captain Hastings for the soldier-like manner in which he had been treated and said that as a prisoner it was his duty to meet death in any way his conqueror might determine. The scene at last began to assume a comic character;--for Hastings was the last person on board to perceive that his prisoner supposed that he was about to be murdered by his orders; and the Turkish commandant was the only one who did not understand that it was really Hastings' intention to send him to Missolonghi in perfect safety. When the Turk was conducted to the monoxylon in which one of his own men was seated in order to paddle the boat through the lagoon he was convinced of his error and his expressions of gratitude to Hastings were warm though as dignified as his previous conduct. The flat-bottomed boats arrived next day and took away the prisoners. They brought a sheep and a sabre as a present to Captain Hastings from the Turkish commandant accompanied by a letter expressing his regret that the commander-in-chief in Missolonghi would not allow him to come himself to visit his benefactor. The conquest of Vasiladhi did not diminish the difficulties with which Hastings was surrounded nor remove any of the disagreeable circumstances attendant on the neglect with which he was treated by Lord Cochrane and the Greek government. On the 7th of January 1828 he wrote to a friend in the following desponding terms:--""I am full of misery. I have not a dollar. I owe my people three months' pay and five dollars a man gratuity for Vasiladhi. I have no provisions. I have lost an anchor and chain. If I can get out of my present difficulties I may perhaps go into the gulf."" On the 16th of January he wrote to the Greek government stating all the difficulties of his position and complaining of the manner in which the Karteria had been left entirely dependent on his private resources. He wrote: ""It has become an established maxim to leave this vessel without any supplies. Dr Goss has just been at Zante and has left three hundred dollars for the Helvetia now serving under my orders--but not one farthing no provisions and not even a single word for me. Five months ago I was eight thousand dollars in advance for the pay of my crew; and since that time I have only received one thousand dollars from the naval chest of Lord Cochrane and six hundred from the military of General Church. This last sum is not even sufficient to pay the expenses incurred by the detention of our prizes in order to serve as transports for the army. I have in addition to the ordinary expenses of this vessel been obliged to purchase wood for our steam-engine and provisions for the gun-boat Helvetia--to which I have also furnished two hundred dollars in money to pay the crew. The capture of Vasiladhi has cost me two thousand dollars; yet I have not taken the brass cannon in that fort and replaced them with the iron guns of our prizes in order to assist me in meeting my expenses."" About this time Count Capo d'Istrias arrived in Greece to assume the presidency of the republic; and Captain Hastings as soon as he was informed of his arrival transmitted him a very valuable letter in which he gave a luminous picture of the state of affairs in Western Greece. This letter is particularly instructive as it gives an admirable summary of the line of conduct which gained Hastings his great reputation in Greece. ""From the hour of my receiving the command of the Karteria I determined to break down the system existing in the navy of paying the sailors in advance as such a practice is destructive of all discipline. The Greek government and Lord Cochrane however did not adopt this rule. They paid their own equipages in advance and they left mine unpaid."" Count Capo d'Istrias though a very able diplomatist was not a military man; and he paid no attention to Hastings' letter. Lord Cochrane who had long ceased to hold any communication with Captain Hastings had a short time previous to the arrival of Count Capo d'Istrias suddenly disappeared from Greece in the English yacht in which he arrived without giving the Greek government any notice of his intention. In this state of things it was not wonderful that the naval affairs of the country fell into the most deplorable anarchy; and the disorder became so painful to Captain Hastings that he resigned the command of the Kateria and resolved to quit Greece. The importance of preventing so distinguished a Philhellene from quitting Greece so shortly after his own arrival struck Count Capo d'Istrias very forcibly and he resolved to do every thing in his power to retain Captain Hastings in his service. To effect this he invited him to a personal interview at Poros in order as he said to avail himself of the valuable experience of so tried a friend to the cause of his country. When they met it was easy for Capo d'Istrias to persuade Hastings to resume the command of the naval division in the Gulf of Corinth; particularly as the president promised to adopt the principles which Hastings laid down as necessary for the formation of a national navy and engaged to follow his advice in organizing this force. Nothing indeed could have gratified the ambition of Captain Hastings so much as being employed in this way since he could thus hope to raise a durable monument of his naval skill and a lasting memorial of his service in Greece. After commencing the formation of a naval arsenal at Poros and laying the foundation for some superstructure of order in the naval administration Hastings again assumed the command of the Karteria; and on the 9th of May 1828 anchored off Vasiladhi in order to co-operate with the troops under General Church. The united forces had been directed by the president to act against Anatolikon and Missolonghi which it was hoped would easily be compelled to surrender. After reconnoitring the approaches to Anatolikon which General Church had resolved to attack first Captain Hastings with his usual activity prepared rocket-frames and brought all his boats into the lagoons. On the 15th an attempt was made to set fire to the town by the discharge of a number of six and twelve-pound rockets; but though many entered the place no conflagration ensued and the attack failed. It was then determined to bombard Anatolikon; and under the cover of a heavy fire of shells from the batteries and grenades from the gun-boats to make an attempt to carry the place by storm. The 25th of May was fixed for the assault; and Captain Hastings who felt the necessity of enforcing order and setting an example of courage in so important a crisis determined to direct the attack of the naval forces in person. Unfortunately a division of the land forces which were totally destitute of all discipline and not even officered in a regular manner had been embarked in the boats of some Greek privateers for the purpose of assisting in the attack. The real object of these troops was to try to get first into the place in order to pillage. Before the artillery had produced any effect and before Captain Hastings had made all the necessary dispositions for the assault these irregular troops advanced to the attack. Two officers of the marine who commanded the gun-boats at the greatest distance from the boats of the Karteria seeing the attack commencing and supposing that the signal had been given by Captain Hastings pushed forward. No alternative now remained between carrying the place or witnessing a total defeat of a considerable part of the force under his command; Hastings therefore without a moment's hesitation endeavoured to repair the error already committed by rendering the attack as general as possible. Making the signal of attack he led the boats of the Karteria to the assault. The ardour of the troops who rashly commenced the attack abated as soon as they found that the Turks received them with a well-directed fire of musketry. After some feeble attempts to approach the enemy in which they sustained no loss they kept their boats stationary far out of musket-shot of Anatolikon. On the other side the boats of the Greek squadron advanced with great gallantry and steadiness; but the Turks had assembled a powerful force which was posted in a well-protected position and opened a severe fire on the assailants. The shallow water and intricate channel through the lagoon retarded the progress of the two gun-boats; and Captain Andrea who commanded that in advance having been killed and some of his men wounded his crew was thrown into disorder. Captain Hastings pushing forward in his gig to repair this loss was almost immediately after struck by a rifle-ball in the left arm and fell down. His fall was the signal for a general retreat. When the boats returned to the Karteria the wound of Captain Hastings was examined and bandaged. By a most unfortunate accident there was no surgeon attached to the ship at the time; one surgeon having left a few days before and his successor not having arrived. A medical man had however without any loss of time been procured from the camp on shore; and after he had dressed the wound he declared that it was not alarming and that the arm was in no danger. Though he suffered great pain Captain Hastings soon began to turn his attention to repairing the loss the Greek arms had sustained. On the 28th of May he wrote a report of the proceedings before Anatolikon addressed to the minister of the marine; and in it he expressed the hope that in a few days his wound would be so far healed as to allow him again to assume the direction of the operations against Anatolikon in person. But in spite of the favourable opinion expressed by the surgeon of the troops it became evident that the wound was rapidly becoming worse; and it was decided that amputation was necessary. In order to entrust the operation to a more skilful surgeon than the one who had hitherto attended him it was necessary that Captain Hastings should proceed to Zante. This decision had unfortunately been delayed too long. Tetanus had ensued before the Karteria reached the port; and on the 1st of June Frank Abney Hastings expired at Zante on board the Karteria which he had so gloriously commanded. The moment his death was known in Greece the great value of his services was universally felt. All hope of organizing the Greek navy perished with him; and notwithstanding the advice and assistance of the European powers and the adoption of many plans prepared by the allies of Greece the naval force of that country is in a much worse condition to-day than it was at the time of Captain Hastings' death in 1828. Every honour was paid to his memory. The president of Greece Count Capo d'Istrias decreed that his remains should receive a public funeral; and by an ordinance addressed to Mr Alexander Maurocordatos the minister of the marine and Mr George Finlay and Mr Nicholas Kalergy the personal friends of the deceased he charged these gentlemen with this sacred duty. Mr Tricoupi pronounced the funeral oration when the interment took place at Poros; and he concluded his discourse with the following words as the prayer of the assembled clergy in the name of the whole Greek nation:--""O LORD! IN THY HEAVENLY KINGDOM REMEMBER FRANK ABNEY HASTINGS WHO DIED IN DEFENCE OF HIS SUFFERING FELLOW-CREATURES."" But nations are proverbially ungrateful. Nearly seventeen years have now elapsed since the death of Hastings the best and ablest Englishman who even to the present hour has been connected in any way with the public affairs of Greece; yet neither the Greek government nor the Greek people though often revelling in millions rashly furnished them by their injudicious friends have ever thought of paying their debt of gratitude to the memory of Frank Abney Hastings. While stars and ribands have been lavishly conferred on those whose power was supposed to influence the arrival of expected millions the heirs of Hastings were forgotten. We are bound however to absolve a considerable portion of the nation from the charge of ingratitude and avarice which we only thereby concentrate against the government and the leading statesmen of the country. When the numerous Greek sailors who had served under the orders of Hastings heard of his death many of them happened to be at Egina. They immediately collected a sum of money among themselves and engaged the clergy at Egina to celebrate the funeral service in the principal church with all the pomp and ceremony possible in those troubled times. Never probably was a braver man more sincerely mourned by a veteran band of strangers who in a foreign land grieved more deeply for his untimely loss. It may appear surprising to many of our readers that we should give to the name of Hastings so very prominent a position in the history of the latter days of the Greek Revolution when that name is comparatively unknown at home. To make this apparent we shall endeavour to explain the manner in which the Greeks carried on their warfare with the Turks; and it will then appear that European officers were not generally likely to form either a correct or a favourable opinion of the military affairs of the country. It is not therefore surprising that false ideas of the state of Greece have prevailed or indeed that they still continue to prevail even among the foreigners long resident in the new Greek kingdom. The military operations of the Greeks both at sea and on shore were remarkable not only for a total want of all scientific knowledge but also for the absence of every shadow of discipline and the first elements of order and subordination. The troops consisted of a number of separate corps each under its own captain who regulated the movements and provided for the supply of his men from day to day. Every soldier joined his standard and left it when he thought fit unless when it happened that he had received some pay in advance; in which case he was bound in honour to remain in the camp for the term he was engaged. With such an army any systematic plan of campaign and all strategetical combinations were clearly impossible; and when they have been attempted by the different European officers who have commanded the Greeks they have invariably ended in the most complete defeats the Greeks have ever sustained. So entirely were the operations of the war an affair of chance that the mountain skirmishes in which the Greek troops excelled were usually brought on by accident. In such an army it is evident that the services of many an able officer would be useless. A Greek general could only acquire and maintain a due influence over his troops by taking a rifle in his hand and bounding over the rocks in advance of his soldiers. The best general therefore in the estimation of the soldiers was the officer who could run fastest see furthest and fire with truest aim from behind the smallest possible projection of a rock. In cases where it became absolutely necessary to enforce obedience to an order the captain required to be both able and willing to knock down the first man who dared to show any signs of dissatisfaction with the butt of his pistol. Many excellent European generals were not competent to emulate the fame to be gained in such a service. Matters were very little better in the fleet. The sailors were always paid in advance or they refused to embark; if on a cruise when the term for which they had been paid expired they always returned home unless prevented by an additional payment. While at sea they frequently held councils to discuss the movements of their ships and repeatedly compelled their captains to alter the plans adopted by the admiral; and sometimes they have been known to carry their ships home in defiance of their officers. Even the brilliant exploits of the fire-ships which destroyed the Turkish three-deckers were entirely performed by volunteers and are rather due to the daring courage of Kanaris and a few other individuals than to the naval skill of the Greek fleet. In the latter years of the war when the Turks and Egyptians had by the exertions of Sultan Mahmoud and Mohammed Ali made some small progress in naval affairs the fire-ships of the Greeks failed to produce any important results. Captain Hastings observing the total difference between Greek and European warfare avoided the error into which foreigners generally fell of allowing their authority to be mixed up with that of others over whose actions they could not exercise any efficient control. Instead of seeking a command the imposing title of which might flatter his vanity and impose on the rest of Europe Hastings steadily refused to accept any rank or place himself in any command where he would have been unable to enforce obedience to his orders. By this means and by the sacrifice of very large sums of money from his private fortune in paying not only the men but even all the officers who bore commissions on board the Karteria he was enabled to maintain some order and discipline in that vessel. Though he was at the head of the smallest detached force commanded by a foreigner in Greece there can be no doubt that of all the foreigners who have visited Greece he rendered the greatest service to the cause of her independence. At the same time it is not wonderful that all other foreigners have felt but little inclined to give the due meed of praise to a line of conduct which they have never had strength of mind to imitate. It may be observed here that the naval operations of Captain Hastings possess considerable interest in connexion with the modern history of maritime warfare in Europe. The Karteria was the first steam-vessel armed with long sixty-eight pounders; she was the first vessel from which eight-inch shells and hot shot were used as ordinary projectiles. And this great change in the employment of destructive elements of warfare was introduced by Captain Hastings among a people where he had to teach the first principles of military discipline. Yet he overcame every difficulty; and with very little assistance either from the Greek government or the officers who were his superiors in the Greek navy he succeeded in giving all the naval powers of Europe a valuable practical lesson in marine artillery. Great Britain is especially called upon to acknowledge her obligations to Captain Hastings. She has imitated the armament of the Greek steam-frigate Karteria in several vessels; and though the admiralty have doubtless added many improvements in our ships we are only the more explicitly bound to recognise the debt of gratitude we owe. By rendering naval warfare not only more destructive but at the same time making it more dependent on a combination of good gunnery and mechanical knowledge with profound naval skill he has increased the naval power of Great Britain where all these qualities are cultivated in the highest degree. At the same time the civilized world is indebted to him for rendering battles so terrible as to be henceforth less frequent; and for putting an end to naval warfare as a means of amusing kings and gratifying the ambition of princely admirals or vain-glorious states. In concluding this sketch of the biography of Hastings we regret that we have to record the death of Colonel Hane of the Greek army so long his companion during the war and who is so often and so honourably mentioned in his despatches as Captain Hane of the artillery. His death is another blot on Greece and on what is called the English party in Greece by whom he was treated with the greatest neglect. Colonel Hane was removed from active employment in 1842 when King Otho placed many Philhellenes and Greeks on a trifling pittance of half-pay in order to retain a number of Bavarian officers in his service who were richly endowed with staff-appointments. As a Philhellene a constitutionalist and an Englishman it was natural that Colonel Hane should be treated with the utmost severity by the court and the Bavarian administration. The adoption of the constitution on the 15th September (3d O.S.) 1843 caused all the Bavarians to be dismissed from the Greek service; but there were so many Greeks more eager in their solicitations for appointments than Colonel Hane and ministers are always so much more ready to listen to the claims of their party than their country that the title of a stranger to the gratitude of Greece was easily forgotten. When Mr Alexander Maurocordatos however became prime-minister his subserviency to English diplomacy was supposed by many to indicate a feeling of attachment to English views and an esteem for the English character. Under this impression Mr Bracebridge Dr Howe and Mr George Finlay solicited Sir Edmund Lyons to exert his influence to prevent an Englishman who for twenty-three years had served Greece with courage and fidelity from dying of absolute want. Mr Maurocordatos gave Sir Edmund Lyons some promises but those promises were never fulfilled; and Colonel Hane died of a broken heart at Athens on the 18th of September 1844 leaving a young wife and three children in the most destitute condition. It was well known to every body in Athens from King Otho to the youngest soldiers in the army that Colonel Hane had for some time suffered the severest privations of poverty which he had vainly endeavoured to conceal. That his last hours were soothed by the possession of the necessaries of life was owing to the delicacy with which Dr Howe and Mr Bracebridge contrived to make the assistance they supplied as soothing to his mind as it was indispensable for the comfort of his declining health. Frank Abney Hastings the hero who commanded the Karteria and John Hane the gallant officer who fought by his side now rest in peace. Two volunteers their friends and companions in many a checkered scene of life still survive to cherish the memory of the days spent together on board the Karteria. One has acquired a wide-extended reputation in America and Europe by the intelligence activity and we may truly say genius with which he has laboured to alleviate the sufferings of humanity. But for an account of Dr Howe's exertions to extend the blessings of education to the blind the deaf and the dumb we must refer to Dickens' _American Notes_. The other still watches the slow progress of the Greeks towards that free and independent condition of which these friends of their cause once fancied they beheld the approaching dawn. We may therefore allow the names of Hastings Hane Howe and Finlay to stand united on our page-- ""As in this glorious and well foughten field They stood together in their chivalry."" _Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes Paul's Work._ Footnotes: [1] An offspring created without a mother. [2] ""There is no one now thinks of reading Montesquieu "" said the Marquis of Mirabeau author of _L'Ami des Hommes_ and a distinguished economist to the King of Sweden in 1772 at Paris.--See _Biog. Univ._ xxix. 89. [3] This is still the case in some parts of England according to the custom called Borough-English Blackstone ii. 93. Duhalde mentions that a similar rule of descent prevails among some of the Tartar tribes whom he visited on the frontiers of China: a curious indication of the justice of Montesquieu's speculation as to its origin. [4] We were once told by Mr West the president that the reading of Richardson (to use his own words ) ""lighted up a fire in his breast that had never been extinguished; and that he had in consequence and contrary to the wishes of his friends and relatives who were Quakers at Philadelphia resolved to become a painter."" By a very curious circumstance this identical volume is now in our possession the legacy of the very man whose history is worth relating who lent it to Mr West when a boy. [5] Fuseli objects that the principal figures and chief action in the _Raising of Lazarus_ by Sebastian del Piombo are crowded into a corner. He would have had them ""pyramid;"" so does received quackery overpower the judgment of men of sense and acute reasoning. [6] CHANT. The Theatines' commandments ten Have less to do with saints than men. _Chorus_.--Tra lara tra lara. 1--Of money make sure. Tra lara &c. 2--Entrap rich and poor. 3--Always get a good dinner. 4--In all bargains be winner. 5--Cool your red wine with white. 6--Turn day into night. 7--Give the bailiff the slip. 8--Make the world fill your scrip. 9--Make your convert a slave. 10--To your king play the knave. _Chorus._--Those ten commandments make but _two_-- All things for _me_ and none for _you_. Tra lara tra lara. [7] Breeders of all foreign wars Breeders of all household jars Snugly 'scaping all the scars. Worshipp'd like the saints they make; Tyrants forcing fools to quake; Grasping all we brew or bake. All our souls and bodies ruling All our passions hotly schooling All our wit and wisdom fooling. Lords of all our goods and chattels Firebrands of our bigot battles. When you see them spring your rattles. Shun them as you'd shun the Pest; Shun them teacher friend and guest; Shun them north south east and west. France her true disease has hit; France has made the vagrants flit; France has swamp'd the Jesuit. [8] _The Discovery of the Science of Languages._ By MORGAN KAVANAGH. London: Longman Brown Green and Longmans. 1844. [9] The poets are a little at variance and do not all celebrate the _same_ wine--(as some of us like Port and some Madeira)--some doubtless dealt with better wine-merchants than others. Poets have the privilege of celebrating plain women and wine that nobody else can drink. Redi talks of Monte Fiascone and Monte Pulciano--both _raisin_ wines to English or French stomachs. _Florence_ had no fame in those days and _now_ makes by far the best wine in Italy--give _us_ good _Chianti_ and none of your Aleatico or Vino Santo. At Rome there is not a flask of any thing fit to drink; and we recollect when bad _Spanish wine_ was brought up the Tiber to meet the deficiency. _Orvieto_ is far from wholesome; yet in Juvenal's time _Albano_ furnished a wine of superlative quality. ""_Albani_ veteris pretiosa senectus;"" the same passage denouncing _Falernian_ by the epithet of _acris_--a wine he says to _make faces at_. Again _Cuma_ and _Gaurus_--the privilege of drinking those wines was for the _rich only_--are now the common

rink of the peasants who cultivate them. ""_Te_ Trifolinus ager _fecundis vitibus_ implet Suspectumque jugum _Cumis_ et _Gaurus inanis_."" The _vinum Setinum_ wine fit for patriots to drink ""on the birthdays of Brutus and Cassius "" was never heard of by a subject of the _Pope_ nor would be worth above a _paul_ a flask. But the day is far off when Italy will quaff a generous goblet on any such solemnity or pour out a cup ""Quale coronati Thrasca Helvidiusque bibebant Brut rum et Cassî natablibus."" [10] During the dissensions of the Regency and the _corps diplomatique_ old Kolocotroni who was then confined in the fortress above the town of Nauplia once remarked--""These Franks abuse us for quarrelling but""--and here he threw out his right hand with the fingers wide apart towards the town of Nauplia below him exclaiming [Greek: na] with true Greek energy--""they worry one another like dogs--to unshame us."" [Greek: Trôgountai san schulia dia na mas exentropiasan.] [11] Published by RIDGWAY. 1828. [12] In a description of the engagement forwarded by the Austrian consul at Patras to the consul-general in the Ionian islands which was captured by the Greeks the following is the account given by the Austrians:--""Il commandante della flottiglia Ottomana con terzo del Vapore andò per aria avendogli questo gettato una granata in Santa Barbara."" Transcriber's Note: The original text included Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations set off by [Greek: ] tags. Misprints corrected: ""Lairisse"" corrected to ""Lairesse"" (page 429) ""sb ject"" corrected to ""subject"" (page 464) unnecessary leading ""ac-"" removed (page 466) ""head"" to ""heard"" (page 480) ""ruler"" corrected to ""rule"" (page 497) Additional spacing after some of the poetry and block quotes is intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as is in the original text. "

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and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Library of Early Journals.) TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Spellings are sometimes erratic. A few obvious misprints have been corrected but in general the original spelling and typesetting conventions (e.g. ellipses as * * *) have been retained. Accents in foreign language phrases are inconsistent and have not been standardised. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. NO. CCCLXI. NOVEMBER 1845. VOL. LVIII. CONTENTS. THE STUDENT OF SALAMANCA. PART I. 521 HUMBOLDT 541 HAKEM THE SLAVE 560 THE LAY OF STARKÀTHER 570 MOZART 572 ACCOUNT OF A VISIT TO THE VOLCANO OF KIRAUEA 591 THE DAYS OF THE FRONDE 596 THE GRAND GENERAL JUNCTION AND INDEFINITE EXTENSION RAILWAY RHAPSODY 614 SKETCHES OF ITALY--LUCCA 617 THE RAILWAYS 633 * * * * * EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 45 GEORGE STREET; AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW LONDON. _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._ SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES EDINBURGH. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCLXI. NOVEMBER 1845. VOL. LVIII. THE STUDENT OF SALAMANCA. PART I. "España de la guerra Tremola la pendon." _Cancion Patriotica._ It wanted about an hour of sunset on the last day of September 1833 when two young men whose respective ages did not much exceed twenty years emerged from a country lane upon the high-road from Tarazona to Tudela in that small district of Navarre which lies south of the river Ebro. The equipments of the travellers--for such the dusty state of their apparel and the knapsacks upon their shoulders indicated them to be--were exactly similar and well calculated for a pedestrian journey across the steep sierras and neglected roads of Spain. They consisted with little variation of the national Spanish dress--short jackets of dark cloth somewhat braided and embroidered knee-breeches of the same material and broad-brimmed hats surrounded by velvet bands. Only instead of the tight-fitting stockings and neat pumps which should have completed the costume long leathern gamashes extended from knee to ankle and were met below the latter by stout high-quartered shoes. Each of the young men carried a stick in his hand rather as it appeared from habit or for purposes of defence than as a support and each of them had a cloak of coarse black serge folded and strapped upon his otter-skin knapsack. With their costume however the similarity in their appearance ceased; nothing could be more widely different than their style of person and countenance. The taller of the two who was also apparently the elder was of a slender active figure with well-moulded limbs and a handsome intelligent countenance in which energy and decision of character were strongly marked. His complexion was dark olive; his eyes and short curling hair were of a coal black; what little beard he had was closely shaven excepting upon the upper lip which was fringed by a well-defined mustache as gracefully curved and delicately penciled as any that Vandyke ever painted. At this time however there was a shade over his countenance other than that cast by the broad leaf of his sombrero; it was the look of mingled hope anxiety and suspense sometimes worn by persons who are drawing near to a goal their attainment of which is still doubtful and at which even when attained it is not quite certain whether pleasure or pain awaits them. No such thoughts or anxieties were to be read upon the joyous careless countenance of the second traveller--a stout square-built young man whose ruddy complexion and light-brown hair contrasted as strongly with the dark locks and olive skin of his companion as they differed from the generally received notions of Spanish physiognomy. The face wore no particular expression excepting that of good-humoured _insouciance_; his hazel eye had a merry twinkle and a slight fulness of lip and chin seemed to denote a reasonable degree of addiction to the good things of this life. Altogether and to judge them by their physiognomies only one would have chosen the first for a friend the latter for a pleasant and jovial boon-companion. On leaving the cross-road the two pedestrians took a northerly direction in which they proceeded for nearly a quarter of an hour without exchanging a syllable the one absorbed in meditations which the other was apparently unwilling to disturb. At the end of that time they paused as if by preconcerted arrangement in front of a small _venta_ or country inn less remarkable for the accommodation it afforded than for its pleasant situation and aspect. It stood a little back from the road in a nook formed by the recession of a line of wooded hills which there skirt the highway. The front of the house composed of rough blocks of grey stone was overgrown by the twisted branches of a venerable vine the age of which did not prevent it from becoming covered each spring with leaves and tendrils nor from yielding in the autumn an abundant supply of delicious gold-coloured grapes. At a short distance in front of the door which opened into the stable whence a wooden step-ladder led to the upper floor there stood a huge oak throwing its broad shadow over a table and some benches placed beneath it for the accommodation of guests. On one side of the venta and detached from it but in a right line with its front was a massive fragment of wall which had probably at no very remote period formed part of a chapel or convent. Its summit which was broken and irregular rose full thirty feet from the ground throughout more than double that length and along the wall at about two-thirds of a man's height ran a horizontal black line indicating as did also the numerous marks and bruises upon the whitewashed surface that this ancient piece of masonry enabled the frequenters of the venta to indulge in the favourite _juego de pelota_ or a game at ball to which the Navarrese and the northern Spaniards generally are much addicted and at which most of them excel. On the arrival of our travellers the benches in front of the venta had already two occupants belonging to classes of men which may rank amongst the chief supporters of Spanish roadside inns. One of them was a corporal of dragoons returning to his garrison at Tudela whence he had probably been sent with a despatch or on some similar mission. He was a strapping powerful fellow well set up as the phrase goes and whose broad shoulders and soldierly figure showed to advantage in his dark-green uniform. His horse--a high-crested fine-legged Andalusian whose jetty coat looked yet blacker by contrast with the white sheep-skin that covered the saddle and the flakes of foam with which his impatient champings had covered his broad chest--was tied up near the stable door the bridle removed finishing out of a nose-bag a plentiful feed of maize. The dragoon's sabre and his brass and leopard-skin helmet were hanging at the saddle-bow their owner having temporarily covered his head with a smart foraging-cap of green and scarlet cloth which set off to great advantage his bearded and martial countenance. Having provided for his horse the trooper was now attending to the calls of his own appetite and doing immense execution on some goat's-milk cheese and excellent white bread which he moistened by copious draughts of the thick black wine of Navarre. Seated opposite to the soldier and similarly employed was a hardy-looking man who had arrived in company with two mules which were also tethered to a ring in the venta wall but at a respectful distance from the dragoon's charger. A heap of chopped straw and Indian corn leaves was lying before them at which they assiduously munched--not however without occasionally casting wistful glances at the more luxurious repast of their neighbour. The soldier and the muleteer had apparently met before; and when the new-comers approached them they were discussing with great animation the merits of the various players in a ball-match which they had recently witnessed near Tudela. Thence they glided into a discussion concerning ball-players in general; the muleteer who was a Navarrese asserting the invincibility of his country at the game of pelota whilst the corporal who came from the neighbourhood of Oviedo was equally confident of the superiority of the Asturians. Whilst the younger of the travellers was ascertaining from the _patrona_ the state of the larder which as is usual enough in Spanish inns was but meagrely provided his companion sought out the landlord of the venta whom he found in the chimney-corner enjoying a supplementary siesta amidst a cloud of wood smoke. "The Conde de Villabuena " enquired the young man when he had shaken the drowsy host out of his slumbers--"is he still at his house between this and Tudela?" The _ventero_ a greasy ill-conditioned Valencian rubbed his eyes muttered a coarse oath and seemed half disposed instead of replying to pick a quarrel with his interrogator; but a glance at the athletic figure and resolute countenance of the latter dissipated the inclination and he answered by a surly affirmative. "And his daughter also?" continued the stranger in a lower tone. "Doña Rita? To be sure she is or was yesterday; for I saw her ride by with her father and some other cavaliers. What eyes the little beauty has; and what a foot! It was peeping from under her habit as she passed. Sant'Antonio what a foot!" And now thoroughly awakened the ventero launched out into a panegyric on the lady's beauty interlarded by appeals to various saints as to the justice of his praise which was continued in the manner of a soliloquy for some time after the stranger had turned his back upon him and descended the stairs. At the door of the venta the young man encountered his companion who was issuing forth with a jug of wine in his hand. "Well Luis " said the latter "have you ascertained it? Is she still here or has our journey been in vain?" "She is here " was the reply. "Good. Then I hope you will put aside your melancholy and eat and drink with better appetite than you have lately done. We have plenty of time; it will not be dark for the next two hours. So let us to supper such as it is; ham as rancid as an old oil-cask eggs that would have been chickens to-morrow and wine--but the wine may atone for the rest--it is old Peralta or the patrona is perjured. I have had the table spread under the tree in hopes that fresh air may sweeten musty viands and in order that we may see the ball-play of yonder soldier and muleteer." The young man who had been addressed by the name of Luis glanced in the direction of the ball-court where the two men to whom his companion referred were preparing for a match. The discussion as to the superiority of Navarrese or Asturian ball-players had increased in warmth until the disputants each obstinate in his opinion finding themselves perhaps at a loss for verbal arguments had agreed to refer the matter to a trial of individual skill. The challenge came from the dragoon who as soon as he heard it accepted proceeded to lighten himself for his task. With great alacrity he threw aside his foraging-cap stripped off his pouch-belt and uniform coat and unfastened his spurs. The preparations of the muleteer were even more rapidly completed. When he had thrown off his jacket--the back of which was adorned according to the custom of his class with flowers and various quaint devices cut out in cloth of many colours and sewn upon the brown material of which the garment was composed--he stood in his shirt and trousers of unbleached linen with light sandals of plaited hemp upon his feet. In this latter respect he had the advantage of the soldier who not choosing to play barefooted was obliged to retain his heavy boots. In apparent activity too the advantage was greatly on the side of the Navarrese who was spare and sinewy without an ounce of superfluous flesh about him but with muscles like iron and limbs as elastic and springy as whalebone. His very face partook of the hard wiry character of his person; the cheekbones were slightly prominent and although he evidently wanted some years of thirty two deep furrows or lines such as are rarely seen on the countenance of so young a man curved outwards from either nostril to considerably below the mouth increasing in depth when he talked or smiled and giving in conjunction with a quick grey eye considerable character to his frank and by no means disagreeable countenance. The game began with great spirit and with much appearance of equality between the players who would both have been deemed first-rate in any ball-court in Europe. The great strength of the dragoon seemed at first to give him the advantage; the tremendous blows he delivered sent the ball against the wall with as much seeming force as if it had been driven out of a cannon and caused it to rebound to an immense distance keeping the muleteer continually at the very top of his speed. The match was to be the best two out of three games. The first of the three was won by the muleteer after the victory had been long and well contested. "_Bien!_" said the dragoon as he wiped the perspiration from his face and took a deep draught out of a jug of wine which the ventero presented to him. "_Bien_--that is one for you; the next may go differently. I only missed the ball through my foot slipping. Curse boots for playing ball in say I! Hola Valenciano! have you never a pair of shoes or espadrillas to lend me?" The landlord who acted as umpire and who as well as his wife and two or three loitering peasants was taking an intense interest in the game ran into the house and brought out a pair of sandals. These the soldier tied upon his feet in lieu of the boots to which he attributed his defeat. Then with renewed confidence he took his place opposite the wall where the muleteer was waiting for him. But if as the dragoon said an accident had lost him the first game it soon became evident that the superior activity and endurance of his antagonist were equally certain to make him lose the second. The idleness of a garrison life fat feeding and soft lying had disqualified the soldier to compete for any length of time with a man like the Navarrese accustomed to the severest hardships whose most luxurious meal was a handful of boiled beans his softest couch a bundle of straw or the packsaddles of his mules. Constant exposure and unceasing toil had given the muleteer the same insensibility to fatigue attributed to certain savage tribes. Whilst his antagonist with inflamed features and short-drawn breath and reeking with perspiration was toiling after the ball the Navarrese went through the same or a greater amount of exertion without the least appearance of distress. Not a bead of moisture upon his face nor a pant from his broad well-opened chest gave token of the slightest inconvenience from the violent exercise he was going through. On the contrary as he went on and got warm in the harness he seemed to play better to run faster to catch the ball with greater address and strike it with more force. Sometimes he would be standing close to the wall when a mighty blow from the strong arm of the dragoon sent the ball scores of yards in his rear. It seemed impossible that he should arrive soon enough to strike it. But before it had time to rebound he was behind it and by a blow of his horny palm less forcible perhaps but more dexterously applied than the one his opponent had given he sent it careering back to the wall with greater swiftness than it had left it. He rarely struck the ball in the air even when the opportunity offered but allowed it to rebound--a less dashing but a surer game than he would perhaps have played had he not considered the honour of "Navarra la bella" to be at stake represented in his person. Again when the ball fell near the wall he would sometimes swing his arm as though about to strike it a violent blow and whilst the dragoon was already beginning to retire in the direction he expected it to take he would change his apparent intention and drop it gently just above the line so that his opponent although rushing up in desperate haste could scarcely arrive in time to avoid being put out. It was by a feint of this description that the second game was decided in favour of the Navarrese. "_Viva la Navarra!_" shouted the winner bounding like a startled roebuck three or four feet from the ground in front of the discomfited soldier. "_Viva el demonio!_" growled the latter in reply. "Do you think that because you have beaten me to-day thanks to your herring guts and dog's hide that you could do the same if I were in training or had a month's practice? You would find it very different Master Paco." "Viva la Navarra!" repeated Paco chucking the small hard ball up into the air to a height at which it appeared scarcely bigger than a bullet. Then replying to the words of the dragoon; "At your orders Señor Velasquez " said he "I shall pass through Tudela some time next month and shall be ready to give you your revenge." And catching the ball as it fell the Navarrese whom victory had put into extravagant spirits began tossing it from one hand to the other catching it behind his back and performing various other small feats of address looking the while at the corporal with a sort of jeering smile which greatly aggravated the irritation of the latter. "_Pues_ " said Velasquez at last after gazing at Paco for the space of a minute with a stern look which was insufficient however to make the other lower his eyes or alter the expression of his countenance; "Well what do you stare at? Oh! I forgot--you may well stare. It is the first time that you have seen an Asturian caballero beaten at any thing by a cur of a Navarrese." "Not at all " replied the muleteer coolly; "your Señoria is mistaken. It is only the first time that I have seen an Asturian _caballero_ with a pipeclayed belt over his shoulder and a corporal's bars upon his arm." And he broke out into one of those wild shrill laughs of scorn and defiance with which the peasant soldiers of Navarre have so often during recent Spanish wars caused the rocks and ravines of their native province to ring again. "_Hijo de zorra!_" muttered the soldier enraged beyond endurance by this last taunt; and drawing back his right arm he dealt so heavy and unexpected a blow upon the breast of the muleteer that the latter reeled a couple of paces backwards and then fell headlong and with considerable violence to the ground. The dragoon gazed for an instant at the fallen man as if expecting him to rise and attack him in turn; but seeing that he did not do so he turned round and walked slowly in the direction of his charger. He had taken but a few steps when the Navarrese sprang to his feet and thrust his hand into the red sash which girded his waist as though seeking a weapon. He found none and instantly darting forward he passed the soldier and reached his mules a moment sooner than the former did his horse. The next instant a long brown barrel was projected across the packsaddles and behind it was seen the blue cap and pale countenance of Paco who with glittering eye and face livid from fury was taking a deadly aim at the soldier now standing beside the shoulder of his charger. Without a moment's hesitation the Navarrese pulled the trigger. As he did so the dragoon suddenly aware of his danger threw himself on one side and at the same time his horse either startled by the movement or tormented by a fly tossed his head violently up and backwards. The muleteer's bullet intended for the rider entered the brain of the steed. There was a convulsive quivering of the animal's whole frame and then before the smoke cleared away the horse fell over so heavily and suddenly that he bore down Velasquez under him. The soldier lay with the whole weight of the expiring animal resting upon his legs and thighs; and before he could make an attempt to extricate himself the Navarrese with a large dagger-shaped knife gleaming in his hand sprang across the space that separated him from his antagonist. The fate of the latter would speedily have been decided had not the innkeeper his wife and the two young men who had been observing with much interest these rapidly occurring incidents thrown themselves between Paco and the object of his wrath. "Out of the way!" roared the infuriated muleteer. "He has struck me and by the Holy Trinity I will have his blood. He has struck _me_ a free Navarrese!" repeated he striking his own breast with the points of his fingers one of the expressive and customary gestures of his countrymen. "Let him be Señor Don Paco!" yelled the ventero and his wife greatly alarmed at the prospect of a murder in broad daylight and at their very threshold. "You have done enough already to send you to the galleys. Get on your mules and ride away before worse comes of it." "_A los infiernos!_" shouted Paco. "As the horse now is so shall be the rider." And he gave a long sweep of his arm making the bright blade of his knife flash in the last red sun-rays like a curved line of burnished gold. The point of the weapon passed within an inch or two of the face of the innkeeper who started back with a cry of alarm. At the same moment the wrist of the Navarrese was caught in a firm grasp by the elder of the two travellers and the knife was wrested from his hand. The muleteer turned like a madman upon his new antagonist. The latter had laid aside the hat which shaded his face and now fixed his eyes upon the angry countenance of the Navarrese. "Do you not know me Paco?" said he repulsing the first furious onset of the muleteer. Paco stared at him for a moment with a look of doubt and astonishment. "Don Luis!" he at last exclaimed. "The same " replied the stranger. "You have been too hasty Paco and we expose ourselves to blame by not detaining you to answer for your attempt on yonder soldier's life and for the death of his horse. But you had some provocation and I for one am willing to take the risk. Begone and that immediately." "I shall do your bidding Señorito " said Paco "were it only for old acquaintance sake. But let that cowardly Asturian beware how he meets me in the mountains. I have missed him once but will answer for not doing so again." "And you " retorted the soldier whom the innkeeper and a peasant had dragged from under the dead horse and placed upon a bench where he sat rubbing his legs which were numbed and bruised by the weight that had fallen upon them--"and you have a care how you show yourself in Tudela. If there is a stirrup-leather or sword-scabbard in the garrison I promise you as sound a beating as you ever yet received." The Navarrese who had returned to his mules and was busied reloading his gun snapped his fingers scornfully at this menace. Don Luis walked up to him. "Listen Paco " said he in a low voice "take my advice and avoid this neighbourhood for a while. Are you still in the service of Count Villabuena?" "No Señor " replied the man "I have left his Señoria and the mules are my own. I shall be passing near the count's house to-morrow if you have any thing to send." "I have nothing " answered Don Luis. "Should you by chance see any of the family it is unnecessary to mention our meeting." Paco nodded his head significantly seated himself sideways on one of his mules his gun across his knees and leading the other by the bridle trotted off at a brisk pace down a mountain path nearly opposite to the venta. Ten minutes later the dragoon having regained in some degree the use of his legs resumed his boots took his saddle and valise on his shoulders and set out on foot for his garrison. The sun had set and the twilight passed away the night was clear and starlight but moonless when Luis and his companion left the venta and resumed their progress northwards. After following the highway for a short league they took a cross-road on either side of which the richly cultivated plain was sprinkled with farmhouses and with a few country villas. In spite of the darkness which was increased by the overhanging foliage of the fruit-trees that on either hand bordered the road Luis moved rapidly and confidently forward in the manner of one perfectly acquainted with the ground; and presently leaving the beaten track he passed through a plantation of young trees crossed a field and arrived with his companion at a low hedge surrounding a spacious garden. Jumping over this boundary the young men penetrated some distance into the enclosure and soon found themselves within fifty yards of a house of which the white walls were partially visible rising out of a thick garland of trees and bushes in which the building was embowered. Several of the windows were lighted up and the sound of music reached the ears of Luis and his companion. "This is far enough Mariano " said the former. "To the right amongst the trees you will find an old moss-grown bench upon which I have often sat in happier days than these. There await my return." "Let me accompany you further " replied Mariano. "There is no saying what reception the count may give you." "I shall not see the count " answered Luis; "and if by chance I should there is nothing to apprehend. But my plan as I have already explained to you is only to seek one moment's interview with Rita. I am well acquainted with the arrangements of the house and you may depend that I shall be seen by no one whom I wish to avoid." Mariano turned into the shrubbery and Luis with rapid but silent step advanced towards the villa favoured in his clandestine approach by the darkness of the night and the trees of the thickly-planted garden. The house was a square edifice without balconies and the windows that were lighted up were those of the first floor. On the side on which Luis first approached the building the windows were closed but upon moving noiselessly round to the front he perceived one which the fineness of the weather still mild and genial although at the end of September had induced the occupants of the room to leave open. The sound of laughter and merriment issued from it; but this was presently hushed and two voices accompanied by guitars began to sing a lively _seguidilla_ of which at the end of each piquant couplet the listeners testified their approbation by a hum of mirthful applause. Before the song was over Luis had sought and found a means of observing what was passing within doors. Grasping the lower branch of a tree which grew within a few feet of the corner of the house he swung himself up amongst the foliage. A large bough extended horizontally below the open window and by climbing along this he was enabled to look completely into the apartment; whilst owing to the thickness of the leafage and the dark colour of his dress there was scarcely a possibility of his being discovered. The room was occupied by about twenty persons the majority of whom were visitors inhabitants of Tudela or of neighbouring country-houses. With four or five exceptions the party consisted of men for the most part elderly or middle-aged. One of the ladies and a young officer of the royal guard were the singers and their performance seemed partially to interrupt the conversation of a group of the seniors who were seated round a card-table at the further end of the apartment. The cards however if they had been used at all had long been thrown aside and replaced by a discussion carried on in low tones and with an earnestness of countenance and gesture which gave to those engaged in it the appearance rather of conspirators than of friends met together for the enjoyment of each other's society. The ladies and a few of the younger men did not appear disposed to let the gravity of their elders interfere with their own pleasures. The song and the dance the pointed epigram and witty repartee all the varied resourccs which Spaniards know so well how to bring into play and which render a Spanish _tertulia_ so agreeable had been in turn resorted to. When the seguidilla--during the continuance of which Luis had gained his post of observation--was brought to a close there seemed to ensue a sort of break in the amusements of the evening. The younger members of the company whose conversation had previously been general separated into groups of two or three persons; and in more than one of those composed of the former number the flashing eye coquettish smile and rapidly significant motions of the fan bespoke the existence of an animated flirtation. Two ladies neither of whom could have seen more than eighteen summers now left the sofa upon which they had been sitting and with arms intertwined approached the open window. Luis remained motionless as the leaves that surrounded him and which were undisturbed by a breath of wind. The ladies leaned forward over the window-sill enjoying the freshness of the night; and one of them the lively brunette who had taken a part in the seguidilla plucked some sprays of jasmine which reared their pointed leaves and white blossoms in front of the window and began to entwine them in the hair of her companion--a pale and somewhat pensive beauty in whose golden locks and blue eyes the Gothic blood of old Spain was yet to be traced. Presently she was interrupted in this fanciful occupation by a voice within the room calling upon her to sing. She obeyed the summons and her friend remained alone at the window. No sooner was this the case than a slight rustling occurred amongst the branches of the tree and the name of "Rita" was uttered in a cautious whisper. The lady started and but half suppressed a cry of terror. The next instant the leaves were put aside and the light from the apartment fell upon the countenance of Luis who with uplifted finger warned the agitated girl to restrain her emotion. "Santa Virgen!" she exclaimed leaning far out of the window and speaking in a hurried whisper "this is madness Luis. My father is unchanged in his sentiments and I dread his anger should he find you here." "I will instantly depart " replied Luis "if you promise me an interview. I am about to leave Spain--perhaps for ever; but I cannot go without bidding you farewell. You will not refuse me a meeting which may probably be our last." "What mean you?" exclaimed the lady. "Why do you leave Spain and when? But we shall be overheard. To-morrow my father goes to Tudela. Be here at mid-day. Brigida will admit you." She held out her hand which Luis pressed to his lips. At that moment the clatter of a horse's hoofs rapidly approaching was heard upon the hard ground of the avenue. The lady hastily withdrew her land and left the window whilst Luis again concealed himself behind the screen of foliage. Scarcely had he done so when a horseman dashed up to the house forced his steed up the three or four broad steps leading to the door and without dismounting or looking for a bell or other means of announcing his arrival struck several blows upon the oaken panels with the butt of his heavy riding-whip. Whilst the party above-stairs hurried to the windows and endeavoured to discern who it was that disturbed them in so unceremonious a manner a servant opened the small grated wicket in the centre of the door and enquired the stranger's pleasure. "Is the Conde de Villabuena at home?" demanded the horseman. "I must see him instantly." "The name of your Señoria " enquired the domestic. "It is unnecessary. Say that I have a message to him from friends at Madrid." The servant disappeared and in another moment his place was occupied by a grave stern-looking man between fifty and sixty years of age. "I am Count Villabuena " said he; "what is your business?" The stranger bent forward over his horse's mane so as to bring his face close to the wicket and uttered three words in a tone audible only to the count who replied to them by an exclamation of surprise. The door was immediately opened and Villabuena stood beside the horseman. "When?" said he. "Yesterday. I have ridden night and day to bring you the intelligence and shall now push on to the interior of Navarre. At the same time as myself others of our friends started north and south east and west. Early this morning Santos Ladron heard it at Valladolid and Merino in Castile. To-day the news has reached Vittoria; this night they will be at Bilboa and Tolosa. It is from the northern provinces that most is expected; but 'El Rey y la Religion' is a rallying-cry that will rouse all Spaniards worthy of the name. You are prepared for the event and know what to do. Farewell and success attend us!" The stranger set spurs to his horse and galloped down the avenue at the same rapid pace a

which he had arrived. The count re-entered the house; and as soon as he had done so Luis dropped from his tree and hurried to rejoin Mariano. In another hour they had returned to the venta. Luis Herrera was the son of a Castilian gentleman who had suffered much both in person and property for his steady adherence to the constitutional cause in Spain. Severely wounded whilst fighting against the Royalists and their French allies in 1823 Don Manuel Herrera with difficulty escaped to England taking with him his only son then a boy of eleven years of age. In 1830 he changed his residence to the south of France and thence taking advantage of his proximity to the frontier and wishing his son's education to be completed in Spain he dispatched Luis to Madrid with a recommendation to the Conde de Villabuena who notwithstanding that his political principles were diametrically opposed to those of Don Manuel was one of the oldest friends of the latter. The count welcomed Luis kindly and received him into his house where for some months he prosecuted his studies in company with the young Villabuenas and at the end of that time went with them to the university of Salamanca. The vacations were passed by the young men either at the count's house at Madrid or at a country residence near Tudela north of which in the central valleys of his native province of Navarre the Conde de Villabuena owned extensive estates. The count was a widower and besides his two sons had an only daughter who at the time of Luis's arrival was in her sixteenth year and who added to great personal attractions a share of accomplishment and instruction larger than is usually found even amongst the higher classes of Spanish women. During the first sojourn of Luis at the count's house he was naturally thrown a great deal into Doña Rita's society and a reciprocal attachment grew up between them which if it occasionally afforded the young Villabuenas a subject of good-humoured raillery on the other hand was unobserved or uncared for by the count--a stern silent man whose thoughts and time were engrossed by political intrigues. When Luis went to Salamanca his attachment to Rita instead of becoming weakened or obliterated appeared to acquire strength from absence; and she on her part as each vacation approached unconsciously looked forward with far more eagerness to the return of Herrera than to that of her brothers. The autumn of 1832 arrived and the count and his family including Luis were assembled at the villa near Tudela. The attachment existing between Rita and Luis had become evident to all who knew them; and even the count himself seemed occasionally by a quiet glance and grave smile to recognise and sanction its existence. Nor was there any very obvious or strong reason for disapproval. The family of Herrera was ancient and honourable; and although Don Manuel's estates had been confiscated when he fled the country he had previously remitted to England a sum that secured him a moderate independence. The state of things in Spain was daily becoming more favourable to the hopes of political exiles. The declining health of Ferdinand had thrown the reins of government almost entirely into the hands of Queen Christina who in order to increase the number of her adherents and ensure her daughter's succession to the throne favoured the return to Spain of the Liberal party. Although Don Manuel who was known to be obstinate and violent in his political views had not yet been included in the amnesties published it was thought that he speedily would be so; and then time and importunity and an adherence to the established order of things might perhaps procure him the restitution of some part of his confiscated property. It chanced that on the fourth day after the arrival of Luis and the Villabuenas from Salamanca the two latter rode over to the Ebro below Tudela for the purpose of bathing. They were not good swimmers and were moreover unaccustomed to bathe in so rapid and powerful a stream. A peasant who observed two horses tied to a tree and some clothes upon the grass by the river side but who could see nothing of the owners suspected an accident and gave the alarm. A search was instituted and the dead bodies of the unfortunate young men were found upon the sandy shore of an island some distance down the river. This melancholy event was destined to have an important influence on the position of Luis Herrera in the family of Count Villabuena and on his future fortunes. Mingled with the natural grief felt by the count at the untimely death of his children were the pangs of disappointed pride and ambition. He had reckoned upon the gallant and promising young men thus prematurely snatched away for the continuance and aggrandizement of his ancient name. Upon his daughter he had hitherto scarcely bestowed a thought. She would marry--honourably of course richly if possible; but even in this last respect he would not be inflexible for where his pride of birth did not interfere Villabuena was not an unkind father. But the death of his sons brought about great changes. The next heir to his title and estates was a distant and unmarried cousin and to him the count determined to marry his daughter whose beauty and large fortune in money and unentailed estates rendered any objection to the match on the part of her kinsman a most improbable occurrence. As a first step towards the accomplishment of this scheme the count resolved to put an end at once to what he considered the childish attachment existing between Rita and Luis. Within a week after the death of his sons he had a conversation with young Herrera in which he informed him of his intentions with regard to his daughter and pointed out to him the necessity of forgetting her. In vain did Luis declare this to be impossible and plead the strength which his attachment had acquired by his long permitted intercourse with Rita. The count cared little for such lover-like arguments; he assured Luis that he was mistaken that time and absence brought oblivion in their train and that after a few months perhaps weeks of separation he would wonder at the change in his sentiments and laugh at the importance he had attached to a mere boyish fancy. It so happened that on the day preceding the one upon which this conversation took place a letter had been received from Don Manuel Herrera announcing his speedy return to Spain the much-desired permission having at length been obtained. In order to give Luis an opportunity of speedily testing the effects of absence the count proposed that he should at once set out for the French frontier to meet his father. Under the existing circumstances he said it was undesirable that he should remain under the same roof with his daughter longer than could be avoided. Although bitterly deploring the prospect of an immediate and lasting separation from Rita Luis had no choice but to adopt the course proposed; nor would his pride have allowed him to remain in the count's house an instant longer than his presence there was acceptable. He feared that the count would prevent his having a last interview with Rita; but this Villabuena did not think it worth while to do contenting himself with repeating to his daughter the communication he had already made to Luis. When the latter sought his mistress he found her in tears and great affliction. The blow was so sudden and unexpected that she could scarcely believe in its reality and still less could she bring herself to think that the count would persist in his cruel resolution. ""He will surely relent "" she said ""when he sees how unhappy his decision makes me; but should he not do so rest assured Luis that I will never be forced into this odious marriage. Sooner than submit to it a convent shall receive me."" And once more repeating the vows of constancy which they had so often interchanged the lovers separated. At daybreak upon the following morning Luis set out for Bayonne. The joy experienced by Don Manuel Herrera upon once more treading his native soil did not so engross him as to prevent his observing the melancholy of his son. In reply to his father's enquiries Luis informed him of his attachment to Rita and of the interdict which the count had put upon its continuance. Don Manuel was indignant at what he termed the selfish and unfeeling conduct of Villabuena who would thus sacrifice his daughter's happiness to his own pride and ambition. He then endeavoured to rouse the pride of Luis and to convert his regrets into indignation; but finding himself unsuccessful he resolved to try the effect of change of scene and constant occupation. He set out with his son for Old Castile of which he was a native and undertook various journeys through the province in search of a small estate such as his means would permit him to purchase and upon which he might in future reside. This he at last found a few leagues to the south of Burgos. The purchase completed there were still many arrangements to make before Don Manuel could settle down and enjoy the peaceful country life which he had planned for himself and in making these arrangements he took care to find his son abundant and varied employment. But all his well-meant efforts were in vain. Luis could not detach his thoughts from one all-engrossing subject; and at last although Count Villabuena had expressly forbidden any correspondence between his daughter and young Herrera the latter after some weeks' absence unable to resist any longer his desire to hear from Rita ventured to write to her. The letter was intercepted by the count and returned unopened with a few haughty lines expressive of his indignation at the ingratitude of Luis who was requiting the kindness he had received at his hands by endeavouring to thwart his plans and seduce the affections of his daughter. The terms in which this letter was couched roused the ire of Don Manuel who in his turn forbade his son to expose himself to a repetition of similar insults by any communication with the count or his daughter. Shortly afterwards Luis returned to Salamanca to complete his studies. The profession of the law to which young Herrera was destined had never had any charms for him. His own inclinations pointed to a military career which he had on various occasions urged his father to allow him to adopt; but Don Manuel had invariably refused his request alleging the poor prospect of advancement in time of peace and in a service in which nearly all promotion was gained by interest and court-favour. Nevertheless from his earliest youth Luis had devoted his leisure hours to the attainment of accomplishments qualifying him for the trade of war. He was the boldest horseman most skilful swordsman and best shot in the University of Salamanca. His superiority in these respects his decided character and agreeable manners had gained him considerable popularity amongst his fellow-students who frequently expressed their surprise that one whose vocation was evidently military should abide by the dusty folios and dry intricacies of the law. More insupportable than ever did his studies now appear to Luis who nevertheless persevered in them for several months after his father's return to Spain endeavouring by strenuous application to divert his thoughts from his hopeless attachment. Weary at length of the effort he determined to abandon a pursuit so uncongenial to his tastes and to seek a more active course of life and one for which he felt he was better suited. His plan was to repair to Africa and endeavour to obtain a commission in one of the foreign corps which the French were raising for their campaign against the Bedouins. Should he fail in this he would serve as a volunteer and trust to his courage and merits for procuring him advancement. Previously however to the execution of this scheme he resolved to see Rita once more ascertain from her own lips whether there was a chance of the count's relenting and should there be none bid her a last farewell. He would then return to his father's house and obtain Don Manuel's sanction to his project. Since the unfortunate death of the young Villabuenas Herrera's chief intimate at the University had been Mariano Torres a hot-headed warm-hearted Arragonese entirely devoted to Luis to whom he looked up as a model of perfection. To this young man Luis had confided his love for Rita and her father's opposition and to him he now communicated his new plans. To his infinite surprise scarcely had he done so when Mariano instead of expressing regret at his approaching departure threw his three-cornered student's hat to the ceiling tore off his gown and declared his intention of accompanying his friend to Africa or to any other part of the world to which he chose to betake himself. Luis tried to persuade him to abandon so mad a resolution; but Torres persisted in it protesting that it would suit his taste much better to fight against Bedouins than to become a bachelor of arts and that he had always intended to leave the University with his friend and to accompany him wherever he might go. Trusting that by the time they should reach Navarre Mariano's enthusiasm would cool down and his resolution change Luis at length yielded and the two friends left Salamanca together. Travelling by the public conveyances they reached Valladolid and subsequently the town of Soria whence they had still nearly twenty leagues of high-road to Tudela. The path across the mountains being considerably shorter and in order to diminish the risk of being seen by persons who might inform the count of his arrival Luis resolved to complete the journey on foot; and after two short days' march the young men reached the neighbourhood of Count Villabuena's residence. The church and convent clocks of the right Catholic city of Tudela had not yet chimed out the hour of noon when Luis impatient for the interview promised by Rita entered the count's domain by the same path as on the previous evening. Before he came in sight of the house he was met at an angle of the shrubbery by Rita herself. ""I was sure you would take this path "" said she with a smile in which melancholy was mingled with the pleasure she felt at seeing her lover; ""it was your favourite in days gone by. Our interview must be very brief. My father was to have remained at Tudela till evening but something has occurred to derange his plans. He sat up the whole night in close conference with some gentlemen. At daybreak two couriers were dispatched and the count rode away with his friends without having been in bed. He may return at any moment."" Luis drew the arm of his mistress through his own and they slowly walked down one of the alleys of the garden. Rita had little to tell him favourable to the hopes which he still in spite of himself continued to cherish. The appeals which she had ventured to make to her father's affection and to his regard for her happiness had been met by severe reproof. Her evident depression and melancholy remained unnoticed or at least unadverted to by the count. All that she said only confirmed Luis in his resolution of seeking high distinction or an honourable death in a foreign service. He was deliberating with eyes fixed upon the ground on the best manner of breaking his intentions to Rita when an exclamation of alarm from her lips caused him to look up and he saw Villabuena crossing on horseback the end of the walk along which they were advancing. The count's head was turned towards them and he had without doubt seen and recognised them. Herrera's resolution was instantly taken. He would seek the count's presence take upon himself the whole blame of his clandestine meeting with Rita and appease her father's anger by informing him of his proposed self-banishment. Before however he had succeeded in calming Rita's fears he again perceived the count who had left his horse and was advancing slowly towards them with a grave but not an angry countenance. On his near approach Luis was about to address him; but by a wave of his hand Villabuena enjoined silence. ""Return to the house Rita "" said he in a calm voice: ""and you Señor de Herrera remain here; I would speak a few words with you."" Tremblingly and with one last lingering look at Luis Rita withdrew. ""We will walk sir if you please "" said the count; and the two men walked for some distance side by side and in silence; Villabuena apparently plunged in reflection Luis wondering at his forbearance and impatient for its explanation. ""You are surprised "" said the count at last ""after all that has passed that I show so little resentment at your uninvited presence here and at Rita's infringement of my positive commands."" Luis would have spoken but Villabuena resumed. ""You will be still more astonished to learn that there is a possibility of your attachment receiving my sanction."" Herrera started and his face was lighted up with sudden rapture. ""You will of course have heard "" continued the count ""of the important intelligence received here last night and with which this morning all the country is ringing. I allude to the death of Ferdinand VII."" ""I had not heard of it "" replied Luis much surprised; for although the desperate state of the king's health was well known his malady had lasted so long that men had almost left off expecting his death. ""I know I can depend upon your honour Luis "" said the count; ""and I am therefore about to speak to you with a confidence which I should repose in few so young and inexperienced."" Luis bowed. ""Although "" resumed Villabuena ""his Majesty Charles the Fifth is at this moment absent from Spain his faithful subjects will not allow that absence to be prejudicial to him. They intend to vindicate his just rights and to overturn the contemptible faction which headed by an intriguing woman supports the unfounded claims of a sickly infant. In anticipation of Ferdinand's death all necessary measures have been taken; and before three days elapse you will see a flame lighted up through the land which will speedily consume and destroy the enemies of Spain and of her rightful monarch. Navarre and Biscay Valentia and Arragon Catalonia and Castile will rise almost to a man in defence of their king; the other provinces must follow their example or be compelled to submission. Although confident of success it yet behoves us to neglect no means of securing it; nor are we so blinded as to think that the faction which at present holds the reins of government will resign them without a struggle. Avoiding overconfidence therefore which so often leads to failure each man must put his shoulder to the wheel and contribute his best efforts to the one great end regardless of private sacrifices. What I have to propose to you is this. Time was when our universities were the strongholds of loyalty and religion; but that time is unfortunately past and the baneful doctrines of republicanism and equality have found their way even into those nurseries of our priesthood and statesmen. We are well informed that at Salamanca especially many of the students even of the better class incline to the self-styled Liberal party. You Luis are ready of speech bold and prompt in action and moreover you are known to have great influence amongst your fellow-students. Return then to Salamanca and exert that influence to bring back into the right path those who have been led astray. Urge the just claims of Charles V. hold out the prospect of military glory and distinction and of the gratitude of an admiring country. Let your efforts be chiefly directed to gain over young men of wealthy and influential families and to induce them to take up arms for the king. Form them into a squadron of which you shall have the command and the private soldiers of which shall rank as officers in the army and subsequently be transferred to other corps to act as such. Appoint a place of rendezvous; and when your men are assembled there march them to join the nearest division of the Royalist army. I guarantee to you a captain's commission; and as soon as the king with whom I have some influence arrives in Spain I will strongly recommend you to his favour. Our campaign however brief must afford opportunities of distinction to brave men who seek them. With your energy and with the natural military talents which I am persuaded you possess high rank honours and riches may speedily be yours. And when Charles V. firmly seated on the throne of Spain points you out to me as one of those to whom he owes his crown and as a man whom he delights to honour I will no longer refuse to you my daughter's hand."" However distant the perspective of happiness thus offered to his view and although the avenue leading to it was beset with dangers and uncertainties it promised to realize the ardent hopes which Luis Herrera had once ventured to indulge. Sanguine and confident he would at once have caught at the count's proposal but for one consideration that flashed across his mind. He was himself wedded to no political creed and had as yet scarcely bestowed a thought upon the different parties into which his countrymen were split. But his father who had so strenuously adhered to the Liberal side who had poured out his blood with Mina fought side by side with Riego sacrificed his property and endured a long and wearisome exile for conscience and his opinions' sake--what would be his feelings if he saw his only son range himself beneath the banner of absolutism? The struggle in the mind of Luis between love on the one hand and filial duty and affection on the other was too severe and too equally balanced to be instantly decided. He remained silent and the count mistaking the cause of his hesitation resumed. ""You are surprised "" said he ""to find me so willing to abandon my dearest projects for the sake of a remote advantage to the king's cause. But remember that I promise nothing--all is contingent on your own conduct and success. And although you may have thought me unfeeling and severe I shall gladly if possible indulge the inclinations of my only surviving child."" It required all Herrera's firmness and sense of duty to prevent him from yielding to the temptation held out and pledging himself at once to the cause of Charles V. ""You will not expect me Señor Conde "" said he ""to give an immediate answer to a proposal of such importance. I feel sincerely grateful to you but must crave a short delay for consideration."" ""Let that delay be as brief as possible "" said Villabuena. ""In the present circumstances the value of assistance will be doubled by its promptness. When love and loyalty are both in one scale "" added he with a slight smile ""methinks a decision were easy."" They had now approached the gate of the garden and Luis desirous of finding himself alone to arrange his thoughts and reflect on his future conduct took his leave. The count held out his hand with some of his former cordiality. ""You will write to me from Salamanca?"" said he. Herrera bowed his head and then fearful lest his assent should be misconstrued he replied-- ""From Salamanca or from elsewhere you shall certainly hear from me Señor Conde and that with all speed."" The count nodded and turned towards the house whilst Luis retook the road to the venta. He found Mariano impatiently waiting his return and eager to learn the result of his interview with Rita. Upon being informed of the proposal that had been made to Luis Torres seeing in it only a means of happiness for his friend strongly urged him to accept it. To this however Luis could not make up his mind; and finally after some deliberation he resolved to proceed to Old Castile and endeavour to obtain his father's consent to his joining the party of Don Carlos. Should he succeed in this of which he could not help entertaining a doubt he would no longer hesitate but at once inform the count of his decision and hasten to Salamanca to put his instructions into execution. Without further delay the two friends set out for Tarazona where they trusted to find some means of speedy conveyance to the residence of Don Manuel. * * * * * In the kingdom of Old Castile and more especially in its mountainous portions and the districts adjacent to the Ebro an extraordinary bustle and agitation were observable during the first days of October 1833. There was great furbishing of rusty muskets an eager search for cartridges much dusting of old uniforms that had long served but as hiding-places for moths and which were now donned by men many of whom seemed but ill at ease in their military equipments. For ten years Spain had been tranquil if not happy; but now as if even this short period of repose were too long for the restless spirit of her sons a new pretext for discord had been found and an ominous stir the forerunner of civil strife was perceptible through the land. Whilst Santos Ladron an officer of merit who had served through the whole of the war against Napoleon raised the standard of Charles V. in Navarre various partisans did the same in the country south of the Ebro. In the northeastern corner of Castile known as the Rioja Basilio Garcia agent for the Pope's bulls in the province of Soria--a man destitute of military knowledge and remarkable only for his repulsive exterior and cold-blooded ferocity--collected and headed a small body of insurgents; whilst in other districts of the same province several battalions of the old Royalist volunteers--a loose ill-disciplined militia as motely and unsoldierlike in appearance as they were unsteady and inefficient in the field--ranged themselves under the orders of a general-officer named Cuevillas and of the veteran Merino. To these soon joined themselves various individuals of the half-soldier half-bandit class so numerous in Spain--men who had served in former wars and asked no better than again to enact the scenes of bloodshed and pillage which were their element. The popularity and acknowledged skill of Merino as a guerilla-leader secured to him the services of many of these daring and desperate ruffians who flocked joyously to the banner of the soldier-priest under whose orders some of them had already fought. Through a tract of champaign country in the province of Burgos a column of these newly-assembled troops was seen marching early upon the third morning after the interview between Luis Herrera and Count Villabuena. It consisted of a battalion of the Realista militia for the most part middle-aged citizens who although they had felt themselves bound to obey the call to arms seemed but indifferently pleased at having left their families and occupations. Their equipment was various: few had complete uniform although most of them displayed some part of one; but all had belts and cartridge-box musket and bayonet. Although they had as yet gone but a short distance many of them appeared footsore and weary; and it was pretty evident that in the event of a campaign their ranks would be thinned nearly as much by the fatigues of the march as by the fire of the enemy. In front and rear of the battalion marched a squadron of cavalry of a far more soldierly aspect than the foot-soldiers although even amongst them but little uniformity of costume was found. The bronzed and bearded physiognomy athletic form and upright carriage which bespeak the veteran soldier were not wanting in their ranks; their horses were active and hardy their arms clean and serviceable. At the head of the column a few paces in advance rode a small group of officers the chief amongst whom was only to be distinguished by the deference shown to him by his companions. Insignia of rank he had none nor any indications of his military profession excepting the heavy sabre that dangled against the flank of his powerful black charger. His dress was entirely civilian consisting of a long surtout something the worse for wear and a round hat. Heavy spurs upon his heels and an ample cloak now strapped across his holsters completed the equipment of the cura Merino in whose hard and rigid features and wiry person scarcely a sign of decay or infirmity was visible after more than sixty years of life a large portion of which had been passed amidst the fatigues and hardships of incessant campaigning. As if infected by the sombre and taciturn character of their leader the party of officers had been riding for some time in silence when they came in sight of a house situated at a short distance from the road and of a superior description to the _caserias_ and peasants' cottages which they had hitherto passed. It was a building of moderate size with an appearance of greater comfort and neatness about it than is usually found in Spanish houses. Stables adjoined it and at some distance in its rear a range of barns and outhouses served to store the crops produced by the extensive tract of well-cultivated land in the centre of which the dwelling was situated. The front of the house was partially masked from the road by an orchard and behind it a similar growth of fruit trees seemed intended to intercept the keen blasts from a line of mountains which rose grey and gloomy at the distance of a few miles. ""Who lives yonder?"" abruptly enquired Merino pointing to the house which he had been gazing at for some time from under his bushy eyebrows. The officer to whom the question was addressed referred to another of the party a native of that part of the country. ""Señor de Herrera "" was the answer. ""We have been riding for some minutes through his property. He purchased the estate about a year ago on his return from France."" ""What had he been doing in France?"" ""Living there which he could not have done here unless he had been bullet-proof or had a neck harder than the iron collar of the garrote."" ""Herrera!"" repeated the cura musingly--""I know the name but there are many who bear it. There was a Manuel Herrera who sat in the Cortes in the days of the constitutionalists and afterwards commanded a battalion of their rabble. You do not mean him?"" ""The same general "" replied the officer addressing Merino by the rank which he held in the Spanish army since the war of Independence. A most unpriestly ejaculation escaped the lips of the cura. ""Manuel Herrera "" he repeated; ""the dog the _negro_ [1] the friend of the scoundrel Riego! I will hang him up at his own door!"" All the old hatreds and bitter party animosities of Merino seemed wakened into new life by the name of one of his former opponents. His eyes flashed his lips quivered with rage and he half turned his horse as if about to proceed to Herrera's house and put his threat into execution. The impulse however was checked almost as soon as felt. ""Another time will do "" said he with a grin smile. ""Let us once get Charles V. at Madrid and we will make short work of the Señor Herrera and of all who resemble him."" And the cura continued his march silent as before. He had proceeded but a short half mile when the officer commanding the cavalry rode up beside him. ""We have no forage general "" said he--""not a blade of straw or a grain in our corn-sacks. Shall I send on an orderly that we may find it ready on reaching the halting-place?"" ""No!"" replied Merino. ""Send a party to that house on the left of the road which we passed ten minutes ago. Let them press all the carts they find there load them with corn and bring them after us."" The officer fell back to his squadron and the next minute a subaltern and twenty men detached themselves from the column and at a brisk trot began retracing their steps along the road. Upon arriving in sight of the house to which they were proceeding they leaped their horses over a narrow ditch dividing the road from the fields and struck across the latter in a straight line compelled however by the heaviness of the ground to slacken their pace to a walk. They had not got over more than half the distance which they had to traverse when they heard the clang of a bell continuously rung; and this was followed by the appearance of two men who issued from the stables and out-buildings and hurried to the house. Scarcely had they entered when the shutters of the lower windows were pushed to and the heavy door closed and barred. The soldiers were now within a hundred yards of the dwelling. ""Hallo!"" cried the officer contemptuously ""they will not stand a siege will they? The old don is a black-hearted rebel I know; but he will hardly be fool enough to resist us."" The trooper was mistaken. The courage of Don Manuel Herrera was of that obstinate and uncalculating character which would have induced him to defend his house single-handed against a much larger force than that now brought against it. When he h

d learned three days previously that risings were taking place in his own neighbourhood in the name of Charles V. he had attached very little importance to the intelligence. An old soldier himself he entertained the most unmitigated contempt for the Realista volunteers whom he looked upon as a set of tailors whose muskets would rather encumber them than injure any body else; and who on the first appearance of regular troops would infallibly throw down their arms and betake themselves to their homes. As to the parties of insurgent guerillas which he was informed were beginning to show themselves at various points of the vicinity he considered them as mere bandits availing themselves of the stir and excitement in the country to exercise their nefarious profession; and should any such parties attempt to molest him he was fully determined to resist their attacks. In this resolution he now persevered although he rightly conjectured that the horsemen approaching his house were either the rearguard or a detachment of the disorderly-looking column of which he had a short time previously observed the passage. ""Hola! Don Manolo!"" shouted the officer as he halted his party in front of the house; ""what scurvy hospitality is this? What are you fastening doors and ringing alarm-bells for as if there were more thieves than honest men in the land? We come to pay you a friendly visit and instead of welcome and the wine-skin you shut the door in our faces. Devilish unfriendly that Don Manolito!"" The speaker who like many of Merino's followers was an inhabitant of the neighbouring country knew Don Manuel well by name and reputation and was also known to him as a deserter from the Constitutionalists in 1823 and as one of the most desperate smugglers and outlaws in the province. ""What do you want with me Pedro Rufin?"" demanded Don Manuel who now showed himself at one of the upper windows; ""and what is the meaning of this assemblage of armed men?"" ""The meaning is "" replied Rufin ""that I have been detached from the division of his Excellency General Merino to demand from you a certain quantity of maize or barley or both for the service of his Majesty King Charles V."" ""I know no such persons "" retorted Don Manuel ""as General Merino or King Charles V. But I know you well Rufin and the advice I give you is to begone yourself and your companions. We shall have troops here to-day or to-morrow and you will find the country too hot to hold you."" The officer laughed. ""Troops are here already "" he said; ""you may have seen our column march by not half an hour ago. But we have no time to lose. Once more Señor Herrera open the door and that quickly."" ""My door does not open at your bidding "" replied Don Manuel. ""I give you two minutes to draw off your followers and if you are not gone by that time you shall be fired upon."" ""Morral "" said the officer to one of his men ""your horse is a kicker I believe. Try the strength of the door."" The soldier left the ranks and turning his rawboned vicious-looking chestnut horse with its tail to the house-door he pressed his knuckles sharply upon the animal's loins just behind the saddle. The horse lashed out furiously each kick of his iron-shod heels making the door crack and rattle and striking out white splinters from the dark surface of the oak of which it was composed. At the first kick Don Manuel left the window. The soldiers stood looking on laughing till they rolled in their saddles at this novel species of sledge-hammer. Owing however to the great solidity of the door and the numerous fastenings with which it was provided on the other side the kicks of the horse although several times repeated failed to burst it open; and at last the animal as if wearied by the resistance it met with relaxed the vigour of its applications. ""Famous horse that of yours Morral!"" said the officer; ""as good as a locksmith or a six-pounder. Try it again my boy. You have made some ugly marks already. Another round of kicks and the way is open."" ""And if another blow is struck upon my door "" said Don Manuel suddenly reappearing at the window to the soldier ""your horse will go home with an empty saddle."" ""Silence! you old rebel "" shouted Rufin drawing a pistol from his holster. ""And you Morral never fear. At it again man."" The soldier again applied his knuckles to his horse's back and the animal gave a tremendous kick. At the same instant a puff of smoke issued from the window at which Don Manuel had stationed himself the report of a musket was heard and the unlucky Morral shot through the body fell headlong to the ground. ""Damnation!"" roared the officer firing his pistol at the window whence the shot had proceeded; and immediately his men without waiting for orders commenced an irregular fire of carbines and pistols against the house. It was replied to with effect from three of the windows. A man fell mortally wounded and two of the horses were hit. Rufin alarmed at the loss the party had experienced drew his men back under shelter of some trees till he could decide on what was best to be done. It seemed at first by no means improbable that the Carlists would have to beat a retreat or at any rate wait the arrival of infantry which it was not improbable Merino might have sent to their assistance when the sound of the firing reached his ears. The lower windows of the house were protected by strong iron bars; and although the defenders were so few in number their muskets and the shelter behind which they fought gave them a great advantage over the assailants whose carbines would not carry far and who had no cover from the fire of their opponents. At last a plan was devised which offered some chance of success. The party dismounted; and whilst four men making a circuit and concealing themselves as much as possible behind trees and hedges endeavoured to get in rear of the building the others with the exception of two or three who remained with the horses advanced towards the front of the house firing as rapidly as they could in order by the smoke and by attracting the attention of the besieged to cover the manoeuvre of their comrades. The stratagem was completely successful. Whilst Don Manuel and his servants were answering the fire of their assailants with some effect the four men got round the house climbed over a wall found a ladder in an out-building and applied it to one of the back-windows which they burst open. A shout of triumph and the report of their pistols informed their companions of their entrance and the next moment one of them threw open the front door and the guerillas rushed tumultuously into the house. It was about two hours after these occurrences that Luis Herrera and Mariano Torres arrived at Don Manuel's residence. They had been delayed upon the road by the disturbed state of the country which rendered it difficult to procure conveyances and had at last been compelled to hire a couple of indifferent horses upon which accompanied by a muleteer they had made but slow progress across the mountainous district they had to traverse. The news of the Carlist insurrection had inspired Luis with some alarm on account of his father whom he knew to be in the highest degree obnoxious to many of that party. At the same time he had not yet heard of the perpetration of any acts of violence and was far from anticipating the spectacle which met his eyes when he at last came in view of the Casa Herrera. With an exclamation of horror he forced his horse up a bank bordering the road and followed by Mariano galloped towards the house. Of the dwelling so lately a model of rural ease and comfort the four walls alone were now standing. The roof had fallen in and the tongues of flame which licked and flickered round the apertures where windows had been showed that the devouring element was busy completing its work. The adjoining stables owing to their slighter construction and to the combustibles they contained had been still more rapidly consumed. Of them a heap of smoking ashes and a few charred beams and blackened bricks were all that remained. The paling of the tastefully distributed garden was broken down in several places; the parterres and melon-beds were trampled and destroyed by the hoofs of the Carlist horses which had seemingly been turned in there to feed or perhaps been ridden through it in utter wantonness by their brutal owners. The ground in front of the house was strewed with broken furniture and with articles of wearing apparel the latter of which appeared to have belonged to the Carlists and to have been exchanged by them for others of a better description found in the house. Empty bottles fragments of food and a couple of wine-skins of which the greater part of the contents had been poured out upon the ground lay scattered about near the carcass of a horse and three human corpses two of the latter being those of Carlists and the third that of one of the defenders of the house. A few peasants stood by looking on in open-mouthed stupefaction; and above the whole scene of desolation a thick cloud of black smoke floated like a funereal pall. In an agony of suspense Luis enquired for his father. The peasant to whom he addressed the question pointed to the buildings in rear of the house which the Carlists weary perhaps of the work of destruction had left uninjured. ""Don Manuel is there "" said he ""if he still lives."" The latter part of the sentence was drowned in the noise of the horse's feet as Luis spurred furiously towards the buildings indicated which consisted of barns and of a small dwelling-house inhabited by his father's steward. On entering the latter his worst fears were realized. Upon a bed in a room on the ground floor Don Manuel Herrera was lying apparently insensible. His face was overspread with an ashy paleness his eyes were closed his lips blue and pinched. He was partially undressed and his linen and the bed upon which he lay were stained with blood. A priest stood beside him a crucifix in one hand and a cordial in the other; whilst an elderly peasant woman held a linen cloth to a wound in the breast of the expiring man. In an adjacent room were heard the sobbings and lamentations of women and children. With a heart swollen almost to bursting Luis approached the bed. ""Father!"" he exclaimed as he took Don Manuel's hand which hung powerless over the side of the couch--""Father is it thus I find you!"" The voice of his son seemed to rouse the sufferer from the swoon or lethargy in which he lay. He opened his eyes a faint smile of recognition and affection came over his features and his feeble fingers strove to press those of Luis. The priest made a sign to the woman and whilst she gently raised Don Manuel's head he held the cordial to his lips. The effect of the draught was instantaneous and reviving. ""This is a sad welcome for you Luis "" said Don Manuel. ""Your home destroyed and your father dying. God be thanked for sending you now and no sooner! I can die happy since you are here to close my eyes."" He paused exhausted by the exertion of speaking. A slight red foam stood upon his lips which the priest wiped away and another draught of the cordial enabled him to proceed. ""My son "" said he ""my minutes are numbered. Mark my last words and attend to them as you value my blessing and your own repose. I foresee that this country is on the eve of a long and bloody struggle. How it may end and whether it is to be the last that shall rend unhappy Spain who can tell? But your course is plain before you. By the memory of your sainted mother and the love you bear to me be stanch to the cause I have ever defended. You are young and strong and brave; your arm and your heart's best blood are due to the cause of Spanish freedom. My son swear that you will defend it!"" No selfish thought of his own happiness which would be marred by the oath he was required to take nor any but the one absorbing idea of smoothing his dying father's pillow by a prompt and willing compliance with his wishes crossed the mind of Luis as he took the crucifix from the hand of the priest and kneeling by the bedside swore on the sacred emblem to obey Don Manuel's injunctions both in letter and spirit and to resist to his latest breath the traitors who would enslave his country. His father listened to the fervent vow with a well-pleased smile. By a last effort he raised himself in his bed and laid his hand upon the head of his kneeling son. ""May God and his saints prosper thee Luis "" said he ""as thou observest this oath!"" He sank back his features convulsed by the pain which the movement occasioned him. ""Mother of God!"" exclaimed the woman who was still holding the bandage to the wound. The bleeding which had nearly ceased had recommenced with redoubled violence and a crimson stream was flowing over the bed. The death-rattle was in Don Manuel's throat but his eyes were still fixed upon his son and he seemed to make an effort to extend his arms towards him. With feelings of unutterable agony Luis bent forward and kissed his father's cheek. It was that of a corpse. For the space of a minute did the bereaved son gaze at the rigid features before him as if unable to comprehend that one so dear was gone from him for ever. At last the sad truth forced itself upon his mind; he bowed his face upon the pillow of his murdered parent and his overcharged feelings found relief in a passion of tears. The priest and the woman left the apartment. Mariano Torres remained standing behind his friend and after a time made an effort to lead him from the room. But Luis motioned him away. His grief was of those that know not human consolation. It was evening when Mariano who had been watching near the chamber of death without venturing to intrude upon his friend's sorrow saw the door open and Luis come forth. Torres started at seeing him so great was the change that had taken place in his aspect. His cheeks were pale and his eyes inflamed with weeping but the expression of his countenance was no longer sorrowful; it was stern even to fierceness and his look was that of an avenger rather than a mourner. Taking Mariano's arm he led him out of the house and entering the stable began to saddle his horse with his own hands. Torres followed his example in silence and then both mounted and rode off in the direction of the high-road. Upon reaching it Mariano first ventured to address a question to his friend. ""What are your plans Luis?"" said he. ""Whither do we now proceed?"" ""To provide for my father's funeral "" was the reply. ""And afterwards?"" said his friend with some hesitation. ""To revenge his death!"" hoarsely shouted Herrera as he spurred his horse to its utmost speed along the rough road that led to the nearest village. FOOTNOTES: [1] _Negro_ or black was the term commonly applied to the Liberals by their antagonists. HUMBOLDT. We hear much and much that is true of the ephemeral character of a large part of our literature; but to no branch of it are the observations more truly applicable than to the greater number of travels which now issue from the British press. It may safely be affirmed that our writers of travels both male and female have of late years arrived at a pitch of weakness trifling and emptiness which is unparalleled in the previous history of literature in this or perhaps any other country. When we see two post octavos of travels newly done up by the binder we are prepared for a series of useless remarks weak attempts at jokes disquisitions on dishes complaints of inns stale anecdotes and vain flourishes which almost make us blush for our country and the cause of intelligence over the world. The Russian Emperor who unquestionably has the power of licensing or prohibiting any of his subjects to travel at his own pleasure is said to concede the liberty only to the men of intelligence and ability in his dominions; the fools are all obliged to remain at home. Hence the high reputation which the Muscovites enjoy abroad and the frequent disappointment which is felt by travellers of other nations when they visit their own country. It is evident from the character of the books of travels which every spring issue from the London press with a few honourable exceptions that no such restraining power exists in the British dominions. We have no individuals or particular works in view in these observations. We speak of things in general. If any one doubts their truth let him enquire how many of the numberless travels which annually issue from the British press are ever sought after or heard of five years after their publication. Our annual supply of ephemeral travels is far inferior in point of merit to the annual supply of novels. This is the more remarkable because travels if written in the right spirit and by persons of capacity and taste are among the most delightful and withal instructive species of composition of which literature can boast. They are so because by their very nature they take the reader as well as the writer out of the sphere of every-day observation and commonplace remark. This is an immense advantage: so great indeed that if made use of with tolerable capacity it should give works of this sort a decided superiority in point of interest and utility over all others excepting History and the higher species of Romance. Commonplace is the bane of literature especially in an old and civilized state; monotony--the thing to be principally dreaded. The very air is filled with ordinary ideas. General education universal reading unhappily make matters worse; they tend only to multiply the echoes of the original report--a new one has scarce any chance of being heard amidst the ceaseless reverberation of the old. The more ancient a nation is the more liable is it to be overwhelmed by this dreadful evil. The Byzantine empire during a thousand years of civilisation and opulence did not produce one work of original thought; five hundred years after the light of Athenian genius had been extinguished the schools of Greece were still pursuing the beaten paths and teaching the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle. It is the peculiar and prodigious advantage of travelling that it counteracts this woful and degrading tendency and by directing men's thoughts as well as their steps into foreign lands has a tendency to induce into their ideas a portion of the variety and freshness which characterize the works of nature. Every person knows how great an advantage this proves in society. All must have felt what a relief it is to escape from the eternal round of local concerns or county politics of parish grievances or neighbouring railroads with which in every-day life we are beset to the conversation of a person of intelligence who has visited foreign lands and can give to the inquisitive at home a portion of the new ideas images and recollections with which his mind is stored. How then has it happened that the same acquaintance with foreign and distant countries which is universally felt to be such an advantage in conversation is attended with such opposite effects in literature; and that while our travellers are often the most agreeable men in company they are beyond all question the dullest in composition? Much of this extraordinary and woful deficiency we are persuaded is owing to the limited range of objects to which the education of the young of the higher classes is so exclusively directed in Oxford and Cambridge. Greek and Latin Aristotle's logic and classical versification quadratic equations conic sections the differential calculus are very good things and we are well aware that it is by excellence in them that the highest honours in these seminaries of learning can alone be attained. They are essential to the fame of a Parr or a Porson a Herschel or a Whewell. But a very different species of mental training is required for advantageous travelling. Men will soon find that neither Greek prose nor Latin prose Greek verse nor Latin verse will avail them when they come to traverse the present states of the world. The most thorough master of the higher mathematics will find his knowledge of scarce any avail in Italy or Egypt the Alps or the Andes. These acquisitions are doubtless among the greatest triumphs of the human understanding and they are calculated to raise a few perhaps one in a hundred to distinction in classical or scientific pursuits; but upon the minds of the remaining ninety-nine they produce no sort of impression. Nature simply rejects them; they are not the food which she requires. They do not do much mischief to such persons in themselves; but they are of incalculable detriment by the time and the industry which they absorb to no available purpose. Ten years of youth--the most valuable and important period of life--are wasted in studies which to nineteen-twentieths of the persons engaged in them are of no use whatever in future years. Thus our young men of the highest rank and best connexions are sent out into the world without any ideas or information which can enable them to visit foreign countries with advantage. Need we wonder that when they come to write and publish their travels they produce such a woful brood of ephemeral bantlings?[2] The reaction against this enormous evil in a different class of society has produced another set of errors in education--of an opposite description but perhaps still more fatal to the formation of the mental character which is essential to the useful or elevating observation of foreign countries. The commercial and middle classes of society educated at the London university or any of the numerous academies which have sprung up in all parts of the country have gone into the other extreme. Struck with the uselessness to the great bulk of students of the classical minutiæ required at one of the universities and the mathematical depth deemed indispensable at the other they have turned education into an entirely different channel. Nothing was deemed worthy of serious attention except what led to some practical object in life. Education was considered by their founders as merely a step to making money. Science became a trade--a mere handmaid to art. Mammon was all in all. Their instruction was entirely utilitarian. Mechanics and Medicine Hydraulics and Chemistry Pneumatics and Hydrostatics Anatomy and Physiology constituted the grand staples of their education. What they taught was adapted only for professional students. One would suppose from examining their course of study that all men were to be either doctors or surgeons apothecaries or druggists mechanics shipwrights or civil-engineers. No doubt we must have such persons--no doubt it is indispensable that places of instruction should exist in which they can learn their various and highly important avocations; but is that the school in which the enlarged mind is to be formed the varied information acquired the appreciation of the grand and the beautiful imbibed which are essential to an accomplished and really useful writer of travels? Sulphuric acid and Optics Anatomy and Mechanics will do many things; but they will never make an observer of Nature a friend of Man a fit commentator on the world of God. Persons of really cultivated minds and enlarged views will probably find it difficult to determine which of these opposite systems of education is the best calculated to attain what seems the grand object of modern instruction the cramping and limiting the human mind. But without entering upon this much-disputed point--upon which much is to be said on both sides and in which each party will perhaps be found to be in the right when they assail their opponents and in the wrong when they defend themselves--it is more material to our present purpose to observe that both are equally fatal to the acquisition of the varied information and the imbibing of the refined and elegant taste which are essential to an accomplished writer of travels. Only think what mental qualifications are required to form such a character! An eye for the Sublime and the Beautiful the power of graphically describing natural scenery a vivid perception of the peculiarities of national manners habits and institutions will at once be acknowledged to be the first requisites. But in addition to this how much is necessary to make a work which shall really stand the test of time in the delineation of the present countries of the world and the existing state of their inhabitants? How many branches of knowledge are called for how many sources of information required how many enthusiastic pursuits necessary to enable the traveller worthily to discharge his mission? Eyes and no Eyes are nowhere more conspicuous in human affairs; and unhappily eyes are never given but to the mind which has already seen and learned much. An acquaintance with the history of the country and the leading characters in its annals is indispensable to enable the traveller to appreciate the historical associations connected with the scenes; a certain degree of familiarity with its principal authors to render him alive to that noblest of interests--that arising from the recollection of Genius and intellectual Achievement. Without an acquaintance with political economy and the science of government he will be unable to give any useful account of the social state of the country or furnish the most valuable of all information--that relating to the institutions the welfare and the happiness of man. Statistics form almost an indispensable part of every book of travels which professes to communicate information; but mere statistics are little better than unmeaning figures if the generalizing and philosophical mind is wanting which from previous acquaintance with the subjects on which they bear and the conclusions which it is of importance to deduce from them knows what is to be selected and what laid aside from the mass. Science to the highest class of travellers is an addition of the utmost moment; as it alone can render their observations of use to that most exalted of all objects an extension of the boundaries of knowledge and an enlarged acquaintance with the laws of nature. The soul of a poet is indispensable to form the most interesting species of travels--a mind and still more a heart capable of appreciating the grand and the beautiful in Art and in Nature. The eye of a painter and the hand of a draughtsman are equally important to enable him to observe with accuracy the really interesting features of external things and convey by faithful and graphic description a correct impression of what he has seen to the mind of the reader. Such are the qualifications necessary for a really great traveller. It may be too much to hope to find these ever united in one individual; but the combination of the majority of them is indispensable to distinction or lasting fame in this branch of literature. Compare these necessary and indispensable qualifications for a great traveller with those which really belong to our young men who are sent forth from our universities or academies into the world and take upon themselves to communicate what they have seen to others. Does the youth come from Oxford? His head is full of Homer and Virgil Horace and Æschylus: he could tell you all the amours of Mars and Venus of Jupiter and Leda; he could rival Orpheus or Pindar in the melody of his Greek verses and Cicero or Livy in the correctness of his Latin prose; but as unfortunately he has to write neither about gods nor goddesses but mere mortals and neither in Greek verse nor Latin verse but good English prose he is utterly at a loss alike for thought and expression. He neither knows what to communicate nor is he master of the language in which it is to be conveyed. Hence his recorded travels dwindle away into a mere scrap-book of classical quotations--a transcript of immaterial Latin inscriptions destitute of either energy information or eloquence. Does he come from Cambridge? He could solve cubic equations as well as Cardan is a more perfect master of logarithms than Napier could explain the laws of physical astronomy better than Newton and rival La Grange in the management of the differential calculus. But as unluckily the world which he visits and in which we live is neither a geometric world nor an algebraic world a world of conic sections or fluxions; but a world of plains and mountains of lakes and rivers of men and women flesh and blood--he finds his knowledge of little or no avail. He takes scarce any interest in the sublunary or contemptible objects which engross the herd of ordinary mortals associates only with the learned and the recluse in a few universities and of course comes back without having a word to utter or a sentence to write which can interest the bulk of readers. Does he come from the London University or any of the provincial academies? He is thinking only of railroads or mechanics of chemistry or canals of medicine or surgery. He could descant without end on sulphuric acid or decrepitating salts on capacity for caloric or galvanic batteries on steam-engines and hydraulic machines on the discoveries of Davy or the conclusions of Berzelius of the systems of Hutton or Werner of Liebig or Cuvier. But although an acquaintance with these different branches of practical knowledge is an indispensable preliminary to a traveller in foreign countries making himself acquainted with the improvements they have respectively made in the useful or practical arts they will never qualify for the composition of a great or lasting book of travels. They would make an admirable course of instruction for the overseer of a manufactory of a canal or railway company of an hospital or an infirmary who was to visit foreign countries in order to pick up the latest improvements in practical mechanics chemistry or medicine; but have we really become a race of shopkeepers or doctors and is Science sunk to be the mere handmaid of Art? We despair therefore as long as the present system of education prevails in England (and Scotland of course follows in the wake of its great neighbour ) of seeing any traveller arise of lasting celebrity or book of travels written which shall attain to durable fame. The native vigour and courage indeed of the Anglo-Saxon race is perpetually impelling numbers of energetic young men into the most distant parts of the earth and immense is the addition which they are annually making to the sum-total of _geographical_ knowledge. We have only to look at one of our recent maps as compared to those which were published fifty years ago to see how much we owe to the courage and enterprise of Parry and Franklin Park and Horneman of Burckhardt and Lander. But giving all due credit--and none give it more sincerely than we do--to the vigour and courage of these very eminent men it is impossible not to feel that however well fitted they were to explore unknown and desert regions and carry the torch of civilization into the wilderness of nature they had not the mental training or varied information or powers of composition necessary to form a great _writer of travels_. Clarke and Bishop Heber are most favourable specimens of English travellers and do honour to the great universities of which they were such distinguished ornaments; but they did not possess the varied accomplishments and information of the continental travellers. Their education and very eminence in their peculiar and exclusive lines precluded it. What is wanting in that character above every thing is an acquaintance with and interest in a _great many and different branches of knowledge_ joined to considerable power of composition and unconquerable energy of mind; and that is precisely what our present system of education in England renders it almost impossible for any one to acquire. The system pursued in the Scottish universities undoubtedly is more likely to form men capable of rising to eminence in this department; and the names of Park and Bruce show what travellers they are capable of sending forth. But the attractions of rank connexion and fashion joined to the advantage of speaking correct English are fast drawing a greater proportion of the youth of the higher ranks in Scotland to the English universities; and the education pursued at home therefore is daily running more and more into merely utilitarian and professional channels. That system is by no means the one calculated to form an accomplished and interesting writer of travels. In this deficiency of materials for the formation of a great body of male travellers the ladies have kindly stepped in to supply the deficiency; and numerous works have issued from the press from the pe

s of the most accomplished and distinguished of our aristocratic beauties. But alas! there is no royal road to literature any more than geometry. Almack's and the exclusives the opera and ducal houses the lordlings and the guards form an admirable school for manners and are an indispensable preliminary to success at courts and coronations in ball-rooms and palaces. But the world is not made up of courts or palaces of kings or princes of dukes or marquesses. Men have something more to think of than the reception which the great world of one country gives to the great world of another--of the balls to which they are invited or the fêtes which they grace by their charms--or the privations to which elegant females nursed in the lap of luxury are exposed in roughing it amidst the snows of the North or the deserts of the South. We are grateful to the lady travellers for the brilliant and interesting pictures they have given us of capitals and manners [3] of costume and dress and of many eminent men and women whom their rank and sex gave them peculiar opportunities of portraying. But we can scarcely congratulate the country upon having found in them a substitute for learned and accomplished travellers of the other sex; or formed a set-off on the part of Great Britain to the Humboldts the Chateaubriands and Lamartines of continental Europe. It is impossible to contemplate the works of these great men without arriving at the conclusion that it is in the varied and discursive education of the Continent that a foundation has been laid for the extraordinary eminence which its travellers have attained. It is the vast number of subjects with which the young men are in some degree made acquainted at the German universities which has rendered them so capable in after life of travelling with advantage in any quarter of the globe and writing their travels with effect. This advantage is in a peculiar manner conspicuous in HUMBOLDT whose mind naturally ardent and capacious had been surprisingly enlarged and extended by early and various study in the most celebrated German universities. He acquired in consequence so extraordinary a command of almost every department of physical and political science that there is hardly any branch of it in which facts of importance may not be found in his travels. He combined in a degree perhaps never before equalled in one individual the most opposite and generally deemed irreconcilable mental qualities. To an ardent poetical temperament and an eye alive to the most vivid impressions of external things he united a power of eloquence rarely given to the most gifted orators and the habit of close and accurate reasoning which belongs to the intellectual powers adapted for the highest branches of the exact sciences. An able mathematician a profound natural philosopher an exact observer of nature he was at the same time a learned statistician an indefatigable social observer an unwearied philanthropist and the most powerful describer of nature that perhaps ever undertook to portray her great and glorious features. It is this extraordinary combination of qualities that render his works so surprising and valuable. The intellectual and imaginative powers rarely coexist in remarkable vigour in the same individual; but when they do they produce the utmost triumphs of the human mind. Leonardo da Vinci Johnson Burke and Humboldt do not resemble single men how great soever but rather clusters of separate persons each supremely eminent in his peculiar sphere. Frederick Henry Alexander Baron of Humboldt brother of the celebrated Prussian statesman of the same name was born at Berlin on the 14th September 1769 the same year with Napoleon Wellington Goethe Marshal Ney and many other illustrious men. He received an excellent and extensive education at the university of Gottingeu and at an academy at Frankfort on the Oder. His first step into the business of life was as a clerk in the mercantile house of Buch at Hamburg where he soon made himself master of accounts and bookkeeping and acquired that perfect command of arithmetic and habit of bringing every thing where it is possible to the test of figures by which his political and scientific writings are so pre-eminently distinguished. But his disposition was too strongly bent on scientific and physical pursuits to admit of his remaining long in the comparatively obscure and uninviting paths of commerce. His thirst for travelling was from his earliest years unbounded and it erelong received ample gratification. His first considerable journey was with two naturalists of distinction Messrs Fontu and Genns with whom he travelled in Germany Holland and England in the course of which his attention was chiefly directed to mineralogical pursuits. The fruit of his observations appeared in a work the first he ever published which was printed at Brunswick in 1790 when he was only twenty-one years of age entitled _Observations sur les Basaltes du Rhin_. To extend his information already very considerable on mineralogical science Humboldt in 1791 repaired to Freyburg to profit by the instructions of the celebrated Werner; and when there he devoted himself with the characteristic ardour of his disposition to make himself master of geology and botany and prosecuted in an especial manner the study of the fossil remains of plants in the rocks around that place. In 1792 he published at Berlin a learned treatise entitled _Specimen Floræ Friebergensis Subterraniæ_; which procured for him such celebrity that he was soon after appointed director-general of the mines in the principalities of Anspach and Bayreuth in Franconia. His ardent and philanthropic disposition there exerted itself for several years in promoting to the utmost of his power various establishments of public utility; among others the public school of Streben from which has already issued many distinguished scholars. Charmed by the recent and brilliant discoveries of M. Galvani in electricity he next entered with ardour into that new branch of science; and not content with studying it in the abstract he made a great variety of curious experiments on the effects of galvanism on his own person and published the result in two octavos at Berlin in 1796 enriched by the notes of the celebrated naturalist Blümenbach. This work was translated into French by J. F. Jadelot and published at Paris in 1799. Meanwhile Humboldt consumed with an insatiable desire for travelling resumed his wanderings and roamed over Switzerland and Italy after which he returned to Paris in 1797 and formed an intimacy with a congenial spirit M. Aimé Bonpland; who afterwards became the companion of his South American travels. At this time he formed the design of joining the expedition of Captain Baudin who was destined to circumnavigate the globe; but the continuance of hostilities prevented him from carrying that design into effect. Baffled in that project upon which his heart was much set Humboldt went to Marseilles with the intention of embarking on board a Swedish frigate for Algiers from whence he hoped to join Napoleon's expedition to Egypt and cross from the banks of the Nile to the Persian Gulf and the vast regions of the East. This was the turning point of his destiny. The Swedish frigate never arrived; the English cruisers rendered it impossible to cross the Mediterranean except in a neutral vessel; and after waiting with impatience for about two months he set out for Madrid in the hope of finding means in the Peninsula of passing into Africa from the opposite shores of Andalusia. Upon his arrival in the Spanish capital the German philosopher was received with all the distinction which his scientific reputation deserved; and he obtained from the government the extraordinary and unlooked-for boon of a formal leave to travel over the whole South American colonies of the monarchy. This immediately determined Humboldt. He entered with ardour into the new prospects thus opened to him; wrote to his friend Aimé Bonpland to propose that he should join him in the contemplated expedition--an offer which was gladly accepted; and soon the visions of Arabia and the Himalaya were supplanted by those of the Pampas of Buenos Ayres and the Cordilleras of Peru. The two friends embarked at Corunna on board a Spanish vessel and after a prosperous voyage reached Cumana in the New World in July 1799. From that city they made their first expedition in Spanish America during which they travelled over Spanish Guiana New Andalusia and the Missions of the Caribbees from whence they returned to Cumana in 1800. There they embarked for the Havannah; and the whole of the summer of that year was spent in traversing that great and interesting island on which he collected much important and valuable information. In September 1801 he set out for Quito where he arrived in January of the succeeding year and was received with the most flattering distinction. Having reposed for some months from their fatigues Humboldt and Bonpland proceeded in the first instance to survey the country which had been devastated in 1797 by the dreadful earthquake so frequent in those regions and which swallowed up in a minute forty thousand persons. Then he set out in June 1802 to visit the volcano of Tungaragno and the summit of Chimborazo. They ascended to the height of 19 500 feet on the latter mountain; but were prevented from reaching the top by impassable ravines. Perched on one of the summits however of this giant of mountains amidst ice and snow far above the abode of any living creature except the condor they made a great variety of most interesting observations which have proved of essential service to the cause of science. They were 3485 feet above the most elevated point which the learned Condamine who had hitherto ascended highest reached in 1745 but were still 2140 feet below the loftiest summit of the mountain. They determined by a series of strict trigonometrical observations the height of the chief peaks of that celebrated ridge-- ""Where Andes giant of the western star Looks from his throne of clouds o'er half the world."" Having returned after this fatiguing and dangerous mountain expedition to Lima Humboldt remained several months enjoying the hospitality of its kind-hearted inhabitants whose warm feelings and excellent qualities excited in him the warmest admiration. In the neighbouring harbour of Callao he was fortunate enough to see the passage of the planet Mercury over the disk of the sun of which transit he made very important observations; and from thence passed into the province of New Spain where he remained an entire year sedulously engaged in agricultural political and statistical as well as physical enquiries the fruits of which added much to the value of his published travels. In April 1803 he proceeded to Mexico where he was so fortunate as to discover the only specimen known to exist of the tree called _Cheirostomon Platanoides_ of the highest antiquity and gigantic dimensions. During the remainder of that year he made several excursions over the mountains and valleys of Mexico inferior to none in the world in interest and beauty; and in autumn 1804 embarked for the Havannah from whence he passed into Philadelphia and traversed a considerable part of the United States. At length in 1805 he returned to Europe and arrived safe at Paris in November of that year bringing with him in addition to the observations he had made and recollections with which his mind was fraught the most extensive and varied collection of specimens of plants and minerals that ever was brought from the New World. His herbarium consisted of four thousand different plants many of them of extreme rarity even in South America and great part of which were previously unknown in Europe. His mineralogical collection was of equal extent and value. But by far the most important additions he has made to the cause of science consist in the vast series of observations he has made in the New World which have set at rest a great many disputed points in geography mineralogy and zoology concerning that interesting and in a great degree unknown part of the world and extended in a proportional degree the boundaries of knowledge regarding it. Nor have his labours been less important in collecting the most valuable statistical information regarding the Spanish provinces of those vast regions especially the condition of the Indian negro and mulatto race which exist within them and the amount of the precious metals annually raised from their mines; subjects of vast importance to Great Britain and especially its colonial and commercial interests but which have hitherto been in an unaccountable manner neglected even by those whose interests and fortunes were entirely wound up in the changes connected with these vital subjects. The remainder of Baron Humboldt's life has been chiefly devoted to the various and important publications in which he has embodied the fruit of his vast and extensive researches in the New World. In many of these he has been assisted by M. Aimé Bonpland who his companion in literary labour as in the danger and fatigues of travelling has with the generosity of a really great mind been content to diminish perhaps destroy his prospect of individual celebrity by associating himself with the labours Of his illustrious friend. Pursued even in mature years by the desire of fame the thirst for still greater achievements which belongs to minds of the heroic cast whether in war or science he conceived at a subsequent period the design of visiting the upper provinces of India and the Himalaya range. After having ascended higher than man had yet done on the elevated ridges of the New World he was consumed with a thirst to surmount the still more lofty summits of the Old which have remained in solitary and unapproachable grandeur since the waves of the Deluge first receded from their sides. But the East India Company within whose dominions or at least beneath whose influence the highest ridges of the Himalaya are situated gave no countenance to the design and even it is said refused liberty to the immortal Naturalist to visit their extensive territories. Whatever opinion we may form on the liberality or wisdom of this resolution considered with reference to the interests physical moral and political of British India it is not to be regretted for the cause of science and literature over the world that the great traveller has been prevented from setting out late in life to a fresh region of discovery. It has left the remainder of his life and his yet undiminished powers to illustrate and explain what he has already seen. To do that was enough for the ordinary span of human life. Humboldt's works relating to the New World are very numerous. I. He first published in 1805 at Paris in four volumes quarto the _Personal Narrative_ of his travels from 1799 to 1804. Of this splendid and interesting work several editions have since been published in French in twelve volumes octavo. It is upon it that his fame with the generality of readers mainly rests. II. _Vues des Cordilleras et Monumens des Peuples Indigènes de l'Amerique_--two volumes folio: Paris 1811. This magnificent work the cost of which is now £130 contains by far the finest views of the Andes in existence. Its great price renders it very scarce and not more than a few copies are to be met with in Great Britain; but a cheap edition without the great plates was published at Paris in 1817. III. _Recueil d'Observations Astronomiques et de Mésures exécutées dans le Nouveau Continent_: two volumes quarto. This learned work contains the result of Humboldt's astronomical and trigonometrical observations on the lunar distances the eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter the transit of Mercury and upwards of five hundred elevated points in the New World taken from barometrical observations with all the requisite allowances and calculations carefully made. IV. _Essai sur la Geographie des Plantes ou Tableau Physique des Regions Equinoxiales_: in quarto with a great map. V. _Plantes Equinoxiales recueillies au Mexique dans l'Ile de Cuba dans les Provinces de Caraccas &c._: two volumes folio. A splendid and very costly work. VI. _Monographie des Mélastomes_: two volumes folio. A most curious and interesting work on a most interesting subject. VII. _Nova Genera et Species Plantarum_: three volumes folio. Containing an account of the botanical treasures collected by him in the New World and brought home in his magnificent herbarium. VIII. _Recueil des Observations de Zoologie et d'Anatomie comparée faites dans un Voyage aux Tropiques_: two volumes quarto. IX. _Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne._ 1811: two volumes quarto. Of this admirable work a subsequent edition has been published in 1822 in four volumes octavo. It contains an astonishing collection of important statistical facts arranged and digested with the utmost ability and interspersed with political and philosophical reflections on the state of the human race and the relation of society in the New World. X. _Ansichten der Natur._ Tubingen 1808: in octavo. It is remarkable that this is the only one of the learned author's works on Spanish America which originally appeared in his own language; but it was soon translated into French under the title of _Tableaux de la Nature_. Paris: 1808. It contains a series of descriptions of the different styles of scenery and remarkable objects in the vast regions he had visited portrayed with all the vigour and accuracy for which the author is distinguished. XI. _De Distributione Geographicâ Plantarum secundum Coeli Temperiem et Altitudinem Montium Prolegomena_. In octavo. Paris: 1817. The title of this work explains its object and its importance in describing a portion of the globe consisting of such lofty and successive ridges and table-lands as rise from the level of the sea to the summits of the Cordilleras of Mexico and Peru. XII. _Sur l'Elevation des Montagnes de l'Inde._ Octavo. Paris: 1818. A work prepared when the author was contemplating a journey to the Himalaya and mountains of Thibet. XIII. _Carte du Fleuve Orenoque._ Presented to the Academy of Sciences in 1817. M. Humboldt has there demonstrated the singular fact of the junction of the great rivers Orinoco and of the Amazon by the intermediate waters of the Rio Negro; a fact which the sagacity of D'Anville had long ago led him to suspect but which the travels of the indefatigable German has established beyond a doubt. XIV. _Examen Critique de l'Histoire de la Geographie du Nouveau Continent et du Progrès de l'Astronomie Nautique aux 15me et 16me siècles._ Paris: 1837. XV. ""_Cosmos:_"" in German--a ""Scheme of a Physical Description of the Universe."" This last work embraces a much wider sphere of learning and speculation than any of the preceding and is more characteristic of the vast erudition and ardent genius of the author. From the brief account which has now been given of the published works of this indefatigable traveller and author the reader will be able to appreciate the extent and variety of his scientific and political attainments. We shall now present him under a different aspect as an eloquent and almost unrivalled describer of nature. It need hardly be said that it is on these splendid pictures more even than the numerous and valuable additions he has made to the treasures of science that his reputation with the world in general is founded. The rapids of the Orinoco--one of the most striking scenes in America--are thus described by our author:[4]-- ""When we arrived at the top of the Cliff of Marimi the first object which caught our eye was a sheet of foam above a mile in length and half a mile in breadth. Enormous masses of black rock of an iron hue started up here and there out of its snowy surface. Some resembled huge basaltic cliffs resting on each other; many castles in ruins with detached towers and fortalices guarding their approach from a distance. Their sombre colour formed a contrast with the dazzling whiteness of the foam. Every rock every island was covered with flourishing trees the foliage of which is often united above the foaming gulf by creepers hanging in festoons from their opposite branches. The base of the rocks and islands as far as the eye can reach is lost in the volumes of white smoke which boil above the surface of the river; but above these snowy clouds noble palms from eighty to an hundred feet high rise aloft stretching their summits of dazzling green towards the clear azure of heaven. With the changes of the day these rocks and palm-trees are alternately illuminated by the brightest sunshine or projected in deep shadow on the surrounding surge. Never does a breath of wind agitate the foliage never a cloud obscure the vault of heaven. A dazzling light is ever shed through the air over the earth enameled with the loveliest flowers over the foaming stream stretching as far as the eye can reach; the spray glittering in the sunbeams forms a thousand rainbows ever changing yet ever bright beneath whose arches islands of flowers rivalling the very hues of heaven flourish in perpetual bloom. There is nothing austere or sombre as in northern climates even in this scene of elemental strife; tranquillity and repose seem to sleep on the very edge of the abyss of waters. Neither time nor the sight of the Cordilleras nor a long abode in the charming valleys of Mexico have been able to efface from my recollection the impression made by these cataracts. When I read the description of similar scenes in the East my mind sees again in clear vision the sea of foam the islands of flowers the palm-trees surmounting the snowy vapours. Such recollections like the memory of the sublimest works of poetry and the arts leave an impression which is never to be effaced and which through the whole of life is associated with every sentiment of the grand and the beautiful.""--(Vol. vii. 171-172.) Such is a specimen of the descriptive powers of the great German natural philosopher geographer botanist and traveller. When our senior wranglers from Cambridge our high-honoured men from Oxford or lady travellers from London produce a parallel to it we shall hope that England is about to compete with the continental nations in the race of illustrious travellers--but not till then. As a contrast to this we cannot resist the pleasure of laying before our readers the following striking description of night on the Orinoco in the placid part of its course amidst the vast forests of the tropical regions:-- ""The night was calm and serene and a beautiful moon shed a radiance over the scene. The crocodiles lay extended on the sand; placed in such a manner that they could watch our fire from which they never turned aside their eyes. Its dazzling evidently attracted them as it does fish crabs and the other inhabitants of the waters. The Indians pointed out to us in the sand the recent marks of the feet of three tigers a mother and two young which had crossed the open space between the forest and the water. Finding no tree upon the shore we sank the end of our oars into the sand in order to form poles for our tents. Every thing remained quiet till eleven at night when suddenly there arose in the neighbouring forest a noise so frightful that it became impossible to shut our eyes. Amidst the voice of so many savage animals which all roared or cried at once our Indians could only distinguish the howling of the jaguar the yell of the tiger the roar of the cougar or American lion and the screams of some birds of prey. When the jaguars approached near to the edge of the forest our dogs which to that moment had never ceased to bark suddenly housed; and crouching sought refuge under the shelter of our hammocks. Sometimes after an interval of silence the growl of the tiger was heard from the top of the trees followed immediately by the cries of the monkey tenants of their branches which fled the danger by which they were menaced. ""I have painted feature by feature these nocturnal scenes on the Orinoco because having but lately embarked on it we were as yet unaccustomed to their wildness. They were repeated for months together every night that the forest approached the edge of the river. Despite the evident danger by which one is surrounded the security which the Indian feels comes to communicate itself to your mind; you become persuaded with him that all the tigers fear the light of fire and will not attack a man when lying in his hammock. In truth the instances of attacks on persons in hammocks are extremely rare; and during a long residence in South America I can only call to mind one instance of a Llanero who was found torn in pieces in his hammock opposite the island of Uhagua. ""When one asks the Indians what is the cause of this tremendous noise which at a certain hour of the night the animals of the forest make they answer gaily 'They are saluting the full moon.' I suspect the cause in general is some quarrel or combat which has arisen in the interior of the forest. The jaguars for example pursue the pecaris and tapirs which having no means of defence but their numbers fly in dense bodies and press in all the agony of terror through the thickets which lie in their way. Terrified at this strife and the crashing of boughs or rustling of thickets which they hear beneath them the monkeys on the highest branches set up discordant cries of terror on every side. The din soon wakens the parrots and other birds which fill the woods they instantly scream in the most violent way and erelong the whole forest is in an uproar. We soon found that it is not so much during a full moon as on the approach of a whirlwind or a storm that this frightful concert arises among the wild beasts. 'May heaven give us a peaceable night and rest like other mortals!' was the exclamation of the monk who had accompanied us from the Rio Negro as he lay down to repose in our bivouac. It is a singular circumstance to be reduced to such a petition in the midst of the solitude of the woods. In the hotels of Spain the traveller fears the sound of the guitar from the neighbouring apartment: in the bivouacs of the Orinoco which are spread on the open sand or under the shade of a single tree what you have to dread is the infernal cries which issue from the adjoining forest.""--(Vol. vi. 222-3.) One of the most remarkable of the many remarkable features of Nature in South America is the prodigious plains which under the name of Llanos and Pampas stretch from the shores of the Atlantic to the foot of the Andes over a space from fifteen hundred to two thousand miles in breadth. Humboldt traversed them more than once in their full extent and has given the following striking description of their remarkable peculiarities. ""In many geographical works the savannahs of South America are termed _prairies_. That word however seems not properly applicable to plains of pasturage often exclusively dry though covered with grass four or five feet high. The Llanos and Pampas of South America are true _steppes_: they present a rich covering of verdure during the rainy season; but in the months of drought the earth assumes the appearance of a desert. The turf is then reduced to powder the earth gapes in huge cracks; the crocodiles and great serpents lie in a dormant state in the dried mud till the return of rains and the rise of the waters in the great rivers which flood the vast expanse of level surface awaken them from their long slumber. These appearances are often exhibited over an arid surface of fifty or sixty leagues square--every where in short where the savannah is not traversed by any of the great rivers. On the borders on the other hand of the streams and around the lakes which in the dry season retain a little brackish water the traveller meets from time to time even in the most extreme drought groves of Mauritia a species of palm the leaves of which spreading out like a fan preserve amidst the surrounding sterility a brilliant verdure. ""The steppes of Asia are all out of the region of the tropics and form in general the summit of very elevated plateaux. America also presents on the reverse of the mountains of Mexico of Peru and of Quito steppes of considerable extent. But the greatest steppes the Llanos of Cumana of Caraccas and of Meta all belong to the equinoctial zone and are very little elevated above the level of the ocean. It is this which gives them their peculiar characters. They do not contain like the steppes of Southern Asia and the deserts of Persia those lakes without issue or rivers which lose themselves in the sand or in subterraneous filtrations. The Llanos of South America incline towards the east and the south; their waters are tributary to the Orinoco the Amazon or the Rio de la Plata. ""What most strongly characterizes the savannahs or steppes of South America is the entire absence of hills or inequalities of any kind. The soil for hundreds of miles together is perfectly flat without even a hillock. For this reason the Castilian conquerors who penetrated first from Coro to the banks of the Apuré named the regions to which they came neither deserts nor savannahs nor meadows but _plains--los Llanos_. Over an extent of thirty leagues square you will often not meet with an eminence a foot high. The resemblance to the sea which these immense plains bear strikes the imagination the more forcibly in those places often as extensive as half of France where the surface is absolutely destitute of palms or any species of trees and where the distance is so great from the mountains or the forests on the shores of the Orinoco as to render neither visible. The uniform appearance which the Llanos exhibit the extreme rarity of any habitations the fatigues of a journey under a burning sun and in an atmosphere perpetually clouded with dust the prospect of a round girdle of an horizon which appears constantly to recede before the traveller the isolated stems of the palm-tree all precisely of the same form and which he despairs to reach because he confounds them with other seemingly identical trunks which appear in the distant parts of the horizon: all these causes combine to make these steppes appear even more vast than they really are. ""Yet are their actual dimensions so prodigious that it is hard to outstrip them even by the wildest flights of the imagination. The colonists who inhabit the slopes of the mountains which form their extreme boundary on the west and north see the steppes stretch away to the south and east as far as the eye can reach an interminable ocean of verdure. Well may they deem it boundless! They know that from the Delta of the Orinoco crossing the province of Vannos and from thence by the shores of the Meta the Guaviare and the Caguan you may advance in the plains at first from east to west then from north-east to south-east three hundred and eighty leagues--a distance as great as from Tombuctoo to the northern coast of Africa. They know by the report of travellers that the Pampas of Buenos Ayres--which are also Llanos destitute of trees covered with rich grass filled with cattle and wild horses--are equally extensive. They imagine according to the greater part of maps that this huge continent has but one chain of mountains the Andes which forms its western boundary; and they form a vague idea of the boundless sea of verdure stretching the whole way from the foot of this gigantic wall of rock from the Orinoco and the Apuré to the Rio de la Plata and the Straits of Magellan. Imagination itself can hardly form an idea of the extent of these plains. The Llanos from the Caqueta to the Apuré and from thence to the Delta of the Orinoco contain 17 000 square marine leagues--a space nearly equal to the area of France; that which stretches to the north and south is of nearly double the extent or considerably larger than the surface of Germany; and the Pampas of Buenos Ayres which extend from thence towards Cape Horn are of such extent that while one end is shaded by the palm-trees of the tropics the other equally flat is charged with the snows of the antarctic circle.""--(Vol. vi. 52 67.) These prodigious plains have been overspread with the horses and cattle of the Old World which originally introduced by the Spanish settlers have strayed from the enclosures of their masters and multiplied without end in the vast savannahs which nature had spread out for their reception. ""It is impossible "" says Humboldt ""to form an exact enumeration of the cattle in the Pampas or even to give an approximation to it so immensely have they augmented during

he three centuries which have elapsed since they were first introduced; but some idea of their number may be formed from the following facts in regard to such portions of these vast herds as are capable of being counted. It is calculated that in the plains from the mouths of the Orinoco to the lake Maracaybo there are 1 200 000 head of cattle 180 000 horses and 90 000 mules which belong to individual proprietors. In the Pampas of Buenos Ayres there are 12 000 000 cows and 3 000 000 horses belonging to private persons besides the far greater multitude which are wild and wander altogether beyond the reach of man. Considerable revenues are realized from the sale of the skins of these animals for they are so common that the carcasses are of scarcely any value. They are at the pains only to look after the young of their herds which are marked once a-year with the initial letter of the owner. Fourteen or fifteen thousand are marked by the greater proprietors every year of which five or six thousand are annually sold.""--(Vol. vi. 97.) The enormous number of beasts of prey which multiply with this vast accumulation of animals to be devoured as well those introduced by man as those furnished by the hand of nature renders the life of many of the inhabitants of these regions little else than a constant struggle with wild animals. Many hairbreadth escapes and heroic adventures are recounted by the natives which would pass for fabulous if not stated on such unquestionable authority as that of M. Humboldt and supported by the concurring testimony of other travellers. The number of alligators in particular on the Orinoco the Rio Apuré and their tributary streams is prodigious; and contests with them constitute a large portion of the legendary tales of the Indian and European settlers in the forest. ""The numerous wild animals "" says Humboldt ""which inhabit the forests on the shores of the Orinoco have made apertures for themselves in the wall of vegetation and foliage by which the woods are bounded out of which they come forth to drink in the river. Tigers tapirs jaguars boars besides numberless lesser quadrupeds issue out of these dark arches in the green wilderness and cross the strip of sand which generally lies between it and the edge of the water formed by the large space which is annually devastated and covered with shingle or mud during the rise of the water in the rainy season. These singular scenes have always possessed a great attraction for me. The pleasure experienced was not merely that of a naturalist in the objects of his study; it belongs to all men who have been educated in the habits of civilization. You find yourself in contact with a new world with savage and unconquered Nature. Sometimes it is the jaguar the beautiful panther of America which issues from its dark retreat; at others the hosco with its dark plumes and curved head which traverses the _sauso_ as the band of yellow sand is called. Animals of the most various kinds and opposite descriptions succeed each other without intermission. 'Es como en el Paraiso ' (It is as in Paradise ) said our pilot an old Indian of the Missions. In truth every thing here recalls that primitive world of which the traditions of all nations have preserved the recollection the innocence and happiness; but on observing the habits of the animals towards each other it is evident that the age of gold has ceased to them as well as to the human race; they mutually fear and avoid each other and in the lonely American forests as elsewhere long experience has taught all living beings that gentleness is rarely united to force."" * * * * * ""When the sands on the river side are of considerable breadth the sauso often stretches to a considerable distance from the water's edge. It is on this intermediate space that you see the crocodiles often to the number of eight or ten stretched on the sand. Motionless their huge jaws opened at right angles they lie without giving any of those marks of affection which are observable in other animals which live in society. The troop separate when they leave the coast; they are probably composed of several females and one male. The former are much more numerous than the latter from the number of males which are killed in fighting during the time of their amours. These monstrous reptiles have multiplied to such a degree that there was hardly an instant during our voyage along the whole course of the river that we had not five or six in view. We measured one dead which was lying on the sand; it was sixteen feet nine inches long. Soon after Mr Bonpland found a dead male on the shore measuring twenty-two feet three inches. Under every zone--in America as in Egypt--this animal attains the same dimensions. The Indians told us that at San Fernando scarce a year passes without two or three grown up persons usually women who are drawing from the river being devoured by these carnivorous lizards. ""They related to us an interesting story of a young daughter of Urituen who by extraordinary intrepidity and presence of mind succeeded in extricating herself from the very jaws of a crocodile. When she felt herself seized by the voracious animal in the water she felt for its eyes and thrust her fingers into them with such violence that she forced the animal to let go but not before he had torn off the lower part of her left arm. The Indian girl notwithstanding the enormous quantity of blood which she lost succeeded in swimming to shore with the hand which was left and escaped without further injury. In those desert regions where man is constantly in strife with animated or inanimated nature they daily speak of similar or corresponding means by which it is possible to escape from a tiger a great boa or a crocodile. Every one prepares himself against a danger which may any day befall him 'I knew ' said the young girl calmly when praised for her presence of mind 'that the crocodile lets go his hold when you plunge your fingers in his eyes.' Long after my return to Europe I learned that the negroes in the interior of Africa make use of the same method to escape from the alligators in the Niger. Who does not recollect with warm interest that Isaaco the guide in his last journey of the unfortunate Mungo Park was seized twice near Boulinkombro and that he escaped from the throat of the monster solely by thrusting his fingers into his two eyes?[5] The African Isaaco and the young American girl owed their safety to the same presence of mind and the same combination of ideas.""--(Vol. vi. 203 205.) If there is any one fact more than another demonstrated by the concurring testimony of travellers historians and statistical observers in all ages and quarters of the world it is that the possession of _property in land_ is the first step in social improvement and the only effectual humanizer of Savage Man. Rousseau's famous paradox ""The first Man who enclosed a field and called it mine is the author of all the social ills which followed "" is not only false but decidedly the reverse of the truth. He was the first and greatest benefactor of his species. Subsequent ills have arisen not from following but forgetting his example; and preferring to the simplicity of country life the seductions and vices of urban society. Humboldt adds his important testimony to the noble army of witnesses in all ages and from all parts of the world on this all important subject. ""The Guamos are a race of Indians whom it is extremely difficult to fix down to the soil. Like other wandering savages they are distinguished by their dirt revengeful spirit and fondness for wandering. The greater part of them live by fishing and the chase in the plains often flooded by the Apuré the Meta and the Guaviare. The nature of those regions their vast extent and entire want of any limit or distinguishing mark seems to invite their inhabitants to a wandering life. On entering again the mountains which adjoin the cataracts of the Orinoco you find among the Piroas the Macos and the Macquiritares milder manners a love of agriculture and remarkable cleanliness in the interior of their cabins. On the ridges of mountains amidst impenetrable forests man is forced to fix himself to clear and cultivate a corner of the earth. That culture demands little care and is richly rewarded: while the life of a hunter is painful and difficult. The Guamos of the Mission of Santa Barbara are kind and hospitable; whenever we entered their cottages they offered us dried fish and water.""--(Vol. vi. 219.) No spectacle in nature can exceed few equal the sublimity and magnificence of the scenery presented by the vast chain of mountains which under the name of Cordilleras Andes and Rocky Mountains traverses the whole continent of America both north and south in the neighbourhood of the Pacific Ocean. Of this prodigious pile of rocks and precipices Humboldt in another of his works has given the following admirable account:-- ""The immense chain of the Andes traversing its whole extent near the Pacific Ocean has stamped a character upon South American nature which belongs to no other country. The peculiarity which distinguishes the regions which belong to this immense chain are the successive plateaux like so many huge natural terraces which rise one above another before arriving at the great central chain where the highest summits are to be found. Such is the elevation of some of these plains that they often exceed eight and nine and sometimes reach that of twelve thousand feet above the level of the sea. The lowest of these plateaux is higher than the summit of the Pass of the Great St Bernard the highest inhabited ground in Europe which is 7545 feet above the level of the sea. But such is the benignity of the climate that at these prodigious elevations which even in the south of Europe are above the line of perpetual snow are to be found cities and towns corn-fields and orchards and all the symptoms of rural felicity. The town of Quito itself the capital of a province of the same name is situated on a plateau or elevated valley in the centre of the Andes nearly 9000 feet above the level of the sea. Yet there are found concentrated a numerous population and it contains cities with thirty forty and even fifty thousand inhabitants. After living some months on this elevated ground you experience an extraordinary illusion. Finding yourself surrounded with pasture and corn-fields flocks and herds smiling orchards and golden harvests the sheep and the lama the fruits of Europe and those of America you forget that you are as it were suspended between heaven and earth and elevated to a height exceeding that by which the European traveller makes his way from France into Italy and double that of Ben Nevis the highest mountain in Great Britain. ""The different gradations of vegetation as might be expected in a country where the earth rises from the torrid zone by a few steep ascents to the regions of eternal congelation exhibit one of the most remarkable features in this land of wonders. From the borders of the sea to the height of two thousand feet are to be seen the magnificent palm-tree the musa the heleconia the balms of Tolu the large flowering jasmin the date-tree and all the productions of tropical climates. On the arid and burning shores of the ocean flourish in addition to these the cotton-tree the magnolias the cactus the sugar-cane and all the luscious fruits which ripen under the genial sun and amidst the balmy breezes of the West India Islands. One only of these tropical children of nature the _Carosylou Andicola_ is met with far in advance of the rest of its tribe tossed by the winds at the height of seven and eight thousand feet above the sea on the middle ridges of the Cordillera range. In this lower region as nature exhibits the riches so she has spread the pestilence of tropical climates. The humidity of the atmosphere and the damp heats which are nourished amidst its intricate thickets produce violent fevers which often prove extremely destructive especially to European constitutions. But if the patient survives the first attack the remedy is at hand; a journey to the temperate climate of the elevated plateau soon restores health; and the sufferer is as much revived by the gales of the Andes as the Indian valetudinarian is by a return to Europe. ""Above the region of the palms commences the temperate zone. It is there that vegetation appears in its most delightful form luxuriant without being rank majestic yet not impervious; it combines all that nature has given of the grand with all that the poets have figured of the beautiful. The bark-tree which she has provided as the only effectual febrifuge in the deadly heats of the inferior region; the cyprus and melastoma with their superb violet blossoms; gigantic fuchsias of every possible variety and evergreen trees of lofty stature covered with flowers adorn that delightful zone. The turf is enamelled by never-fading flowers; mosses of dazzling beauty fed by the frequent rains attracted by the mountains cover the rocks; and the trembling branches of the mimosa and others of the sensitive tribe hang in graceful pendants over every declivity. Almost all the flowering shrubs which adorn our conservatories are to be found there in primeval beauty and what to Europeans appears a gigantic scale; magnificent arums of many different kinds spread their ample snowy petals above the surrounding thickets; and innumerable creepers adorned by splendid blossoms mount even to the summit of the highest trees and diffuse a perennial fragrance around. ""The oaks and trees of Europe are not found in those parts of the Andes which lie in the torrid zone till you arrive at the height of five thousand feet above the sea. It is there you first begin to see the leaves fall in winter and bud in spring as in European climates: below that level the foliage is perpetual. Nowhere are the trees so large as in this region: not unfrequently they are found of the height of a hundred and eighty or two hundred feet; their stems are from eight to fifteen feet across at their base and sometimes rise a hundred feet without a single cross branch. When so great an elevation as the plains of Quito however which is 9515 above the sea is reached they become less considerable and not larger than those usually found in the forests of Europe. If the traveller ascends two thousand feet higher to an elevation of eleven or twelve thousand feet trees almost entirely disappear; but the frequent humidity nourishes a thick covering of arbutus and other evergreens shrubs three or four feet high covered with flowers generally of a bright yellow which form a striking contrast to the dark evergreen foliage with which they are surrounded. Still higher at the height of thirteen thousand feet near the summit of the lower ranges of the Cordilleras almost constant rains overspread the earth with a verdant and slippery coating of moss; amidst which a few stunted specimens of the melastoma still exhibit their purple blossoms. A broad zone succeeds covered entirely with Alpine plants which as in the mountains of Switzerland nestle in the crevices of rocks or push their flowers generally of yellow or dark blue through the now frequent snow. Higher still grass alone is to be met with mixed with the grey moss which conducts the wearied traveller to the region of perpetual snow which in those warm latitudes is general only at an elevation of fifteen thousand feet. Above that level no animated being is found except the huge condor the largest bird that exists which there amidst ice and clouds has fixed its gloomy abode.""--(_Tableau de la Nature dans les Regions Equatoriales_ 59 140-144.) In the rhythm of prose these are the colours of poetry; but it is of poetry chastened and directed by the observation of reality and possessing the inimitable charm of being drawn from real life and sharing the freshness and variety which characterize the works of nature and distinguish them from the brightest conceptions of human fancy. As we have set out in this article with placing Humboldt at the head of modern travellers and much above any that Great Britain has produced and assigned as the main reason of this superiority the exclusive and limited range of objects on which the attention of our youth is fixed at our great universities we shall in justice to Oxford and Cambridge present the reader with a specimen of the finest passages from Clarke and Bishop Heber that he may judge for himself on their merit great as it often is when compared with that of the ardent and yet learned German. Clarke on leaving Greece gives the following brilliant summary of the leading features of that classic land:-- ""The last moments of this day were employed in taking once more a view of the superb scenery exhibited by the mountains Olympus and Ossa. They appeared upon this occasion in more than usual splendour; like one of those imaginary Alpine regions suggested by viewing a boundary of clouds when they terminate the horizon in a still evening and are gathered into heaps with many a towering top shining in fleecy whiteness. The great Olympian chain forms a line which is exactly opposite to Salonica; and even the chasm between Olympus and Ossa constituting the defile of Tempe is here visible. Directing the eye towards that chain there is comprehended in one view the whole of Pieria and Bottiæa; and with the vivid impressions which remain after leaving the country memory easily recalled into one mental picture the whole of Greece. Every reader may not duly comprehend what is meant by this: but every traveller who has beheld the scenes to which allusion is made will readily admit its truth; he will be aware that whenever his thoughts were directed to that country the whole of it recurred to his imagination as if he were actually indulged with a view of it. ""In such an imaginary flight he enters for example the defile of Tempe; and as the gorge opens to the south he beholds all the Larissian plain. This conducts him to the fields of Pharsalia whence he ascends the mountains south of Pharsalus; then crossing the bleak and still more elevated region extending from these mountains towards Lamia he views Mount Pindus far before him and descending into the plain of the Sperchius passes the straits of Thermopylæ. Afterwards ascending Mount Oeta he beholds opposite to him the snowy point of Lycorea with the rest of Parnassus and the villages and towns lying at its base: the whole plain of Elataia lying at his feet with the course of the Cephissus to the sea. Passing to the summit of Parnassus he looks down upon all the other mountains plains islands and gulfs of Greece; but especially surveys the broad bosom of Cithæron Helicon and Hymettus. Thence roaming into the depths and over all the heights of Euboea and Peloponnesus he has their inmost recesses again submitted to his contemplation. Next resting upon Hymettus he examines even in the minutest detail the whole of Attica to the Sunian promontory; for he sees it all--and all the shores of Argos Sicyon Corinth Megara Eleusis and Athens. Thus although not in all the freshness of its living colours yet in all its grandeur doth GREECE actually present itself to the mind's eye--and may the impression never be obliterated! In the eve of bidding it farewell for ever as the hope of visiting this delightful country constituted the earliest and warmest wish of his youth the author found it to be some alleviation of his regret excited by a consciousness of never returning that he could thus summon to his recollection the scenes over which he had passed.""--(_Clarke's Travels_ Vol. vii. pp. 476-478.) So far Clarke--the accomplished and famed traveller of Cambridge. We now give a favourable specimen of Bishop Heber--his companion in traversing Russia--the celebrated author in early life at Oxford of _Palestine_ the amiable and upright Bishop of Calcutta whose life if ever that could be said of mortal was literally spent in doing good. This accomplished and excellent prelate thus describes the first view of the Himalaya range and the summits of Nundidevi the highest mountain in the world neatly 5000 feet above the loftiest peak of Chimborazo. ""After coasting the lake for a mile we ascended for thirteen more by a most steep and rugged road over the neck of Mount Gaughur through a succession of glens forests and views of the most sublime and beautiful description. I never saw such prospects before and had formed no adequate idea of such. My attention was completely strained and my eyes filled with tears; every thing around was so wild and magnificent that man appeared as nothing and I felt myself as if climbing the steps of the altar of the great temple of God. The trees as we advanced were in a large proportion fir and cedar; but many were ilex and to my surprise I still saw even in these wild Alpine tracts many venerable Peepul trees on which the white monkeys were playing their gambols. Tigers used to be very common and mischievous; but since the English have begun to frequent the country they have become very scarce. There are many wolves and bears and some chamois two of which passed near us. After wending up 'A wild romantic chasm that slanted Down the steep hill athwart a cedar cover-- A savage place as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath the waning moon was haunted By woman's wailing for her demon lover ' we arrived at the gorge of the Pass in an indent between the two principal summits of Mount Gaughur near 8600 feet above the sea. And now the snowy mountains which had been so long eclipsed opened upon us in full magnificence. To describe a view of this kind is only lost labour: and I found it nearly as impossible to make a sketch of it. Nundidevi was immediately opposite Kedar Nath was not visible but Marvo was visible as a distant peak. The eastern mountains for whom I could procure no name rose into great consequence and were very glorious objects as we wound down the hill on the other side. The guides could only tell us they were a great way off and on the borders of the Chinese empire. Nundidevi the highest peak in the world is 25 689 feet above the sea 4000 higher than Chimborazo. Bhadinath and Kedernath which are merely summits of it are 22 300 feet high. They are all in the British dominions.""--(_Heber's India_ Vol. ii. pp. 193-194 209.) On comparing the descriptions of the most interesting objects in Europe and Asia--Greece and the Himalaya range--by these two distinguished British travellers with the pictures given by Humboldt of the Andes the falls of the Orinoco the forests of the same river and the expanse of the Pampas in South America every one must admit the great superiority of the German's powers of painting Nature. Neither Clarke nor Heber appear to attempt it. They tell you indeed that certain scenes were grand and beautiful certain rocks wild certain glens steep; but they make no attempt to portray their features or convey to the reader's mind the pictures which they tell you are for ever engraven on their own. This is a very great defect so great indeed that it will probably prevent their works how valuable soever as books of authority or reference from ever acquiring lasting fame. It is a total mistake to say that it is in vain to attempt describing such scenes; that is the same mistake as was formerly committed by pacific academical historians who said it was useless to attempt painting a battle for they were all like each other. How like they really are to each other has been shown by Colonel Napier and many other modern historians. We question if even the sight of the rapids of the Orinoco would make so vivid an impression on the imagination as Humboldt's inimitable description; or a journey over the Pampas or the Andes convey a clearer or more distinct idea of their opposite features than what has been derived from his brilliant pencil. It is the same with all the other scenes in nature. Description if done by a masterly hand can to an intelligent mind convey as vivid an idea as reality. What is wanting is the enthusiasm which warms at the perception of the sublime and the beautiful the poetic mind which seizes as by inspiration its characteristic features and the pictorial eye which discerns the appearances they exhibit and by referring to images known to all succeeds in causing them to be generally felt by the readers. With all Humboldt's great and transcendent merits he is a child of Adam and therefore not without his faults. The principal of these is the want of arrangement. His travels are put together without any proper method; there is a great want of indexes and tables of contents; it is scarcely possible except by looking over the whole to find any passage you want. This is a fault which in a person of his accurate and scientific mind is very surprising and the more inexcusable that it could so easily be remedied by mechanical industry or the aid of compilers and index-makers. But akin to this is another fault of a more irremediable kind as it originates in the varied excellences of the author and the vast store of information on many different subjects which he brings to bear on the subject of his travels. He has so many topics of which he is master himself that he forgets with how few comparatively his readers are familiar; he sees so many objects of enquiry--physical moral and political--in the countries which he visits that he becomes insensible to the fact that though each probably possesses a certain degree of interest to each reader yet it is scarcely possible to find one to whom as to himself they are _all alike_ the object of eager solicitude and anxious investigation. Hence notwithstanding his attempt to detail his personal narrative from the learned works which contain the result of his scientific researches he has by no means succeeded in effecting their separation. The ordinary reader who has been fascinated by his glowing description of tropical scenery or his graphic picture of savage manners is a few pages on chilled by disquisitions on the height of the barometer the disk of the sun or the electricity of the atmosphere; while the scientific student who turns to his works for information on his favourite objects of study deems them strangely interspersed with rhapsodies on glowing sunsets silent forests and sounding cataracts. It is scarcely possible to find a reader to whom all these objects are equally interesting; and therefore it is scarcely to be expected that his travels unrivalled as their genius and learning are will ever be the object of general popularity. In truth here as in all the other branches of human thought it will be found that the rules of composition are the same and that a certain _unity of design_ is essential to general success or durable fame. If an author has many different and opposite subjects of interest in his head which is not unfrequently the case with persons of the higher order of intellect and he can discant on all with equal facility or investigate all with equal eagerness he will do well to recollect that the minds of his readers are not likely to be equally discursive and that he is apt to destroy the influence or mar the effect of each if he blends them together; separation of works is the one thing needful there. A mathematical proposition a passage of poetry a page of history are all admirable things in their way and each may be part of a work destined to durable celebrity; but what should we say to a composition which should present us page about with a theorem of Euclid a scene from Shakspeare and a section from Gibbon? Unity of effect identity of train of thought similarity of ideas are as necessary in a book of travels as in an epic poem a tragedy or a painting. There is no such thing as one set of rules for the fine arts and another for works of thought or reflection. The _Iliad_ is constructed on the same principles as the _Principia_ of Newton or the history of Thucydides. What makes ordinary books of travels so uninteresting and in general so shortlived is the want of any idea of composition or unity of effect in the minds of their authors. Men and women seem to think that there is nothing more to do to make a book of travels than to give a transcript of their journals in which every thing is put down of _whatever_ importance provided only it really occurred. Scenes and adventures broken wheels and rugged rocks cataracts and omelets lakes and damp beds thunderstorms and waiters are huddled together without any other thread of connexion than the accidental and fortuitous one of their having successively come under the notice of the traveller. What should we say to any other work composed on the same principle? What if Milton after the speech of Satan in _Paradise Lost_ were to treat us to an account of his last dinner; or Shakspeare after the scene of the bones in Juliet were to tell us of the damp sheets in which he slept last night; or Gibbon after working up the enthusiasm of his readers by the account of the storming of Constantinople by the Crusaders was to favour us with a digression on the insolence of the postilions in Roumelia? All the world would see the folly of this: and yet this is precisely what is constantly done by travellers and tolerated by the public because it is founded on nature. Founded on nature! Is every thing that is actually true or real fit to be recorded or worthy of being recounted? Sketches from nature are admirable things and are the only foundation for correct and lasting pictures; but no man would think of interposing a gallery of paintings with chalk drawings or studies of trees. Correctness fidelity truth are the only secure bases of eminence in all the arts of imitation; but the light of genius the skilful arrangement the principles of composition the selection of topics are as necessary in the writer of travels as in the landscape painter the historian or the epic poet. FOOTNOTES: [2] We lately heard of a young man who had gone through the examination at Cambridge with distinction enquiring ""whether the Greek church _were Christians?_"" What sort of a traveller would he make in the East or Russia? [3] Lady Londonderry's description of Moscow is the best in the English language. [4] We have translated all the passages ourselves. A very good translation of Humboldt's _Personal Narrative_ was published many years ago by Miss H. Williams; but we could not resist the pleasure of trying to transfer to English such noble specimens of descriptive eloquence. [5] Park's _Last Mission to Africa_ 1815 p. 89. HAKEM THE SLAVE. A TALE EXTRACTED FROM THE HISTORY OF POLAND. CHAPTER I. Albert Glinksi the powerful ostentatious and intriguing Duke of Lithuania was passing distinguished by his glancing plume and gorgeous mantle through one of the more retired streets of the city of Cracow at this time (A.D. 1530) the capital of Poland when a domestic wearing the livery of the palace deferentially accosted him. ""Her Majesty "" he said ""commands me to deliver these tablets into your hands; you dropped them in the palace."" ""I dropped no tablets "" replied the duke; but instantly added ""Yes they are mine--Give them me."" He took from the hands of the domestic certain tablets of ivory which folded into a case of gold exquisitely wrought by one of the most skilful artists of Italy and dismissed the bearer with a liberal gratuity for his services. ""Ha! my excellent Bona! youthful bride of our too aged monarch Sigismund!"" said the duke to himself when he was left alone. ""Each day some new device. What have we in these tablets? Here in the corner of each leaf I see a solitary figure finely pencilled in which to any other eye than mine would mean nothing but which tells me that at eight o'clock this evening you will receive your favoured duke. So so! But charming Bona! it is not love--loveable as you are--it is not love--it is ambition gives its zest and must bring the recompense to this perilous intrigue. The Duke of Lithuania is no hot-brained youth to be entangled and destroyed by a woman's smiles. To have a month's _happiness_ as men phrase it and then the midnight dagger of a jealous monarch--I seek no such adventures. It is the crown of Poland--yes the crown--that you must help me to fair lady."" As he stood reflecting on his ambitious schemes his rival in the state Count Laski minister and chancellor of the king passed by him on his way to the palace. The duke assuming a frank and cordial manner called to him. Laski paused. ""What would the Duke of Lithuania?"" he asked in his usual calm and reserved manner. ""Peace!"" replied t

e duke--""amicable terms. Political opponents it seems we are destined to be. The world gives us out as the selected champions of two hostile factions. You affect the commons I side with the nobility. Be it so. But there exists between us I hope a mutual respect; and it would be my greatest boast if in spite of this political antagonism I might reckon Count Laski amongst my personal friends."" A derisive smile played upon the countenance of the chancellor as he replied--""Such friendship my lord as is consistent with perpetual strife--open and concealed--shall if it please you subsist between us. Pardon me but we prate a silly jargon when we talk of private friendship and public hostility."" ""At all events "" rejoined the duke ""political rivalry does not exclude the practice of the courtesies of life. It has been reported to me that you admire the marble statue of a nymph which an Italian sculptor has lately wrought for me. I on my part have envied you the possession of a certain Arab slave a living statue a moving bronze that you have amongst your retainers. Let us like Homeric heroes make an exchange. Give me your statue-man your swart Apollo and accept from me what many have been pleased to call the living statue."" Glinski had a secret motive for the acquisition of this slave: his known fidelity his surprising address and power had protected the life of the minister against more than one scheme of assassination. ""The exchange "" replied Laski ""is too much in my favour. Your Italian marble would purchase a hundred slaves. It would be a present in disguise; and you know my rule--even from his Majesty himself I never _receive_."" ""Yes we know your tyrannous munificence; but this "" said the duke with a smile ""shall be pure barter."" ""What say you then "" said the count ""to those golden tablets which you hold in your hand? Give me leave to look at them. They might suit my pedantic way of life. But "" added he as he examined their delicate workmanship ""came you honestly by this toy my lord? What fair frailty have you cheated of this knack that never I will be sworn was a man's marketing?"" ""I am glad to hear so grave a gentleman indulge so pleasant a view "" said the duke. As Count Laski was handling the tablets he touched whether by accident or design a spring that had not been observed by him to whom the present had been sent. The outer case flew back and disclosed a miniature of the queen! ""I have been indiscreet "" said the count and immediately folded up and returned the tablets. ""This is perilous ware to deal in Duke of Lithuania. Have you aught else in the way of honest barter to propose?"" ""What you may infer "" said the duke reddening with anger and grievously embarrassed at his discovery--""What you may infer from this silly bauble I shall not be at the pains to enquire. I addressed you my lord in courteous and amicable terms; you have ill responded to them; our conversation had better close here."" ""As you will "" said the chancellor bowing; and he continued his way towards the palace with the same deliberate step with which he was proceeding when accosted by the duke. ""He is master of our secret "" muttered the duke. ""He or I""---- CHAPTER II. In an apartment of the palace fitted up with every luxury her native Italy could supply sat Bona the young and beautiful queen of Poland. She is known to have transplanted into that northern clime not only the arts and civilization of her own genial soil but also the intrigue and voluptuousness and the still darker crimes for which it was celebrated. Daughter of the crafty Sforza Duke of Milan educated in a city and at a court where pleasure reigned predominant married out of policy to a monarch many years older than her own father it was almost to be expected that she should seek in the society of some gay cavalier a compensation for this banishment to a northern country and a sexagenarian spouse. Nor had she hesitated long in her choice. Albert Glinski Duke of Lithuania who though he was the father of a son ripening into manhood was still in the vigour of life and surpassed all his younger rivals in grace of manner and charm of conversation had soon fixed her regard and won whatever of affection or love the luxurious princess had to bestow. She now sat waiting his arrival. Punctually at the hour of eight he entered. If any observer could have watched the duke as he traversed the corridor which led to the queen's apartment he would have had great difficulty in believing that it was a favoured lover that was passing before him; so serious a brow did he wear and so deep an air of abstraction was there on his countenance. No sooner however did he enter that apartment than by a sudden effort his countenance lit up; his manner grew free and unrestrained and he assumed that mingled tone of gaiety and pathos so effective with the fair sex. Never had the queen felt more entirely convinced of the merits of her cavalier; never had she more thoroughly approved of the choice she had made. When this favourable disposition was at its height the duke adopting gradually a more serious tone of conversation said-- ""Has it never occurred to you charming Bona that the most exalted of your sex share with the humblest this one privilege--love alone must be the motive which brings a suitor to their feet. That passion must be genuine must be fever-high which makes a subject quite forget his Queen in the lovely woman before him and tempts him to dare the vengeance of a Monarch as well as of a husband."" ""True there is danger--perhaps to both of us "" she replied ""but it daunts us not."" ""No;--but it is at hand."" ""What mean you Glinski?"" ""We are betrayed."" ""How?--by whom?"" ""How or by whom it matters little; but that subtle demon Count Laski knows that which in his hands is a warrant for our destruction."" ""What is to be done? We will bribe him. All my jewels all my hoards shall go to purchase his silence."" ""Bribe Laski! bribe the north wind! bribe destiny itself whose nature it is to distribute good and ill but to feel neither. No but I would have a dagger in his throat before the night were passed but that his short light slumbers are guarded by a slave of singular power whom the villains fear to attack. I had meant to beg or buy of him this same fierce automaton but something broke off the treaty."" ""We will poison the mind of the king against him: he shall be dismissed from all his offices."" ""That poison is too slow. Besides if he once communicate his suspicions to the king--which at this very moment he may be doing--see you not that it is no longer the minister but the jealous monarch that we have to guard against. Hear me Bona one of two fates must now be mine. Death--or thy hand and with it the crown of Poland. Do not start. There is for _me_ no middle station. You may be safe. A few tears a few smiles and the old king will lapse into his dotage."" ""You speak in riddles Glinski; I comprehend nothing of all this."" ""Yet it is clear enough. Thus it stands: the Duke of Lithuania loved the wife of Sigismund king of Poland. Love!--I call to witness all the saints in heaven!--love alone prompted his daring suit. But now that fortune has first favoured and then betrayed him where think you does his safety lie? Where but in the bold enterprises of ambition? His only place of refuge is a throne. He who has won a queen must protect her with a sceptre. You must be mine--my very queen--you must extend your hand and raise me to the royalty of Poland or see my blood flow ignominiously upon the scaffold."" ""I extend my hand!"" exclaimed the agitated queen ""how can a feeble woman give or take away the crown of Poland?"" ""Him who wears the crown--she can take away."" ""Murder the king!"" shrieked Bona. ""Or sentence me "" replied the duke. It was no affected horror that the queen here displayed. Though at a subsequent period of her life if history speaks true her imagination had grown familiar with deeds of this very nature and she had become skilful in the art of poisoning she was at this time young and unpractised in crime and received its first suggestions with the horror which it naturally inspires. She had sought for pleasure only in the society of Glinski; it was a cruel disappointment it was a frightful surprise to find herself thrust suddenly with unsandaled feet on the thorny path of ambition. She sank back on the couch where they had both been sitting and hiding her face in both her hands remained in that position while the duke continued to unfold his schemes at greater length. He represented to her that the possession of the duchy of Lithuania the inhabitants of which were distinguished by their bravery and their turbulence would enable him--should the king opportunely die--to seize upon the vacant throne of Poland;--that he had numerous and powerful friends among the nobility;--that he had already drawn together his Lithuanians under pretence of protecting the frontier from the incursion of predatory bands;--that he intended immediately to place himself at their head and march towards Cracow. Now if at this moment the throne should suddenly become vacant what power on earth could prevent him from ascending it and claiming the hand of his then veritable queen? And then he expatiated on the happiness they should enjoy when they should live in fearless union ""Like gods together careless of mankind."" ""What is this "" exclaimed Bona suddenly starting up--""what is this you would tempt me to? You dare not even _name_ the horrid deed you would have me _commit_. Avaunt! you are a devil Albert Glinski!--you would drag me to perdition."" Then falling in tears upon his neck she implored him not to tempt her further. ""Oh Albert! Albert!"" she cried ""I beseech you plunge me not into this pit of guilt. You _can_! I feel you can. Have mercy! I implore you I charge you on your soul convert me not into this demon. Spare me this crime!"" ""Is it I alone "" said the duke who strove the while by his caresses to soothe and pacify her--""Is it I alone who have brought down upon us this distressful alternative? Neither of us while love decoyed us on step by step dreamed of the terrible necessity towards which it was hourly conducting us. But here we _are_--half-way up and the precipice below. We must rush still upwards. There is safety only on the summit. Pause and we fall. Oh did you think that you a queen could play as securely as some burgher's wife the pleasant comedy of an amorous intrigue? No no; you must queen it even in crime. High station and bold deed become each other. We are committed Bona. It is choice of life or death. His death or _ours_. For--scarcely dare I breathe the thought--the sudden revenge of your monarch husband whose jealousy at least age has not tamed _may_ execute its purpose before his dotage has had time to return."" ""Where do you lead me? What shall I become?"" cried the bewildered queen. ""I have loved thee Albert but I hate not him."" ""I ask thee not to _hate_""---- ""They married me to Sigismund out of state policy. You I have chosen for the partner of my heart and I will protect you to the uttermost. Let things rest there--'tis well enough."" ""We will consult further of our plans sweet Bona "" said the duke and circling her with his arm he led the weeping queen into an adjoining room. The victory he felt was his. CHAPTER III. The scene changes to an apartment of a very different style. We enter the house of the chancellor; but it is not the chancellor himself who is first presented to our view. In an antique Gothic chamber in the decoration and structure of which the most costly material had been studiously united with the severest simplicity of taste sat Maria the only daughter and child of Count Laski. She sat at her embroidery. The embroidery however had fallen upon her lap; she leaned back resigned to her meditations in a massive arm-chair covered with purple velvet which it is impossible not to think must have felt something like pride and pleasure as her slight and lovely form sank into it. It was a long reverie. In an angle of this lofty room at some distance but not out of the range of clear vision stood motionless as a statue the slave Hakem. His arms were folded on his breast his eye rested without as it seemed a power to withdraw it on the beautiful figure of the young girl before him. It was one of those long intense looks which show that the person on whom it is fixed is still more the object of meditation than of vision--where it is the soul that looks. Hakem gazed like a devotee upon the sacred image of his saint. Maria quite unconscious of this gaze pursued her meditations. Her eye caught the hour-glass that stood on a small table beside her. ""Sand after sand "" said she musing to herself--""Sand after sand thought after thought. The same sand ever trickling there; the same thought ever coursing through my mind. Oh love! love! They say it enlarges the heart; I think it contracts it to a single point."" ""Hakem "" she said after a pause and turning towards the slave ""you are true to my father will you be true also to me?"" ""To her father!"" he murmured to himself ""as if""----And then checking himself and speaking aloud he answered--""The Christians are not so true to your sweet namesake the Holy Virgin whom they adore as I will be to you."" ""A simple promise will suffice "" said Maria. ""You have Hakem--let me say it without offence--a style of language--Eastern I suppose--hyperbolical--which either I must learn to pardon or you must labour to reform. It does not suit our northern clime."" ""I am mute. Yet lady you have sometimes chid me for my long silence."" ""And is it for your _much_ speaking that I chide you now?"" said the maiden with a smile. ""You will stand half the day like a statue there; and when spoken to answer with a gesture only--so that many have thought you really dumb. Much speaking is certainly not thy fault."" ""I understand. The slave speaks as one who felt the indescribable charm of thy presence. It is a presumption worthy of death. Shall I inflict the punishment?"" ""Is this amendment of thy fault good Hakem or repetition of it?"" ""I await your commands. What service can Hakem render?"" But Maria relapsed again into silence. She seemed to hesitate in making the communication she had designed. Meantime the arrival of her father was announced and the slave left the apartment. Never man felt more tender love for his daughter than did the proud high-minded minister for this his beautiful Maria. His demeanour towards her from childhood upwards had been one of unalterable uninterrupted fondness. He knew no other mood no other tone in which he could have addressed her. Did the grave chancellor then--some one who in his way also is very grave may ask--did he by constant fondness _spoil_ his child? No. It is the fondness which is _not_ constant that spoils. It is the half-love of weak and irritable natures who are themselves children amongst their children who can themselves be petulant selfish and capricious--it is this that mars a temper. But calm and unalterable love--oh believe it not that such ever spoilt a child! Maria grew up under the eye of affection and the ever-open hand of paternal love; and she herself seemed to have learned no other impulses but those of affection and generosity. Alas for fathers! when the child grows into the budding woman and by her soft intelligent companionship fills the house with gladness and the heart with inappreciable content then comes the gay permitted spoiler--comes the lover with his suit--his honourable suit--and robs them of their treasure. The world feels only with the lover--with the youth and the fair maiden that he wins. For the bereaved parent not a thought! No one heeds the sigh that breaks from him as amidst festivities and mirth and congratulatory acclamations he sees his daughter with all her prized affections borne off from him in triumph for ever. There was on this occasion in the manner of Laski towards his child an evident sadness. It was not that the political horizon was darkening; he had never permitted _that_ to throw its gloom over his companionship with his daughter. It was because he had grounds to believe that the events which threatened the tranquillity of Poland threatened also the peace of his daughter whose affections he had divined were no longer exclusively his own. She observing his emotion and attributing it to some untoward event in the political world could not refrain from expressing the wish that he would quit the harassing affairs of state and live wholly in his home. ""I would long since have done so "" he replied ""if personal happiness had been the sole aim of my existence. But I have a taskwork to accomplish--one I think which God by fitting me thereto has pointed out as mine. Else it is indeed here with thee beside me that I find all that can bear the name of happiness. The rest of life is but sternest duty--strife hostility contempt. But away with this gloomy talk--what gossip is there stirring in your idle world Maria?"" ""Pray is there war forward?"" ""I hope not. Why do you ask?"" ""A maid of mine who in the city gathers news as busily as bees in the open fields their honey""---- ""Your simile I fear would scarce hold good as to the _honey_."" ""No in faith; and there is no honey in the news she brings. She tells me that a camp is forming in the frontiers between Poland and Lithuania and that Augustus Glinski is sent there to command the troops. Is this true?"" ""It is; and she might have added that the duke himself secretly left the city last night to place himself at their head."" ""Is it a dangerous service?"" ""The service on which the duke has entered and into which he misleads his son _is_ dangerous. You tremble Maria. It was no maiden nor the tattle of the town that brought you this. When did you last see or hear from him--from Augustus Glinski?"" ""Believe me "" said Maria while a crimson blush suddenly spread over her countenance ""if I have concealed any thing from you it was not from craft nor subtlety nor fear but from""---- ""From a mere delicacy a simple bashfulness "" said the father coming to her assistance. ""I know it well. Had you a mother living I would bid you confide these sentiments of your heart to her and to her only; but having no other parent make me your confidant. Trust me you shall not find a woman's heart more open to your griefs your fears your joys than mine shall be. Make me your sole confidant--you love this young Augustus?"" ""When I was at my aunt's we met each other often--but to you my father I have ever referred him as our final arbiter. I need not say that the known political rivalry between his father and yourself has made him backward in addressing you."" ""All men speak well of Augustus Glinski. I blame you not my child; I only tremble for you. The duke his father is a restless bold ambitious man who will lead him--honourable as he is but too young to judge or to resist his parent--into treasonable enterprises. Both father and son--if they will play the rebel and bring down war on Poland--I stand prepared to meet. The sword of justice shall sweep them from the earth. But if thy heart my child is doomed to bleed in this encounter the wound will not be more yours than mine. There shall be no secrets between us. I will protect thee all I can; and if I cannot prevent thy sorrows I will at least share them."" A low tap was here heard at the door and a page made his appearance. On seeing the minister the stripling was about to retire. Maria however called him in and bade him deliver his message. ""You come "" she said to the youth who still hesitated to speak--""you come from the younger Glinski: speak openly--what is it he has commissioned you to say?"" ""This my lady "" answered the page ""that he has ridden in all haste from the camp--that he must quit the city again before nightfall and craves an audience if only for one minute."" Maria looked towards her father and thus referred the answer to him. Count Laski was silent. ""Will you not "" said his daughter ""tell this messenger whether his master may come here or not?"" ""My child he _cannot!_ he is at this moment under my arrest. Return sir page "" and he motioned him from the room--""but return to the fortress of----; you will find your master there a prisoner under charge of high treason."" ""Oh spare him! spare him!"" cried Maria as she sank back almost senseless with terror and alarm. ""My child! my child!"" exclaimed the minister in heart-breaking anguish as he bent over his weeping daughter. CHAPTER IV. After having in some measure soothed the terrors of his daughter the chancellor called to him his trusty Hakem. He briefly explained to him that the Duke of Lithuania was at that moment in open rebellion against his Majesty and placed in his hands a warrant for his execution. ""The law cannot reach him through its usual servants "" he said; ""it is a bold enterprise I propose to you--to decapitate a general at the head of his troops."" If this was a measure which hardly another minister than Laski would have contemplated it was one also which he would have hardly found another than Hakem to undertake and accomplish. The bravery of this man was all but miraculous and was only rescued from madness by the extreme skill and address by which it was supported. In battle he rushed on danger as a bold and delighted swimmer plunges in the waves which to him are as innocuous as the breeze that is freshening them. Yet when the excitement was passed he relapsed into a state of apparent apathy. He had been taken captive in one of those engagements at this time not unfrequent between the Poles and the Turks with the latter of whom he had served as a soldier of fortune. To say that he was taken prisoner is hardly correct; for he was found lying half dead on the field of battle and was brought home by the Poles by some caprice of compassion with their own sick and dying. Neither was it constraint that held him beneath the roof of Laski or in the nominal condition of a slave for at all times escape would have been easy to him. It was either attachment to those who lived beneath that roof or an equal indifference to every thing without or beyond it that retained him there. To propose to Hakem some bold and perilous enterprise was to offer him one of the few pleasures to which he was open. He accepted therefore of the strange commission now entrusted to him without hesitation; stipulating only that he might take from the stables of the king a horse which was much celebrated for its amazing power and fleetness. Mounted upon this incomparable steed he pursued his way to the camp of the Duke of Lithuania. On his journey he had made trial of its speed and yet had husbanded its strength. Arrived at the plain where the insurgent army was encamped he there lay in ambush for some time till he saw where the duke passing his troops in review rode somewhat in advance of what in the language of modern warfare we should call his staff. Hakem set spurs to his horse and rushed upon him with the velocity of lightning his drawn cimeter flashing in the sun and his loud cry of defiance calling the duke to his defence. Thus challenged he put his lance in rest to meet his furious assailant. But the thrust of the lance was avoided and the next moment the head of the duke was seen to roll upon the field. The Arab wheeled round and without quitting his steed picked up the severed head placed it on his saddle-bows and darted off fleeter than the wind. A cry of horror and a shout of pursuit arose from the whole army who were spectators of this scene. Every horse was in motion. But where the contest is one of speed of what avail are numbers? In the whole camp there was not a steed which could compete with that on which the solitary fugitive was mounted and was already seen scouring the plain at a distance. As he fled a paper was observed to fall from his hands which the wind bore amongst his innumerable pursuers; it was the judicial warrant that had been thus strangely executed. Meanwhile at the palace the royal mind of Sigismund was not a little disquieted and alarmed by this sudden rebellion of the powerful Duke of Lithuania. That alarm would not have been diminished had he been aware that this open rebellion was to be aided by a secret domestic treason which in his own palace was lying in ambush for his life. The queen whilst watching her opportunity to perform her part in this criminal enterprise affected to throw all the blame of this formidable rebellion on the unpopularity of the minister Laski whose measures indeed the duke proclaimed as the main motive of his conduct. Matters were in this condition when Count Laski attended by his slave entered the royal apartment. There were present beside the queen several of the nobility--all prepared by the insinuations and address of the queen to give but a cold greeting to the minister. ""In good time "" said the queen ""Count Laski makes his appearance. We wish to know how you will extricate his Majesty from the peril in which your unpopular counsels have thrust him. With what forces will you meet the Duke of Lithuania? Now when there is need of the brave chivalry of Poland to defend the king from rebellion we find the nobility alienated from the crown by your unwise and arrogant and plebeian policy. But let us hear what is the excellent advice what is the good intelligence that you now bring us?"" ""The Duke of Lithuania madam "" said the chancellor slightly raising his voice but preserving the same calm dignity as if he had been presiding in a high court of justice--""the Duke of Lithuania is in open manifest rebellion; and rebellion is in the laws of all nations punished by death."" ""Punished!"" said the queen scoffingly: ""are you speaking of some trembling caitiff who holds up his naked hand at your bar of justice? Punished! you must conquer him."" ""Your Majesty will be pleased to hear "" continued the chancellor with a look full of significance ""that Albert Glinski Duke of Lithuania whose treason was open and proclaimed has been by the royal warrant sentenced""---- Count Laski paused. ""Sentenced!"" exclaimed Bona and repeated her scornful laugh which this time but ill concealed a certain vague terror that was rising in her mind. ""Is our chancellor mad or does he sport with us? This rebel whom you talk of sentencing--of condemning we presume to the block--stands at the head of a greater army than his Majesty can at this moment assemble."" ""And the sentence "" pursued the minister ""has been executed!"" As he pronounced these words the slave Hakem advanced and drawing aside his robe which had hitherto concealed it he held up by the hair the severed head of the Duke of Lithuania. There ran a thrill of horror through the assembly. But the next moment a loud hysterical shriek drew the attention of all parties to the queen: she had fallen insensible at the feet of the king. The council was abruptly dismissed. CHAPTER V. Thus far the cause of the chancellor had prospered. Poland had been preserved from the horrors of a civil war. The king's life had also been saved and a great crime prevented; the career of assassination and of poisoning into which the queen afterwards entered was at all events postponed. As a public man the minister was fully triumphant. But the minister was a father; at this side he was vulnerable; and fortune dealt her blow with cruel and unexpected severity. We have seen with what stern fidelity to his ministerial duty and at how great a peril to his daughter's happiness the chancellor had arrested Augustus Glinski. The rebellion quelled the author of it punished and decapitated there seemed no just motive for holding longer in imprisonment a youth who could not be accused of having any guilty participation in the crime of his father. He accordingly proposed his release. But the anger of the king against the late duke who to his political offence had added that of personal ingratitude (for it was Sigismund himself who had bestowed on him the powerful duchy of Lithuania ) was still unappeased and he insisted upon including the son in the guilt and punishment of his parent. The representations of the minister were here unavailing; he would listen to nothing but the dictates of his own vindictive feelings. Count Laski detailed the manner of his arrest and explained the singular interest he felt in the pardon and liberation of this youth; adding that if Angustus Glinski died upon the scaffold he feared the life of his daughter. But even this was unavailing. The old monarch thought he was displaying a great acuteness when he detected as he imagined in this plea of a daughter's happiness a scheme of selfish aggrandizement. ""Ha! ha!"" said he ""so the wind sits in that quarter. A good match--duchess of Lithuania! I would rather you asked for the dukedom yourself and married your daughter to another."" It was in vain that the minister again repeated his simple and true statement; it was in vain that he limited his request to the life of the younger Glinski consenting to the forfeiture of his title and estates; Sigismund was resolved this time not to be _overreached_ by his subtle minister. The language of entreaty was new to Laski; he had tried it and had failed. It was new to Laski to endure tamely the misconstruction of his motives or the least impeachment of his veracity. He had no other resource no other response left than the resignation of his ministerial office. But the obstinacy and anger of the king were proof against this also. The danger which threatened his reign had been dispelled. He could afford to be self-willed. He would not be controlled. In short Count Laski left the royal presence--a discarded minister. In a monarchy uncontrolled and unaided by representative assemblies the power which is secured perhaps to one of the weakest of men or women perhaps to a child has often struck the observer of human affairs as a strange anomaly. But the insecure and precarious foundation of the power of the great minister in such a monarchy is scarcely less curious to contemplate. The sagacious counsellor the long-experienced governor who has for years wielded the powers of the state may be reduced to obscurity and impotence by a word--a word of puerile passion kindled perhaps by a silly intrigue. A great ruler is displaced at the caprice of a dotard. When Count Laski entered the presence of the king he was in reality the governor of Poland; Europe acknowledged him amongst the controllers and directors of human affairs; his country expected many signal improvements at his hands; the individual happiness of thousands depended upon him; but this power which had devised great schemes and which was the rock of support to so many could itself be shaken and overthrown in a moment by the splenetic humour of an angry old man. Who shall describe the grief and despair of Maria when she heard of the cruel resolution which the king had taken of the dreadful fate which threatened Augustus Glinski? As she sat this time in her Gothic chamber and in her accustomed chair what a mortal paleness had settled upon her countenance! Her eye glared out and was fixed on the vacant wall as if a spirit had arisen before her and arrested her regard. There _was_ a spirit there. It was the form of the young Augustus whom she saw withering and wasting in his dungeon; a dungeon which would deliver him up only to the scaffold. After the events which had occurred all idea of a union with Augustus presuming that his life should be spared had been resigned. How could he on whom the maxims of that age especially imposed the duty of revenging his parent ally himself to her? How could he choose for his second father the very man who had deprived him of his first and natural parent? If she could but hear that he had broken loose from imprisonment that he was but safe--this was all that she felt entitled to wish or to pray for. It need hardly be added that it was additional bitterness to reflect that but for his unhappy attachment to herself his arrest and captivity would never have taken place. Again in the same angle of the apartment the Arab slave might have been seen standing silent and motionless as before regarding with deep interest and commiseration the beautiful daughter of Laski. The secret which she was about on one occasion to betray to Hakem had now betrayed itself to his own observation. She loved--she loved the son of him whom he had assassinated or executed. There was a profound sadness on the features of the slave.

The silence of the room was suddenly broken by Maria who turning to the slave exclaimed in a tone of anguish--""Hakem you must save him! you must save him!"" This was said in mere desperation certainly not with any distinct hope that it was in the power of Hakem to obey. When therefore she heard his voice reply in a calm but saddened tone ""I will!"" she was almost as much surprised as if she had not addressed herself to him. She rose to be assured that it was he who spoke; to bid him repeat his consolatory promise; to question him on his means of fulfilling it: but Hakem was no longer there; he had suddenly quitted the apartment. It seemed as if some voice in the air had sported with her grief. CHAPTER VI. But it was no voice that mocked at her grief. Hakem proceeded that very day to the palace and sought an interview with the queen. The guard or sentinel to whom he addressed himself laughed at his request. ""Give her majesty this paper "" said the slave ""and refuse to deliver it at your peril."" The paper was forwarded to the queen--Hakem was immediately ushered into her presence. ""You promise here "" she said pointing to the missive she had received ""to revenge the death of the Duke of Lithuania. I presume some private motive of revenge against the minister and your master prompts your conduct and you seek from me in additional recompense for an act which you have already resolved on but which you think will be grateful to me. Is it not so? ""Your Majesty is penetrating."" ""And this recompense what is it?"" ""That which will cost you nothing though you alone can accomplish it--the release and pardon of Augustus Glinski. Obtain this from the king--which to you will be easy--and with my own hand I will assassinate the assassin (for such you will doubtless deem him) of the Duke of Lithuania."" ""I will not ask what are your motives in all this nor how you have divined my wishes but revenge the death of the Duke of Lithuania and far more than the liberation of the young Augustus shall be your reward."" ""I ask and will accept no other. But his rescue must _first_ be obtained."" The queen had no objection to urge against this condition; although she had hitherto for reasons which may be easily surmised avoided any appearance of interest in the fate of Augustus. She acquiesced therefore in Hakem's demand; surprised indeed that she should have obtained the gratification of her revenge at so slight a cost. What the influence and the reasonings of the minister could not effect was very speedily brought about by the blandishments of the queen. Augustus Glinski was pardoned and restored to a portion of his father's wealth and dignities. The warrant for the release of the prisoner was conveyed to the hand of Hakem together with a message that he was now expected to perform his part of the engagement. Hakem bearing this warrant and accompanied by one of the officers of justice proceeded to the prison of Augustus and having liberated him carried him forthwith to the house of the chancellor; the young man who as yet hardly apprehended that he was master of his own movements permitting himself without remonstrance to be led by his new conductor. The chancellor and his daughter sat together in the same apartment to which we have already twice introduced the reader. Had his daughter been happy what a release for Laski had been his enfranchisement from public office! ""Banishment from court!"" he exclaimed to one who would have condoled with him--""make way there for a liberated prisoner!"" But the grief of his daughter who strove in vain to check her flowing tears entirely pre-occupied his mind. These tears he never chid; her sadness he never rebuked; he shared it and by renewed kindness strove to alleviate it. They sat in silence together when Hakem entering made his obeisance and presented Augustus to the astonished Maria. ""I have saved him!"" was all he said. The joy of Maria was extreme. It was soon however followed by a painful embarrassment. Amongst all parties there was a sad conflict of feeling. Augustus would have given worlds to have thrown himself at the feet of Maria; but if the memory of what had occurred had not been sufficient there stood her father in person before him--the author of his own father's death. Hakem broke the silence. ""Beautiful being!"" he said kneeling on one knee before Maria ""whom I have in secret worshipped whom alone to worship I have lingered here in the guise and office of a slave--you bade me save _him_--and I have! Is there any thing further for thy happiness which the Arab can accomplish?"" ""No Hakem and I feel already overburdened with gratitude for this service you have rendered me--_how_ rendered I cannot as yet divine. There is no other service now I think that any one can render me."" As she spoke her eye had already turned to the spot where Augustus hesitating to approach or to retreat was still standing. ""No other service! But by the living God there is!"" cried Hakem starting to his feet. His countenance flushed with sudden excitement; his eye kindled with some generous sentiment. ""Hear me gentle sir "" he said addressing himself to Augustus. ""Nature calls for vengeance--is it not so? Christian and Mahometan we all resemble in this. Blood cries for blood. But the hand that slew your father--it was mine. I am the first and direct object of your resentment. Let now one victim suffice. Is the Arab too ignoble a victim? That Arab is the preserver of your life at what cost you may one day learn. Let this enhance the value of the sacrifice. Over my blood let peace be made between you."" Turning once more and bowing with deep emotion before Maria he then with a movement quick as thought plunged a poniard in his bosom and fell to the ground. ""Go tell the queen "" he said to the officer of justice who had stood a mute spectator of this scene--""tell her what you have witnessed; and add that my promise has been fulfilled. And you Augustus Glinski--will not this suffice? The assassin of the duke lies here before you. Oh take her by the hand!"" Then looking his last towards Maria he murmured--""And I too--loved!"" and closed his eyes in death. The prayer of Hakem was granted. It was impossible to demand another sacrifice--impossible not to accept this as full atonement to the spirit of revenge. Over the body of Hakem whom all lamented and admired peace was made. The generous object of the slave was fully accomplished. His death procured the long happiness of Maria. THE LAY OF STARKÀTHER. [The following lines are founded on the account given by Saxo-Grammaticus (Lib. VIII.) of the guilt penitence and death of Starkàther a fabulous Scandinavian hero famous throughout the North for his bodily strength and warlike achievements as well as for his poetical genius of which traces are still to be found in the metrical traditions and phraseology of his country. According to the old legend the existence of Starkàther was prolonged for three lifetimes in each of which he was doomed to commit some act of infamy; but this fiction has not here been followed out. Oehlenschläger's drama bearing the name of this hero has many beauties; but deviates widely from Saxo's story of his death.] It was an aged man went forth with slow and tottering tread The frosts of many a Northland Yule lay thick upon his head; A staff was in his outstretched hand to lead him on his way And vainly rolled his faded eyes to find the light of day. Yet in that ancient form was seen the pride of other years In ruined majesty and night the HERO there appears. The awful brow the ample breast a shelter from the foe And there the massive weight of arm that dealt the deadly blow. He stopped a passing stranger's steps and thus his purpose told -- ""See here the twin swords by my side and see this purse of gold; Thy weapon choose to cope with One who should no longer live And by an easy slaughter earn the guerdon I would give. ""A hundred winters o'er my soul have shed their gathering gloom And still I seek but seek in vain an honourable tomb; With friendly enmity consent to quench this lingering breath And give to crown a warrior's life one boon--a warrior's death. ""Of matchless might and fearless soul with powers of song sublime I spread afar my name and fame in every Gothic clime; Those godlike gifts were treasured long from blot and blemish clear But one dark act of fraudful guilt bedimmed my bright career. ""When Olo sat the people's choice in Sealand's kingly seat And trampled liegemen and the laws beneath his tyrant feet His nobles placed this glittering hoard within my yielding hand And bade me rid them of a rule that wide enslaved the land. ""I watched my royal victim well I tracked his every path And found him with a faithless guard within the secret bath; Yet rather had I faced an host fast rushing to the fight Than the eye of that unarmèd man there gleaming bold and bright. ""The fear of my defenceless foe awhile unnerved my arm But thoughts of glory or of gain dispelled the better charm; The water reddened with his blood I left the lifeless corse To meet myself a living death --a lifetime of remorse. ""In every feud in every fray on every field of strife I since have fondly sought release from such a loathèd life; The foremost who suborned my crime have perished at my feet But none had heart or hand to strike the blow I longed to meet. ""Even as I am I seek the fight and offer as the prize The untasted bait that bribed my soul nor thou the boon despise; Else like some worn-out beast of prey Starkàther soon must lie Nor gain the bliss that Odin gives to men who nobly die."" ""I know thee now "" the stranger said ""I hear thy hated name I take thy gold I take thy life a forfeit to my claim; My father fell beneath thy hand his image haunts me still-- But the hour of his revenge is come and he shall drink his fill."" He seized a sword; its sweeping edge soon laid the Hero low But not before his sinking arm was felt upon his foe: ""Thanks youthful friend!"" the Hero said; ""now Odin's hall is won Its rays already greet my soul its raptures are begun."" MOZART.[6] The true position of the creative musical power in the scale of human genius is difficult to determine; and will be differently estimated by different minds. That it is a heavenly gift of a high order admits of no doubt; that it exercises over men's minds a mighty and under due safeguards a beneficent influence is equally indisputable; and that its existence implies and is closely connected with the possession of other superior faculties moral and intellectual must also we think be clear upon reflection though this last proposition is not so likely to be readily conceded. Yet the place which the great COMPOSER is generally allowed to occupy in relation to the PAINTER or the POET does not correspond either to the qualities or to the effects displayed in his art. Many would think it a disparagement to connect the names of Milton or Virgil Raphael or Michael Angelo with those of the greatest musical masters; and it may seem not easy to say whether this feeling is the result of injustice or accident on the one hand; or on the other is founded on some deep and solid truth in the laws and elements of our nature. The mighty magic that lies in the highest manifestations of musical composition must command the wonder and reverence of all who understand or even observe its operation. The power of giving birth to innumerable forms of exquisite melody delighting the ear and stirring every emotion of the soul agitating us with fear or horror animating us with ardour and enthusiasm filling us with joy melting us with grief now lulling us to repose amidst the luxurious calm of earthly contentment now borrowing wings more ethereal than the lark's and wafting us to the gate of heaven where its notes seem to blend undistinguishably with the songs of superior beings--this is a faculty that bears no unequivocal mark of a divine descent and that nothing but prejudice or pride can deem of trivial or inferior rank. But when to this is added a mastery over the mysterious combinations of harmony a spirit that can make subservient to its one object immense masses of dissimilar and sometimes discordant sounds; and like the leader of a battle can ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm till it subdue the whole soul taking captive all our feelings corporeal and mental and moulding them to its will--a power of this nature seems to equal in dignity the highest faculties of genius in any of its forms as it undoubtedly surpasses all the others in the overwhelming and instantaneous efficacy of its agency while thus working its wonders. Tame is the triumph of the artist in the exhibition-room dim and distant the echo which the poet receives of the public praise compared with the unequivocal and irrepressible bursts of admiration which entrance the great composer in the crowded theatre or even with that silent incense which is breathed in the stifled emotions of his audience in some more sacred place. The nearest approach to any such enthusiastic tribute is that which sometimes awaits the successful tragic poet at the representation of his dramas; but besides the lion's share of applause which the actor is apt to appropriate what dramatic writer in our own experience or history has been greeted with such homage as that paid to Handel when the king and people of England stood up in trembling awe to hear his _Hallelujah_ chorus?--that which hailed Mozart from the enraptured theatres of Prague when listening to his greatest operas?--that which fanned into new fire the dying embers of Haydn's spirit when the _Creation_ was performed at Vienna to delight his declining days before an audience of 1500 of the Austrian nobility and gentry? The ancient poets felt the force of those emotions which musical sound produces and shadowed out under its name the great principles of human harmony and social order. Societies were founded cities built and countries cultivated by Orpheus and Amphion and men of analogous fame who wielded at will this mythic power and made all the susceptibilities of nature ""sequacious of the lyre."" In one respect the fame of the composer is less diffusible than that of the poet. He requires various mechanical means and appliances for his full success. His works must be performed in order to be felt. He cannot be read like the poet in the closet or in the cottage or on the street-stall where the threadbare student steals from day to day as he lingers at the spot new draughts of delicious refreshment. Few can sit down and peruse a musical composition even for its melody; and very few indeed can gather from the silent notes the full effect of its splendid combinations. Yet even here the great master has analogous compensations. The idle amateur the boarding-school girl the street minstrel and the barrel-organ reflect his more palpable beauties; and subjecting them to the severe test of incessant reiteration make us wonder that ""custom cannot stale"" the infinite variety that is shut up even in his simplest creations. But the creative musician has an immeasurable advantage over both the painter and the poet in the absence of all local limitation to his popularity. Here indeed the painter is the least favoured by the nature of his art. The immediate presence of the prophet could only be felt at Mecca; the perfection of painting can only be seen at Rome. The poet has a wider range and can be prized and appreciated wherever the language is known in which he writes. But the musician is still more highly privileged. He speaks with a tongue intelligible alike to every nation and class; he expresses himself in a universal character which Bishop Wilkins would have died to possess; he needs no translation; he can suffer nothing by change of place; his works are equally and at once capable of being enjoyed at London and Naples Paris and Prague Vienna and St Petersburg. If the enjoyment received from his powers is not every where equally great it is not from the want of a medium to make them understood but from a difference in the minds to which they are presented. The creative art of the musician is not one of mere talent or of a certain sensual refinement and dexterity. It involves deep systematic study closely akin to that of the severer sciences. It has a sequence and logic of its own and excellence in it is unattainable without good sense and strong intellect. It involves great moral and pathetic sensibility and a ready sympathy with all the joys and sorrows of mankind. And finally the lightest branch of it is beyond the reach of any but those who are lifted up by strong feelings of reverence and devotion. Handel was a man of sincere piety who avowed it to be the object of his compositions not merely to please men but ""to make them better."" ""The character of Handel "" says Mr Hogarth in his excellent _Musical History_ ""in all its great features was exalted and amiable. Throughout his life he had a deep sense of religion. He used to express the great delight he felt in setting to music the most sublime passages of Holy Writ; and the habitual study of the Scriptures had constant influence on his sentiments and conduct. For the last two or three years of his life he regularly attended divine service in his parish church of St George's Hanover Square where his looks and gestures indicated the fervour of his devotion. In his life he was pure and blameless.""--(Vol. i. 209.) ""Haydn "" in like manner (we quote from the same biographer ) ""was a stranger to every evil and malignant passion; and indeed was not much under the influence of passion of any sort. But his disposition was cheerful and gentle and his heart was brimful of kindly affections. He was friendly and benevolent open and candid in the expression of his sentiments always ready to acknowledge and aid the claims of talent in his own art and in all his actions distinguished by the most spotless integrity. Such is the account of him given by all those who knew him best; and they add as the most remarkable feature of his character that strong and deeply-rooted sense of religion which is the only solid foundation of moral excellence. Haydn's piety was not a mere feeling capable as is often the case with worldly men of being excited for the moment by circumstances and dying away when the external influence is removed; it was an active principle which guided the whole tenor of his life and conduct. His sacred music was exalted by the existence in his mind of those devout sentiments which it is the object of sacred music to express. 'When I was engaged in composing _The Creation_ ' he used to say 'I felt myself so penetrated with religious feeling that before I sat down to write I earnestly prayed to God that he would enable me to praise him worthily.'""--(Vol. i. 304.) Similar feelings of strong piety as well as of generous benevolence animated and inspired the great and amiable man whose character is more immediately the subject of this article. It would be difficult indeed to think of an oratorio or requiem written by a scoffer or a sceptic. With such exalted requisites so intense a power and so extensive a range of influence it is strange that the composer should not have taken the rank and relative dignity to which he seems entitled in the province of the arts. But honour and fame are chiefly dispensed by poets and literary men; and it is impossible not to feel that generally speaking the musician is treated by men of letters as an alien from their own lineage. Music may be praised in vague and evasive terms; but the individual composer is not deemed deserving of mention. All the great masters of the pencil have been cordially commended in immortal verse; but of the great composers' names scarce a notice is to be found. It is not wonderful that the poet should prize above all others his own form of art. Poetry as the mouthpiece of practical wisdom as the clearest interpreter of all instruction must ever hold an undisputed pre-eminence. Painting too as nearest akin to poetry in the objects it presents and the effects it produces may be allowed at least to contest the palm for the second rank. But that music in the person of her most inspired sons should have been sternly excluded from a participation in the honours awarded to her sister arts seems an injustice which can be defended on no pleadable grounds. The explanation of it seems to be that most of our great poets--and this has certainly been the case in England--have had no love or knowledge and no true appreciation of high musical composition. Milton alone seems to have been an exception; and we cannot doubt that if he had lived in the same age with Handel he would have given utterance to his admiration in strains worthy of them both. The rest of our _vates sacri_ on whom immortality is proverbially said to depend seem generally speaking to have been ignorance itself in this department. Several of them indeed have written odes for St Cecilia's day but this does not prove that they had a taste for more than rhythm. Pope had the tact to call Handel a giant and speaks cleverly of his ""hundred hands"" as sure to be fatal to the reign of Dulness. ""Strong in new arms lo! giant Handel stands Like bold Briareus with his hundred hands To stir to rouse to shake the soul he comes And Jove's own thunders follow Mars's drums. Arrest him goddess! or you sleep no more."" But no reference is made to the exquisite beauty of his compositions. The loudness is all that seems to be praised and we suspect that in private Pope was inclined to laugh with Swift in his disparaging comparison between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Wordsworth has written on the ""Power of Sound;"" but the small part of it that touches on the musical art does not impress us with the idea of his knowing or caring much about it though in this as in other things he has the sense and philosophy to sacrifice a cock to Esculapius and to bow down to what others worship even where he does not himself feel the influence of a warm devotion. Collins and Moore and perhaps a few others whom we have overlooked ought to be excluded from this condemnation; but they have not been led to speak of individual musicians or have not had courage to leave the beaten track. Thus neglected by those who would have been its most faithful depositaries and most effective champions the fame of the musical composer has been left to the guardianship of the few sound and enlightened judges who thoroughly comprehend him to the humble but honest admiration of professional performers to the practice and imitation of effeminate amateurs to the cant of criticism of the worthies on the free list and to the instinctive applause of the popular voice. Even with these humbler hands to build up his monument the great master of music has a perpetual possession within the hearts of men that the poet and the painter may well envy. Every chord in the human frame that answers to his strains every tear that rises at the bidding of his cadences every sob that struggles for an outlet at his touches of despairing tenderness or at the thunders of his massive harmony is a tribute to his power and his memory enough to console his spirit if it can still be conscious of them or to have rewarded his living labours in their progress by a bright anticipation of their effects. If nobles and even nations do not contend for the possession of his works or offer a ransom for their purchase such as is daily given for the masterpieces of the painter's power; it is the pride of his genius that his compositions cannot be appropriated or possessed. An oratorio of Handel or an opera of Mozart cannot become property like a picture of Raphael or Guido. They belong to mankind at large open to all and enjoyable by all who have the faculty to perceive and delight in their beauties; and in every theatre and public place in every church and in every chamber throughout Christendom a portion of their divine and various influence suited to the scene and occasion is always within reach to make men gentler and better happier and holier than they would otherwise be without such manifestations of their Maker's wondrous gifts. Nowhere can the views we have above suggested be better illustrated than in the fate and character of the singular man who if not the first was yet only second to one other among those on whom music has shed her fullest inspiration. It is not our intention to follow minutely the events of Mozart's life. They are generally well known; and to those who wish to have a clear complete and judicious view of them we can safely recommend the book noticed at the outset of this article. Mozart was born at Salzburg in 1756 and died at Vienna in 1791 in his thirty-sixth year. But into that short space were compressed as many proofs and compositions of genius as much joy and sorrow as much triumph and humiliation as would have crowded a much longer lifetime. His early indications of genius are well known and were indeed wonderful even as compared with those of other great composers--for Handel Haydn and Beethoven all gave proofs of their musical powers in boyhood--though none of them as children showed that full maturity of mind which distinguished Mozart and which only a few of those who witnessed it could fully appreciate. Mozart's organization was obviously of the finest and tenderest texture; but he had also many advantages in his nurture and among others the inestimable blessing of a happy home where harmony reigned in the hearts as well as upon the lips and fingers of the inmates. His father was a man of sense and education as well as of musical talent and in all respects did his duty to his son throughout life amidst many difficulties and disappointments resulting partly from his own dependent situation at Salzburg and partly from an over-estimate of the worldly prosperity which his son's genius should have commanded. His mother seems also to have been an excellent person; and from the remarkable letters which Mozart wrote from Paris to prepare his father for her death after the event had happened she appears to have been the object of the tenderest affection to her family. Mozart uniformly discharged towards his parents all the offices of pious devotion; and he was always affectionately attached to his sister who was a few years older than himself and whose early and distinguished skill as a performer must have been useful in assisting her brother's tastes. In 1829 the Novello family saw this lady at Salzburg a widow and in narrow circumstances. ""We found Madame Sonnenberg lodged in a small but clean room bed-ridden and quite blind. Hers is a complete decay of nature; suffering no pain she lies like one awaiting the stroke of death and will probably expire in her sleep.... Her voice was scarcely above a whisper so that I was forced to lean my face close to hers to catch the sound. In the sitting-room still remained the old clavichord on which the brother and sister had frequently played duets together; and on its desk were some pieces of his composition which were the last things his sister had played over previous to her illness."" With becoming delicacy the fruits of an English subscription were presented to her on her name-day as a remembrance from some friends of her brother. The bane of Mozart's fortunes was the patronage on which he was dependent. His father had got into the trammels of the Archbishop of Salzburg--a sordid arrogant and ignorant man who saw Mozart's value in the eyes of others though he could not himself estimate it and would neither pay him nor part with him. When in his twentieth year and already a great composer and an efficient performer Mozart was in the receipt from this princely prelate for the liberal use of his musical talents of a salary equal in amount to about £1 1s. English per annum. ""Among a multitude of compositions that he wrote for the archbishop's concerts in 1775 are five concertos for the violin which he probably performed himself. His gentle disposition made him easily comply with any proposal to augment pleasure however out of his usual course. During the following year 1776 he seems to have made his last great effort to awaken the archbishop to some sense of his desert and a due generosity of acknowledgment by producing masses litanies serenades divertimentos for instruments clavier concertos &c. too numerous for detail. But in vain; and what aggravated the injury of this monstrous appropriation of labour was that the father whose household economy was now somewhat pinched on applying for permission to remedy these circumstances by a tour was refused. From that hour Wolfgang threw by his pen in disgust--at least as far as it concerned voluntary labour."" It was now resolved that Mozart should leave Salzburg with his mother and try his fortune in the world. He was every where admired; but the wonder of his childhood had passed away and empty praise was all that he could for the most part earn. After lingering in the sickness of hope deferred at several of the German courts his destination was at last fixed for Paris. His chance of success as a courtier was probably diminished by the blunt though kindly frankness of his opinions and by his inability to stoop to unworthy means of rising. He had also many rivals to encounter particularly those of the more slender school of Italian melody; and few of the public had knowledge or independence enough to forsake the inferior favourites that were in vogue. In approaching Paris Mozart became alarmed at the prospect of his being there compelled to resort to the drudgery of tuition for his support. ""I am a composer "" he said ""and the son of a kapell-meister and I cannot consent to bury in teaching the talent for composition which God has so richly bestowed upon me."" His father more experienced in the world and more prudential in his ideas endeavoured to modify his alarm and urge him to perseverance in any honourable course of employment. The father's letter at this time to his son to apprize him of the true position of the family and preserve him against the dangers in his path is honourable to both and worthy of perusal. ""This being in all probability the last letter that you will receive from me at Mannheim I address it to you alone. How deeply the wider separation which is about to take place between us affects me you may partly conceive though not feel it in the same degree with which it oppresses my heart. If you reflect seriously on what I have undergone with you two children in your tender years you will not accuse me of timidity but on the contrary do me the justice to own that I am and ever have been a man with the heart to venture every thing though indeed I always employed the greatest circumspection and precaution. Against accidents it is impossible to provide for God only sees into futurity. Up to this time we cannot be said to have been either successful or unsuccessful; but God be thanked we have steered between the two. Every thing has been attempted for your success and through you for our own. We have at least endeavoured to settle you in some appointment on a secure footing; though fate has hitherto decreed that we should fail in our object. This last step of ours however makes my spirit sink within me. You may see as clearly as the sun at noonday that through it the future condition of your aged parents and of your affectionately attached sister entirely depends upon you. From the time of your birth and indeed earlier ever since my marriage I have found it a hard task to support a wife and by degrees a family of seven children two relatives by marriage and the mother on a certain income of twenty-five florins a month out of this to pay for maintenance and the expenses of child-bed deaths and sicknesses; which expenses when you reflect upon them will convince you that I not only never devoted a kreutzer to my own private pleasure but that I could never in spite of all my contrivances and care have managed to live free from debt without the especial favour of God; and yet I never was in debt till now. I devoted all my time to you two in the hope and indeed reliance upon your care in return; that you would procure for me a peaceful old age in which I might render account to God for the education of my children and without any other concern than the salvation of my soul quietly await death. But Providence has so ordered that I must now afresh commence the ungrateful task of lesson-giving and in a place too where this dreary labour is so ill paid that it will not support one from one end of

the year to the other; and yet it is to be thought a matter of rejoicing if after talking oneself into a consumption something or other is got by it. ""I am far my dear Wolfgang from having the least mistrust in you--on the contrary on your filial love I place all confidence and every hope. Every thing now depends upon fortunate circumstances and the exercise of that sound understanding which you certainly possess if you will listen to it; the former are uncontrollable--but that you will always take counsel of your understanding I hope and pray.... ""You are now a young man of twenty-two years of age; here is none of that seriousness of years which may dissuade a youth let his condition be what it may--an adventurer a libertine a deceiver--be he old or young from courting your acquaintance and drawing you into his society and his plans. One may fall into this danger unawares and then not know how to recede. Of the other sex I can hardly speak to you for there the greatest reserve and prudence are necessary Nature herself being our enemy; but whoever does not employ all his prudence and reserve in his intercourse will with difficulty extricate himself from the labyrinth--_a misfortune that usually ends in death_. How blindly through inconsiderate jests flattery and play one may fall into errors at which the returning reason is ashamed you may perhaps have already a little experienced and it is not my intention to reproach you. I am persuaded that you do not only consider me as your father but as your truest and most faithful friend and that you know and see that our happiness or unhappiness--nay more my long life or speedy death is under God so to speak in your hands. If I know you aright I have nothing but pleasure to expect in you which thought must console me in your absence for the paternal pleasure of seeing hearing and embracing you. Lead the life of a good Catholic Christian; love and fear God; pray to him with devotion and sincerity and let your conduct be such that should I never see you more the hour of my death may be free from apprehension. From my heart I bless you."" His reception at Paris was comparatively cold. The Parisians were scarcely done with the ""faction fight"" in which the rivalry of Gluck and Piccini had involved them; but none of the partisans were inclined to be enthusiastic about the new-comer. His only great admirer and his best friend seems to have been his acute and accomplished countryman Grimm who prophesied that monarchs would dispute for the possession of Mozart. The prediction was fulfilled but not in sufficient time to benefit the unhappy subject of their competition. ""Baron Grimm and myself often vent our indignation at the state of music here that is to say between ourselves; but in public it is always '_bravo! bravissimo!_' and clapping till the fingers burn. What most displeases me is that the French gentlemen have only so far improved their taste as to be able to _endure_ good things; but as for any perception that their music is bad--Heaven help them!--and the singing--_oimè!_"" Again he writes-- ""You advise me to visit a great deal in order to make new acquaintances or to revive the old ones. That is however impossible. The distance is too great and the ways too miry to go on foot; the muddy state of Paris being indescribable; and to take a coach one may soon drive away four or five livres and all in vain for the people merely pay you compliments and then it is over. They ask me to come on this or that day--I play and then they say '_O c'est un prodige c'est inconcevable c'est étonnant_;' and then '_à Dieu_.'"" ""All this however "" Mr Holmes observes ""might have been endured so far as mere superciliousness and _hauteur_ to the professional musician were involved if these people had possessed any real feeling or love for music; but it was their total want of all taste their utter viciousness that rendered them hateful to Mozart. He was ready to make any sacrifice for his family but longed to escape from the artificial and heartless Parisians. ""If I were in a place "" he writes ""where people had ears to hear hearts to feel and some small degree of perception and taste I should laugh heartily over all these things--but really as it regards music I am living among mere brute beasts. How can it be otherwise? It is the same in all their passions and indeed in every transaction of life; no place in the world is like Paris. Do not think that I exaggerate when I speak thus of the state of music here--ask any one except a native Frenchman and if he be fit to answer the question he will tell you the same. I must endure out of love to you--but I shall thank God Almighty if I leave this place with my healthful natural taste. It is my constant prayer that I may be enabled to establish myself that I may do honour to the German nation and make fame and money and so be the means of helping you out of your present narrow circumstances and of our all living together once more cheerfully and happily."" Take the following vivid sketch of his task in teaching composition to a young lady:-- ""Among these pupils one is daughter of the Duc de Guines with whom I am in high favour and I give her two hours' instruction in composition daily for which I am very liberally paid. He plays the flute incomparably and she magnificently on the harp. She possesses much talent and cleverness and in particular a very remarkable memory which enables her to play all her pieces of which there are at least two hundred without book. She is doubtful whether she has genius for composition--particularly with respect to thoughts or ideas; her father (who between ourselves is a little too much in love with her) affirms that she certainly has ideas and that nothing but modesty and a want of confidence in herself prevent their appearing. We shall now see. If she really have no ideas and I must say I have as yet seen no indication of them it will be all in vain for God knows I can give her none. It is not her father's intention to make any very great composer of her. 'I do not wish her ' he says 'to write any operas airs concertos or symphonies but merely grand sonatas for her instrument as I do for mine.' ""I gave her the fourth lesson to-day and as far as the rules of composition go am tolerably satisfied with her; she put the bass to the first minuet which I placed before her very correctly. We now commenced writing in three parts. She tried it and fatigued herself in attempts but it was impossible to help her; nor can we move on a step further for it is too early and in science one must advance by the proper gradations. If she had genius--but alas! there is none--she has no thoughts--nothing comes. I have tried her in every imaginable way; among others it occurred to me to place a very simple minuet before her to see whether she could make a variation upon it. That was all to no purpose. Now thought I she does not know how to begin; so I varied the first bar for her and told her to continue the variation pursuing that idea; and at length she got through tolerably well. I next requested her to begin something herself--the first part only--a melody; but after a quarter of an hour's cogitation nothing came. I then wrote four bars of a minuet and said 'What a stupid fellow I am I have begun a minuet and cannot finish the first part of it. Have the goodness to do it for me.' She distrusted her ability but at last with much labour something came to light. I rejoiced that we got something at last. She had now to complete the entire minuet that is to say the melody only. On going away I recommended her to alter my four bars for something of her own; to make another beginning even if she retained the same harmony and only altered the melody. I shall see to-morrow how she has succeeded."" In the midst of this irksome labour Mozart's beloved mother expired at Paris in the summer of 1778 after a fortnight's illness. He then wrote to his father that she was ""very ill "" and to a family friend at Salzburg desiring him to prepare his father and sister for the truth. The whole correspondence at this time is interesting. The letter to the Abbé Bullinger is in these words:-- ""Sympathize with me on this the most wretched and melancholy day of my life. I write at two o'clock in the morning to inform you that my mother--my dearest mother--is no more! God has called her to himself. I saw clearly that nothing could save her and resigned myself entirely to the will of God; he gave and he can take away. Picture to yourself the state of alarm care and anxiety in which I have been kept for the last fortnight. She died without being conscious of any thing--her life went out like a taper. Three days ago she confessed received the sacrament and extreme unction; but since that time she has been constantly delirious and rambling until this afternoon at twenty-one minutes after five when she was seized with convulsions and immediately lost all perception and feeling. I pressed her hand and spoke to her; but she neither saw me heard me nor seemed in the least sensible; and in this state she lay for five hours namely till twenty-one minutes past ten when she departed no one being present but myself M. Haine a good friend of ours whom my father knows and the nurse. ""I cannot at present write you the whole particulars of the illness; but my belief is that she was to die--that it was the will of God. Let me now beg the friendly service of you to prepare my poor father by gentle degrees for the melancholy tidings. I wrote to him by the same post but told him no more than that she was very ill; and I now await his answer by which I shall be guided. May God support and strengthen him! Oh my friend! through the especial grace of God I have been enabled to endure the whole with fortitude and resignation and have long since been consoled under this great loss. In her extremity I prayed for two things: a blessed dying hour for my mother and courage and strength for myself; and the gracious God heard my prayer and richly bestowed those blessings upon me. Pray therefore dear friend support my father. Say what you can to him in order that when he knows the worst he may not feel it too bitterly. I commend my sister also to you from the bottom of my heart. Call on both of them soon but say no word of the death--only prepare them. You can do and say what you will; but let me be so far at ease as to have no new misfortune to expect. Comfort my dear father and my dear sister and pray send me a speedy answer."" The letter to his father is curiously circumstantial; but if on such occasion it is allowable to deceive at all it is allowable to make the deception complete. ""The cause of my having left your letter of the 11th of June so long unanswered is that I have very unpleasant and melancholy intelligence to communicate. My dear mother is very ill. At the beginning of her illness she was as usual bled and this seemed to relieve and do her good; but in a few days she began to complain of sudden chills and heats which were accompanied by headach and diarrhoea. We began now to use the remedy that we employ at home--the antispasmodic powder. We wished that we had brought the black but had it not and could not get it here where even its name _pulvis epilepticus_ is unknown. But as she got worse continually spoke with difficulty and so far lost her hearing that it was necessary to call out in speaking to her Baron Grimm sent us his physician. She is still very weak and is also feverish and delirious. They want to give me hope; but I have not much. I have been long already--for days and nights together--between hope and fear; but I have now entirely resigned myself to the will of God and I hope that you and my dear sister will do the like. What are the means then to give us calm and peace in a degree if not absolutely? I am resigned let the end be what it may because I know that God who however mysteriously he may proceed to human eyes ordains every thing for the best so wills it; and I am not easily persuaded out of the belief that neither physician nor any other man neither misfortune nor accident can either take or give life but God alone though these are the means which he mostly employs; but even these not always. We see people constantly sinking and dying around us; but I do not say on that account that my mother must and will die or that we have lost all hope. She may recover if it be the will of God. I however find consolation in these reflections after praying to God as earnestly as I am able for my dear mother's health and life; they strengthen encourage and console me and you must needs think I require them. Let us now change the subject and quit these melancholy thoughts. Let us hope if not much and put our trust in God consoling ourselves with the reflection that every thing is well ordered which the Almighty orders and that he best knows what is essential to our temporal happiness and our eternal salvation."" The elder Mozart had in the mean time without knowing of her illness begun a letter to his wife designed to reach her on her name-day; but before its conclusion he had received his son's letter and seen the Abbé and had thus learned not only her danger but its result. ""M. Bullinger found us as every one else did in deep affliction; I handed him your letter without saying a word; he dissembled very well; and having read it enquired what I thought about it. I said that I firmly believed my dear wife was no more. He almost feared the same thing he told me--and then like a true friend entered upon consolatory topics and said to me every thing that I had before said to myself. We finished our conversation and our friends gradually left us with much concern. M. Bullinger however remained behind and when we were alone asked me whether I believed that there was any ground for hope after such a description of the illness as had been given. I replied that I not merely believed her dead by this time--but that she was already so on the very day that the letter was written; that I had resigned myself to the will of God and must remember that I have two children who I hoped would love me as I lived solely and entirely for them; indeed that I felt so certain as to have taken some pains to write to and remind you of the consequences &c. Upon this he said 'Yes she is dead ' and in that instant the scales fell from my eyes; for the suddenness of the accident had prevented my perceiving what I else should have suspected as soon as I had read your letter--namely how probable it was that you had privately communicated the real truth to M. Bullinger. In fact your letter stupified me--it at first was such a blow as to render me incapable of reflection. I have now no more to say. Do not be anxious on my account I shall bear my sorrow like a man. Remember what a tenderly loving mother you have had--now you will be able to appreciate all her care--as in your mature years after my death you will mine with a constantly increasing affection. If you love me as I doubt not but you do take care of your health--on your life hangs mine and the future support of your affectionate sister. How incomprehensibly bitter a thing it is when death rends asunder a happy marriage--can only be known by experience."" In a few days Mozart wrote to his father again:-- ""I hope that you are now prepared to receive with firmness some intelligence of a very melancholy and distressing character; indeed my last letter of the 3d will not have encouraged you to expect any thing very favourable. On the evening of the same day (the 3d ) at twenty-one minutes after ten at night my mother fell happily asleep in God and was already experiencing the joys of heaven at the very moment that I wrote to you. All was over--I wrote to you in the night and I trust that you and my sister will pardon this slight but very necessary artifice;--for when after all the distress that I had suffered I turned my thoughts towards you I could not possibly persuade myself to surprise you all at once with the dreadful and fatal news. Now however I hope that you have both prepared yourselves to hear the worst; and after giving way to the reasonable and natural impulses of your grief to submit yourselves at last to the will of God and to adore his inscrutable unfathomable and all-wise providence. * * * * * ""I write this in the house of Madame d'Epinay and M. Baron de Grimm with whom I am now staying and where I have a pretty little room with a pleasant prospect and am as far as circumstances will permit happy. It would be a great additional comfort were I to hear that my dear father and sister had resigned themselves with fortitude and submission to the will of God; trusting him entirely in the full conviction that every thing is ordered for our good. Dear father--be comforted! Dearest sister--be comforted!--you know not the kind intentions of your brother towards you; because hitherto they have not been in his power to fulfil. ""I hope that you will both be careful of your health. Remember that you have still a son--a brother--who will exert himself to the utmost for your happiness well knowing what sacrifices you are both ready to make for him and that when the time shall come neither of you will oppose the fulfilment of his honourable wishes. Oh! then we will lead a life as peaceful and happy as is attainable in this world; and at length in God's time meet all together again in the enjoyment of that object for which we were created."" We have given these letters at some length as we think they show the worth affection and right feeling of the whole family. The disconsolate state in which his father was thus left decided Mozart however reluctant to return to the hated service of the Archbishop at Salzburg. The terms on which he was received back were somewhat improved for his absence had rendered his value more perceptible; and a greater latitude was allowed him in visiting and composing for other courts. In the winter of 1780-1 he made use of his leave of absence by writing and bringing out at Munich with triumphant success the splendid serious opera of _Idomeneo_ always so great a favourite with himself and which is still regarded as a masterpiece. ""With this work the most important in its influence on music Mozart crowned his twenty-fifth year. The score is still a picture to the musician. It exhibits consummate knowledge of the theatre displayed in an opera of the first magnitude and complexity; which unites to a great orchestra the effects of a double chorus on the stage and behind the scenes; and introduces marches processions and dances to various accompaniments in the orchestra behind the scenes or under the stage. This model opera in which Mozart rises on the wing from one beauty to another through long acts was completed as we have seen within a few weeks and ever since has defied the scrutiny of musicians to detect in it the slightest negligence of style."" In March 1781 Mozart followed the Salzburg court to Vienna where he was subjected to such indignity by his patron as finally to terminate their connexion. The author of _Idomeneo_ was required to take his meals at the same table with his grace's valets confectioner and cooks. This was too much even for Mozart's good-nature; and aggravated by the Archbishop's refusal to allow the display of his talents to the public gave him courage to insist for his dismissal. ""The step however of resigning a pension and of throwing himself entirely upon the public for fame and support was a more important one than his sanguine imagination and excitement of feeling permitted him at the time to contemplate. How far his being an _unappointed_ composer may have hastened the production of his immortal works is open to question; but that his life was sacrificed in struggling against the difficulties in which he was thereby involved is beyond a doubt. ""In the absence of any immediate design of a new dramatic composition and delighted at the effect which his public performance on the pianoforte had created at Vienna Mozart forgot all the fears he had expressed previously to his journey to Paris; thought no more that teaching would interfere with the higher vocation of his muse; and was content to become the fashionable performer teacher and pianoforte composer of the day. This mode of life for a time had its temptations and its success; and he hoped that he might still better assist his father at Vienna than at Salzburg as he was at intervals able to remit to him sums of from ten to thirty ducats. But here commenced the precarious existence which the composer was for the future destined to lead. For not only was the taste of Vienna then as now proverbially variable and flippant--not only was concert-giving an uncertain speculation and teaching an inconstant source of income--but in a man who like Mozart had from time to time strong impulses to write for the theatre it frequently happened that the order and regularity of his engagements were made to yield to the object which engrossed him; and that the profits of his time were sacrificed on the one hand without any proportionate advantage on the other."" Let it be observed that Mozart's payment for teaching among the Austrian nobility was at the rate of five shillings a lesson! Mozart was distinguished for virtues which belong only to great or good men when labouring in the field of emulation--an absence of all envy and jealousy of which he was himself too much the object and a just and generous estimate of excellence in others. As observed by Mr Holmes good music not his own was his best relaxation from his toils; and his predecessors and contemporaries were alike sure of that sincere admiration which sprang from an unselfish love of the art. His regard and respect for Haydn who was greatly his inferior in genius and power is a pleasing illustration of what we have said. ""At this time Joseph Haydn was established as kapell-meister in the service of Prince Nicholas Esterhazy and enjoyed a very extensive reputation which indeed the native energy of his genius and the fortunate circumstances of his mature life enabled him to earn with ease in a variety of compositions. He was frequently at Vienna in the suite of his prince; and it was natural that Mozart who had long lived on terms of mutual esteem with Michael Haydn at Salzburg should be predisposed to a regard for his brother;--but the simplicity benevolence and sincerity of Joseph Haydn's character when united with the charming qualities of his genius offered more than the materials for an ordinary friendship. The attachment of these two men remains accordingly one of the most honourable monuments of the virtuous love of art that musical history can produce. Haydn was at this period about fifty years of age. His constant habit of writing five hours a-day had accumulated in a series of years a large collection of quartets pianoforte music church music and symphonies most of which were greatly admired for the spirit and elegance of their style and the clearness and originality of their design. Mozart at once saw and acknowledged the excellence of Haydn; and in his future intercourse with that master took the part which the difference of their age if not of their genius rendered graceful--by deferring to his judgment with all the meekness of a learner. To Haydn he submitted many of his compositions before publication; delighting often to call him his master and model in quartet writing which he now began to cultivate in earnest; and omitting no circumstance which could gratify the veteran musician in possessing such an admirer. Haydn on his part repaid all this devotion with becoming generosity. However conscious that in the universality of musical power his own genius must be placed at a disadvantage in comparison with that of his friend he harboured no envious or unworthy sentiment; and death alone interrupted the kind relation in which each stood to the other. ""At the musical parties which Mozart gave from time to time when he had new compositions to try and leisure to indulge his disposition for sociality Haydn was a frequent guest and no one more profoundly enjoyed the extraordinary beauty and perfection of Mozart's pianoforte playing. Years after when those fingers and the soul which animated them were sought for in vain a few touching words from Haydn spoke more feelingly to the imagination in the description of that beauty than the most laboured and minute criticism could have done. 'Mozart's playing ' said he 'I can never forget.'"" Haydn's high estimate of his friend's superiority to himself was always expressed with equal generosity. In a company of critics who discovered that there were faults in Mozart's operas Haydn when appealed to replied--""All I know is that Mozart is the greatest composer now existing."" When applied to in 1787 to write a comic opera Haydn thought a new subject or _libretto_ would be necessary and adds-- ""Even then it would be a bold attempt as scarcely any one can stand by the side of the great Mozart. For were it possible that I could impress every friend of music particularly among the great with that deep musical intelligence of the inimitable works of Mozart--that emotion of the soul with which they affect me and in which I both comprehend and feel them the nations would contend together for the possession of such a gem. Prague ought to retain him and reward him well too; else the history of great genius is melancholy and offers posterity but slight encouragement to exertion which is the reason alas! that many hopeful and aspiring spirits are repressed. I feel indignant that this _unique_ Mozart is not yet engaged at some royal or imperial court. Forgive me if I stray from the subject--but I love the man too much."" Again when engaged along with Mozart for Salomon's concerts in England--a plan which so far as Mozart was concerned was unhappily not carried out--Haydn's only stipulation was that his compositions should precede those of his friend; and avowed with unparalleled frankness his feeling that he would otherwise have less chance of being heard with success. The celebrity of Mozart and the applause which attended some of his new compositions procured him the notice and ultimately the patronage of the Emperor Joseph--though somewhat unsteadily conferred and divided with unworthy Italian rivals. The change however was tardy and when it came did not much improve his external circumstances. The appointments he held made but a miserable sinecure with a still more miserable salary; but the deficiency was supplied by soft words and familiar looks which with Mozart's kindly disposition served to attach him to his imperial master better than would have been done by a larger allowance ungraciously given. In the mean time relying upon his position as a composer and hoping for the best Mozart had formed the connexion as to which Mr Hogarth justly says ""that his fixing his affections on the admirable woman whom he married was the wisest act as it was the happiest event of his life. Constance Weber was his guide--his monitress--his guardian angel. She regulated his domestic establishment--managed his affairs--was the cheerful companion of his happier hours--and his never-failing consolation in sickness and despondency. He passionately loved her and evinced his feelings by the most tender and delicate attentions."" It is remarkable that Mozart's attachment had at first been directed to his wife's elder sister and seemed to be returned on her part. But after his absence in Paris he was coldly received when they again met and fortunately for himself he transferred his affections to Constance who became his wife. Rich as this union was in affection and in all the happiness that affection can bestow it was soon checkered by distress and difficulty. The health of the wife became precarious; and Mozart's ignorance of the world as well as his generous and joyous disposition joined to the precarious and varying amount of his earnings and the disappointment in his prospects of imperial favour involved him in debt which by overtaxing his mind and body led to the errors and excesses such as they were of his latter life and ultimately undermined his constitution and brought him to an untimely tomb. The ""res angusta domi"" stimulated the composer's pen and the rapidity of his productions at this time is marvellous. The taste of Vienna however was capricious; and cabals among singers and critics succeeded in deadening the effect of his _Figaro_ when first brought out and in thoroughly disgusting Mozart with the Viennese opera. How different the reception which it met from the true hearts and well-attuned ears of the Bohemian audiences! It was in February 1787 after parting with the Storaces on their leaving for England with a hope that the mighty master would soon be allured to follow them that his Bohemian visit was paid. ""In the very same week that he parted from his English friends Mozart himself set out upon a journey to Prague whither he had been very cordially invited by a distinguished nobleman and connoisseur Count John Joseph Thun who maintained in his service an excellent private band. This was the first professional expedition of any consequence in which he had engaged since his settlement in Vienna; it was prosecuted under the most favourable auspices and with glowing anticipations of that pleasure for which he so ardently longed but so imperfectly realized at home--the entire sympathy of the public. Nor was he disappointed. On the same evening that he alighted at the castle of his noble entertainer his opera of 'Figaro' was given at the theatre and Mozart found himself for the first time in the midst of that Bohemian audience of whose enthusiasm and taste he had heard so much. The news of his presence in the theatre quickly ran through the parterre and the overture was no sooner ended than the whole audience rose and gave him a general acclamation of welcome amidst deafening salvos of applause. ""The success of 'Le Nozze di Figaro ' so unsatisfactory at Vienna was unexampled at Prague where it amounted to absolute intoxication and frenzy. Having run through the whole previous winter without interruption and rescued the treasury of the theatre from ruinous embarrassments the opera was arranged in every possible form; for the pianoforte for wind-instruments (garden music ) as violin quintets for the chamber and German dances; in short the melodies of 'Figaro' re-echoed in every street and every garden; nay even the blind harper himself at the door of the beer-house was obliged to strike up _Non più andrai_ if he wished to gain an audience or earn a kreutzer. Such was the effect of the popular parts of the opera on the public at large; its more refined beauties exercised an equal influence on musicians. The director of the orchestra Strobach under whose superintendence 'Figaro' was executed at Prague often declared the excitement and emotion of the band in accompanying this work to have been such that there was not a man among them himself included who when the performance was finished would not have cheerfully recommenced and played the whole through again. ""Finding himself at length in a region of sympathy so genial and delightful a new era in the existence of the composer seemed to open and he abandoned himself without reserve to its pleasures. In retracing a life so ill rewarded by contemporaries and so checkered by calamity it is pleasant to dally awhile in the primrose path and enjoy the opening prospects of good fortune. ""In a few days he was called upon to give a grand concert at the opera-house. This was in reality his first public appearance and many circumstances conspire to render it memorable; but chiefly that every piece throughout the performance was of his own composition. The concert ended by an improvisation on the pianoforte. Having preluded and played a fantasia which lasted a good half-hour Mozart rose; but the stormy and outrageous applause of his Bohemian audience was not to be appeased and he again sat down. His second fantasia which was of an entirely different character met with the same success; the applause was without end and long after he had retired to the withdrawing-room he heard the people in the theatre _thundering_ for his re-appearance. Inwardly delighted he presented himself for the third time. Just as he was about to begin when every noise was hushed and the stillness of death reigned throughout the theatre a voice in the pit cried '_from Figaro_.' He took the hint and ended this triumphant display of skill by extempor

sing a dozen of the most interesting and scientific variations upon the air _Non più andrai_. It is needless to mention the uproar that followed. The concert was altogether found so delightful that a second upon the same plan soon followed. A sonnet was written in his honour and his performances brought him one thousand florins. Wherever he appeared in public it was to meet testimonies of esteem and affection. His emotion at the reception of 'Figaro' in Prague was so great that he could not help saying to the manager Bondini 'As the Bohemians understand me so well I must write an opera on purpose for them.' Bondini took him at his word and entered with him on the spot into a contract to furnish his theatre with an opera for the ensuing winter. Thus was laid the foundation of 'Il Don Giovanni.'"" The greatest of Mozart's operas was composed at Prague on a second visit thither in 1787 when he lived with a musical friend in the suburbs of the city. ""Here on an elevated site which commanded a view of the antique magnificence of Prague its faded castles ruined cloisters and other majestic remains of feudal times under the mild rays of an autumnal sun and in the open air _Don Giovanni_ was written."" It was immediately brought out at Prague with the success it deserves and was afterwards performed at Vienna but was badly got up and but indifferently received. ""Don Giovanni "" said its author ""was rather written for Prague than Vienna but chiefly for myself and my friends."" It is a disgraceful fact that it was eclipsed in popularity among the Viennese by the ""Tarrare"" of Salieri of which no one now knows any thing. In 1787 Mozart's father died at Salzburg less happy it is to be feared than his own worth and his son's genius should have made him. But he was ignorant of the great truth that fame and often merely posthumous fame is the chief external blessing that awaits men of extraordinary mental powers in the arts and that the appropriate reward of genius any more than of virtue is not always--""bread."" On hearing of his father's illness Mozart had written him in affectionate terms-- ""I have just received some news which has given me a sad blow; the more so as your last letter left me reason to suppose that you were in perfect health. I now however learn that you are really very ill. How anxiously I await and hope for some comforting intelligence from you I need hardly say although I have long since accustomed myself in all things to expect the worst. As death rightly considered fulfils the real design of our life I have for the last two years made myself so well acquainted with this true friend of mankind that his image has no longer any terrors for me but much that is peaceful and consoling; and I thank God that he has given me the opportunity to know him as the key to our true felicity. I never lie down in bed without reflecting that perhaps (young as I am) I may never see another day; yet no one who knows me will say that I am gloomy or morose in society. For this blessing I daily thank my Creator and from my heart wish it participated by my fellow-men."" In the autumn of the same year he lost a valued and valuable friend in Dr Barisani of Vienna whose medical attentions had already been eminently useful to him and might if they had been continued have saved him from those irregularities of alternate labour and indulgence which so soon afterwards began to affect his health. Mozart made on this occasion an affecting entry in his memorandum-book under some lines which his friend had written for him. ""To-day the 2d of September I have had the misfortune to lose through an unexpected death this honourable man by best and dearest friend and the preserver of my life. He is happy!--but I--we and all who thoroughly knew him cannot again be so--till we have the felicity to meet him in a better world never again to separate."" In 1789 Mozart visited Prussia where he was well received by every one and seems to have been happy. We may here insert part of a well-known letter written about this time to an amateur baron which gives a curious picture of Mozart's character and habits as well as of the mixed tone of good humour and good sense with which he seems to have both written and conversed. The baron had sent him some tolerable music and some better wine. ""TO THE BARON V----. ""Herewith I return you my good baron your scores; and if you perceive that in my hand there are more _nota benes_ than notes you will find from the sequel of this letter how that has happened. Your symphony has pleased me on account of its ideas more than the other pieces and yet I think that it will produce the least effect. It is too much crowded and to hear it partially or piecemeal (_stückweise_) would be by your permission like beholding an ant-hill (_Ameisen haufen_). I mean to say that it is as if Eppes the devil were in it. ""You must not snap your fingers at me my dearest friend for I would not for all the world have spoken out so candidly if I could have supposed that it would give you offence. Nor need you wonder at this; for it is so with all composers who without having from their infancy as it were been trained by the whip and the curses (_Donnerwetter_) of the maestro pretend to do every thing with natural talent alone. Some compose fairly enough but with other people's ideas not possessing any themselves; others who have ideas of their own do not understand how to treat and master them. This last is your case. Only do not be angry pray! for St Cecilia's sake not angry that I break out so abruptly. But your song has a beautiful cantabile and your dear _Fraenzl_ ought to sing it very often to you which I should like as much to see as to hear. The minuet in the quartet is also pleasing enough particularly from the place I have marked. The _coda_ however may well clatter or tinkle but it will never produce _music_; _sapienti sat_ and also to the _nihil sapienti_ by whom I mean myself. I am not very expert in writing on such subjects; I rather show at once how it ought to be done. ""You cannot imagine with what joy I read your letter; only you ought not to have praised me so much. We may get accustomed to the hearing of such things but to read them is not quite so well. You good people make too much of me; I do not deserve it nor my compositions either. And what shall I say to your present my dearest baron that came like a star in a dark night or like a flower in winter or like a cordial in sickness? God knows how I am obliged at times to toil and labour to gain a wretched livelihood and Stänerl (Constance ) too must get something. ""To him who has told you that I am growing idle I request you sincerely (and a baron may well do such a thing) to give him a good box on the ear. How gladly would I work and work if it were only left me to write always such music as I please and as I can write; such I mean to say as I myself set some value upon. Thus I composed three weeks ago an orchestral symphony and by to-morrow's post I write again to Hoffmeister (the music-seller) to offer him three pianoforte quatuors supposing that he is able to pay. Oh heavens! were I a wealthy man I would say 'Mozart compose what you please and as well as you can; but till you offer me something finished you shall not get a single kreutzer. I'll buy of you every MS. and you shall not be obliged to go about and offer it for sale like a hawker.' Good God! how sad all this makes me and then again how angry and savage and it is in such a state of mind that I do things which ought not to be done. You see my dear good friend so it is and not as stupid or vile wretches (_lumpen_) may have told you. Let this however go _a cassa del diavolo_. ""I now come to the most difficult part of your letter which I would willingly pass over in silence for here my pen denies me its service. Still I will try even at the risk of being well laughed at. You say you should like to know my way of composing and what method I follow in writing works of some extent. I can really say no more on this subject than the following; for I myself know no more about it and cannot account for it. When I am as it were completely myself entirely alone and of good cheer--say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. _Whence_ and _how_ they come I know not; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed as I have been told to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way it soon occurs to me how I may turn this or that morsel to account so as to make a good dish of it; that is to say agreeably to the rules of counterpoint to the peculiarities of the various instruments &c. ""All this fires my soul and provided I am not disturbed my subject enlarges itself becomes methodized and defined and the whole though it be long stands almost complete and finished in my mind so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts _successively_ but I hear them as it were all at once (_gleich alles zusammen_.) What a delight this is I cannot tell! All this inventing this producing takes place in a pleasing lively dream. Still the actual hearing of the _tout ensemble_ is after all the best. What has been thus produced I do not easily forget and this is perhaps the best gift I have my Divine Maker to thank for. ""When I proceed to write down my ideas I take out of the bag of my memory if I may use that phrase what has previously been collected into it in the way I have mentioned. For this reason the committing to paper is done quickly enough for every thing is as I said before already finished; and it rarely differs on paper from what it was in my imagination. At this occupation I can therefore suffer myself to be disturbed; for whatever may be going on around me I write and even talk but only of fowls and geese or of Gretel or Bärbel or some such matters. But why my productions take from my hand that particular form and style that makes them _Mozartish_ and different from the works of other composers is probably owing to the same cause which renders my nose so or so large so aquiline or in short makes it Mozart's and different from those of other people. For I really do not study or aim at any originality; I should in fact not be able to describe in what mine consists though I think it quite natural that persons who have really an individual appearance of their own are also differently organized from others both externally and internally. At least I know that I have constituted myself neither one way nor the other. * * * * * ""Here my best friend and well-wisher the pages are full and the bottle of your wine which has done the duty of this day is nearly empty. But since the letter which I wrote to my father-in-law to request the hand of my wife I hardly ever have written such an enormously long one. Pray take nothing ill. In speaking as in writing I must show myself as I am or I must hold my tongue and throw my pen aside. My last word shall be--my dearest friend keep me in kind remembrance. Would to God I could one day be the cause of so much joy to you as you have been to me. Well! I drink to you in this glass: long live my good and faithful ----."" ""W. A. MOZART."" Before he left Prussia the King offered him an appointment and a liberal pension. ""Can I leave my good Emperor?"" said Mozart with emotion. The proposal however made its impression and shortly afterwards probably encouraged him at Vienna on occasion of fresh intrigues against him to tender his resignation of his paltry situation there. But a kind-like appeal from his imperial patron drove him at once from his intention and fixed him where he was. It was afterwards hinted to him that he might at least have taken this opportunity to stipulate for a better provision for himself. ""Satan himself "" he replied ""would hardly have thought of bargaining at such a moment."" The year 1789-90 seems to have been about the most disastrous in the situation of his affairs and led to the most unhappy results. ""The music-shops as a source of income were almost closed to him as he could not submit his genius to the dictates of fashion. Hoffmeister the publisher having once advised him to write in a more _popular_ style or he could not continue to purchase his compositions he answered with unusual bitterness 'Then I can make no more by my pen and I had better starve and go to destruction at once.' The fits of dejection which he experienced were partly the effect of bodily ailments but more of a weariness with the perplexity of affairs and of a prospect which afforded him but one object on which he could gaze with certainty of relief and that was--death. Constant disappointment introduced him to indulgences which he had not before permitted himself. ""He became wild in the pursuit of pleasure; whatever changed the scene was delightful to him and the more extravagant the better. His associates and the frequent guests at his table were recommended by their animal spirits and capacity as boon companions. They were stage-players and orchestral musicians low and unprincipled persons whose acquaintance injured him still more in reputation than in purse. Two of these men Schickaneder the director of a theatre (for whom Mozart wrote the 'Zauberflöte ') and Stadler a clarionet-player are known to have behaved with gross dishonesty towards the composer; and yet he forgave them and continued their benefactor. The society of Schickaneder a man of grotesque humour often in difficulties but of inexhaustible cheerfulness and good-fellowship had attractions for Mozart and led him into some excesses that contributed to the disorder of his health as he was obliged to retrieve at night the hours lost in the day. A long-continued irregularity of income also disposed him to make the most of any favourable moment; and when a few rouleaus of gold brought the means of enjoyment the Champagne and Tokay began to flow. This course is unhappily no novelty in the shifting life of genius overworked and ill-rewarded and seeking to throw off its cares in the pursuits and excitements of vulgar existence. It is necessary to know the composer as a man of pleasure in order to understand certain allusions in the correspondence of his last years when his affairs were in the most embarrassed condition and his absence from Vienna frequently caused by the pressure of creditors. He appears at this time to have experienced moments of poignant self-reproach. His love of dancing masquerades masked balls &c. was so great that he did not willingly forego an opportunity of joining any one of those assemblies whether public or private. He dressed handsomely and wished to make a favourable impression in society independently of his music. He was sensitive with regard to his figure and was annoyed when he heard that the Prussian ambassador had said to some one 'You must not estimate the genius of Mozart by the insignificance of his exterior.' The extremity of his animal spirits may occasion surprise. He composed pantomimes and ballets and danced in them himself and at the carnival balls sometimes assumed a character. He was actually incomparable in Arlequin and Pierrot. The public masquerades at Vienna during the carnival were supported with all the vivacity of Italy; the emperor occasionally mingled in them and his example was generally followed. We are not therefore to measure these enjoyments by our colder northern notions."" It should be added what Mr Holmes tells us on good authority that the vice of ebriety was not among Mozart's failings. ""He drank to the point of exhilaration but not beyond."" His fondness for ballet-dancing may seem strange to us who have almost a Roman repugnance to such exhibitions in men of good station. But it is possible that in some minds the love of graceful motion may be a refined passion and an exalted art; and it is singular that Mozart's wife told of him that in his own estimation his taste lay in dancing rather than in music. ""That these scenes of extravagant delight seduced him into occasional indulgences which cannot be reconciled with the purity of his earlier life it would be the worst affectation in his biographer to deny. Nor is it necessary to the vindication of Mozart that such temporary errors should be suppressed by a feeling of mistaken delicacy. Living such a round of excitements and tortured by perpetual misfortunes there is nothing very surprising in the fact that he should sometimes have been drawn into the dangerous vortex; but he redeemed the true nobility of his nature by preserving in the midst of his hasty inconstancies the most earnest and unfailing attachment to his home. It is a curious illustration of his real character that he always confessed his transgressions to his wife who had the wise generosity to pardon them from that confidence in his truth which survived alike the troubles and temptations of their checkered lives."" Let none lightly dare either to condemn or to imitate the irregularities of life of such wondrous men as Mozart and our own Burns. Those who may be gifted with equally strong and exquisite sensibilities as they as fine and flexible affections as bright an imagination beautifying every object on which its rainbow colours rest and who have been equally tried by affliction and misconstruction and equally tempted by brilliant opportunities of pleasure in the intervals of penury and pain--these if they stand fast may be allowed to speak and they will seldom speak uncharitably of their brethren who have fallen; or if they fall they may be heard to plead a somewhat similar excuse. But let ordinary men and men less extraordinary than those we speak of beware how they either refer to them as a reproach or follow them as an example. The excesses of men of genius are always exaggerated by their enemies and often overrated even by their friends and companions. With characteristic fervour they enter enthusiastically into every thing in which they engage; and when they indulge in dissipation delight to sport on the brink of all its terrors and to outvie in levity and extravagance the most practised professors of their new art. Few that see or hear them think that even in the midst of their revels their hearts are often far away or are extracting good from the evil spread before them; and that all the waste of time and talent so openly and ostentatiously exhibited is compensated in secret by longer and intenser application to the true object of their pursuit and by acts of atonement and self-denial of which the conscious stars of heaven are the only created witnesses. The worst operation of dissolute indulgences on genius is not perhaps in producing depravity of heart or habits for its pure plumes have a virtue about them that is a preservative against pollution; but in wearing out the frame ruffling the temper and depressing the spirits and thus embittering as well as shortening a career that even when most peaceful and placid is often destined to be short and sad enough. The good-natured sympathy which Mozart always felt in the welfare of the very humblest of his brethren of the lyre is highly creditable to him. But the extent to which he sacrificed his own interests to serve them was often any thing but prudent. He was devoid of every sordid and avaricious feeling and indeed carried his generosity to an excess. ""The extreme kindness of his nature was grossly abused by artful performers music-sellers and managers of theatres. Whenever any poor artists strangers in Vienna applied to him for assistance he offered them the use of his house and table introduced them to the persons whom he thought could be of use to them and frequently composed for their use concertos of which he did not even keep a copy in order that they might have the exclusive advantage of playing them. But not content with this they sold these pieces to music-publishers; and thus repaid his kindness by robbing him. He seldom received any recompense for his pianoforte compositions but generally wrote them for his friends who were of course anxious to possess some work of his for their own use and suited to their powers of playing. Artaria a music-seller of Vienna and other members of the trade contrived to get possession of many of these pieces and published them without obtaining the author's consent or making him any remuneration for them. A Polish count who was invited to a concert at Mozart's house heard a quintet performed for the first time with which he was so greatly delighted that he asked Mozart to compose for him a trio for the flute. Mozart agreed on condition that he should do it at his own time. The count next day sent a polite note expressive of his thanks for the pleasure he had enjoyed and along with it one hundred gold demi-sovereigns (about £100 sterling.) Mozart immediately sent him the original score of the quintet that had pleased him so much. The count returned to Vienna a year afterwards and calling upon Mozart enquired for the trio. Mozart said that he had never found himself in a disposition to write any thing worthy of his acceptance. ""Perhaps then "" said the count ""you may find yourself in a disposition to return me the hundred demi-sovereigns I paid you beforehand."" Mozart instantly handed him the money but the count said not a word about the quintet; and the composer soon afterwards had the satisfaction of seeing it published by Artaria arranged as a quartet for the pianoforte violin tenor and violoncello. Mozart's quintets for wind instruments published also as pianoforte quartets are among the most charming and popular of his instrumental compositions for the chamber; and this anecdote is a specimen of the manner in which he lost the benefit he ought to have derived even from his finest works. The opera of the 'Zauberflöte' was composed for the purpose of relieving the distresses of a manager who had been ruined by unsuccessful speculations and came to implore his assistance. Mozart gave him the score without price with full permission to perform it in his own theatre and for his own benefit; only stipulating that he was not to give a copy to any one in order that the author might afterwards be enabled to dispose of the copyright. The manager promised strict compliance with the condition. The opera was brought out filled his theatre and his pockets and some short time afterwards appeared at five or six different theatres by means of copies received from the grateful manager."" Mozart's career when hastening to its close was illumined by gleams of prosperity that came but too late. On returning from Prague in Nov. 1791 from bringing out the _Clemenza di Tito_ at the coronation of Leopold the new Emperor-- ""He found awaiting him the appointment of kapell-meister to the cathedral church of St Stephen with all its emoluments besides extensive commissions from Holland and Hungary for works to be periodically delivered. This with his engagements for the theatres of Prague and Vienna assured him of a competent income for the future exempt from all necessity for degrading employment. But prospects of worldly happiness were now phantoms that only came to mock his helplessness and embitter his parting hour."" ""Now must I go "" he would exclaim ""just as I should be able to live in peace; now leave my art when no longer the slave of fashion nor the tool of speculators I could follow the dictates of my own feeling and write whatever my heart prompts. I must leave my family--my poor children at the very instant in which I should have been able to provide for their welfare."" The story of his composing the requiem for a mysterious stranger and his melancholy forebodings during its composition are too well known to require repetition here. The incident to all appearance was not extraordinary in itself and owed its imposing character chiefly to the morbid state of Mozart's mind at the time. On the 5th of December 1791 the ill-defined disease under which he had for some time laboured ended in his dissolution; and subsequent examination showed that inflammation of the brain had taken place. He felt that he was dying--""The taste of death "" he said to his sister-in-law ""is already on my tongue--_I taste death_; and who will be near to support my Constance if you go away?"" ""Süssmayer (an assistant) was standing by the bedside and on the counterpane lay the 'Requiem ' concerning which Mozart was still speaking and giving directions. As he looked over its pages for the last time he said with tears in his eyes 'Did I not tell you that I was writing this for myself?'"" It should be added that this ""Süssmayer who had obtained possession of one transcript of the 'Requiem ' the other having been delivered to the stranger immediately after Mozart's decease published the score some years afterwards claiming to have composed from the _Sanctus_ to the end. As there was no one to contradict this extraordinary story it found partial credit until 1839 when a full score of the 'Requiem' in Mozart's handwriting was discovered."" We have now done. The life and character that we have been considering speak for themselves. Mozart is not perhaps the greatest composer that ever lived but Handel only is greater than he; and to be second to Handel seems now to us the highest conceivable praise. Yet in some departments Mozart was even greater than his predecessor. It is not our intention to characterise his excellences as a composer. The millions of mankind that he has delighted in one form or other according to their opportunities and capacities have spoken his best panegyric in the involuntary accents of open and enthusiastic admiration; and his name will for ever be sweet in the ear of every one who has music in his soul. Two remarks only we will make upon Mozart's taste and system as a master. The first is that he invariably considered and proclaimed that the great object of music was not to astonish by its difficulty but to delight by its beauty. Some of his own compositions are difficult as well as beautiful and in some the beauty may be too transcendental for senses less exalted than his own. But the production of _pleasure_ in all its varied forms and degrees was his uniform aim and effort; and no master has been more successful. Our next remark is that with all his genius he was a laborious and learned musician; and the monument to his own fame which he has completed in his works was built upon the most anxious heartfelt and humble study of all the works of excellence that then existed and without knowing and understanding which he truly felt that he could never have equalled or surpassed them. FOOTNOTE: [6] _The Life of Mozart including his Correspondence._ By EDWARD HOLMES Author of ""A Ramble among the Musicians of Germany."" London: Chapman and Hall. 1845 TO THE EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE. SIR --The accompanying narrative was originally sent from the Sandwich Islands in the shape of a letter. Since my return to England it has been suggested to me that it would suit your pages. If you think so I shall be happy to place it at your disposal. The ground-plan annexed is intended merely to assist the description: it has no pretensions to strict accuracy the distances have been estimated not measured.--I remain Sir your obedient servant AN OFFICER OF THE ROYAL NAVY. ACCOUNT OF A VISIT TO THE VOLCANO OF KIRAUEA IN OWHYHEE SANDWICH ISLANDS IN SEPTEMBER 1844. The ship being about to proceed to Byron's Bay (the Hilo of the natives ) on the N.E. side of Owhyhee to water the captain arranged that to give all opportunity to all those who wished to visit the volcano distant from the anchorage forty miles the excursion should be made in two parties. Having anchored on Wednesday the 11th of September he and several of the officers left Hilo early on the 12th; they travelled on horseback and returned on the ensuing Monday highly delighted with their trip but giving a melancholy description of the road which they pronounced to be in some places impassable to people on foot. This latter intelligence was disheartening to the second division some of whom and myself of the number had intended to walk. These notwithstanding adhered to their resolution; and the second party consisting of eight left the ship at 6 A.M. on Tuesday. Some on horseback and some on foot we got away from the village about eight o'clock attended by thirteen natives to whose calabashes our prog and clothing had been transferred; these calabashes answer this purpose admirably; they are gourds of enormous size cut through rather above their largest diameter which is from eighteen inches to two feet; the half of another gourd forms the lid and keeps all clean and dry within; when filled they are hung by net-work to each end of a pole thrown across the shoulders of a native who will thus travel with a load of fifty or sixty pounds about three miles an hour. The day was fine and bright and we started in high spirits the horsemen hardly able to conceal their exultation in their superiority over the walkers whilst they cantered over the plain from which our ascent commenced; this 4000 feet almost gradual in forty miles is not fatiguing; and thus although we found the path through a wood about three miles long very deep and the air oppressive we all arrived together without distress at the ""half-way house "" by 1 P.M. Suppose a haystack hollowed out and some holes cut for doors and windows and you have a picture of the ""half-way house "" and the ordinary dwellings of the natives of these islands; it is kept by a respectable person chiefly for the accommodation of travellers and in it we found the comfort of a table a piece of furniture by these people usually considered superfluous. Here we soon made ourselves snug commencing by throwing ourselves on the mats and allowing a dozen vigorous urchins to ""rumi rumi"" us. In this process of shampooing every muscle is kneaded or beaten; the refreshing luxury it affords can only be perfectly appreciated by those who have like us walked twenty miles on a bad road in a tropical climate. Here we were to stay the night and our first object was to prepare dinner and then to eat it; all seemed disposed to assist in the last part of this operation and where every one was anxious to please and determined to be pleased sociability could not be absent. After this we whiled away our time with books and conversation till one by one dropping asleep all became quiet except a wretched child belonging to our hostess who from one corner of the hut every now and then set up its shrill pipe to disturb our slumbers. [Illustration: Map of the Crater.] _Explanation of Plan:--_ A A The outer rim. B B The inner rim. C The active crater. D D D D D The surface of the larger crater. E E E E The dike. F The house. G The hut. H H Track to and from crater. I I Track of party on Wednesday night. _o o o o o o_ Cones in large crater. We were on the march the next morning at six the walkers more confident than the horsemen some of whose beasts did not seem at all disposed for another day's work. Our road lay for the most part through immense seas of lava in the crevices of which a variety of ferns had taken root and though relieving the otherwise _triste_ appearance in many places shut out our view of any thing besides. Two of the walkers and some of the horsemen came in at the journey's end shortly after eleven o'clock; the remainder some leaving their horses behind them straggled in by two P.M. Here we were at the crater! Shall I confess that my first feeling was disappointment? The plan shows some distance between the outer and inner rims immediately below the place where the house (F) is situated; this is filled up by another level which shuts out a great part of the prospect; the remainder was too distant and the sun's rays too powerful to allow of our seeing more than a quantity of smoke and an occasional fiery ebullition from the further extremity. It was not until we had walked to the hut (G) that we became sensible of the awful grandeur of the scene below; from this point we looked perpendicularly down on the blackened mass and felt our insignificance. The path leads between many fissures in the ground from which sulphurous vapour and steam issue; the latter condensing on the surrounding bushes and falling into holes in the compact lava affords a supply of most excellent water. As evening set in the active volcano assumed from the house the appearance of a city in flames; long inters

cting lines of fire looked like streets in a blaze; and when here and there a more conspicuous burst took place fancy pictured a church or some large building a prey to the element. Not contented with this distant view three of our party started for the hut whence in the afternoon we had so fine a prospect. When there although our curiosity was highly gratified it prompted us to see more; so pressing a native into our service we proceeded along the brink of the N.W. side until being nearly half-way round the outer circle of the crater we had hoped to obtain almost a bird's-eye view of the active volcano; we were therefore extremely chagrined to find that as we drew nearer our object it was completely shut out by a ridge below the one on which we stood. Our walking had thus far been very difficult if not dangerous and this with the fatigues of the morning had nearly exhausted our perseverance. We determined however to make another effort before giving it up and were repaid by the discovery of a spur which led us down and thence through a short valley to the point where our track (I) terminates. We came in sight of the crater as we crested the hill; the view from hence was most brilliant. The crater appeared nearly circular and was traversed in all directions by what seemed canals of fire intensely bright; several of these radiated from a centre near the N.E. edge so as to form a star from which a coruscation as if of jets of burning gas was emitted. In other parts were furnaces in terrible activity and undergoing continual change sometimes becoming comparatively dark and then bursting forth throwing up torrents of flame and molten lava. All around the edge it seemed exceedingly agitated and noise like surf was audible; otherwise the stillness served to heighten the effect upon the senses which it would be difficult to describe. The waning moon warned us to return and reluctantly we retraced our steps; it required care to do this so that we did not get back to the house before midnight. Worn out with the day's exertions we threw ourselves on the ground and fell asleep but not before I had revolved the possibility of standing at the brink of the active crater after nightfall. In the morning we matured the plan which was to descend by daylight so as to reconnoitre our road to return to dinner and then if we thought it practicable to leave the house about 5 P.M. and to remain in the large crater till after night set in. The only objection to this scheme (and it was a most serious one) was that when we mentioned it to the guides they appeared completely horror-struck at the notion of it. Here as elsewhere in the neighbourhood of volcanic activity the common people have a superstitious dread of a presiding deity; in this place especially where they are scarcely rescued from heathenism we were not surprised to find it. This and their personal fears (no human being ever having as the natives assured us entered the crater in darkness ) we then found insuperable: all we could do was to take the best guides we were able to procure with us by daylight so that they should refresh their memories as to the _locale_ and ascertain if any change had taken place since their last visit and trust to being able during our walk to persuade one to return with us in the evening. Accordingly we all left the house after breakfast following the track marked (H) which led us precipitously down till we landed on the surface of the large crater an immense sheet of scoriaceous lava cooled suddenly from a state of fusion; the upheaved waves and deep hollows evidencing that congelation has taken place before the mighty agitation has subsided. It is dotted with cones 60 or 70 feet high and extensively intersected by deep cracks from both of which sulphurous smoke ascends. It is surrounded by a wall about twelve miles in circumference in most parts 1000 feet deep. I despair of conveying an idea of what our sensations were when we first launched out on this fearful pit to cross to the active crater at the further end. With all the feeling of insecurity that attends treading on unsafe ice was combined the utter sense of helplessness the desolation of the scene encouraged: it produced a sort of instinctive dread such as brutes might be supposed to feel in such situations. This however soon left us and attending our guides who led us away to the right for about a mile we turned abruptly to the left and came upon a deep dike which running concentric with the sides terminates near the active crater with which I conceive its bottom is on a level. The lava had slipped into it where we crossed and the loose blocks were difficult to scramble over. In the lowest part where these had not fallen the fire appeared immediately beneath the surface. The guides here evinced great caution trying with their poles before venturing their weight; the heat was intense and made us glad to find ourselves again on _terra firma_ if that expression may be allowed where the walking was exceedingly disagreeable owing to the hollowness of the lava formed in great bubbles that continually broke and let us in up to our knees. This dike has probably been formed by the drainage of the volcano by a lateral vent as the part of the crater which it confines has sunk lower than that outside it and the contraction caused by loss of heat may well account for its width which varies from one to three hundred yards. In support of this opinion I may mention that in 1840 a molten river broke out eight miles to the eastward and in some places six miles broad rolled down to the sea where it materially altered the line of coast. From where we crossed there is a gradual rise until within 200 yards of the volcano when the surface dips to its margin. Owing to this we came suddenly in view of it and lost in amazement walked silently on to the brink. To the party who had made the excursion the previous evening the surprise was not so great as to the others; moreover a bright noonday sun and a floating mirage which made it difficult to discern the real from the deceptive robbed the scene of much of its brilliancy; still it was truly sublime as a feeble attempt at description will show. This immense caldron two and three quarter miles in circumference is filled to within twenty feet of its brim with red molten lava over which lies a thin scum resembling the slag on a smelting furnace. The whole surface was in fearful agitation. Great rollers followed each other to the side and breaking disclosed deep edges of crimson. These were the canals of fire we had noticed the night before diverging from a common centre and the furnaces in equal activity; while what had appeared to us like jets of gas proved to be fitful spurts of lava thrown up from all parts of the lake (though principally from the focus near the N.E. edge) a height of thirty feet. Most people probably would have been satisfied with having witnessed this magnificent spectacle; but our admiration was so little exhausted that the idea continually suggested itself ""How grand would this be by night!"" The party who had encountered the difficulties of the walk the night before were convinced that no greater ones existed in that of to-day; and therefore if it continued fine and we could induce the guide to accompany us the project was feasible. The avarice of one of these ultimately overcame his fears and under his direction we again left the house at 5 P.M. and returning by our old track reached the hill above the crater about the time the sun set though long after it had sunk below the edge of the pit. Here we halted and smoking our cigars lit from the cracks (now red-hot) which we had passed unnoticed in the glare of the sunlight waited until it became quite dark when we moved on; and great as had been our expectations we found them faint compared with the awful sublimity of the scene before us. The slag now appeared semi-transparent and so extensively perforated as to show one sheet of liquid fire its waves rising high and pouring over each other in magnificent confusion forming a succession of cascades of unequalled grandeur; the canals now incandescent the restless activity of the numerous vents throwing out great volumes of molten lava the terrible agitation and the brilliancy of the jets which shooting high in the air fell with an echoless lead-like sound breaking the otherwise impressive stillness; formed a picture that language (at least any that I know) is quite inadequate to describe. We felt this; for no one spoke except when betrayed into an involuntary burst of amazement. On our hands and knees we crawled to the brink and lying at full length and shading our faces with paper looked down at the fiery breakers as they dashed against the side of the basin beneath. The excessive heat and the fact that the spray was frequently dashed over the edge put a stop to this fool-hardiness; but at a more rational distance we stood gazing with our feelings of wonder and awe so intensely excited that we paid no regard to the entreaties of our guide to quit the spot. He at last persuaded us of the necessity of doing so by pointing to the moon and her distance above the dense cloud which hung a lurid canopy above the crater. Taking a last look we ""fell in"" in Indian file and got back to the house with no further accident than a few bruises about ten o'clock. The walk had required caution and it was long after I had closed my eyes ere the retina yielded the impressions that had been so nervously drawn on them. The next morning at nine we started on our return to the ship sauntering leisurely along picking strawberries by the way and enjoying all the satisfaction inherent to the successful accomplishment of an undertaking. With health and strength for any attempt we had been peculiarly favoured by the weather and had thus done more than any who had preceded us. Our party under these circumstances was most joyous; so that independent of the object the relaxation itself was such as we creatures of habit and discipline seldom experience. To make this narrative more intelligible it will be necessary to describe briefly the position and general features of this volcano which does not like most others spring from a cone but has excavated for itself a bed in the side of Mowna Roa which rises 14 000 feet above the level of the sea; it is about sixteen miles distant from the summit of the mountain wherein is an enormous extinct crater from which this is probably the outlet; it is 4000 feet above the level of the sea and twenty miles from the nearest coast line. Several distinct levels in the present crater prove that it has eaten its way to its present depth. On the most elevated of these large trees now grow evidences of many years' tranquillity; lower down we come to shrubs and lastly to the fern apparently the most venturesome of the vegetable kingdom; it seems to require nothing but rest and water for we found it shooting out of crevices where the lava appeared to have undergone no decomposition. Nowhere I conceive (not even in Iceland ) can be seen such stupendous volcanic efforts as in Owhyhee. The whole island eighty-six miles long by seventy broad and rising as it does at Mowna Keah more than 15 000 feet above the sea would seem to have been formed by layers of lava imposed at different periods. Some of these have followed quickly on each other; while the thickness of soil made up of vegetable mould and decomposed lava indicates a long interval of repose between others. The present surface is comparatively recent though there is no tradition of any but partial eruptions. ""O Lord! how manifold are Thy works: in wisdom hast Thou made them all!"" We reached the village the next day at 1 P.M. and after a refreshing bathe returned on board to find the ship prepared for sea to which we proceeded the following morning at four o'clock. THE DAYS OF THE FRONDE. At the beginning of the present year and upon the authority of M. Alexandre Dumas we laid before the readers of this Magazine a sketch of certain incidents in the lives of three French guardsmen who in company with a young cadet of Gascony fought drank loved and plotted under the reign of Louis the Thirteenth and the rule of Richelieu. The sketch was incomplete: contrary to established practice M. Dumas neither married nor killed his heroes; but after exposing them to innumerable perils out of all of which they came triumphant although from none did they derive any important benefit he left them nearly as he found them--with their fortunes still to make and with little to rely upon save their good swords and their dauntless courage. He promised however a continuation of their history and that promise he has kept but with a difference. Passing over a score of years he again introduces us to the guardsmen whom he left in the heyday of youth and who have now attained most of them passed the sober age of forty. Twenty years later then we find D'Artagnan the young Gascon gentleman aforesaid alone upon the scene. His three friends influenced by various motives have retired from the corps of mousquetaires: Athos to reside upon a small estate in Poitou Porthos to marry a rich widow Aramis to become an abbé. D'Artagnan alone having no estate to retire to larger than a cabbage-garden no widow to marry or inclination for the church has stuck to the service with credit but with small profit to himself; and the lieutenancy bestowed upon him by the Cardinal-Duke in 1628 is still a lieutenancy in 1648 under Richelieu's less able but equally ambitious successor Cardinal Mazarine. Moreover deprived during the greater part of these twenty years of the society of his three fiends who had in some measure formed his character and from the example of two of whom he had caught much of what chivalry and elegance he possessed--deprived also of opportunities of displaying those peculiar talents for bold intrigue which had once enabled him to thwart the projects of Richelieu himself D'Artagnan has degenerated into a mere trooper. His talents and shrewdness have not deserted him; on the contrary the latter has increased with his experience of the world; but instead of being employed in the service of queens and princes their exercise has been for some years confined to procuring their owner those physical and positive comforts which soldiers seek and prize--namely a good table comfortable quarters and a complaisant hostess. Although thus making the best of his position and only occasionally grumbling at the caprice of Dame Fortune who seems entirely to have forgotten him it is with a lively sensation of joy that D'Artagnan one evening when on guard at the Palais Royal hears himself summoned to the presence of Mazarine. It is at the commencement of the Fronde; the exactions of the cardinal have irritated the people who show symptoms of open resistance; his enemies already sufficiently numerous are daily increasing and becoming more formidable. Mazarine trembles for his power and looks around him for men of head and action to aid him in breasting the storm and carrying out his schemes. He hears tell of the four guardsmen whose fidelity and devotion had once saved the reputation of Anne of Austria and baffled the most powerful minister France ever saw; these four men he resolves to make his own and D'Artagnan is dispatched to find his three former companions and induce them to espouse the cause of the cardinal. The mission is but partially successful. D'Artagnan finds Porthos whose real name is Du Vallon rich flourishing and a widower but notwithstanding all these advantages perfectly unhappy because he has no title. Vanity was always the failing of Porthos. Aramis otherwise the Chevalier--now the Abbé--d'Herblay is up to the ears in intrigues of every description. Athos Count de la Fère has abandoned the wine-flask formerly the deity of his adoration and is busied in the education of a natural son a youth of sixteen of whom the beautiful Duchess of Chevreuse is the mother. By the promise of a barony D'Artagnan easily induces Porthos to follow him to Paris; but with his other two friends he is less successful. Athos and Aramis put him off with excuses for both have already pledged themselves to the cause of the Fronde and of the Duke of Beaufort. This prince the grandson of Henry the Fourth and of the celebrated Gabrielle D'Estrées is a prisoner in the fortress of Vincennes and a constant subject of uneasiness to Mazarine. Brave as steel but of limited capacity the idol of the people who by the use of his name are easily roused to rebellion the duke has beguiled his long captivity by abuse of the Facchino Mazarini as he styles the cardinal and by keeping up a constant petty warfare with the governor of Vincennes Monsieur de Chavigny. On his way to prison he boasted to his guards that he had at least forty plans of escape some one of which would infallibly succeed. This was repeated to the cardinal; and so well is the duke guarded in consequence that five years have elapsed and he is still at Vincennes. At last his friends find means of communicating with him and Grimaud the servant of the Count de la Fère is introduced in the capacity of an under jailer into the fortress where by his taciturnity and apparent strictness he gains the entire confidence of La Ramée an official who under M. de Chavigny is appointed to the especial guardianship of the Duke of Beaufort. An attempt to escape is fixed for the day of the Pentecost. Upon the morning of that day Monsieur de Chavigny starts upon a short journey leaving the castle in charge of La Ramée whom the duke invites to sup with him upon a famous pasty that has been ordered for the occasion from a confectioner who has recently established himself at Vincennes. Here is what takes place at the repast. La Ramée who at the bottom of his heart entertained a considerable degree of regard and affection for M. de Beaufort made himself a great treat of this tête-à-tête supper. His chief foible was gluttony and for this grand occasion the confectioner had promised to outdo himself. The pasty was to be of pheasants the wine of the best vintage of Chambertin. By adding to the agreeable images which this promise called up in his mind the society of the duke who in the main was such an excellent fellow who played Monsieur de Chavigny such capital tricks and made such biting jokes against the cardinal La Ramée had composed a picture of a perfectly delightful evening which he looked forward to with proportionate jubilation and with an impatience almost equalling that of the duke. His first visit that morning had been to the pastrycook who had shown him the crust of a gigantic pasty decorated at the top with the arms of Monsieur de Beaufort. The said crust was still empty but beside it were a pheasant and two partridges so minutely and closely larded that each of them looked like a cushion stuck full of pins. La Ramée's mouth watered at the sight. Early in the day M. de Beaufort went to play at ball with La Ramée; a sign from Grimaud warned him to pay attention to every thing. Grimaud walked before them as if to point out the road that he and the duke would have to take that evening. The place where they were in the habit of playing was the smaller court of the fortress--a solitary enclosure where sentinels were only stationed when the duke was there; even that precaution seeming unnecessary on account of the great height of the ramparts. There were three doors to open before reaching this court and each door was opened with a different key. All three keys were kept by La Ramée. When they reached the court Grimaud seated himself negligently in one of the embrasures his legs dangling outside the wall. The duke understood that the rope-ladder was to be fixed at that place. This and other manoeuvres comprehensible enough to M. de Beaufort and carefully noted by him had of course no intelligible meaning for La Ramée. The game began. M. de Beaufort was in play and sent the balls wherever he liked; La Ramée could not win a game. When they had finished playing the duke whilst rallying La Ramée on his ill success pulled out a couple of louis-d'ors and offered them to his guards who had followed him to the court to pick up the balls telling them to go and drink his health. The guards asked La Ramée's permission which he gave but for the evening only. Up to that time he had various important matters to arrange some of which would require him to absent himself from his prisoner whom he did not wish to be lost sight of. Six o'clock came and although the dinner-hour was fixed for seven the table was already spread and the enormous pie placed upon the side-board. Every body was impatient for something: the guards to go and drink La Ramée to dine and Monsieur de Beaufort to escape. Grimaud was the only one who seemed to be waiting for nothing and to remain perfectly calm; and at times when the duke looked at his dull immoveable countenance he almost doubted whether that could be the man who was to aid his projected flight. At half-past six La Ramée dismissed the guards the duke sat down at the table and signed to his jailer to take a chair opposite to him. Grimaud served the soup and stationed himself behind La Ramée. The most perfect enjoyment was depicted on the countenance of the latter as he commenced the repast from which he had been anticipating so much pleasure. The duke looked at him with a smile. ""Ventre St Gris! La Ramée "" cried he ""if I were told that at this moment there is in all France a happier man than yourself I would not believe it."" ""And you would be quite right not to do so Monseigneur "" said La Ramée. ""I confess that when I am hungry I know no pleasure equal to that of sitting down to a good dinner; and when I remember that my Amphitryon is the grandson of Henry the Fourth the pleasure is at least doubled by the honour done to me."" The duke bowed. ""My dear La Ramée "" said he ""you are unequaled in the art of paying compliments."" ""It is no compliment Monseigneur "" said La Ramée; ""I say exactly what I think."" ""You are really attached to me then?"" said the duke. ""Most sincerely "" replied La Ramée; ""and I should be inconsolable if your highness were to leave Vincennes."" ""A singular proof of affection that!"" returned the duke. ""But Monseigneur "" continued La Ramée sipping at a glass of Madeira ""what would you do if you were set at liberty? You would only get into some new scrape and be sent to the Bastile instead of to Vincennes."" ""Indeed!"" said the duke considerably amused at the turn the conversation was taking and glancing at the clock of which the hands as he thought advanced more slowly than usual. ""M. de Chavigny is not very amiable "" said La Ramée ""but M. de Tremblay is a great deal worse. You may depend Monseigneur that it was a real kindness to send you here where you breathe a fine air and have nothing to do but to eat and drink and play at ball."" ""According to your account La Ramée I was very ungrateful ever to think of escaping."" ""Exceedingly so "" replied La Ramée; ""but your highness never did think seriously of it."" ""Indeed did I though!"" said the duke; ""and what is more folly though it may be I sometimes think of it still."" ""Still by one of your forty plans Monseigneur?"" The duke nodded affirmatively. ""Monseigneur "" resumed La Ramée ""since you have so far honoured me with your confidence I wish you would tell me one of the forty methods of escape which your highness had invented."" ""With pleasure "" replied the duke. ""Grimaud give me the pasty."" ""I am all attention "" said La Ramée leaning back in his chair and raising his glass so as to look at the setting sun through the liquid amber which it contained. The duke glanced at the clock. Ten minutes more and it would strike seven the hour for which his escape was concerted. Grimaud placed the pie before M. de Beaufort who took his silver-bladed knife--steel ones were not allowed him--to cut it; but La Ramée unwilling to see so magnificent a pasty mangled by a dull knife passed him his own which was of steel. ""Well Monseigneur "" said he ""and this famous plan?"" ""Do you wish me to tell you "" said the duke ""the one on the success of which I most reckoned and which I intended to try the first?"" ""By all means "" said La Ramée. ""Well "" said M. de Beaufort who was busy in the dissection of the pie ""in the first place I hoped to have for my guardian some honest fellow like yourself Monsieur La Ramée."" ""Your hope was realized Monseigneur. And then?"" ""I said to myself "" continued the duke ""if once I have about me a good fellow like La Ramée I will get a friend whom he does not know to be my friend to recommend to him a man devoted to my interests and who will aid my escape."" ""Good!"" said La Ramée. ""No bad idea."" ""When I have accomplished this "" said the duke ""if the man is skilful and manages to gain the confidence of my jailer I shall have no difficulty in keeping up a communication with my friends."" ""Indeed!"" said La Ramée; ""how so?"" ""Easily enough "" replied M. de Beaufort; ""in playing at ball for instance."" ""In playing at ball!"" repeated La Ramée who was beginning to pay great attention to the duke's words. ""Yes. I strike a ball into the moat; a man who is at hand working in his garden picks it up. The ball contains a letter. Instead of throwing back the same ball he throws another which contains a letter for me. My friends hear from me and I from them without any one being the wiser."" ""The devil!"" said La Ramée scratching his head ""you do well to tell me this Monseigneur. In future I will keep an eye on pickers up of balls. But after all that is only a means of correspondence."" ""Wait a little. I write to my friends--'On such a day and at such an hour be in waiting on the other side of the moat with two led horses.'"" ""Well "" said La Ramée with some appearance of uneasiness ""but what then? Unless indeed the horses have wings and can fly up the rampart to fetch you."" ""Or that I have means of flying down "" said the duke carelessly. ""A rope-ladder for instance."" ""Yes "" said La Ramée with a forced laugh; ""but a rope ladder can hardly be sent in a tennis-ball though a letter may."" ""No; but it may be sent in something else. Let us only suppose for argument's sake that my cook Noirmont has purchased the pastrycook's shop opposite the castle. La Ramée who is a bit of an epicure tries his pies finds them excellent and asks me if I would like to taste one. I accept the offer on condition that he shall help me to eat it. To do so more at his ease he sends away the guards and only keeps Grimaud here to wait upon us. Grimaud is the man whom my friend has recommended and who is ready to second me in all things. The moment of my escape is fixed for seven o'clock. At a few minutes to seven""---- ""At a few minutes to seven!"" repeated La Ramée perspiring with alarm. ""At a few minutes to seven "" continued the duke suiting the action to the word ""I take the crust off the pie. Inside it I find two poniards a rope-ladder and a gag. I put one of the poniards to La Ramée's breast and I say to him--'My good friend La Ramée if you make a motion or utter a cry you are a dead man!'"" The duke as we have already said whilst uttering these last sentences had acted in conformity. He was now standing close to La Ramée to whom his tone of voice and the sight of the dagger levelled at his heart intimated plainly enough that M. de Beaufort would keep his word. Meanwhile Grimaud silent as the grave took out of the pie the second poniard the rope-ladder and the gag. La Ramée followed each of these objects with his eyes with a visibly increasing terror. ""Oh Monseigneur!"" cried he looking at the duke with an air of stupefaction which at any other time would have made M. de Beaufort laugh heartily ""you would not have the heart to kill me?"" ""No if you do not oppose my flight."" ""But Monseigneur if I let you escape I am a ruined man."" ""I will pay you the value of your office."" ""And if I defend myself or call out?"" ""By the honour of a gentleman you die upon the spot!"" At this moment the clock struck. ""Seven o'clock "" said Grimaud who had not yet uttered a word. La Ramée made a movement. The duke frowned and the unlucky jailer felt the point of the dagger penetrate his clothes and press against his breast. ""Enough Monseigneur "" cried he; ""I will not stir. But I entreat you to tie my hands and feet or I shall be taken for your accomplice."" The duke took off his girdle and gave it to Grimaud who tied La Ramée's hands firmly behind his back. La Ramée then held out his legs; Grimaud tore a napkin into strips and bound his ankles together. ""And now the gag!"" cried poor La Ramée; ""the gag! I insist upon it; or they will hang me for not having given the alarm."" In an instant La Ramée was gagged and laid upon the ground; two or three chairs were overturned to make it appear that there had been a struggle. Grimaud took from La Ramée's pockets all the keys that they contained opened the room-door shut and double-locked it when the duke and himself had passed out and led the way to the court. This the fugitives reached without accident or encounter and found it entirely deserted; no sentinels nor any body at the windows that overlooked it. The duke hurried to the rampart and saw upon the further side of the moat three horsemen and two led horses. He exchanged a sign with them; they were waiting for him. Meanwhile Grimaud was fastening the rope by which the descent was to be effected. It was not a ladder but a silken cord rolled upon a stick which was to be placed between the legs and become unrolled by the weight of the person descending. ""Go "" said the duke. ""First Monseigneur?"" asked Grimaud. ""Certainly "" was the reply; ""if I am taken a prison awaits me; if you are caught you will be hung."" ""True "" said Grimaud; and putting himself astride the stick he commenced his perilous descent. The duke followed him anxiously with his eyes. About three quarters of the distance were accomplished when the cord broke and Grimaud fell into the moat. M. de Beaufort uttered a cry; but Grimaud said nothing although he was evidently severely hurt for he remained motionless upon the spot on which he had fallen. One of the three horsemen slid down into the moat fastened the noose of a rope under the arms of Grimaud and his two companions who held the other end pulled him up. ""Come down Monseigneur "" cried the cavaliers; ""the fall is only about fifteen feet and the grass is soft."" The duke was already descending. His task was difficult; for the stick was no longer there to sustain him and he was obliged to lower himself along the slender rope from a height of fifty feet by sheer force of wrist. But his activity strength and coolness came to his aid; in less than five minutes he was at the end of the cord. He then let go his hold and fell upon his feet without injury. Climbing out of the moat he found himself in the company of Count Rochefort and of two other gentlemen with whom he was unacquainted. Grimaud whose senses had left him was fastened upon a horse. ""Gentlemen "" said the duke ""I will thank you by and by; just now we have not an instant to lose. Forward then and let who loves me follow."" And springing upon his horse he set off at full gallop breathing as if a load were removed from his breast and exclaiming in accents of inexpressible joy-- ""Free! Free! Free!"" The two cavaliers who accompany the Duke and the Count de Rochefort are Athos and Aramis. D'Artagnan and Porthos are sent in pursuit of the cardinal and in the obscurity by night the four friends who have so often fought side by side find themselves at sword's point with each other. Fortunately a recognition ensues before any harm is done. A strong party of the Duke of Beaufort's adherents comes up and D'Artagan and Porthos are taken prisoners but immediately set at liberty by the duke. The readers of the _Three Mousquetaires_ will not have forgotten a certain Lady de Winter having a _fleur-de-lis_ branded on her shoulder who plays an important part in that romance and who after committing innumerable crimes at last meets her death at the hands of a public executioner but without form of trial. This latter indeed might be considered almost superfluous so numerous and notorious were her offences; but nevertheless D'Artagnan and his three friends by whose order and in whose presence the execution took place sometimes feel pangs of remorse for the deed which none of the m

ny lives they have taken in fair and open fight ever occasion them. Athos especially the most reflecting and sensitive of the four continually reproaches himself with the share he took in that act of illegal justice. This woman has left a son who inherits all her vices and who having been proved illegitimate has been deprived of Lord De Winter's estates and passes by the name of Mordaunt. He is now brought upon the scene. Raoul Viscount of Braguelonne the son of Athos is proceeding to Flanders in company with the young Count de Guiche to join the army under the Prince of Condé when on the last day of his journey and whilst passing through a forest he falls in with and disperses a party of Spanish marauders who are robbing and ill-treating two travellers. Of these latter one is dead and the other who is desperately wounded implores the aid of a priest. Raoul and his friend order their attendants to form a litter of branches and to convey the wounded man to a neighbouring forest inn whilst they hasten on to the next village to procure him the spiritual consolation he is so urgent to obtain. The two young men had ridden more than a league and were already in sight of the village of Greney when they saw coming towards them mounted upon a mule a poor monk whom from his large hat and grey woollen gown they took to be an Augustine friar. Chance seemed to have sent them exactly what they were seeking. Upon approaching the monk they found him to be a man of two or three and twenty years of age but who might have been taken for some years older owing probably to long fasts and severe penances. His complexion was pale not that clear white paleness which is agreeable to behold but a bilious yellow; his hair was of a light colour and his eyes of a greenish grey seemed devoid of all expression. ""Sir "" said Raoul with his usual politeness ""have you taken orders?"" ""Why do you ask?"" said the stranger in a tone so abrupt as to be scarcely civil. ""For our information "" replied the Count de Guiche haughtily. The stranger touched his mule with his heel and moved onwards. With a bound of his horse De Guiche placed himself before him blocking up the road. ""Answer sir"" said he. ""The question was polite put and deserves a reply."" ""I am not obliged I suppose to inform the first comer who and what I am."" With considerable difficulty De Guiche repressed a violent inclination to break the bones of the insolent monk. ""In the first place "" said he ""we will tell you who _we_ are. My friend here is the Viscount of Braguelonne and I am the Count de Guiche. It is no mere caprice that induces us to question you; we are seeking spiritual aid for a dying man. If you are a priest I call upon you in the name of humanity to afford him the assistance he implores; if on the other hand you are not in orders I warn you to expect the chastisement which your impertinence merits."" The monk's pale face became livid and a smile of so strange an expression overspread it that Raoul whose eyes were fixed upon him felt an involuntary and unaccountable uneasiness. ""He is some spy of the Imperialists "" said the viscount putting his hand upon his pistols. A stern and menacing glance from the monk replied to the accusation. ""Well sir "" said De Guiche ""will you answer?"" ""I am a priest "" replied the young man his face resuming its former calm inexpressiveness. ""Then holy father "" said Raoul letting his pistol fall back into the holster and giving a tone of respect to his words ""since you are a priest you have now an opportunity of exercising your sacred functions. A man wounded to death is at the little inn which you will soon find upon your road and he implores the assistance of one of God's ministers."" ""I will go to him "" said the monk calmly setting his mule in motion. ""If you do not sir "" said De Guiche ""remember that our horses will soon overtake your mule that we possess sufficient influence to have you seized wherever you go and that then your trial will be very short. A tree and a rope are to be found every where."" The eyes of the monk emitted an angry spark but he merely repeated the words ""I will go to him "" and rode on. ""Let us follow "" said De Guiche; ""it will be the surest plan."" ""I was about to propose it "" said Raoul. And the young men followed the monk at pistol-shot distance. On arriving in sight of the roadside tavern they saw their servants approaching it from the opposite direction leading their horses and carrying the wounded man. On perceiving the monk an expression of joy illuminated the countenance of the sufferer. ""And now "" said Raoul ""we have done all we can for you and must hasten onwards to join the prince's army. There is to be a battle to-morrow it is said and we would not miss it."" The host had got everything ready a bed lint and bandages and a messenger had been dispatched to Lens which was the nearest town to bring back a surgeon. ""You will follow us "" said Raoul to the servants ""as soon as you have conveyed this person to his room. A horseman will arrive here in the course of the afternoon "" added he to the innkeeper ""and will probably enquire if the Viscount de Braguelonne has passed this way. He is one of my attendants and his name is Grimaud. You will tell him that I have passed and shall sleep at Cambrin."" By this time the litter had reached the door of the inn. The monk got off his mule ordered it to be put in the stable without unsaddling and entered the house. The two young men rode away followed by the benedictions of the wounded man. The litter was just being carried into the inn when the hostess hurried forward to receive her guests. On catching sight of the sufferer she seized her husband's arm with an exclamation of terror. ""Well "" said the host ""what is the matter?"" ""Do you not recognise him?"" said the woman pointing to the wounded man. ""Recognise him! No--yet--surely I remember the face. Can it be?""---- ""The former headsman of Bethune "" said his wife completing the sentence. ""The headsman of Bethune!"" repeated the young monk recoiling with a look and gesture of marked repugnance. The chief of Raoul's attendants perceived the disgust with which the monk heard the quality of his penitent. ""Sir "" he said ""although he may have been an executioner or even if he still be so it is no reason for refusing him the consolations of religion. Render him the service he claims at your hands and you will have the more merit in the sight of God."" The monk made no reply but entered a room on the ground-floor in which the servants were now placing the wounded man upon a bed. As he did so every one left the apartment and the penitent remained alone with his confessor. The presence of Raoul's and De Guiche's followers being no longer required the latter remounted their horses and set off at a sharp trot to rejoin their masters who were already out of sight. They had been gone but a few minutes when a single horseman rode up to the door of the inn. ""What is your pleasure sir?"" said the host still pale and aghast at the discovery his wife had made. ""A feed for my horse and a bottle of wine for myself "" was the reply. ""Have you seen a young gentleman pass by "" continued the stranger ""mounted on a chestnut horse and followed by two attendants."" ""The Viscount de Braguelonne?"" said the innkeeper. ""The same."" ""Then you are Monsieur Grimaud?"" The traveller nodded assent. ""Your master was here not half an hour ago "" said the host. ""He has ridden on and will sleep at Cambrin."" Grimaud sat down at a table wiped the dust and perspiration from his face poured out a glass of wine and drank in silence. He was about to fill his glass a second time when a loud shrill cry was heard issuing from the apartment in which the monk and the patient were shut up together. Grimaud started to his feet. ""What is that?"" exclaimed he. ""From the wounded man's room "" replied the host. ""What wounded man?"" ""The former headsman of Bethune who has been set upon and sorely hurt by Spanish partisans. The Viscount de Braguelonne rescued and brought him hither and he is now confessing himself to an Augustine friar. He seems to suffer terribly."" ""The headsman of Bethune "" muttered Grimaud apparently striving to recollect something. ""A man of fifty-five or sixty years of age tall and powerful; of dark complexion with black hair and beard?"" ""The same; excepting that his beard has become grey and his hair white. Do you know him?"" ""I have seen him once "" replied Grimaud gloomily. At this moment another cry was heard less loud than the first but followed by a long deep groan. Grimaud and the innkeeper looked at each other. ""It is like the cry of a man who is being murdered "" said the latter. ""We must see what it is "" said Grimaud. Although slow to speak Grimaud was prompt in action. He rushed to the door and shook it violently; it was secured on the inner side. ""Open the door instantly "" cried he ""or I break it down."" No answer was returned. Grimaud looked around him and perceived a heavy crowbar standing in a corner of the passage. This he seized hold of and before the host could interfere the door was burst open. The room was inundated with blood which was trickling from the mattrass; there was a hoarse rattling in the wounded man's throat; the monk had disappeared. Grimaud hurried to an open window which looked upon the court-yard. ""He has escaped through this "" said he. ""Do you think so?"" said the host. ""Boy see if the monk's mule is still in the stable."" ""It is gone "" was the answer. Grimaud approached the bed and gazed upon the harsh and strongly marked features of the wounded man. ""Is he still alive?"" said the host. Without replying Grimaud opened the man's doublet to feel if his heart beat and at the same time the innkeeper approached the bed. Suddenly both started back with an exclamation of horror. A poniard was buried to the hilt in the left breast of the headsman. What had passed between the priest and his penitent was as follows. It has been seen that the monk showed himself little disposed to delay his journey in order to receive the confession of the wounded man; so little indeed that he would probably have endeavoured to avoid it by flight had not the menaces of the Count de Guiche and afterwards the presence of the servants or perhaps his own reflections induced him to perform to the end the duties of his sacred office. On finding himself alone with the sufferer he approached the pillow of the latter. The headsman examined him with one of those rapid anxious looks peculiar to dying men and made a movement of surprise. ""You are very young holy father "" said he. ""Those who wear my dress have no age "" replied the monk severely. ""Alas good father speak to me more kindly! I need a friend in these my last moments."" ""Do you suffer much?"" asked the monk. ""Yes but in soul rather than in body."" ""We will save your soul "" said the young man; ""but tell me are you really the executioner of Bethune as these people say?"" ""I was "" replied the wounded man hurriedly as though fearful that the acknowledgment of his degrading profession might deprive him of the assistance of which he stood in such imminent need. ""I was but I am so no longer; I gave up my office many years ago. I am still obliged to appear at executions but I no longer officiate. Heaven forbid that I should!"" ""You have a horror of your profession then?"" The headsman groaned. ""So long as I only struck in the name of the law and of justice "" said he ""my conscience was at rest and my sleep untroubled; but since that terrible night when I served as instrument of a private vengeance and raised my sword with hatred against one of God's creatures--since that night""---- The headsman paused and shook his head despairingly. ""Speak on "" said the monk who had seated himself on the edge of the bed and began to take an interest in a confession that commenced so strangely. ""Ah!"" exclaimed the dying man ""what efforts have I not made to stifle my remorse by twenty years of good works! I have exposed my own existence to preserve that of others and have saved human lives in exchange for the one I had unwarrantably taken. I frequented the churches sought out the poor to console and relieve them; those who once avoided became accustomed to see me and some have even loved me. But God has not pardoned me; for do what I will the memory of my crime pursues me and each night in my dreams the spectre of that woman stands menacing before me."" ""A woman! Was it a woman then whom you assassinated?"" cried the monk. ""And you too "" exclaimed the headsman--""you too use that word assassinated. It _was_ an assassination then not an execution and I am a murderer!"" He shut his eyes and uttered a hollow moan. The monk feared probably that he would die without completing his confession for he hastened to console him. ""Go on "" said he. ""I cannot yet know how far you are guilty. When I have heard all I will decide. Tell me then how you came to commit this deed."" ""It was night "" resumed the headsman in faltering accents: ""a man came to my house to seek me and showed me an order. I followed him. Four other gentlemen were waiting for him; they put a mask upon my face and led me with them. I was resolved to resist if what they required me to do appeared unjust. We rode on for five or six leagues almost without uttering a word; at last we halted--and they showed me through the window of a cottage a woman seated at a table. 'That ' said they 'is she whom you are to decapitate.'"" ""Horrible!"" exclaimed the monk. ""And you obeyed?"" ""Father that woman was a monster; she had poisoned her husband had tried to assassinate her brother-in-law who was one of the men that now accompanied me; she had murdered a young girl whom she thought her rival; and before leaving England had instigated the assassination of the king's favourite."" ""Buckingham?"" exclaimed the monk. ""Yes Buckingham--that was the name."" ""She was an Englishwoman then?"" ""No--a Frenchwoman but she had been married to an English nobleman."" The monk grew pale passed his hand across his forehead and rising from the bed approached the door and bolted it. The headsman thought that he was leaving him and implored him to return. ""I am here "" said the monk resuming his seat. ""Who were the five men who accompanied you?"" ""One was an Englishman; the other four were French and wore the uniform of the mousquetaires."" ""Their names?"" demanded the monk. ""I do not know them. But the four Frenchmen called the Englishman 'My lord.'"" ""And the woman; was she young?"" ""Young and beautiful most beautiful as she kneeled before me imploring mercy. I have never been able to understand how I had the courage to strike off that pale and lovely head."" The monk seemed to be under the influence of some violent emotion; his limbs trembled and he appeared unable to speak. At last mastering himself by a strong effort--""The name of this woman?"" said he. ""I do not know it. She had been married twice once in France and once in England."" ""And you killed her!"" said the monk vehemently. ""You served as instrument to those dastardly villains who dared not kill her themselves. You had no pity on her youth her beauty her weakness! You killed her!"" ""Alas! holy father "" said the headsman ""this woman concealed under the exterior of an angel the vices of a demon; and when I saw her when I remembered all that I had myself suffered from her""---- ""You? And what could she have done to you?"" ""She had seduced my brother who was a priest had fled with him from his convent lost him both body and soul."" ""Your brother?"" ""Yes my brother had been her first lover. Oh my father! do not look at me thus. I am very guilty then! You cannot pardon me!"" The monk composed his features which had assumed a terrible expression during the latter part of the dying man's confession. ""I will pardon you "" said he ""if you tell me all. Since your brother was her first lover you must know her maiden name. Tell it me."" ""Oh my God! my God!"" exclaimed the headsman--""I am dying! Absolution holy father! absolution!"" ""Her name "" said the monk ""and I give it to you."" The headsman who was convulsed with agony both physical and moral seemed scarcely able to speak. The monk bent over him as if to catch the smallest sound he should utter. ""Her name "" said he ""or no absolution."" The dying man seemed to collect all his strength. ""Anne de Bueil "" murmured he. ""Anne de Bueil!"" repeated the monk rising to his feet and lifting his hands to heaven ""Anne de Bueil! Did you say Anne de Bueil?"" ""Yes yes that was her name; and now absolve me for I am dying."" ""_I_ absolve you?"" cried the monk with a laugh that made the sufferer's hair stand on end; ""_I_ absolve you? I am no priest!"" ""You are no priest!"" cried the headsman; ""but who and what are you then?"" ""I will tell you miscreant! I am John de Winter and that woman""---- ""And that woman""----gasped the executioner. ""Was my mother!"" The headsman uttered a shriek the long and terrible one which Grimaud and the innkeeper had heard. ""Oh pardon pardon!"" murmured he--""forgive me if not in God's name at least in your own. If not as a priest as a son."" ""Pardon you!"" replied the pretended monk; ""pardon you! God may perhaps do it but I never will. Die wretch die! unabsolved despairing and accursed."" And drawing a dagger from under his gown he plunged it into the breast of the headsman. ""Take that "" said he ""for my absolution."" It was then that the second cry followed by a long moan had been uttered. The headsman who had partially raised himself fell back upon the bed. The monk without withdrawing his dagger from the wound ran to the window opened it jumped out into the little flower-garden below and hurried to the stable. Leading out his mule he plunged into the thickest part of the adjacent forest stripped off his monk's garb took a horseman's dress out of his valise and put it on. Then making all haste to the nearest post-house he took a horse and continued with the utmost speed his journey to Paris. The headsman lives long enough to inform Grimaud of what has passed; and Grimaud who was present at the decapitation of Lady de Winter returns to Paris to put Athos and his friends on their guard against the vengeance of her son. Mordaunt _alias_ De Winter is one of Cromwell's most devoted and unscrupulous agents and is proceeding to the French capital to negotiate with Mazarine on the part of the Parliamentary general. Guided by what he has heard from the executioner of Bethune he discovers who the men are by whose order his mother was beheaded and he vows their destruction. The four friends soon afterwards meet in England whither D'Artagnan and Porthos have been sent on a mission to Cromwell; whilst Athos and Aramis have repaired thither to strive to prop the falling fortunes of Charles the First. We cannot say much in favour of that portion of the book of which the scene is laid on English ground. M. Dumas is much happier in his delineations of Frondeurs and Mazarinists than of Puritans and Cavaliers; and his account of Charles the First and of the scenes prior to his execution is horribly Frenchified. After numerous narrow escapes from Mordaunt who pursues them with unrelenting rancour and succeeds in assassinating their friend and his uncle Lord de Winter the four guardsmen embark on board a small vessel to return to France. Mordaunt discovers this gets the captain and crew out of the way replaces them by one Groslow and other creatures of his own and conceals himself on board. His plan is so soon as the vessel is a short distance out at sea to escape in a boat with his confederates after firing a train communicating with some barrels of powder in the hold. There is some improbability in this part of the story; but gunpowder plots have special privilege of absurdity. The guardsmen however discover the mischief that is brewing against them just in time to escape through the cabin windows and swim off to the boat which is towing astern. Scarcely had D'Artagnan cut the rope that attached the boat to the ship when a shrill whistle was heard proceeding from the latter which as it moved on whilst the boat remained stationary was already beginning to be lost to view in the darkness. At the same moment a lantern was brought upon deck and lit up the figures of the crew. Suddenly a great outcry was heard; and just then the clouds that covered the heavens split and parted and the silver light of the moon fell upon the white sails and dark rigging of the vessel. Persons were seen running about the deck in bewilderment and confusion; and Mordaunt himself carrying a torch in his hand appeared upon the poop. At the appointed hour Groslow had collected his men and Mordaunt after listening at the door of the cabin and concluding from the silence which reigned that his intended victims were buried in sleep had hurried to the powder barrels and set fire to the train. Whilst he was doing this Groslow and his sailors were preparing to leave the ship. ""Haul in the rope "" said the former ""and bring the boat along-side."" One of the sailors seized the rope and pulled it. It came to him without resistance. ""The cable is cut!"" exclaimed the man; ""the boat is gone."" ""The boat gone!"" repeated Groslow; ""impossible!"" ""It is nevertheless true "" returned the sailor. ""See here; nothing in our wake and here is the end of the rope."" It was then that Groslow uttered the cry which the guardsmen heard from their boat. ""What is the matter?"" demanded Mordaunt emerging from the hatchway his torch in his hand and rushing towards the stern. ""The matter is that your enemies have escaped you. They have cut the rope and saved themselves in the boat."" With a single bound Mordaunt was at the cabin-door which he burst open with his foot. It was empty. ""We will follow them "" said Groslow; ""they cannot be far off. We will give them the stem; sail right over them."" ""Yes; but the powder--I have fired the train!"" ""Damnation!"" roared Groslow rushing to the hatchway. ""Perhaps there is still time."" A horrible laugh and a frightful blasphemy were Mordaunt's reply; and then his features distorted by rage and disappointed hate rather than by fear he hurled his torch into the sea and precipitated himself after it. At the same moment and before Groslow had reached the powder barrels the ship opened like the crater of a volcano a gush of fire rose from it with a noise like that of fifty pieces of artillery and blazing fragments of the doomed vessel were seen careering through the air in every direction. It lasted but an instant; the red glow that had lit up the sea for miles around vanished; the burning fragments fell hissing into the water; and with the exception of a vibration in the air all was calm as before. The felucca had disappeared; Groslow and his men were annihilated. Our four guardsmen had witnessed this terrible spectacle with mute awe and horror and when it was over they remained for a moment downcast and silent. Porthos and D'Artagnan who had each taken an oar forgot to use them and sat gazing at their companions whilst the boat rocked to and fro at the will of the waves. ""_Ma foi!_"" said Aramis who was the first to break the pause ""this time I think we are fairly rid of him."" ""Help gentlemen help!"" just then cried a voice that came sweeping in piteous accents over the troubled surface of the sea. ""Help! for heaven's sake help!"" The guardsmen looked at each other. Athos shuddered. ""It is his voice!"" said he. All recognised the voice and strained their eyes in the direction in which the felucca had disappeared. Presently a man was seen swimming vigorously towards them. Athos extended his arm pointing him out to his companions. ""Yes yes "" said D'Artagnan; ""I see him."" ""Will nothing kill him?"" said Porthos. Aramis leaned forward and spoke in a whisper to D'Artagnan. Mordaunt advanced a few yards and raised one hand out of the water in sign of distress. ""Pity! gentlemen "" cried he; ""pity and mercy! My strength is leaving me and I am about to sink."" The tone of agony in which these words were spoken awakened a feeling of compassion in the breast of Athos. ""Unhappy man!"" he murmured. ""Good!"" said D'Artagnan. ""I like to see you pity him. On my word I think he is swimming towards us. Does he suppose we are going to take him in? Row Porthos row."" And D'Artagnan plunged his oar into the water. Two or three long strokes placed twenty fathoms between the boat and the drowning man. ""Oh! you will have mercy!"" cried Mordaunt. ""You will not let me perish!"" ""Aha! my fine fellow "" said Porthos ""we have you now I think without a chance of escape."" ""Oh Porthos!"" murmured the Count de la Fère. ""For heaven's sake Athos "" replied Porthos ""cease your eternal generosity which is ridiculous under such circumstances. For my part I declare to you that if he comes within my reach I will split his skull with the oar."" D'Artagnan who had just finished his colloquy with Aramis stood up in the boat. ""Sir "" said he to the swimmer ""be so good as to betake yourself in some other direction. The vessel which you intended for our coffin is scarcely yet at the bottom of the sea and your present situation is a bed of roses compared to that in which you intended to put us."" ""Gentlemen!"" said Mordaunt in despairing accents ""I swear to you that I sincerely repent. I am too young to die. I was led away by a natural resentment; I wished to revenge my mother. You would all have acted as I have done."" ""Pshaw!"" said D'Artagnan who saw that Athos was becoming more and more softened by Mordaunt's supplications. The swimmer was again within three or four fathoms of the boat. The approach of death seemed to give him supernatural strength. ""Alas!"" said he ""I am going to die then. And yet I was right to avenge my mother. And besides if it were a crime I repent of it and you ought to pardon me."" A wave that passed over his head interrupted his entreaties. He again emerged and made a stroke in the direction of the boat. D'Artagnan took his oar in both hands. The unhappy wretch uttered a groan of despair. Athos could bear it no longer. ""D'Artagnan!"" cried he ""my son D'Artagnan I entreat of you to spare his life. It is so horrible to let a man die when you can save him by stretching out your hand. I cannot witness such a deed; he _must_ be saved."" ""Mordieu!"" replied D'Artagnan ""why do you not tie our hands and feet and deliver us up to him at once? The thing would be sooner over. Ha! Count de la Fère you wish to perish at his hands: well I whom you call your son--I will not suffer it."" Aramis quietly drew his sword which he had carried between his teeth when he swam off from the ship. ""If he lays a hand upon the boat "" said he ""I sever it from his body like that of a regicide as he is."" ""Wait a moment "" said Porthos. ""What are you going to do?"" said Aramis. ""Jump overboard and strangle him "" replied the giant. ""Oh my friends!"" said Athos in a tone of entreaty that was irresistible; ""remember that we are men and Christians! Grant me the life of this unhappy wretch!"" D'Artagnan hung his head: Aramis lowered his sword: Porthos sat down. ""Count de la Fère "" exclaimed Mordaunt now very near the boat ""it is you whom I implore. Have pity upon me and that quickly for my strength is exhausted. Count de la Fère where are you?"" ""I am here sir "" replied Athos with that noble and dignified air that was habitual to him. ""Take my hand and come into our boat."" ""I cannot bear to witness it "" said D'Artagnan; ""such weakness is really pitiable."" And he turned towards his two remaining friends who on their part recoiled to the other side of the boat as if unwilling to touch the man to whom Athos alone did not fear to give his hand. Mordaunt made an effort raised himself up and seized the arm extended to him. ""So "" said Athos leaning over the gunwale of the boat--""now place your other hand here;"" and he offered him his shoulder as a support so that his head nearly touched that of Mordaunt; and for a moment the two deadly foes seemed to embrace each other like brothers. Mordaunt grasped the count's collar with his cold and dripping fingers. ""And now sir you are saved "" said Athos; ""compose yourself."" ""Ah my mother!"" exclaimed Mordaunt with the look of a demon and an accent of hatred impossible to render ""I can offer you but one victim but it is the one you would yourself have chosen!"" D'Artagnan uttered a cry; Porthos raised his oar; Aramis sprang forward his naked sword in his hand. But it was too late. By a last effort and with a yell of triumph Mordaunt dragged Athos into the water compressing his throat and winding his limbs round him like the coils of a serpent. Without uttering a word or calling for help Athos strove for a moment to maintain himself on the surface of the water. But his movements were fettered the weight that clung to him was too great to bear up against and little by little he sank. Before his friends could get to his assistance his head was under water and only his long hair was seen floating; then all disappeared and a circle of foam which in its turn was rapidly obliterated alone marked the spot where the two men had been engulfed. Struck dumb by horror motionless and almost suffocated with grief and indignation the three guardsmen remained with dilated eyes and extended arms gazing down upon the dark waves that rolled over the body of their friend the brave the chivalrous the noble-hearted Athos. Porthos was the first to recover his speech. ""Oh Athos!"" said he tearing his hair and with an explosion of grief doubly affecting in a man of his gigantic frame and iron mould; ""Oh Athos! are you indeed gone from us?"" At this moment in the midst of the vast circle which the rays of the moon lit up the agitation of the water which had accompanied the absorption of the two men was renewed and there appeared first a quantity of fair hair then a pallid human face with eyes wide open but fixed and glazed then a body which after raising its bust out of the water fell softly backwards and floated upon the surface of the sea. In the breast of the corpse was buried a dagger of which the golden hilt sparkled in the moonbeams. ""Mordaunt! Mordaunt!"" cried the three friends; ""it is Mordaunt! But Athos! where is he?"" Just then the boat gave a lurch and Grimaud uttered an exclamation of joy. The guardsmen turned and saw Athos his face livid with exhaustion supporting himself with a trembling hand upon the gunwale of the boat. In an instant he was lifted in and clasped in the arms of his friends. ""You are unhurt?"" said D'Artagnan. ""Yes "" replied Athos. ""And Mordaunt?"" ""Oh! thank God he is dead at last. Look yonder."" And D'Artagnan forced Athos to look in the direction he pointed out where the body of Mordaunt tossed upon the wave seemed to pursue the friends with a look of insult and mortal hate. Athos gazed at it with an expression of mingled pity and melancholy. ""Bravo! Athos "" cried Aramis with a degree of exultation which he rarely showed. ""A good blow "" exclaimed Porthos. ""I have a son "" said Athos ""and I wished to live. But it was not I who killed him. It was the hand of fate."" Soon after the escape of Monsieur de Beaufort the Parisians stirred up by various influential malecontents--one of the chief of whom is the famous Jean de Gondy Coadjutor of Paris and afterwards Cardinal de Retz--break out into open insurrection. Mazarine's life is menaced; the queen-mother and the young king are virtually prisoners of the Frondeurs. The Prince of Condé with the laurels he has gained on the battle-field of Lens yet fresh upon his brow hurries to Paris to take part against the Fronde; the queen and Mazarine are anxious to escape from the capital in order to carry on the war in the open field instead of in the narrow streets fighting in which latter or from behind their barricades the ill-disciplined troops of the insurgents are nearly as efficient as the most practised veterans. How to manage the escape is the difficulty. The gates of the city are guarded by armed citizens; there appears no possibility of egress. In this dilemma Anne of Austria bethinks her of the man to whose address and courage she had twenty years previously been so deeply indebted; D'Artagnan is called in to her assistance. He succeeds in smuggling the cardinal out of Paris and then returns to fetch Louis XIV. and the queen-mother. Instea

of re-entering Paris by the gate of St Honoré D'Artagnan who had time to spare went round to that of Richelieu. The guard stopped him and when they saw by his plumed hat and laced cloak that he was an officer of mousquetaires they insisted upon his crying out ""Down with Mazarine."" This he did with so good a grace and in so sonorous a voice that the most difficult were fully satisfied. He then walked down the Rue Richelieu reflecting how he should manage the escape of the queen for it would be impossible to take her away in one of the royal carriages with the arms of France painted upon it. On passing before the hotel of Madame de Guéménée who passed for the mistress of Monsieur de Gondy he perceived a coach standing at the door. A sudden idea struck him. ""Pardieu!"" said he ""it would be an excellent manoeuvre."" And stepping up to the carriage he examined the arms upon the panels and the livery of the coachman who was sleeping on the box. ""It is the Coadjutor's carriage "" said D'Artagnan to himself. ""Providence is decidedly in our favour."" He opened the door without noise got into the coach and pulled the check-string. ""To the Palais Royal "" cried he to the coachman. The man waking in a fright made no doubt that the order came from his master and drove off at full speed to the palace. The gates of the court were just closing as he drove in. On pulling up at the steps the coachman perceived that the footmen were not behind the carriage and supposing that M. de Gondy had sent them somewhere he got off his box and opened the door. D'Artagnan jumped out and just as the coachman alarmed at seeing a stranger instead of his master made a step backwards he seized him by the collar with his left hand and with his right put a pistol to his breast. ""Not a word "" said D'Artagnan ""or you are a dead man."" The coachman saw that he had fallen into a snare. He remained silent with open mouth and staring eyes. Two mousquetaires were walking up and down the court; D'Artagnan called them handed over the coachman to one of them with orders to keep him in safe custody and desired the other to get on the box of the carriage drive it round to the door of the private staircase leading out of the palace and there to wait till he came. The coachman's livery coat and hat went with the carriage. These arrangements completed D'Artagnan entered the palace and knocked at the door of the queen's apartments. He was instantly admitted; Anne of Austria was waiting for him in her oratory. ""Is every thing prepared?"" said she. ""Every thing madam."" ""And the cardinal?"" ""He has left Paris without accident and waits for your majesty at Cours la Reine."" ""Come with me to the king."" D'Artagnan bowed and followed the queen. The young king was already dressed with the exception of his shoes and doublet. He seemed greatly astonished at being thus roused in the middle of the night and overwhelmed his valet-de-chambre Laporte with questions to all of which the latter replied--""Sire it is by order of her majesty."" The bed-clothes were thrown back and the sheets were seen worn threadbare and even into holes. This was one of the results of Mazarine's excessive parsimony. The queen entered and D'Artagnan remained at the door of the apartment. As soon as the child saw his mother he escaped from Laporte's hand and ran up to her. She signed to D'Artagnan to approach. ""My son "" said Anne of Austria showing him the mousquetaire who stood with his plumed hat in his hand calm grave and collected ""this is M. D'Artagnan who is brave as one of those knights of old whose histories you love to hear repeated. Look at him well and remember his name for he is about to render us a great service."" Louis XIV. gazed at D'Artagnan with his large proud eyes; then slowly lifting his little hand he held it out to the officer who bent his knee and kissed it. ""Monsieur D'Artagnan "" repeated the young king. ""It is well madam; I shall remember it."" At this moment a loud murmuring noise was heard approaching the palace. ""Ha!"" said D'Artagnan straining his ears to distinguish the sound--""The people are rising."" ""We must fly instantly "" said the queen. ""Madam "" said D'Artagran ""you have deigned to give me the direction of this night's proceedings. Let your majesty remain and learn what the people want. I will answer for every thing."" Nothing is more easily communicated than confidence. The queen herself courageous and energetic appreciated in the highest degree those two virtues in others. ""Do as you please "" said she. ""I trust entirely to you."" ""Does your majesty authorize me to give orders in your name?"" ""I do sir."" D'Artagnan hurried from the room. The tumult was increasing; the mob seemed to surround the Palais Royal. On all sides were heard seditious cries and clamours. Presently M. de Comminges who was on guard that night at the Palais Royal craved admittance to the queen's presence. He had about two hundred men in the court-yard and stables and he placed them at her majesty's disposal. ""What do the people want?"" said Anne of Austria to D'Artagnan who just then re-appeared. ""A report has been spread madam that your majesty has left the Palais Royal taking the king with you. The mob demand a proof of the contrary or threaten to demolish the palace."" ""Oh! this time it is too bad "" said the queen. ""I will soon show them that I am not gone."" D'Artagnan saw by the expression of Anne's face that she was about to give some violent order. He hastened to interfere. ""Madam "" said he in a low voice ""have you still confidence in me?"" ""Entire confidence sir "" was the reply. ""Then let your majesty send away M. de Comminges and order him to shut himself up with his men in the guard-room and stables. The people wish to see the king and the people must see him."" ""See him! But how? On the balcony?"" ""No madam; here in his bed sleeping."" The queen reflected a moment and smiled. There as a degree of duplicity in the course proposed that chimed in with her humour. ""Let it be as you will "" said she. ""Monsieur Laporte "" said D'Artagnan; ""go and announce to the people that in five minutes they shall see the king in his bed. Say also that his majesty is sleeping and that the queen requests them to be silent in order not to awaken him."" ""But they cannot all come "" said Anne. ""A deputation of two or four persons."" ""All of them madam."" ""But it will last till to-morrow morning."" ""In a quarter of hour it will be over. I know the mob madam; it is a great baby that only wants flattery and caresses. Before the king these noisy rioters will be mute and timid as lambs."" ""Go Laporte "" said the queen. The young king approached his mother. ""Why do you do what these people ask?"" said he. ""It must be so my son "" said Anne of Austria. ""But if they can tell me that it _must_ be so I am no longer king."" The queen remained silent. ""Sire "" said D'Artagnan ""will your majesty permit me to ask you a question?"" ""Yes sir "" replied Louis after a moment's pause occasioned by surprise at the guardsman's boldness. ""Does our majesty remember when playing in the park at Fontaine-bleau or the gardens at Versailles to have seen the heavens become clouded and to have heard the thunder roll?"" ""Certainly I do "" answered Louis. ""Well the noise of that thunder told your majesty that however disposed you might be to play you _must_ go in-doors."" ""Certainly sir; but I have been told that the voice of the thunder is the voice of God."" ""Well sire let your majesty listen to the voice of the people and you will perceive that it greatly resembles that of the thunder."" As he spoke a low deep roar proceeding from the multitude without was borne upon the night breeze to the windows of the apartment. The next instant all was still and hushed. ""Hark sire "" said D'Artagnan ""they have just told the people that you are sleeping. You see that you are still king."" The queen looked with astonishment at the singular man whose brilliant courage made him the equal of the bravest; whose keen and ready wit rendered him the equal of all. Laporte entered the room and announced that the message he had taken to the people had acted like oil upon the waves and that they were waiting in respectful silence till the five minutes at the expiration of which they were to see the king should have elapsed. By the queen's order Louis was put into bed dressed as he was and covered up to the throat with the sheets. His mother stooped over him and kissed his forehead. ""Pretend to sleep Louis "" said she. ""Yes "" said the king ""but not one of those men must touch me."" ""Sire "" said D'Artagnan ""I am here; and if one of them had that audacity he should pay for it with his life."" The five minutes were over. Laporte went out to usher in the mob; the queen remained standing near the door; D'Artagnan concealed himself behind the curtains of the bed. Then was heard the march of a great multitude of men striving to step lightly and noiselessly. The queen raised with her own hand the tapestry that covered the doorway and placed her finger on her lips. On beholding her the crowd paused struck with respect. ""Come in gentlemen--come in "" said the queen. There was apparent in the mob a degree of hesitation which resembled shame; they had expected resistance had anticipated a contest with the guards bloodshed and violence; instead of that the gates had been peaceably opened and the king ostensibly at least was unguarded save by his mother. The men in front of the throng stammered out an excuse and attempted to retire. ""Come in gentlemen "" said Laporte ""since the queen desires it."" Upon this invitation a man bolder than the rest entered the room and advanced on tiptoe towards the bed. He was followed by others and the chamber was rapidly filled as silently as if the new-comers had been the most humble and obsequious courtiers. D'Artagnan saw every thing through a hole he had made in the curtain. In the man who had first entered he recognised his former servant Planchet who since he had left his service had been a sergeant in the regiment of Piedmont and who was now a confectioner in the Rue des Lombards and an active partisan of the Fronde. ""Sir "" said the queen who saw that Planchet was a leader of the mob ""you wished to see the king and the king is here. Approach and look at him and say if we resemble persons who are going to escape."" ""Certainly not your majesty "" said Planchet a little astonished at the honour done to him. ""You will tell my good and loyal Parisians "" continued Anne of Austria with a smile of which D'Artagnan well understood the meaning ""that you have seen the king in bed and sleeping and the queen about to go to bed also."" ""I will tell them so madam and those who accompany me will also bear witness to it but""---- ""But what?"" said the queen. ""I beseech your majesty to pardon me "" said Planchet ""but is this really the king?"" The queen trembled with suppressed anger. ""Is there one amongst you who knows the king?"" said she. ""If so let him approach and say if this be his majesty or not."" A man muffled in a cloak which he wore in such a manner as to conceal his face drew near and stooping over the bed gazed at the features of Louis. For a moment D'Artagnan thought that this person had some evil design and he placed his hand upon his sword; but as he did so the cloak slipped partially from before the man's face and the guardsman recognised the Coadjutor De Gondy. ""It is the king himself "" said the man. ""God bless his majesty!"" ""God bless his majesty!"" murmured the crowd. ""And now my friends "" said Planchet; ""let us thank her majesty and retire."" The insurgents bowed their thanks and left the room with the same caution and silence with which they had entered it. When the last had disappeared followed by Laporte the remaining actors in this strange scene remained for a moment looking at each other without uttering a word: the queen standing near the door; D'Artagnan half out of his hiding-place; the king leaning on his elbow but ready to fall back upon his pillow at the least noise that should indicate the return of the mob. The noise of footsteps however grew rapidly more remote and at last entirely ceased. The queen drew a deep breath of relief; D'Artagnan wiped the perspiration of anxiety from his brow; the king slid out of his bed. ""Let us go "" said Louis. Just then Laporte returned. ""I have followed them to the gates madam "" said the valet-de-chambre; ""they informed their companions that they had seen the king and spoken to the queen and the mob has dispersed perfectly satisfied."" ""The wretches!"" murmured Anne of Austria; ""they shall pay dearly for their insolence."" Then turning to D'Artagnan ""Sir "" said she ""you have this night given me the best advice I ever received in my life. What is next to be done?"" ""We can set out when your majesty pleases. I shall be waiting at the foot of the private staircase."" ""Go sir "" said the queen. ""We will follow you."" D'Artagnan descended the stairs and found the carriage at the appointed place with the guardsman sitting on the box. He took the hat and coat of M. de Gondy's coachman put them on himself and took the guardsman's place. He had a brace of pistols in his belt a musquetoon under his feet his naked sword behind him. The queen appeared accompanied by the king and by his brother the Duke of Anjou. ""The Coadjutor's carriage!"" exclaimed she starting back in astonishment. ""Yes madam "" said D'Artagnan ""but be not alarmed. I shall drive you."" The queen uttered a cry of surprise and stepped into the coach. The king and his brother followed and sat down beside her. By her command Laporte also entered the vehicle. The mantelets of the windows were closed and the horses set off at a gallop along the Rue Richelieu. On reaching the gate at the extremity of the street the chief of the guard advanced at the head of a dozen men and carrying a lantern in his hand. D'Artagnan made him a sign. ""Do you recognise the carriage?"" said he to the sergeant. ""No "" was the reply. ""Look at the arms."" The sergeant put his lantern close to the pannel. ""They are those of M. le Coadjuteur "" said he. ""Hush!"" said d'Artagnan. ""Madam de Guéménée is with him."" The sergeant laughed. ""Open the gate "" said he; ""I know who it is."" Then approaching the mantelet--""Much pleasure Monseigneur "" said he. ""Hold your tongue!"" cried D'Artagnan ""or you will lose me my place."" The gate creaked upon its hinges; D'Artagnan seeing the gate open flogged his horses and set off at a rapid trot. In five minutes he had rejoined the cardinal's coach. ""Mousqueton "" cried D'Artagnan to M. du Vallon's servant ""open the door of his majesty's carriage."" ""It is he!"" exclaimed Porthos who was waiting for his friend. ""In a coachman's livery!"" cried Mazarine. ""And with the Coadjutor's carriage "" said the queen. ""_Corpo di Dio_ Monsieur d'Artagnan!"" said the cardinal ""you are worth your weight in gold!"" We cannot attempt to give more than these slight glimpses of the eight volumes now lying before us in which the extravagance and exaggeration of many of the incidents are only redeemed by the brilliant diction and animated narrative of their clever but unscrupulous author. It would be too lengthy to give even a sketch of the chain of incidents that succeeds those above detailed or to show how according to M. Dumas D'Artagnan and his friends became instrumental to the conclusion of the treaty by which the hostilities between Frondeurs and Mazarinists are for the time brought to a close. The first act of the war of the Fronde is over; Louis XIV. now within a year of his majority re-enters the capital with Anne of Austria and Mazarine D'Artagnan now captain of mousquetaires riding on one side of his carriage and Porthos now Baron du Vallon on the other. Baron Porthos goes back to his estates happy and glorious; Aramis and Athos return to the seclusion whence the stirring times had called them forth the latter leaving his son in charge of D'Artagnan who is to take the young man with him to the Flemish wars. The restless spirit of the Gascon abhors the idea of repose. ""Come D'Artagnan "" said Porthos as he got upon his horse to depart ""take my advice; throw up your commission hang up your sword and accompany me to Du Vallon. We will grow old together whilst talking of our past adventures."" ""Not so "" replied D'Artagnan. ""_Peste!_ the campaign is just opening and I mean to make it. I hope to gain something by it."" ""And what do you hope to become?"" ""_Pardieu!_ who can tell? Marshal of France perhaps."" ""Ah ah!"" said Porthos looking at D'Artagnan to whose gasconading he had never been able quite to accustom himself. And the two friends parted. ""You will prepare your best apartment for me Madeleine "" said D'Artagnan to his handsome hostess as he re-entered his hotel. ""I must keep up appearances now that I am Captain of Mousquetaires."" THE GRAND GENERAL JUNCTION AND INDEFINITE EXTENSION RAILWAY RHAPSODY. BY A PROVISIONAL COMMITTEE OF CONTRIBUTORS. Though the farmer's hope may perish While in floods the harvest lies Speculation let us cherish Let the Railway market rise! Honest trader whosoever Sick with losses sad with cares Quit your burden now or never Cut the shop and deal in shares. Spendthrift--short of drink and dinners Half-pay captain younger son Boldly throw while all are winners Laugh henceforth at debt and dun. Come ye saints whose skill in cavilling Shock'd at skittles cards or dice Thinks except for Sunday travelling Railway gaming is no vice. Hither haste each black-leg fellow Quit the turf or loaded bone; Like your brother-black Othello Own your occupation's gone. Tribes that live by depredation-- ""Bulls"" and ""Bears "" and birds of prey See the coming spoliation Scent the premiums far away. ""Stags!"" your rapid forms revealing Show awhile your front so bright Then from your pursuers stealing Vanish sudden out of sight. Leave all meaner things my St John For the locomotive race; Post your tin upon the engine Go ahead and keep the pace. At a Railway Monarch's splendour Envious squires and nobles stare; Even the Hebrew gewgaw vender Turns sharebroker in despair. Now no more the Ragfair dealer Hints with horrid breath ""Old Clo';"" Putting forth another feeler ""Any shares?"" he whispers low. Every paper's a prospectus Nostrums news are at an end; ""Easy shaving"" don't affect us Silent even ""The Silent Friend."" Morison resigns his bubbling Lazenby has lost his zest; Widow Welch has ceased from troubling Weary Moses is at rest. Every station age and gender Deep within the torrent dip; Even our children young and tender Play at games of nursery scrip. Over meadows moors and mosses Quagmires black and mountains grey Careless where or how it crosses Speculation finds the way. Every valley is exalted Every mountain is made low; Where we once were roughly jolted Light and lively now we go. Speed along with fire and fury! Hark! the whistle shrilly shrieks! Speed--but mark! we don't insure ye 'Gainst the boiler's frolic freaks. But before a trip is ventured This precaution prudence begs: When you've seen your luggage enter'd Also book your arms and legs. Ask not if yon luckless stoker Blown into the air survive-- These are trifles while the broker Quotes our shares at Ninety-five. Vainly points some bleeding spectre To his mangled remnants;--still Calmly answers each Director ""Charge the damage to the bill."" All the perils which environ (As the poet _now_ would sing) Him who meddles with _hot_ iron Seem to us a pleasant thing. Countless lines from Lewes to Lerwick Cross like nets the country soon; Soon a railway (Atmospheric ) Speeds our progress to the moon. Traversing yon space between us Soon the rapid trains will bring Ores from Mars and fires from Venus Lots of lead from Saturn's Ring; Belts from Jupiter's own factory Mercury from Maia's Son; And when summers look refractory Bottled sunbeams from the sun. If too soaring too seraphic Seems to some that heavenward track T'other way there's much more traffic Though not many travel back. What a gradient through Avernus! What a curve will Hades take! When with joy the Shades discern us How Hell's terminus will shake! How the Pandemonium Junction With the Central will combine Rattling both without compunction Down the Tartarus incline! Phlegethon no more need fright us For we've bridged its fiery way; And the steamer on Cocytus Long ago has ceased to pay. Charon--under sequestration-- Does the Stygian bark resign Glad to find a situation As policeman to the line. Thoughts of penance need not haunt us; Who remains our sins to snub? Pluto Minos Rhadamanthus All have joined the ""Railway Club."" Fortune's gifts then catch and cherish; Follow where her currents flow; Sure to prosper--or to perish Follow though to Styx we go! SKETCHES OF ITALY--LUCCA. The records of travellers in the _Livre des Etrangers_ at Modena had prepared us to expect nothing tolerable at the night halts in our journey through the Apennines to our projected place of _séjour_ during the great heats of summer the _Bagni di Lucca_. At the _mountain_ locandas we were always prepared not to say resigned to encounter those various distresses which seem light evils at a distance--knowing that we could not starve as long as eggs and maccaroni were to be found and even as to lodging we were too old travellers to flinch at trifles. The rural inn at Piave which looked more inviting than the great one of the small place was delighted to receive us and gave us good trout tolerable bread and excellent honey: we were in the midst of a lovely country we heard a limpid stream running within a few yards of our window; and what had we to fear? But night came and with it more annoyances than one bargains for even in Italy. A floor of thin planks which had never fitted and of which the joinings which had never been of the kind called _callidæ_ were now widened by time was all that parted our small bedroom from that of the horses. Through these and also through large rat-holes there came up copious ammoniacal smells which our mucous membrane resented from the first; and well it had fared with us had this been all. We had never been so near horses at night and had no idea they made such an incessant noise. _One_ horse stabled and littered for the night were bad enough but we had a whole stableful; and just as we were forgetting the fleas and forgiving the mosquitos and sleep led on by indigestion was heavy on our eyelids a snort loud as a lion's roar made us start. Then there came a long succession of chump chump from the molar teeth and a snort snort from the wakeful nostril of our mute companions (_equo ne credite Teucri!_)--one stinted quadruped was ransacking the manger for hay another was cracking his beans to make him frisky to-morrow and more than one seemed actually rubbing his moist nose just under our bed! This was not all; not a whisk of their tails escaped us and when they coughed which was often the hoarse _roncione_ shook the very tressels of our bed; in short we never suffered such real night_mare_ before. We dreamt _stethoscopes_ and racks. But morning came and with it morning freshness and morning sound. The wood-pigeons are cooing the green hills just opposite seem to have come closer up to our window to wish us good-day; so we throw open our little casement to let out the gaseous compounds from bed and stable. How elegantly do the dew-bedded vines take hold of the poplars and elms and hang their festoons of ripening fruit from branch to branch! But the sun begins to break a brilliant pencil of rays over the hill-top nor will he take long to leave the screen and uncover himself; indeed in less than a quarter of an hour he will have stared us quite out of countenance and long before the hour of his advent shall have been completed the birds which till now have been all activity will become torpid the pigeons will have given over their cooing and the sparrow his chirp; so the fish that has not yet breakfasted had better make haste for his are chariot-wheels which have been looked after overnight and linchpins that never come out; nor has he had one break-down or overturn since he first set off on his _Macadamized_ way. In haste to escape from the heat of the plains of Tuscany we were not sorry when we saw the douaniers of _Pistoia_ the last of its cities. This town is dulness not epitomized but extended over a considerable space; its streets are many long and what is not usual in Italy wide. There is no population stirring; the very piazza is without activity; and if you leave it you may walk a mile between very large houses churches convents and palaces without meeting any one. Pistoia in short is an improvement on _Oxford_ in the long vacation--the place however has its ancient fame has given birth to two or three distinguished literati and figured in the civil wars. The fifteenth century records among others the name of _Cini_ whose epitaph we saw in the cathedral; and the author of the _Riciardetto_ was we believe also one of its citizens. In its immediate vicinity fell _Catiline_. They say the Italian language is spoken here with great purity of _accent_ which is remarkable as it is only twenty miles from the guttural and inharmonious speech of Florence. It was not our purpose to explore its decayed manufactures if such there still exist at all of fire-arms and organs; indeed we know not if pistols and organ-pipes have any thing particular to do with it; so after refreshment of the cattle we passed on through a beautiful country at its most beautiful season and thought we had seldom seen any thing more striking than the views from _Serravalle_ or those about _Pescia_ and _Monte Catino_. The high almost the highest Apennines were right a-head; and could we have taken the wings of the bird or of the morning and lighted on any of those peaks at no great distance we should have looked directly down on to the Mediterranean and almost into the gulf of _La Spezzia_; we should have seen the long Ligurian promontory in the distant horizon to the right and have embraced Leghorn Elba Gorgona and the coast as far as _Piombino_ in the opposite direction. An imperceptible ascent conducts from the _town of Lucca_ towards its _baths_; and you may expect in about three hours to have accomplished its sixteen miles. The road follows the long windings and beautiful valleys of the _Serchio_ of which harmless as it looks we read on all the bridges records of its occasional violence and of their repeated destruction. After a morning's ride to which there are few equals even in Italy or Switzerland we begin to get our books and paper and light luggage out of the nets and pockets of the carriage--for there are the _Bagni Caldi_ about a mile before us. It is not our purpose to describe the humours of an Italian watering-place; but let it not be supposed that this retreat is the happy thought of our own restless population. The English have had nothing to do with bringing the baths of Lucca into notice or fashion although they are at present among its principal inhabitants from June to September. Hither flock in summer the families who have established themselves in winter-quarters at Florence or Pisa; and here they soon get possession of all the cracked pianos and strolling music-masters who come on speculation and forthwith begin a series of screaming lessons called singing executed by English young women studious of cheap accomplishments to the infinite distress of all who pass by their open windows at whatever hour! As the baths are frequented by the little court of Lucca there is a _residenza_ a _casino_ and tables for play. There are two or three good hotels or _tables-d'hôtes_ and there is a shabby little coffee-house and a handful of _Balzacs and Paul de Kocks_ at one circulating library. There is one butcher and one baker at each of the villages privileged dispensers of their respective commodities. There is a scarcity of poultry of fresh butter and vegetables; but there is abundance of maccaroni. There are two grocers who both supply amateurs with English pickles Harvey's sauce Warren's blacking Henry's magnesia James's powder and the other necessaries of life. The houses are generally let for the season and the rent of the best is as high as £4 a-week. The furniture is old and bad but tolerably clean. Ascend any of the hills and you look down on roofs that have scarcely any chimneys. Whenever you ride or walk you have a hill on the right and left of you and a river making its way against the opposition of huge masses of stone and angular impediments from the turns of the valley itself. On these hills you have uniformly vines below; and when you get above the vines you walk entirely among the chestnut-trees which constitute the real riches of the country. The best office however of the hills is not the production of fruit-trees but the screen they afford against the Italian sun. The early sunset here is worth all the wine of the territory which is scarce and very bad. In the evenings of July and August there is a turn-out of equipages that have figured on the Boulevards and in Hyde Park which commonly make a halt opposite the little shabby coffee-house to eat bad ices and do the agreeable to each other--the rush-bottomed chairs at the door being occupied the while by a set of _intelligent_ young men with mustache who smoke bad cigars and cultivate as elsewhere the charm of each others' classical conversation. Montaigne was here in the 15th century and Fallopius he of the trumpets came here to be cured of deafness--which is one of the infirmities which the Latin inscription declares to have yielded to the use of the waters. Lorenzo di Medici came to talk platonism and the fine arts at a place which will never know either any more; and from a Latin letter extant was summoned from the Bagni to the death-bed of his wife. Ladies have often been recommended to the baths to be cured of sterility; and from what we have seen we think there are far more unpromising places. Doctors whose names only are known but who were probably men of learning have written on these salutary springs and modern flippancy has at present forborne them. We have no Quack to patronize them; the ""_numen aquæ_"" is not violated in _print_ at least by jobbing apothecaries; but there is Gentile di Foligno and Ugolino di Monte Catino and Savonarola and Bandinelli (1483 ) and Fallopio (1569 ) and Ducini (1711 ) who have written books of which the object as they are in Latin is not assuredly what there is too much reason to believe it _is_ when such books are now presented to the world. Of the waters (which like those of Bath contain minute portions of silex and oxide of iron ) the temperature differs at the different establishments--and there are three; 43° Reaumur is assigned as the highest and 35° 24' to two others. We were stranded at this pleasant place of endurable ennui for three long months during which there was no going out from nine to five P.M. Our society afforded little resource our reading less. When the weather permitted--that is in the delicious incomparable month of October--we made little excursions to Barga Ponte Nero &c. &c. and always returned delighted; nor were our walks of shorter distance unproductive of interest. The Lucchese are the most industrious people in the world and their agriculture made us _pro tempore_ amateurs of rural economy. We will not bore the reader with _Georgics_ such as ours; but if he will accept in place of picture galleries and churches the ""_quid faciat lætas segetes_"" of this far from miserable population we will cheerfully take him with us in our walks. AGRICULTURE ROUND LUCCA. The _bearded_ wheat or _triticum_ not the _siligo_ or common wheat of our English culture was the plant which whenever the attributes of Ceres were to be represented on ancient coins was selected for that purpose; but the Lucchese territory where the _Cerealia_ in general abound offers few specimens of either kind. These productions seem afraid of their _ears_ in the neighbourhood of the _Great Turk_ who is the great tyrant here and together with the rice monopolizes three-fourths of all the land devoted to the culture of grain; the _millet_ (_miglio_ ) the _panixa_ (_panico_ ) Indian wheat (_sagena_ ) together with the lupins and a variety of peas beans and lentiles occupy the remainder. ""The Great Turk is a great eater is he not?"" ""Yes "" replied the peasant who cultivated him ""_man

ia come Cristiano_ ""--he eats like a Christian all he can get out of the ground; only the more he gets the better he looks for it--which is not always the case with Christians. There are two kinds of _Gran Turco_ or _maize_; that sown in May is of rather better quality than the other and produces on an average 10 lbs. more per sack in weight than that which is sown afterwards in June. In order to secure a good crop it is necessary that the ground should be well manured with lupins which are either grown for this single purpose the year before and left to rot or boiled to prevent their germination and then scattered over the field. The Grand Turk commonly carries but one head on his shoulders but occasionally we have remarked two or more on the same stem. In the year 1817 the sack (160 lbs.) fetched fifty-eight pauls; while wheat was seventy-eight and even the chestnut flour sold at fifty; so that even in the Lucchese territory they have their approach to famine in bad years. SAGENA. Pliny mentions the _Sagena_ under the name of Saracenic millet as a thing which came from India and was first brought into Italy in his own time. Herodotus speaks of its cultivation by the Babylonians. The Saracens used it in the fourteenth century for making bread as do the Lucchese to this day; it is however lightly esteemed and not used at all when other corn abounds but thrown into the hencoop to fatten poultry. It is a beautiful thing to see the high jungle of this most elastic plant bending to the breeze and displaying as it moves its beaded top looking at a distance like so many flowers; but when seen nearer exhibiting _racemes_ (on highly polished stems) of small pedunculated berries in mitre-looking capsules. When the seed has been shaken from the plant the tops are brought together and form those excellent besoms which throughout southern Europe supply the place of birch-broom than which they are more elastic not so brittle and much cleaner. The ultimate fibrils of this plant are sometimes sold in little bundles for the purpose of being slit and receiving the small Neapolitan firework called _gera foletti_ which scintillates like a fire-fly. Other kinds of millet and pannick are also grown here; care being taken to plant them far from the vine and mulberry as they make considerable demands on the soil. Rice is said to have constituted the sole aliment of the republicans of early Rome and it is still largely cultivated in many parts of Italy. In the low-land about Viareggio it monopolizes the ground almost as much as the Grand Turk in the more interior parts of the country. LUPINS Lupins are largely cultivated both for their own intrinsic value and to induce the growth of other plants. ""We are bitter "" say the Lupins in an Italian work on agriculture; ""but we enrich the earth which lacks other manure and by our bitterness kill those insects which if not destroyed would destroy our successors in the soil. You owe much O husbandmen! to us Lupins."" HEMP. Invaluable plant--pride of intelligent agriculture--that tendest thine own fibre--and strength to him that rightly cultivates thee--and constitutest the greatest element of mechanical power! What does not England--the world itself--owe to that growth which we now contemplate! Armies are encamped within thy walls--thou towest forth the ship of discovery on her venturous way and carriest man and his merchandise to the Equator and to the Pole! Vain were the auspicious breeze unless it blew upon thy opening sails; and what were the sheet-anchor but for that cable of thine which connects it with the ship. Vegetable iron! incomparable hemp! Extemporaneous memory can scarcely follow thy services. Talk of the battering-ram--but what propelled it forward? The shot whizzing in the teeth of adverse winds carries thy _coil_ to snatch the sailor from the rock where he stands helpless and beyond aid from all the powers or productions of man and nature but thine! Thy ladder and thine alone can rescue from the house on fire! Look at the fisheries all over the world--the herrings of Scotland and the cod of the Baltic might defy us but for thee. What were wells and windlasses without thee? useless as corkscrews to empty bottles. Thou art the strong arm of the pulley and the crane. Gravitation itself that universal tyrant had bound all things to the earth but for thy opposition. The scaffolds were thine from which grew the _Colosseum_ and the Pyramids have arisen in thine arms. The kite of science which went cruising among thunder-clouds to bring down to a modern Prometheus the spark which ignites the storm was held by fibres of thine. The _diver_ and the _miner_ cling to thee for safety and they that hunt the wild-bird's egg on the sea-shaken cliff as they swing over the frightful abyss. With the lasso the bold Matador like the _Retiarius_ of the ancient arena makes the cast that is for life. Then the fine arts!--Carrara sends her block for the Laocoon by aid of thine; and what were all the galleries in Europe but a collection of gilt frames but for thy backing and support. By thy subserviency alone (for what were _panel_ or _laminated copper_ for such gigantic works?) did Raffaelle bequeath so many legacies of his immortal genius. It is the strength of thy fibres that is the strength of the loaded supper-tables of Paul Veronese; and the velvets the furs the satins of Titian and Vandyke are quilted upon thee. Nor disdainest thou to render to man who bruises thee to try thy virtue a thousand humbler services. Thou preservest our horses from flies our fruit from birds; and who has not felt how thou cheerest the weary length of continental travelling by the crack of thy whipcord at the approach of a new relay? Here our friend _Anamnesis_ seemed fatigued as if he thought he had spun a sufficiently _long yarn_ on the subject; so we prevailed on him to prosecute the walk as evening was beginning to close in--not indeed without apprehension that he would make a stand at several other interesting plants on which it might suit him to prelect! Hemp when cut is left to dry for a week; it is then immersed for an other week in water; after which it is flayed of its skin--a process which is conducted either by the hand leaving the stem in this case entire; or by subjecting the whole plant to a bruising process conducted by a machine. Besides the above-mentioned grain the ground produces plenty of vegetables but of an inferior quality as are all Italian fruits and most of the leguminous productions also from want of care. Even as to flowers you would find it difficult to make up a bouquet unless of ferns which here abound. The only cultivated flower except a few dahlias and sunflowers are the yellow petals of the lucchini a kind of vegetable marrow which creeps and creeps till its twisted tendrils and broad leaves occupy by continual encroachment the whole field where they germinate. Besides the _fruit_ of this plant which we begin to be supplied with about August its young leaf and stalk are boiled like kail for common greens; and its yellow flower a little later makes a _frittura_ which is in request. Fruits are plentiful and some of them good; but for the greater part of a very inferior quality. Strawberries and particularly raspberries (_lampóni_ ) are found throughout the season; which commencing with these and a scanty supply of currants and gooseberries (the latter very poor indeed and the first quite inferior to our own ) brings us fine figs of many species and in vast quantities. Apples and pears have their kinds and many distinctive names but are without flavour. The great supply of the raspberry and small Alpine strawberry is about midsummer The next-door-hood of all the _Scotch_ families is now fragrant ""on all lawful days "" with the odour of boiling down fruit for jams and marmalades for winter consumption. As autumn comes on heaps of watermelons piled like cannon-balls under the chestnut-trees display their promising purple flesh and look cooling and desirable but are not to be attempted twice under penalty of gastric inconvenience. Plums and nuts abound and are followed by a second course of hard unripe and tasteless nectarines and peaches. The season is closing fast for the prickly pods of the ripening chestnut now begin to gape and the indifferent grapes of the district attain their imperfect maturity and are gathered for the wine-press. September is in its last week and in less than another month we must all migrate somewhere for the winter. The baths on the 15th of October are quite empty. TREES. A good walnut-tree is as good to a poor man as a milk-cow. ""I would not sell either of those walnut-trees in my garden for thirty scudi a-piece "" said a peasant to us; and observing that we looked as if we would not like to tempt him asked us if we had seen the large walnut-tree of _Teraglia_ (we had and had _pic-nicked_ very nearly under it ) ""because "" added he ""the proprietor of _that_ tree refused sixty _scudi_ for it last week _e ha ragione_ for it is a nonpareil. A good tree like those in my garden yields me eight _sacks of shelled fruit_ on an average every year; and a sack of walnuts fetches from a scudo to ten pauls (four shillings and sixpence) in the market. So that my trees between them bring me in one hundred and sixty pauls (_i.e._ £4 English) every year."" Indeed! and the chestnut-trees opposite? Oh! in this land of chestnut-trees we don't pay _prezzi d'affezione_ for them--a good tree standing in the _plain_ may cost about eight or ten scudi and may yield about four sacks of shelled fruit in a good year; but it is a capricious tree even in the _plain_; while those on the _mountain_ the roots of which derive a precarious subsistence from the uncertain soil are liable to be blown down and are made pollards of at an early age to prevent this mishap; also they are frequently burned down by bonfires kindled under them to destroy the furze. The chestnut shoot is only four years old before it begins to bear. Three pounds of fresh chestnuts fetch about one penny--_dried_ or in flour about double that price. The peasants bake a little cake of the chestnut flour called ""_netche_ "" about the thickness of a crimpet and having much the flavour and appearance of potato scones. This paste they bake between two hot stones with a couple of the leaves of the chestnut (dried for the purpose by the peasants) interposed. The baking takes scarcely a minute and the cakes are then piled and packed and sent far and wide. The arms and the tops of the chestnuts are made into charcoal so that no part of this important tree is lost. We are here in the very midst of forests of chestnut only--far as the eye can reach in every direction and as far as vegetation will go up every mountain side its grateful green forms a pleasing contrast to those gloomy frequenters and favourites of the mountain the sombre pine and dusky olive. Several fine-sized olive-trees were shown to us for sale and said to be good fruit-bearers (no olive bears fruit under ten years ) for twenty-five scudi per tree. These trees were computed to yield about two and a quarter to three sacks of berries; whereof every sack yielded a profit of three scudi for one hundred to one hundred and ten pounds of oil which represents about the quantity generally expressed. In retail Lucca oil at the present moment is about one paul and olives about three farthings per pound. OAKS. We observe three kinds of oaks which here both flourish and abound. The _Farnia_ the _Querci_ and the _Leccio_--the last evidently a corruption of Ilex. The first kind grows with amazing rapidity; in twenty years it is a head and shoulders above all the other trees which began life with it. It has very long acorns which are less astringent than those of either of the other trees and very much preferred by pigs. A common oak felled for ship timber costs where it stands from ten to fourteen scudi and they are in great request for the Leghorn market. INSECTS. Insects do not greatly abound in the neighbourhood about Lucca. Even the mosquito winds his horn less frequently in our valley than his universality elsewhere would lead you to expect. Our beds are free from bugs and fleas are not very troublesome. Of the out-of-doors insects those which live upon the vegetable kingdom are not very numerous nor of much variety. The _Cassida_ who rejoices in lettuce brings up his family in other districts where the lettuce abounds. Wanting the tamarisk we miss our little _Curculio_ who thrives upon its leaves; and the _Bruchus pisi_ for want of peas is frequently caught in the bean-tops. But the republican armies of ants are immense and the realm of bees is uncircumscribed; as no birds of prey neither the audacious robin nor the woodpecker tapping away on the hollow beech-tree diminish their hordes. But if the fowls of the air be few the nets of entomologists abound. _Slaters_ of an immense kind and spotted and small mahogany-coloured _Blattidæ_ are found under stones which also conceal hordes of predatory _beetles_ and _scorpions_ which bristle up at you as you expose them; and nests of tiny _snakes_ that coil and cuddle together from the size of crowquills to the thickness of the little finger. During June and July the monotonous _Cicadæ_ spring their rattles in the trees around and one comes at last even to like their note in spite of its sameness. A little later flies and wasps send their buzzing progeny into our dining-rooms to tease us over our dessert like troublesome children: at the same period some of the larger families of _Longicorns_ abound and one of them _Hamaticherus moschatus_ musks your finger if you lay hold of him. In the July and August evenings fire-flies scintillate on a thousand points around you and swarm along the hedges lighting each other to bed till about midnight which is their curfew; for you seldom meet one of these lantern-bearers later though you may still in returning from a late party be stopped with momentary admiration at beholding a magnificent glow-worm burning her tail away at a great rate and lighting up some dark recess unvisited by star or moon herself a star and giving sufficient light to enable you to read the small print of a newspaper a foot off! But who shall attempt to describe his first acquaintance with the fire-fly! We have seen birthday illuminations in London and in Paris; we have seen the cupola of St Peter's start into pale yellow light as the deepening shadows of night shrouded all things around; we have seen the Corso on _Moccoletti_ night a long fluctuating line of ever renewed light from the street to the fourth story--an illumination _sui generis_ and ""beautiful exceedingly;"" but noise and confusion are around all these as you approach them. But oh! to plunge suddenly into an atmosphere filled with _Lucciole_ in the quiet gloaming of an Italian sky amidst the olive groves and plantations of Indian corn with no noise but the drowsy hum of the huge _stag beetle_ (the only patrole of the district ) or the yet fainter sounds of frogs complaining to each other of the sultriness of the night or the monotonous hymn at the peasant's door addressed to the Virgin! Your first impression is unmixed delight--your next a wish probably that you could introduce the fire-fly into England. Could one empty a few hatfuls along Pall-Mall or Bond Street on opera nights what an amazement would seize the people! We swept them up into the crown of our hat and could not get enough of them; then we set them flying about our room putting out the lights and shutting the shutters; and then we caught them and began to look more closely at the sources of our delight and to examine the acts and deeds of these wonderful little creatures. As to the light itself we soon perceived that in reality the fire-fly emitted it from _two sources_; for besides his _steady_ light which never varied there came we saw at intervals flicks or sparks of far greater brilliancy like the revolving light of the beacon on the sea-shore only that the light here was never wholly eclipsed but merely much abated. We soon perceived too that those sudden jets of light came and went at vastly IRREGULAR intervals; sometimes in very quick succession sometimes less frequently--from which observation we concluded that this dispensation of his rich endowment did not proceed from any motion of the _fluids_ in the animal economy analogous to our own circulation--it being far too irregular and inconstant to depend on any such regulated movement. On removing the head of a _Lucciola_ this intermitting light _immediately_ ceased; but the other--the permanent steady and equable light--remained unchanged and was not extinguished for from _sixty to seventy hours after the death of the insect_ unless the body was immersed in oil or alcohol which extinguished it presently. We found that though oil and alcohol quickly extinguished the light it became suddenly much brighter when fading by plunging the insect into hot water; but we did not find that it could be restored when it had once _entirely_ ceased by this or any other means as some French naturalists have affirmed; and as to its exploding a jar of hydrogen as others have written we disbelieve it because the temperature of the insect is far too low. We think then for the present that there are two distinct repositories or two different sources of light in the fire-fly; and that while _one_ depends on the _head_ and is a strictly _vital phenomenon_ the other is altogether independent of any physiological law of the nervous or circulating system. * * * * * We have a great respect for _ants_; but we do not go the length of some of their historians or believe them to be any more than ourselves _infallible_. We have seen a laborious ant (_magni Formica laboris_) tugging a snail-shell (for some reason only known to himself) up a hill stopping to take breath and going cheerily to work again till he had nearly accomplished his ascent and found himself on the very edge of its summit. Here he has been surrounded by friends officious busy-bodies who _intending_ no doubt to help him have got _into_ the shell in place of lending him a hand till their added load was too much and the unfortunate ant has been obliged to loose its hold and let them go shell and all! Then off they would send very much frightened no doubt at the overturn; while he having remained stationary a moment as if to watch its results takes his resolution and proceeds on his journey without his load. In brushing the grass for insects we have constantly found that the ants _with their mouths full_ fight with each other or with their brother captives and are quite unaware of their bondage. For while most other insects on opening the net are glad to escape by flying or leaping these will remain as if to secure their booty and turn even misfortunes to account. Often have we watched their battles which are battles indeed!--battles in which every man of them seems to think the day depends on his own courage and activity. We have never been able to make out which were the best battalions of these variously coloured troops; for all of them fight to the death and _show no quarter_. We have seen on some large tree the ants running up and down and picking off individual enemies from a horde of smaller kind and reddish colour below. We have occasionally knocked off one or two of the giants who falling alive into the midst of their enemies were surrounded spread-eagled trampled upon and either lacerated to death or killed by their own _formic acid_ in a very short space of time indeed. We have seen all this and marvelled; but we were never sufficiently in the confidence of either the invaders or the invaded to know their motives for fighting. It could not be for territory for they had all the world before them; it could not be for food for they were full. We never could make out why flies seem _fond of walking over dead spiders_; for we will not impute to them our unworthy feelings of enduring hatred and hostility. That insects had no brains in their heads to direct and guide their progressive movements or form focuses for their passions had long ago to us been plain. Besides all that we once committed ourselves by writing on the subject we have done many other cruel things; such as dividing insects (whether at the union of the head with corselet or of the corselet with the abdomen ) and we have found that the segments to which the members were articulated carried on their functions _without the head_. The Elytra would open the wings and the legs would move as by association they had moved in the perfect insect. The guidance of the head was destroyed yet the legs pushed the abdomen and corselet on; so that a disapproving friend had to _divide_ his sympathy and to _feel for each of the pieces_. And what appeared to us worthy of remark was that whereas when a snake was decollated it was only the tail that continued to wriggle--when a _worm_ was divided _all_ the segments writhed in the same way and manifested an equal irritability; showing the difference between creatures of annulated structure according as they have or have not a _brain_. A new argument against the brain as the organ of sensation was afforded to us by the conduct of many insects of voracious propensities. We took _locusts_ and _grilli_; we held them by their wings and we presented them _with their own legs_ for dinner; and on our veracity we can affirm that on no single occasion did the animal fail to seize his foot; and having demolished the toes and the tibia with all the meat upon it proceed to demolish up to the very end of the _trochanter_! Nor were they more tender of their own _antennæ_ of which when we had duly convinced a sceptical friend he exclaimed--It _seems impossible_; but _there is no doubting the fact_! Insects (who would have thought it?) lose a great deal by insensible transpiration; from one-tenth to one-quarter of their whole weight as we have abundantly ascertained by series of experiments for which we have the tables to show. A very interesting fact respecting the difference of irritability of insects from that of the higher animals is this: the temperature of man and the mammalia is in health always the same and varies very inconsiderably in disease. _External_ heat and _external_ cold do not produce a blood in man warmer at the equator than at the pole. This is not the case with insects whose mean temperature may be about 80°; but the thermometer inserted into their bodies may be made to _rise_ or _fall_ by bringing any cold or warm body in contact with their external surface. You may thus sink the temperature of an insect to 50° or raise it to 100° and the insect continue alive. This is a very curious fact and shows the inaccuracy of Hunter's description or definition of _life_--""That it was _that_ which _resisted_ the physical agency of cold and heat."" Insectorum duorum (e genere Cantharidum) in coitu deprehensorum extincto a nobis uno alterum per dies plures nullo alio quàm organorum sexus vinculo sibi adstrictum amicæ suæ corpus sursum et deorsum trahentem mirantes vidimus!--_Spanish_ flies you exclaim!--as if he had not taken a dose of his own powder; but after the joke is over we think this is another _poser_ for the advocates of insect intelligence. We found that if either of two insects was destroyed in coition that state was not interrupted for two or three days. The insects on which are observed this remarkable circumstance were the _Cantharis oclemero_ and some others. Spanish flies you will say? That accounts for it; but at present we are not mystifying our indulgent readers. SHOOTING FISH. Long before the middle of September we are frequently startled before we have proceeded a hundred yards by the popping of guns amongst the vineyards and chestnut woods but more frequently in the direction of the stream that winds along our valley--and the sight of one or two of the chasseurs on the road may well surprise any not accustomed to the sports of the Lucchese.--Here are two of them each with a gun on his shoulder coming up the stream. One has shot three four-ounce dace which dangle by his side; the other has a bag full of _small fry_ shot as they frisked about in shoals near the water's edge! an ounce of _sand_ exploded to receive about the same amount of fish! The man who has shot the dace is proud of his exploit and keeps turning them round and round to gauge their dimensions as if they were partridges! Don't think however they have killed off all the fish of the stream. Besides that string of four-ounce dace we have every now and then a sample of barbel and trout. One man has purchased the monopoly of the fishery within two miles and for which he pays twelve crowns by the year. He sells his trout at two and two and a half pauls per pound and we should have thought that he made a good thing of it; but they lose their fish: the torrents come and empty the holes and they have nothing for it but to stock them again--an event which he assured me frequently took place. Besides fly-rods and flies have been introduced by an English shopkeeper and there is no legal provision against them. OWLS. There comes a man with an owl in a basket and another tied by the leg on a pole covered with red cloth; another accompanies him with a bundle of reeds through which a rod runs smeared all the way down with birdlime. This apparatus he disposes on a hedge or cover of any kind--the little owl (_Civetta_) sits opposite on his pole--the birds come to tease him and fly on the birdlime twig when if it be a sparrow he is effectually detained by the viscus only--if a blackbird pop at him goes an old rusty gun. ""We sometimes catch twenty tomtits before breakfast "" said a modest-looking sportsman modestly but not shamefacedly showing us one thrush and one linnet. An image-man told me to-day that after the trade for classical models--Apollos and Venuses--had gone out and nobody would buy _Tam o' Shanter_ and _Souter Johnny_ operated a good _revival_ of the fine arts for several months. How much then the models from the antique do towards improving our taste! and how absurd to set up institutions with the expectation of making the populace other than the gross unideal matter-of-fact thing it is and always was no doubt even in Athens itself! THE IMPROVISATORE. We heard one of these monsters last night. The arena for his exhibition might but for the known liberality of society be thought objectionable--being none other than the English place of worship. But _tout est sain aux sains_--or _aux saints_ if you please. Charity covereth many sins; and if there be a place upon earth where charity reigns it is at what you call _watering-places_. Pindar was right [Greek: ariston men hudôz]. If we were enquired of and propitiated by a fee as to the effects of the waters here we should give it as our opinion that they act directly on the _picrochole_ or bitter principle of bile and carry it soft as milk through the duodenal passages. Our Improvisatore has we understand been six times _painted_ (we know not what saloons are so fortunate as to possess his portrait ) but we believe he has not been described. When we saw him his hair danced wildly over his shoulders as if electrified: he had a quick eye and wore enviably well-fitting ducks: his neck besides supporting his head and all its contents supported an inextricable labyrinth of gold chains; from every buttonhole of his waistcoat the chains they came in and the chains they came out like the peripatetic man on the Boulevards who sells them: his gloves well-fitting and buttoning at the wrist were of the whitest kid and grasped a yet whiter and highly-scented cambric: his boots shone bright with varnish and his face with self-complacency. As the room filled he went round giving the girls permission to write _subjects_ on bits of waste (wasted!) paper which set them _thinking_ at a great rate. Presently a second circuit round the room to collect the orders payable at sight--a title such as the _Lucciola_ _Italia_ _The Exile_ _Woman's Love_ _Man's Ingratitude_; after which he proceeds to fold up and puts them into a large glass vessel. Presently a small hand properly incited dives down for a second into the interior of the vase and brings up between two of its fair round turquoise-encircled fingers the scrap of paper. Its pretty owner blushes and timidly announces ""Bellini's Tomb;"" _Bellini's Tomb_ is buzzed about the room. At this juncture the Duke who has been _expected_ sends a messenger to announce that we are not to wait for him--a sly fellow the Duke! The bard now concentrates himself for inspiration but begs us to talk on and not mind him. While he waits for the _afflatus divinus_ and consults the muses--and in fact his eyes soon begin to betray _possession_--he passes his hand over his parturient forehead while the _os magno sonaturum_ is getting ready; the labour-pains are evidently on him; he hurls back his hair and fixes his eyes upon the moon (who has been looking at _him_ for several minutes through the window opposite.) Full of her influence and not knowing there is such a place as Bedlam in the world he starts upon his legs makes two or three rapid strides up and down the room like a lion taking exercise or a lord of council and session in Scotland preparing to pronounce sentence and means to be delivered (mercy on us!) exactly opposite our chair! All are attentive to the godlike man; you might hear a pin drop: the subject is announced once and again in a very audible voice; the touch-paper is ignited the magazine will blow up presently! Incontinently we are rapt off to _Père la Chaise_ where the great composer lies buried and a form of communication is made to us on this suitable spot that Bellini is _dead_; then comes in episode a catalogue of all the operas he ever wrote with allusions to each and not a little vapouring and pathos while a host of heroes and heroines we never before heard of is let loose upon us; presently a marked pause and some by-play makes it evident that he sees something and cannot see what the thing is; he shortly however imparts to us in confidence though in a very low tone for fear of disturbing it--he sees he assures us a female form stealing to the young man's tomb--the form of a widowed lady--who is she? _e la sua madre!_ This was startling no doubt; though we or many of us were like the cat in Florian to whom the monkey was showing a magic lantern _without a light_ and describing what she ought to have seen. Believing her however to be there on such good authority we were getting very sorry for Bellini's mother when we were unexpectedly relieved by finding it was only a bit of make-believe; for it was now divulged _che questa madre che piangea il suo figlio_ was not in fact his personal mother but ""_Italy_"" dressed up _like_ his mother and gone to Paris on purpose to weep and put garlands on the composer's tomb amaranth and crocus and whatever else was in season. Thunders of applause--we hope the new chapel is insured!-for the _assiduo ruptæ lectore columnæ_ is as old as earthquake in Italy. He now mopped his forehead and prepared for a new effort. The English girls are already in raptures and their Italian masters sitting by ""ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm."" The next subject which destiny assigned to him and inflicted on us was _The Exile_. A nicely manured field or common place to sow and reap on--and what a harvest it yielded accordingly!--the dear friends! the dear native hill! the honour of suffering for the truth! (political martyrdom!) the mother that bore him--(and a good deal besides)--his helpless children! (a proper number for the occasion )--all these fascinating themes were dwelt on one by one till moved apparently at our emotion he dropt his menacing attitude and mitigating his voice assumed a resigned demeanour of which many of his audience had long since set him the example. He began to look down mournfully whereas he had a minute ago looked up fiercely--a smile to the relief of the young ladies stole over his countenance and having thrice shaken his head to dispel whatever gloomy thoughts might still be lingering there he carried us to the Exile's return which brought of course the natal soil and a second service of the mother sire and son with the addition of a dog a clump of trees a church and a steeple. He compresses between his hands the yielding cambric into a very small space his body is fixed his legs are slightly apart his head wags like a wooden mandarin's with thoughts too big for utterance till the m

ment arrives for the critical start then ""_Duplices tendens ad sidera palmas_ "" he becomes quite Virgilian. The unfurled cambric flutters to the breeze of his own creation and coruscations of white kid and other white materials pass and repass before our eyes. He gives vent to his emotions in tears after a reasonable indulgence in which as he cannot (as Tilburina's _confidante_ very properly observes) stay crying there all night he gradually comes right again. Besides all which it is eight o'clock and he has still to _do_ and we to _suffer_ _Napoleon_--whose ashes were just then being carried to Paris as we had read in all the papers of last week. Glad were we when they reached the _Octroi_ and when the indulgent _Barrière_ passed them with all the honours of the _Douane_. An old lady has twice yawned and many would follow her example but that the performer fascinates his audience by staring at them--like the boa at the poor bird in the wood--and frightens them to their seats for a few minutes longer. At length one _resolute_ chair moves; two others are out of the ranks; new centres of movement are establishing; several shawls are seen advancing to the door. The rout is complete there will be no rally and the efforts of the artist have been _crowned_ (one hundred and fifty scudi) with success. We meet him every where. He honours our table-d'hôte daily where he stays an hour and a half to bait--after which we see him lounging in the carriage of some fair _compatriote_ with herself and daughters. If we are paying a morning visit in he comes ""glissarding it"" into the drawing-room and bowing like a dancing-master; nor does he disdain to produce a small book of testimonials in which the subscribers have agreed to give him a poetic _character_ and compare him to a torrent to a nightingale to an eagle to an avalanche. They who love flattery as a bee loves honey are all captivated and almost make love to him. Their albums are rich in the spoils of his poetry and she is happy who by her blandishment can detain him in conversation for five minutes. Yet they own they understand less than half of what he says. Vexed with _one_ to whom we were talking we thought rationally for permitting herself to be ""so pestered by a popinjay ""--""He _is_ so clever "" was the reply; ""such an odd creature too. I wish you knew him. He is in such a strange humour to-night. Do you know he tells me he wishes to marry an English girl? See! he is gone into the balcony yonder to look at the moon."" To be sure he was. He came back looking somewhat wild and walking in like a modern Prometheus down he sits and the new inspiration is presently bespoken for the fly page of virgin scrap-book. Smoothly flows the immortal verse without care correction or halt for the lines are the result of power that works unerringly (Pope _blotted_ most disgracefully ) and goes right _ahead_. The precious _morceau_ is concluded and the improvisatore's name appears in a constellation of zig-zags. TABLES D'HÔTES--MR SNAPLEY. Did you never meet Mr Snapley?--Mr Snapley was the greatest of bores--he bored holes in your self-complacency and riddled your patience through and through; to put up with him was hard to put him down was impossible (your long tolerated nuisance of fifty is always incorrigible.) His bore was surprising considering the smallness of his calibre; like a meagre gimlet he would drill a small hole in some unimportant statement and then gather up his _opima spolia_ and march off to the sound of his own trumpet. For instance on convicting you of assigning a fine picture to a wrong church or gallery he denied all your pretensions to judge of the picture itself. He had a reindeer's length of tongue (how often did we wish it salted and dried!) and the splutter of words it sent forth took off as often happens sufficient observation of the miserably small stock of ideas that he had to work upon. He enjoyed as we all do the blameless pleasure of dining out as often as he could; when though he did not consume all the provisions he would willingly have taken possession of the whole of the talk (_that_ being his notion of a conversation.) When one had to dine at the same table with him one contrived to take up a position as remote as possible from the interruption of his thin wiry ill-modulated voice--the _false_ suavity of which in saying impertinent things was really so disagreeable that one would have renounced the society of wit or beauty on the right hand rather than have been flanked by Mr Snapley on the _left_ and thankfully have accepted the companionship _pro hac vice_ of the plainest woman or the dullest man of the party to be only completely out of his reach. Your _soup_ you _might_ take in peace for he was at this time studying the composition of the party and the chances of endurance or resistance inscribed on the countenance of the guests; but the moment an opportunity occurred of correcting or cavilling with any of those unprecise and generally unchallenged observations the interruption of which is at the cost of the quietness of the repast Mr Snapley's voice was heard! You were too glad of course to give up the trifling point out of which he had raised a discussion; but the earliest concession never saved you nor did you ever afterwards escape the consciousness that he was still hovering like a harpy over the tablecloth and ready to fall foul of you again. Let the subject be what it might you had only to make a remark in his presence and without his permission to _insure_ its contradiction. ""What a needless annoyance in travelling it is for a family to be stopped by douaniers only to extort money for _not_ doing a duty which would be absurd if _done_!"" ""Why really I don't see that "" &c. &c. ""What a plague it is to send your servant (a whole morning's work) from one subaltern with a queer name to another for a lady's ticket to witness any of the functions at the Sistine!"" Well it did appear to him the simplest thing in the world; it was ten times more troublesome to see any thing in London! ""What a nuisance it is on quitting an Italian city to find the passport which has already given you so much trouble only available for _three_ days leaving you liable to be stopped at the gate if sickness or accident have made you transgress even _by an hour_!"" ""Why it is _your own fault_ it is _so easy_ to get it _viséd again_ overnight."" All these impertinencies were only [Greek: pidakos ex hierês oligê libas]. Besides all this Mr Snapley was a miserable monopolizer of pompously advanced nothings. He would not willingly suffer any other man's goose to feed upon the common--he cared for nobody but himself and every thing that was or he esteemed to be _his_--his very joints were worked unlike those of another man--he must have had a set of _adductors_ and _abductors_ of _flexors_ and _extensors_ on purpose. He was stiff priggish precise when he addressed any gentleman with light hair and an _English complexion_; but let him approach any foreign buttonhole with a bit of riband in it then worked he the muscles of his face into most grotesque expression of interest or pleasure--(_Tunc immensa cavi spirant mendacia folles!_)--and you had a famous display of grimace and deferential civility in bad French or worse Italian. We have seen him sneering and leering as he made his way round a drawing-room at an evening party and bowing like a French perruquier to some absurd fool of a foreigner; and we have seen him a minute after holding up his head and cocking his chin in defiance if an English voice approached. When any of us ventured to criticise _any thing foreign_ he was up in arms and cock-a-hoop for the climate the customs the constitution! He sneered awfully at a simple _gaucherie_ but to make amends had ever an approving wink for the meanest _irreverence_; any intellect however feeble being secure of his praise if it only tried to thwart the end for which it was given. When not _talking_ about himself which was seldom he was evidently _occupied_ about his _personel_ with which he was obviously satisfied. If you talked of books he settled for you in laconic sentences works of acknowledged merit--put down men of uncontested superiority--but women of title and tainted reputation if they would but ask him to their parties became at once his favourites and his oracles. He cunningly contrives to get a good artist's opinion on works of art and debits it as his own--a proceeding which makes Mr Snapley _sometimes_ formidable in sculpture and in painting. As to other topics on which educated men and accomplished women converse he would fain be as profound as _Locke_ with the one and as gallant as _Fontenelle_ with the other. For ourselves who meet him but too often we would as soon approach without necessity a huxter's mongrel growling under his master's cart as venture near enough to examine all the small-wares of one who ""hates coxcombs "" and is the very prince of fops; laughs at pedants and only wants a _little more learning_ to attempt the character; with whom no repetition of familiar acts can reconcile you and to whom no number of dinners can conquer your repugnance.----_Did_ you ever meet Mr Snapley? We are sure you must--the Snapleys are a very old family--you may generally know them by the _nez retroussé_ (which our acquaintance however had not.) We never knew but _one_ good-natured man with a _nez retroussé_ and he was if ever man was--a philanthropist. Generally however _beware_ of the _nez retroussé_ except in women--you know its interpretation _chez elles_;--and if you do (on second thoughts ) still beware. HINTS FOR DOCTORS. _Esquilias_ dictumque petunt a _Vimine_ collem--JUV. * * * ""I observed a gentleman in black "" said our informant ""who seemed to fix me across the table-d'hôte at dinner in a way which soon showed me I was an object of interest to him. It was very odd! We were not in Austria! I could not have offended the police--nor in Spain the Inquisition. If I _took_ of a particular dish his eye was on me again. They _did_ use to _poison_ people in Italy but it was in the fifteenth century and all the Borgias were gone! What could it mean? The very waiters seemed to watch the man in black and signals of intelligence seemed to pass between them as they went their rounds with the dishes. After thus meeting the eye of the unknown at intervals for more than an hour when the table was beginning to clear I rose and limped out of the room as well as my complaints would let me and was sauntering a few steps from the door when judge of my terror on turning round to find him of the black coat at my elbow! ""In pain sir I see."" All my alarm ceased in a moment. It was pure philanthropy which had made me an object of so much interest. ""Yes sir in great pain."" ""_You should take care of yourself sir._ Rheumatic are you not?"" ""Very rheumatic."" ""Well sir you have come to the best place in the world for rheumatism. The air the water and proper treatment will soon set you up."" ""Your report is encouraging; but I have suffered too long to hope much."" ""Well at any rate sir let us not talk over your interesting case in this heat. Come and put your feet up on a chair in my rooms and we will drink a glass of soda-water to your better health."" What a kind-hearted man I had met with and how kind Providence is to us! I now ventured to ask him his name. ""My name is Dr ----; and now my dear friend just tell me your whole case from the very beginning down to now for I am really interested in you."" I told my case. ""Put out your tongue."" ""Brown "" we thought we heard him say. ""Wrist--pulse not amiss--but you _require care sir! you require care!_ Clear case for the medicine I gave so successfully last week."" Finding myself thus fallen into professional hands _without intending it_ I said something introductory to the mention of a fee. ""True I was _forgetting_ that; when one takes a proper interest in one's case and hopes to do good fees are the last thing one thinks of--two scudi if you please."" So I found myself immediately booked in a small memorandum-book and constituted his patient. Now came civil promises to introduce me &c. &c. &c. and I took my leave delighted. It is almost needless to say that in a very short time I found that my acquaintance had like so many more commenced physician on the soil of Italy. What will become of London if all her apothecaries desert her at this rate? For ourselves reflecting on the accomplishments of many of these patriotic men their learning their modesty their disinterestedness we have often had a twinge of the philanthropic extorted by the loss inflicted on our native city--she may come to want a doze of julap and have nobody to mix it!--and have said to ourselves as we have looked more than one of these worthies in the face [Greek: Ô alein Athênai Pallados th'ôrismata Oion sterêsesth andros]! One day after dinner a little bit of gold rolled over the table to the doctor from a bluff-looking gentleman opposite--it was well aimed--""There doctor! _there's your fee_; but don't you begin again prating a parcel of stuff to my wife about her complaints--she is quite well--and if you frighten her into illness take notice you will get a different sort of fee next time!"" All this half joke half earnestly must have been very agreeable to the guests."" PRIVATE MUSIC PARTY. Let us try to describe the last musical party at which we assisted. A scramble amid piles of unbound music; the right _cahier_ found snatched up and opened at the well-thumbed solo with which she has already contended for many a long hour and now hopes to execute for our applause. Alas! the piano sounds as if it had the pip; the paralytic keys halt and stammer and tremble or else run into each other like ink upon blotting paper and the pedals are the only part of the instrument which do the work for which they were intended. We should be sorry that our favourite dog had his paw between them and the lady's slipper. The dust which succeeds the concerto proves satisfactorily that it is possible to be frisky without being lively; its vulgarity is so pronounced that it offends you like low conversation. Another concerto follows--ten folio pages! whew!!----Oh ye ebony and ivory devils! oh for an exorcist to put you to flight! Cramped fingers are crossing each other at a great rate; we really tremble for the glue and the pegs and the wires and the whole economy of the instrument at that critical juncture when the performers arrive at a piece of mysterious notation where a great many tadpole-looking figures are huddled together under a black rainbow. At such a ""passage"" as this it seems one would think the house were on fire and no time to be lost; the black mittens and the white now _Rob-Royishly_ invade each other's territory; each snatches up something and carries it off like the old marauders of the Border country; and reprisals are made and lines of discord and dissonance are establishing which require the police the magistrate and the riot act. Bravo! bravo! bravo! and the battle ceases and the _babble_ commences. Place for the foreign train the performers _par métier!_ Full of confidence are they; amidst all their smiles and obsequiousness there is a business air about the thing. As soon as the pianist has asked the piano how it finds itself and the piano has intimated that it is pretty well but somewhat out of tune a collateral fiddler and a violoncello brace up their respective nerves compare notes and when their drawlings and crookings are in unison a third piece of music of indefinite duration and as it seems to us all about nothing begins. Our violinist is evidently not long come out and has little to recommend him--he employs but a second-rate tailor wears no collar dirty mustaches and a tight coat; he is ill at ease poor man wincing pulling down his coat-sleeves or pulling up his braces over their respective shoulders. His strings soon become moist with the finger dew of exertion and trepidation; his bow draws out nothing but groans or squeals; and so in order to correct these visceral complaints a piece of rosin is awkwardly produced from his trousers' pocket and applied to the rheumatic member with some half-dozen brisk rubs in a parenthesis of music. The effect is painfully ludicrous!---- I am _sleepy_ _sleepy_ begins the piano! Sleepy sleepy _mews_ Mr Violin--very very very sleepy drones the drowsy four-stringed leviathan. Oh do try if you can't say something something something to enliven one a bit! On this hint the little violin first got excited upon one string and then upon another and then the bow rode a hand-gallop over two at once; then saw we four fingers flying as far up the finger-board as they could go without falling overboard near the _bridge_--a dangerous place at all times from the currents and eddies--and there provoking a series of sounds as if the performer were pinching the tails of a dozen mice that squeaked and squealed as he made the experiment. The bow (like the funambulist with the soles of his slippers fresh chalked) kept glancing on and off till we hoped he would be off altogether and break his neck; and now the least harsh and grating of the cords snaps up in the fiddler's face and a crude one is to be applied; and now--but what is the use of pursuing the description? Let us leave the old bass to snore away his lethargic accompaniment for ten minutes more and the affair will end. The pianist the Octavius of the triumvirs thinks it necessary to excuse Signor ---- telling us ""He has bad violin he play like one angel on good one""--but hisht hisht! the evening-star is rising and we are to be repaid they say for all we have gone through! Signor * * * is going to play. The _maestro_ advances with perfect consciousness of his own powers; his gait is lounging he does not mean to hurry himself not he--his power of abstraction (from the company) is perfect; he is going to play in solitude before fifty people and only for his own amusement. He placed himself at least a foot from the piano his knees touching the board his body rises perpendicularly from the music-stool his head turns for a moment to either shoulder as if he were glancing at epaulettes thereon and then he looks right ahead; he neither has nor needs a book; with the wide-extended fingers of both hands down he pounces like a falcon on the sleeping keys which caught by surprise now speak out and exert all their energies. Those keys which a few minutes ago vibrated so feebly and spoke so inarticulately now pour forth a continuous swell of the richest melody and distinctest utterance. The little wooden parallelograms at first seem to be keeping out of their ranks just to see what is going on till the affair becoming warm they can no longer stand it but grow excited and take part in the general action. Relying fully on the perfect obedience of his light troops and relaxing a little from his erect attitude of command he gently inclines his body to the left leads his disposable force rapidly upwards in that direction where having surprised the post against which they were dispatched he recovers his swerve and they retrace with equal precision and rapidity their course from the wings to the centre. Come _this_ is playing! This is worth coming to; the instrument seems but the organ of the man's own feelings; its mournful tones are only a paraphrase of his sighs; its brilliant arabesques are but the playful expression of his own delight with every thing and every body! His cheek is warm his eyes sparkle his hands detonate thunder and lightnings from the keys and he concludes as suddenly as he began; the very silence is felt and the breathless guests who have watched the fingers and been rapt by the tones now burst forth simultaneously in expressions of delight and applause. * * * * * THE RAILWAYS. We read no later than yesterday two very pungent leading articles in the London daily journals on the present all-absorbing subject of railway speculation. Both writers are evidently well versed in the details of the novel system; both possess some smattering of political economy sufficient at least to enable them to form a judgment; and both consistent in their data and statistical information. Yet agreeing in these points it is somewhat singular to find that the _Coryphæi_ have arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions. One of them is quite clear that if the present railway _mania_ (as he calls it) is permitted to go on unchecked for a short time further the country will not only be on the verge of bankruptcy but a general crash will be inevitable; that vast as the resources of Britain undoubtedly are she cannot by any exertion short of crippling her staple commercial relations furnish capital enough for the fulfilment of a moiety of the schemes already announced and thrown into the public market; that the fact which is incontestable that a large proportion of these shares were originally and are presently held by parties who have no means of paying up the calls but who are solely speculating for the rise must very soon produce a reaction and that such reaction will be of the absolute nature of a panic. Such are the opinions of this writer who is clearly of the restrictive school. He holds that the government is bound in such a crisis as that which he rather states than prophesies to interfere at once with an arbitrary order and to prevent the issue of any new schemes until those already before the public are either disposed of or exhausted. How this is to be effected the writer does not sufficiently explain. He points to immediate interference from which expression we are led to believe he points at some such proceeding as an Order in Council to be pronounced during the recess of Parliament. If so we may dismiss this gentleman and his remedy in a very summary manner. Such an Order in Council would be worse than useless because it would be a manifest breach of the constitution. As well might an Order be issued to close our manufactories to restrict the amount of any branch of produce or to prevent parties from forming themselves into companies for the most blameless and legitimate purpose. It is a strange symptom of the credulousness of the age or rather of the ignorance of the people in all matters relating to the science of government that towards the close of September last some such rumour was actually circulated and believed though its father was manifestly _a bear_ and its birthplace the Stock Exchange. But if this merely is meant that there lies with the Imperial Parliament a controlling and interferential power and that the great estates of the realm may be called upon to use it we do not question the proposition. Whether however it would be wise to use that power so sweepingly as the journalist recommends or whether practically it could be possible are very serious considerations indeed. But the existence of any evil is denied _in toto_ by the other journalist. In the crowded columns of the morning prints driven to supplement and even extra-supplement by the overwhelming mass of railway advertisements he can see no topic of alarm but ""matter for high exultation and almost boundless hope."" His belief in superabundance of capital and its annual enormous increment is fixed and steadfast. He considers the railways as the most legitimate channel ever yet afforded for the employment of that capital and the most fortunate in result for the ultimate destinies of the country. He compares--and very aptly too--the essential difference between the nature of the schemes in which the public are now embarking and those which led to the disastrous results of 1825. His sole regret is that he must regard the present direction of enterprise ""as an opportunity that is facility of investment that from its nature can be but temporary though the profit of the investment must from the nature of things be perpetual and though even the temporary facility may and probably will last for some years."" This is a hopeful sunny-minded fellow with whose aspirations did our conscience permit us we should be thoroughly delighted to concur. These writers may be taken as examples of two numerous classes. They are in fact the Trois Eschelles' and Petit Andrés of the railroads. The first consider every commercial exertion consequent on a new discovery or the opening of a new channel for investment doubtful in itself and highly dangerous if hurriedly and unhesitatingly adopted. The social system in their view may suffer quite as much from plethora as from inanition. Too much blood is as unwholesome as too little notwithstanding of any extraneous means to work it off. ""Slow and sure "" is their motto--""Carpe diem "" essentially that of their antagonists. And yet in one thing we believe most individuals holding these opposite opinions will be found to concur. They all speculate. Heraclitus signs his contract with a shudder and trembles as he places his realized premium in the bank. Democritus laughingly subscribes his name to thousands and chuckles as he beholds his favourite stock ascending in the thermometer of the share-market. Heraclitus sells--Democritus holds; and thus the great point of wisdom at issue between them is reduced to a mere question of time. But it is with their opinions not their practice that we have to deal. As usual truth will be found to lie somewhere between two opposite extremes. We neither entertain the timid fear of the one writer nor the fearless enthusiasm of the other. The present state of matters presents in a double sense a vast field of speculation through which we think it necessary to see our way a little more clearly. Rash interference may be as dangerous as the principle of ""_laissez faire_ "" which in fact is no principle at all but a blind abandonment to chance. Let us therefore endeavour to borrow some light from the experience of the past. The desire of growing rapidly rich is a very old epidemic in this country. It is a disease which infests the nation whenever capital in consequence of the success of trade and prosperous harvests becomes abundant; nor can it in the nature of things be otherwise. Capital will not remain unemployed. If no natural channel is presented the accumulated weight of riches is sure to make an outlet for itself; and the wisdom or folly of the irruption depends solely upon the course which the stream may take. Of false channels which have conducted our British Pactolus directly to a Dead Sea from which there is no return--we or our fathers have witnessed many. For example there were the South American and Mexican mining companies founded on the most absurd reports and miserably mismanaged in which many millions of the capital of this country were sunk. Again Mr Porter writes so late as 1843--""A very large amount of capital belonging to individuals in this country the result of their savings has of late years sought profitable investments in other lands. It has been computed that the United States of America have _during the last five years_ absorbed in this manner more than TWENTY-FIVE MILLIONS of English capital which sum has been invested in various public undertakings such as canals _railroads_ and banks in that country. Large sums have also been from time to time invested in the public securities of that and other foreign governments not always indeed with a profitable result."" We need hardly remind our readers of the poignant testimony of the Rev. Sydney Smith as to the profit derived from such investments or the probable fate of the actual capital under a repudiating system. These may be taken as two great instances of the danger of foreign speculation. The capital of the mining companies was squandered with no other effect than that of providing employment for a certain number of years to the lowest of the Mexican peasantry; whereas the same amount applied to a similar purpose in this country would not only have produced a handsome return to the invester but would have afforded work and wages to a considerable portion of the community. There is a reciprocity between labour and capital which never ought to be forgotten. Labour is the parent of all capital and capital therefore should be used for the fostering and assistance of the power by which it is produced. Here however it was removed and became to all intents and purposes as useless and irrecoverable as the bullion on board of a vessel which has foundered at sea. This therefore may be regarded as so much lost capital; but what shall we say to the other instance? Simply this--that whoever has lost by the failure of American banks by repudiation or by stoppages of dividends need not claim one single iota of our compassion. With British money has the acute Columbian united state to state by more enduring ties than can be framed within the walls of Congress--with it he has overcome the gigantic difficulties of nature--formed a level for the western waters where none existed before--pierced the interminable forests with his railroads and made such a rapid stride in civilization as the world has never yet witnessed. What of all this could he have done on his own resources? Something we must allow--because his spirit of enterprise is great even to recklessness and a young and forming country can afford to run risks which are impossible for an older state--but a very small part unquestionably without the use of British capital. We cannot and we will not believe that any considerable portion of these loans will be ultimately lost to this country. Great allowance must be made for the anger and vexation of the prospective sufferers at the first apparent breach of international faith and it is no wonder if their lament was both loud and long and heavy. But we think it is but a fair construction to suppose that our Transatlantic brethren in the very rapidity of their ""slickness "" have carried improvement too far given way to a false system of credit among themselves and so having outrun the national constable have found themselves compelled to suspend payment for an interval which in the present course of their prosperity cannot be of long continuance. So at least we having lent the American neither plack nor penny do in perfect charity presume; but in the mean time he has our capital--say now some thirty millions--he has used it most thoroughly and judiciously for himself and even supposing that we shall not ultimately suffer what gain can we qualify thereby? If John Doe hath an estate of some twenty thousand acres in tolerable cultivation which nevertheless in order to bring it to a perfect state of production requires the accessaries of tile-draining planting fencing and the accommodation of roads it is quite evident that his extra thousand pounds of capital will be more profitably expended on such purposes than on lending it to Richard Roe who has double the quantity of land in a state of nature. For Richard though with the best intentions may not find his agricultural returns quite so speedy as he expected may shake his head negatively at the hint of repayment of the principal and even be rather tardy with tender of interest at the term. John moreover has a population on his land whom he cannot get rid of who must be clothed and fed at his expense whether he can find work for them or no. This latter consideration indeed is in political economy paramount--give work to your own people and ample work if possible before you commit in loan to your neighbour that capital which constitutes the sinews alike of peace and of war. We believe there are few thinking persons in this country who will dispute the truth of this position. Indeed the general results of foreign speculation have been unprofitable altogether as is shown by the testimony of our ablest commercial writers. One of them gives the following summary:--""Large sums have from time to time been lent to various foreign states by English capitalists whose money has been put to great hazard and in some cases lost. On the other hand many foreign loans have been contracted by our merchants which have proved highly profitable through the progressive sale of the stock in foreign countries at higher than the contract prices. It is evidently impossible to form any correct estimate of the profit or loss which has resulted to the country from these various operations; the general impression is that hitherto the losses have much exceeded the gains."" In that general impression we most cordially concur--indeed we never heard any man whose opinion was worth having say otherwise. But in the absence of home speculation it is lit

le wonder that for the chance of unfrequent gain men should choose rather than leave their capital unemployed to run the risk of the frequent loss. It does not however follow as a matter of course that home speculation shall always prove profitable either to the invester or to the nation at large. We have said already that the proper function of capital is to foster and encourage labour; but this may be carried too far. For example it is just twenty years ago when at a time of great prosperity in trade--the regular products of this country being as nearly as possible equal to the demand--a large body of capitalists finding no other outlet for their savings gave an unnatural stimulus to production by buying up and storing immense quantities of our home manufactures. This they must have done upon some abstruse but utterly false calculation of augmented demand from abroad making no allowance for change of season foreign fluctuation or any other of the occult causes which influence the markets of the world. The result as is well known was most disastrous. Trade on a sudden grew slack. The capitalists in alarm threw open the whole of their accumulated stock at greatly depreciated prices. There was no further demand for manufacturing labour because the world was glutted with the supply and hence arose strikes panic bankruptcy and a period of almost unexampled hardship to the workman and of serious and permanent loss to the master manufacturer. Speculation therefore in an old branch of industry is perilous not only to the invester but to the prosperity of the branch itself. The case however is widely different when a new and important source of industry and income is suddenly developed in the country. We shall look back in vain over our past history to find any parallel at all approaching to the present state and prospects of the railway system. Forty-four years have elapsed since the first public railway in Great Britain (the Wandsworth and Croydon) received the sanction of the legislature. Twenty-five years afterwards at the close of 1826 when the Manchester and Liverpool bill was passed the whole number of railroad acts amounted to thirty-five: in 1838 it had increased to one hundred and forty-two. The capital of these railways with the sums which the proprietors were authorized to borrow cannot be taken at less than SIXTY MILLIONS STERLING. Now it is very instructive to remark that until the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester line in September 1830 not one single railway was constructed with a view to the conveyance of passengers. The first intention of the railway was to provide for the carriage of goods at a cheaper rate than could be effected by means of the canals and for the accommodation of the great coal-fields and mineral districts of England. In the Liverpool and Manchester prospectus--a species of document not usually remarkable for modesty or shyness of assumption--the estimate of the number of passengers between these two great towns was taken at the rate of one half of those who availed themselves of coach conveyance. Cotton bales manufactures cattle coals and iron were relied on as the staple sources of revenue. Had it not been for the introduction of the locomotive engine and the vast improvements it has received by means of which we are now whirled from place to place with almost magical rapidity there can be no doubt that the railways would in most instances have proved an utter failure. The fact is singular but it is perfectly ascertained that the railroads have not hitherto materially interfered with the canals in the article of transmission of goods. The cost of railway construction is incomparably greater than that attendant on the cutting of canals and therefore the land carriage can very seldom when speed is not required compete with the water conveyance. But for passengers speed is all in all. The facility and shortness of transit creates travellers at a ratio of which we probably have as yet no very accurate idea. Wherever the system has had a fair trial the number of passengers has been quadrupled--in some cases quintupled and even more; and every month is adding to their numbers. But 1838 though prolific in railways was still a mere Rachel when compared with the seven Leahs that have succeeded it. The principle of trunk lines then first recognised has since been carried into effect throughout England and adopted in Scotland though here the system has not yet had full time for development. The statistics of the railways already completed have fully and satisfactorily demonstrated the immense amount of revenue which in future will be drawn from these great national undertakings the increase on the last year alone having amounted to upwards of a million sterling. That revenue is the interest of the new property so created; and therefore we are making no extravagant calculation when we estimate the increased value of these railways at twenty millions in the course of a single year. That is an enormous national gain and quite beyond precedent. Indeed if the following paragraph which we have extracted from a late railway periodical be true our estimate is much within the mark. ""The improvement in the incomes of existing railways still continues and during the last two months has amounted to upwards of £200 000 in comparison with the corresponding two months of 1844. The lines which have reduced their fares most liberally are the greatest gainers. At this rate of increase of income the value of the railway property of the country is becoming greater by upwards of £2 000 000 sterling per month."" It is therefore by no means wonderful that as much of the available capital of the country as can be withdrawn from its staple sources of income should be eagerly invested in the railways since no other field can afford the prospect of so certain and increasing a return. The question has been often mooted whether government ought not in the first instance to have taken the management of the railways into its own hands. Much may be said upon one or other side and the success of the experiment is of course a very different thing from the mere prospect of success. Our opinion is quite decided that as great public works the government ought most certainly to have made the trunk railways or as in France to have leased them to companies who would undertake the construction of them for a certain term of years at the expiry of which the works themselves would have become the property of the nation. Never was there such a prospect afforded to a statesman of relieving the country by its own internal resources of a great part of the national debt. Public works are not unknown or without precedent in this country; but somehow or other they are always unprofitable. At the cost of upwards of a million government constructed the Caledonian Canal the revenue drawn from which does not at the present moment defray its own expenses much less return a farthing of interest on this large expenditure of capital. Now it is very difficult to see why government if it has power to undertake a losing concern should not likewise be entitled for the benefit of the nation at large to undertake even greater works which not only assist the commerce of the nation but might in a very short period comparatively speaking have almost extinguished its taxation. It is now of course far too late for any idea of the kind. The golden opportunity presented itself for a very short period of time and to the hands of men far too timid to grasp it even if they could have comprehended its advantages. Finance never was and probably never will be a branch of Whig education as even Joseph Hume has been compelled a thousand times piteously and with wringing of the hands to admit--and whose arithmetic could we expect them even to know if they admitted and knew not Joseph's? But this at least they might have done when the progress of railroads throughout the kingdom became a matter of absolute certainty. The whole subject should have been brought under the consideration of a board to determine what railways were most necessary throughout the kingdom and what line would be cheapest and most advantageous to the public; and when these points had once been ascertained no competition whatever should have been allowed. The functions of the Board of Trade were not nearly so extensive; they had no report of government engineers and no _data_ to go upon save the contradictory statements of the rival companies. Hence their decision in almost every instance was condemned by the parties interested who having a further tribunal in Parliament where a thousand interests unknown to the Board of Trade could be appealed to rushed into a protracted contest at an expenditure which this year is understood to have exceeded all precedent. We have no means of ascertaining the expenses of such a line as the London and York which was fought inch by inch through the Committees of both Houses with unexampled acrimony and perseverance. We know however that the expenses connected with the Great Western and the London and Birmingham bills amounted respectively to £88 710 and £72 868 exclusive altogether of the costs incurred by the different parties who opposed these lines in Parliament. It has been stated in a former number of this Magazine--and we believe it--that the parliamentary costs incurred for the Scottish private and railway bills during the last session alone amounted to a million and a half. Now though a great part of the money thus expended is immediately returned to circulation still it is a severe tax upon the provinces and might very easily have been avoided by the adoption of some such plan as that which we have intimated above; and we shall presently venture to offer a few practical remarks as to the course which we think is still open to the government for checking an evil which is by no means inseparable from the system. But first we are bound to state that _as yet_ we can see no grounds for believing that the nominal amount of capital invested in the railways which have obtained the sanction of Parliament is beyond or any thing approaching to the surplus means of the country. Foreign speculation except in so far as regards railroads (and these are neither so safe nor so profitable an investment as at home ) seems for the present entirely to have ceased. The last three years of almost unequalled prosperity have accumulated in the country a prodigious deal of capital which is this way finding an outlet; and though it may be true that the parties who originally subscribed to these undertakings may not in the aggregate be possessed of capital enough to carry them successfully to an end still there has been no want of capitalists to purchase the shares at a premium--not as we verily believe for a mere gambling transaction but for the purposes of solid investment. We base our calculations very much upon the steadily maintained prices of the railways which passed in 1844 and which are now making. Now these afford no immediate return--on the contrary a considerable amount of calls is still due upon most of them and the earliest will probably not be opened until the expiry of ten months from the present date. It is quite obvious that in this kind of stock there can be no incentive to gambling because the chances are that any new lines which may be started in the vicinity of them shall be rivals rather than feeders; and if capital were so scarce as in some quarters it is represented to be it is scarce possible that these lines could have remained so firmly held. Let us take the prices of the principal of these from the Liverpool share-lists as on 27th September. Share. Paid. Selling Price. 25 10 BLACKBURN AND PRESTON 19-3/4 to 20-1/4 50 15 CHESTER AND HOLYHEAD 20 to 20-1/2 50 25 LANCASTER AND CARLISLE 53-1/2 to 54-1/2 50 15 LEEDS AND BRADFORD 61 to 63 25 12-1/2 EAST LANCASHIRE 22 to 22-1/2 20 9 NORTH WALES MINERAL 14-3/4 to 15-1/4 10 1 DO. NEW 5-1/4 to 5-1/2 25 15 NORTH BRITISH 25 to 26 50 20 SOUTH DEVON 34 to 36 These lines have in the language of the Stock Exchange passed out of the hands of the jobbers and most of them are now too heavy in amount for the operations of the smaller speculators. We therefore look upon their steadiness as a high proof not only of their ultimate value but of the general abundance of capital. It is hardly possible as yet to draw any such deduction from the present prices of the lines which were passed in the course of last session. Upon many of these no calls have yet been made and consequently they are still open to every kind of fluctuation. It cannot therefore be said that they have settled down to their true estimated value and in all probability erelong some may decline to a certain degree. Still it is very remarkable and certainly corroborative of our view that the amazing influx of new schemes during the last few months--which time and circumstance considered may be fairly denominated a craze--has as yet had no effect in lowering them; more especially when we recollect that the amount of deposit now required upon new railways is ten per cent on the whole capital or exactly double of the ratio of the former deposits. We give these facts to the terrorists who opine that our surplus capital is ere now exhausted and that deep inroads have been made upon the illegitimate stores of credit; and we ask them for an explanation consistent with their timorous theory. At the same time we would by no means scoff at the counsel of our Ahitophels. A glance at the newspapers of last month and their interminable advertising columns is quite enough to convince us that the thing may be overdone. True not one out of five--nay perhaps not one out of fifteen--of these swarming schemes has the chance of obtaining the sanction of Parliament for years to come; still it is not only a pity but a great waste and national grievance that so large a sum as the deposits which are paid on these railways should be withdrawn--it matters not how long--from practical use and locked up to await the explosion of each particular bubble. We do think therefore that it is high time for the legislature to interfere not for any purpose of opposing the progress of railways but either by establishing a peremptory board of supervision or portioning out the different localities with respect to time on some new and compendious method. Last session the committees though they performed their duties with much zeal and assiduity were hardly able to overtake the amount of business before them. It was not without much flattery and coaxing that the adroit Premier of all men best formed for a general leader of the House of Commons could persuade the unfortunate members that an unfaltering attendance of some six hours a-day in a sweltering and ill-ventilated room where their ears were regaled with a constant repetition of the jargon connected with curves gradients and traffic-tables was their great and primary duty to the commonwealth. Most marvellous to say he succeeded in overcoming their stubborn will. Every morning by times the knight of the shire albeit exhausted from the endurance of the over-night's debate rose up from his neglected breakfast and posted down to his daily cell in the Cloisters. Prometheus under the beak of the vulture could not have shown more patience than most of those unhappy gentlemen under the infliction of the lawyer's tongue; and their stoicism was the more praiseworthy because in many instances there seemed no prospect however remote of the advent of a Hercules to deliver them. The only men who behaved unhandsomely on the occasion were some of the Irish members advocates of Repeal who with more than national brass grounded their declinature on the galling yoke of the Saxon and retreated to Connemara doubtless exulting that in this instance at least they had freed themselves from ""hereditary bonds."" It may be doubted however whether the tone of the committees was materially deteriorated by their absence. Now we have a great regard for the members of the House of Commons collectively; and were it on no other account save theirs we cannot help regarding the enormous accumulation of railway bills for next session with feelings of peculiar abhorrence. Last spring every exertion of the whole combined pitchforks was required to cleanse that Augean stable: can Sir Robert Peel have the inhumanity next year to request them to buckle to a tenfold augmented task? In our humble opinion (and we know something of the matter ) flesh and blood are unable to stand it. The private business of this country if conducted on the ancient plan must utterly swamp the consideration of public affairs and the member of Parliament dwindle into a mere arbiter between hostile surveyors; whilst the ministry delighted at the abstraction of both friend and foe have the great game of politics unchecked and unquestioned to themselves. The surest way to gag a conscientious opponent or to stop the mouth of an imprudent ally is to get him placed upon some such committee as that before which the cases of the London and York and Direct Northern lines were discussed. If after three days' patient hearing of the witnesses and lawyers he has one tangible idea floating in his head he is either an Alcibiades or a Bavius--a heaven-born genius or the mere incarnation of a fool! Let it be granted that the present system pursued by Parliament more especially when its immediate prospects are considered is an evil--and we believe there are few who will be bold enough to deny it--it still remains that we seek out a remedy. This is no easy task. The detection of an error is always a slight matter compared with its emendation and we profess to have neither the aptitude nor the experience of a Solon. But as we are sanguine that wherever an evil exists a remedy also may be found we shall venture to offer our own crude ideas in the hope that some better workman whose appetite for business has been a little allayed by the copious surfeit of last year may elaborate them into shape and emancipate one of the most deserving as well as the worst used classes of her Majesty's faithful lieges. And first we would say this--Do not any longer degrade the honourable House of Commons by forcing on its attention matters and details which ought to fall beneath the province of a lower tribunal: do not leave it in the power of any fool or knave--and there are many such actively employed at this time--who can persuade half a dozen of the same class with himself into gross delusion of the public to occupy the time and monopolize the nobler functions of the legislature in the consideration of some miserable scheme which never can be carried into effect and which is protracted beyond endurance simply for the benefit of its promoters. We do not mean that Parliament should abandon its controlling power or even delegate it altogether. We only wish that the initiative--the question whether any particular project is likely to tend to the public benefit and if so whether this is a fit and proper time to bring it forward--should be discussed elsewhere. A recommendation of the Board of Trade which still leaves the matter open is plainly useless and inoperative. It has been overleaped derided despised and will be so again--we scarcely dare to say unjustly; for no body of five men however intelligent could by possibility be expected to form an accurate judgment upon such an enormous mass of materials and conflicting statements as were laid before them. And yet preliminary enquiry there must be. The movement is far too great and charged with too important interests to permit its march unchecked. Of all tyrannical bodies a railway company is the most tyrannical. It asks to be armed with powers which the common law denies to the Sovereign herself. It seeks without your leave to usurp your property and will not buy it from you at your own price. It levels your house be it grange or cottage lays down its rails in your gardens cuts through your policy and fells down unmercifully the oaks which your Norman ancestor planted in the days of William Rufus. All this you must submit to for the public benefit is paramount to your private feelings; but it would be an intolerable grievance were you called upon to submit to this not for the public benefit but for the mere temporary emolument of a handful of unprincipled jobbers. Therefore there must be enquiry even though Parliament strangled with a multitude of projects should delegate a portion of its powers elsewhere. And why not? It required no great acuteness of vision to see that even had the railway mania not risen to this singular height some such step must erelong have been rendered imperative by the growing necessities and altered circumstances of the country. The leading feature of our age is the institution of joint-stock societies. We have taken up very lately the views which Æsop hinted at some thousands of years ago in his quaint parabolic manner and which Defoe who lived a century and a half before his time most clearly enunciated and described. We have found the way at last to make small capitals effect the most gigantic results by encircling them with the magic ties of combination. No matter when it was discovered; the principle has never yet been thoroughly acted upon until now and we know not how far it may be carried. Our fathers for want of this principle ruined themselves by isolated attempts--we are in no such danger if we do not yield ourselves to the madness of extravagant daring. Put railways aside altogether and the number of private bills which are now brought before Parliament is perfectly astounding. Twenty years ago such an influx would have daunted the heart of the stoutest legislator; and yet with all this remarkable increase we have clung pertinaciously to the same machinery and expect it to work as well as when it had not one tithe of the labour to perform. We have always been and we shall always continue to be the strenuous advocates of LOCAL BOARDS as by far the soundest cheapest and most natural method of administering local affairs. We can recognise no principle in the system by which a Scottish bill is entrusted to the judgment of a committee consisting of strangers who are utterly ignorant of locality vested interest popular feeling and every other point which ought to influence the consideration of such a matter. One would think by the care which is invariably taken to exclude from the committee every man whose local knowledge can qualify him to form an opinion that in ignorance alone is there safety from venality and prejudice--a supposition which to say the least conveys no compliment to the character or understanding of the British statesman. And yet this is the system which has hitherto been most rigidly adopted. We have judges in our law courts whose impartiality is beyond all suspicion. They are placed on a high conspicuous pinnacle in the sight of the nation to do justice between man and man; they are fenced and fortified by the high dignity almost sanctity of their calling against clamour idle rumour private interest or any other element that might disturb the course of equity and therefore their decisions are received on all sides with reverential acquiescence. Why should not the private business of the country be placed upon the same footing? Let there be three commissions issued--three permanent local boards established in England Scotland and Ireland under the superintendence if necessary of the Board of Trade; let Parliament lay down rules for their guidance and let every measure which at present would be launched _de plano_ into the House of Commons be first submitted to their consideration; and let their determination to reject or postpone be final unless the legislature shall see fit by a solemn vote to reverse that portion of their report. In this way a multitude of loose and undigested schemes would be thrown back upon the hands of their promoters without clogging the wheels of Parliament; and such only as bear _ex facie_ to be for the public advantage would be allowed to undergo the more searching ordeal of a committee. These boards would literally cost the country nothing even although the constituent members of them were paid as they ought to be for the performance of such a duty very highly. Each company applying for a bill might be assessed to a certain amount corresponding to the value of its stock; as it is but fair that the parties who have created the exigency and whose avowed object is profit should defray the attendant expense. Supposing that the principle of these boards were admitted it seems to us that Parliament has still to exercise a great and serious duty in laying down rules for their guidance. This is perhaps the most difficult subject connected with the railway system; and we approach it with diffidence as it is inseparable nay must be based upon the two grand considerations of CAPITAL and LABOUR. We shall endeavour to explain our meaning a little more minutely. The reader will gather from what we have written above that we entertain no fear that the nominal capital invested in the railways _which have already received the sanction of Parliament_ is now more than the surplus capital floating in the country which can be applied to such a purpose without injuring any portion of our staple manufactures or commerce. On the contrary we think that it is very greatly below that mark and therefore that it matters little in a general point of view by whom the stock is presently held. Sooner or later it must find its way into the hands of the capitalists a class whose numbers are notoriously every day on the increase. Even were this not the case and the balance otherwise it must be recollected that the investment of that capital is not the thing of a moment. Four years probably may elapse before all the railways _which have obtained bills_ can be completed and during that time the calls are gradual. Unless therefore there shall occur some untoward and unforeseen cause such as a continental war or a general stoppage of trade the accumulation of capital in this country will be at least equally progressive. There is thus a future increment corresponding to the period of the completion of these public works which may very fairly be taken into consideration at least as a kind of security that we have not hitherto advanced with too rash or hasty steps. But with the unchecked influx of new schemes this security which at best is but contingent must disappear and a further enormous absorption of capital the existence of which is not satisfactorily proved be called for. In such a state of things it is unquestionably the duty of government to use its controlling power. The payment of ten per cent deposit is no guarantee at all. Whilst new stocks are at premium a hundred pounds in the hands of an enterprising speculator may figure as the representative of many thousands in twenty different railway schemes. The limit of disposable capital in the country must--if all the new projects are permitted to go on--be reached and that erelong; then comes a period of gambling whilst money is cheap and credit plentiful--a sudden contraction of currency--and a crash. It has been found utterly impossible to ascertain the amount of capital at any time floating in Great Britain. We can therefore only guess from certain commercial symptoms when it is nearly exhausted. On this point the money articles in the London journals have of late contained many significant hints. The settlements on the Stock Exchange are weekly becoming more difficult and an enormous per centage is said to be paid at present for temporary accommodation. It is understood also that the banks are about to raise the rate of discount; from which we infer that their deposits are being gradually withdrawn since there is no other circumstance whatever that ought to operate a change.[7] But really it requires no calculation and no foresight to see that the mere amount of deposits required for the new schemes must erelong lock up the whole available capital of Great Britain. Let those who think this is a bold assertion on our part attend to the following fact. We have taken from _The Railway Record_ the amount of _new railway schemes_ advertised _in a single week_ at the beginning of October. The number of the schemes is FORTY; and they comprehend the ephemera of England and Ireland only--Scotland which during that period was most emulously at work seems by some unaccountable accident to have been overlooked. Of the amount of capital to be invested in no less than ELEVEN of these we have no statement. The promoters apparently have no time to attend to such trifling details; and doubtless it will be early enough to announce the capital when they have playfully pounced upon the deposits. But there is some candour in TWENTY-NINE provisional committees and their accumulated nominal capital proves to be--how much think you gifted reader and confident dabbler in new stock? Why merely this--TWENTY-FIVE MILLIONS EIGHT HUNDRED AND THIRTY THOUSAND POUNDS!!! Now--for we wish always to speak and write within the mark--let us calculate the eleven Harpocrates Companies and the Northern Schemes (which are more than eleven ) at fourteen or fifteen additional millions; and you thus have parties engaged _in the course of a single week_ for FORTY MILLIONS STERLING or _about one-twentieth part of the whole national debt_; which according to this rate of subscription may be extinguished by our surplus capital in the short space of five months. And this is the country where three years ago the manufacturer and miner were starving Manchester almost in a state of siege and Staley-bridge in absolute insurrection! Happy Britain where every man has discovered the philosopher's stone! After this need we say any thing more upon the great topic of capital? Were the nation now in its sober senses the facts which we have stated and for the accuracy of which we pledge ourselves would surely be enough to awaken it to a true conception of the vortex into which it is plunging. But as every man will no doubt think--with the ordinary self-delusion of our kind--that the scheme in which he is individually embarked is an exception from the common rule; let us ask each speculator candidly to make answer whether he has minutely examined the merits of the line which he has adopted or whether he has thrown himself into it upon the assurances of others and the mere expectations of a premium? If the former let him hold. We war with no man's deliberate judgment; and that there are many projected lines in Great Britain which must ultimately be carried and which will prove most profitable to the shareholders is beyond all manner of doubt. Whether they may receive the sanction of the legislature so soon as the proprietor expects is a very different question. But if the latter his case is far otherwise. We have seen the prospectus of several of the most gigantic schemes now in the market by means of which the whole length of England is to be traversed and these have undergone no further survey than the application of a ruler to a lithographic map and a trifling transplantation of the principal towns so as to coincide with the direct and undeviating rail. There is hardly a sharebroker in the kingdom who is not cognisant of this most flagrant fact; and by many of them the impudent impositions have been returned with the scorn which such conduct demands. It is hardly possible to conceive that these schemes were ever intended to meet the eye of Parliament; but if not why were they ever started? The reflection is a very serious one for those who have deposited their money. Such projects of course are the exceptions and not the rule. Still their existence and the support which they have unthinkingly obtained are very lamentable symptoms of the recklessness which characterises the present impulse. Were the tone of commercial enterprise healthy and kept within due bounds there would be nothing of this; neither should we hear as we do every day of shares which immediately after their allocation attain an enormous premium and after having fluctuated for a week or two subside to something like their real value. Are we then justified or not in saying that it is the imperative duty of the legislature to look to this question of capital; that it is bound to see that the country does not pledge itself so utterly beyond its means; and that the advance of the railway system must be made slow and steady in order to render its basis secure? But there is another point beyond this. Suppo

ing that all our remarks on the subject of capital were erroneous and that our financial views were as puerile as we believe them to be strictly sound--we fall back upon an element which is more easily ascertained and that is LABOUR. We hold it to be a clear economical maxim that beyond a certain point at all events within a given time capital however abundant it may be cannot _create_ labour. It has passed into a sort of truism that there is nothing which money cannot accomplish--analyse it and you will find that it is not a truism but a popular fallacy. There are many many things which money cannot accomplish. It has no power to clear the social atmosphere from crime; it may mar the morals of a people but it cannot make them; and still less can it usurp the stupendous functions of the Deity. It may rear labour but it cannot by any possibility create it after such a fashion as the crop that sprang from the sowing of the Cadmean teeth. Let us illustrate this a little. Probably--nay certainly--there never was a country in which labour has been so accurately balanced as in Great Britain. Our population has been for a number of years upon the increment; but the increase has been of the nature of supply consequent and almost dependent upon the demand. The wages paid to the children in manufacturing districts have swelled that portion of our population to a great degree though probably not more than is indispensable from the fluctuating nature of commerce. But so far as we can learn from statistical tables the number of agricultural labourers--that is those who are strictly employed in the cultivation of the land and who cannot be spared from that most necessary task--has been rather on the decrease. Our business however is neither with manufacturer nor with agriculturist but with a different class--those namely who are engaged in the public works of the country. Let us take Mr Porter's estimate according to the census of 1831. ""The summary of the returns of 1831 respecting the occupations of males twenty years of age and upwards throws considerable light upon the subject by exhibiting them under several subdivisions. The males belonging to the families included in the non-agricultural and non-manufacturing classes were given at the last census under four distinct heads of description viz.:-- ""Capitalists Bankers Professional and other educated men. ""_Labourers employed in labour not Agricultural._ ""Other males twenty years of age except servants. ""Male servants twenty years of age. ""The whole number of males included under these heads amounts to 1 137 270. Of _these_ 608 712 were actually employed in labour which although usually speaking it was neither manufacturing nor trading was yet necessary in the successful prosecution of some branch of trade or manufactures _such as mining road-making canal-digging inland navigation &c._"" Of these 600 000 now probably augmented by a tenth how many can be spared from their several employments for the construction of the railways and how many are at this moment so employed with their labour mortgaged for years? This is a question which Parliament ought most certainly--if it can be done--to get answered in a satisfactory manner. It must be remarked that in this class are included the miners who certainly cannot be withdrawn from their present work which in fact is indispensable for the completion of the railways. If possible their numbers must be augmented. The stored iron of the country is now exhausted and the masters are using every diligence in their power to facilitate the supply which still as the advancing price of that great commodity will testify is short of and insufficient for the demand. From the agricultural labourers you cannot receive any material number of recruits. The land above all things must be tilled; and--notwithstanding the trashy assertions of popular slip-slop authors and Cockney sentimentalists who have favored us with pictures of the Will Ferns of the kingdom as unlike the reality as may be--the condition of those who cultivate the soil of Britain is superior to that of the peasantry in every other country of Europe. The inevitable increase of demand for labour will even better their condition according to the operation of a law apparent to every man of common sense but which is hopelessly concealed from the eyes of these spurious regenerators of the times. It is impossible to transform the manufacturer even were that trade slack into a railway labourer; the habits and constitution of the two classes being essentially different and distinct. Indeed as the writer we have already quoted well remarks--""Experience has shown that uneducated men pass with difficulty and unwillingly from occupations to which they have been long accustomed "" and nothing consequently is more difficult than to augment materially and suddenly the numbers of any industrial class when an unexpected demand arises. To us therefore it seems perfectly clear that even if the capital were forthcoming there is not labour enough in the country for the simultaneous construction of a tithe of the projected schemes. There are considerations connected with this matter which entail a great responsibility upon the government. The capitalists are in fact putting at its disposal the means of maintaining a great portion of the poorer population for many years to cone. If this be properly attended to emigration which principally benefits the labourer may be discontinued. We have now arrived at a pass when the absence of those who have already emigrated becomes a matter of regret. There is work to be had nearer than the Canadian woods or the waterless prairies of Australia--work too that in its results must be of incalculable benefit to the community. But the government is bound to regulate it so that amidst superabundance of wealth due regard is paid to the ECONOMY OF LABOUR. It is rumoured that some railway directors fully aware of the facts which we have stated are meditating in their exuberant haste for dividends the introduction of foreign labourers. We doubt whether under any circumstances such a scheme is practicable; but of this we entertain no doubt that it is as mischievous a device as ever was forged in the cabinet of Mammon! Some years ago the cuckoo cry of the political quacks was over-population. Now it seems there is a scarcity of hands and in order to supply the want--for we have drained the Highlands--we are to have an importation from Baden or Bavaria without even the protecting solemnity of a tariff. If this be true it seems to us that government is bound to interpose by the most stringent measures. It is monstrous to think that whereas for many years past for mere slackness of labour we have been encouraging emigration among the productive classes of our countrymen to a very great degree; draining as it were the mother country to found the colonies and therein resorting to the last step which a paternal government even in times of the greatest necessity should adopt--now when a new experiment or social crisis--call it which you will--has arisen when labour has again reached the point where the demand exceeds the supply we are to admit an influx of strangers amongst us and thereby entail upon ourselves and posterity the evils of prospective pauperism. We have been already too prone in matters relating rather to the luxuries than the necessities of our social system to give undue preference to the foreigner. British art has in many branches been thereby crippled and discouraged and a cry not unnatural surely has ere now been raised against the practice. But how incomparably more dangerous it would be to inundate the country with an alien population whose mere brute strength without a particle of productive skill is their only passport and certificate! This too be it observed is not for the purpose of establishing or furthering a branch of industry which can furnish permanent employment but merely for carrying out a system of great change certainly but of limited endurance. If labour required to be forced it would certainly be more for our advantage to revise our penal institutions and to consider seriously whether those who have committed offences against our social laws might not be more profitably employed in the great works of the kingdom than by transplanting them as at present to the Antipodes at a fearful expense the diminution of which appears in all human probability impossible. If then we are right in our premises the two leading points which Parliament must steadily regard in forming its decisions connected with the new schemes are the sufficiency of unfettered capital and the adequate supply of labour. Our conviction is that neither exist to any thing like the extent which would be required were the present mania allowed to run its course unchecked. But on the other hand a total stoppage of improvement might be equally dangerous; and it will therefore be necessary to steer a middle course and to regulate the movement according to certain principles. Let us then first consider what lines ought _not_ to be granted. At the head of these we should place the whole bundle of rival companies to railways already completed or in progress. We are not of the number of those who stand up for exclusive commercial monopoly; but we do think that there is a tacit or implied contract between the state and the proprietors of the sanctioned lines which ought to shield the latter against rash and invidious competition. The older railways are the parents of the system; without them it never could have been discovered what gradients were requisite what works indispensable what savings practicable. The expense of their construction we know to have been in many instances far greater than is contained in the modern estimates and the land which they required to occupy was procured at extravagant prices. Now it does seem to us in the highest degree unfair that the interest of these companies should be sacrificed for the sake of what is called the ""direct"" principle. A saving of twenty or thirty miles between Newcastle and London is now thought to be a matter of so much importance as to justify one or more independent lines which despising intermediate cities and their traffic still hold their even course as the crow flies from point to point and thereby shorten the transit from the south to the north of England by--it may be--the matter of an hour. We did not use to be quite so chary of our minutes: nor though fully aware of the value of time did we ever bestow the same regard upon the fractional portions of our existence. What the nation requires is a safe commodious and speedy mode of conveyance and we defy the veriest streak-of-lightning man to say that the present companies in operation do not afford us that to our heart's content. It is but a very few years ago since we used to glorify ourselves in the rapidity of the mail-coach doing its ten miles an hour with the punctuality of clockwork. Now we have arrived at the ratio of forty within the same period and yet we are not content. Next year within fourteen hours we shall be transported from Edinburgh to London. That it seems is not enough. A company offers to transport us by a straighter line in thirteen; and for that purpose they ask leave of the legislature to construct a rival line at the expense of a few millions! Now keeping in mind what we have said as to capital is not this in the present state of things most wanton prodigality? The same ""few millions""--and we rather suspect they are fewer than is commonly supposed--would open up counties hitherto untouched by the railway system--would give us communication through the heart of the Highlands through the remoter districts of Wales through the unvisited nooks of Ireland and in so doing would minister not only to the wants of the community but in an inconceivable degree to the social improvement of the people. Among the list of proposed schemes for next session there are many such; and surely our government if its functions correspond to the name is bound in the first instance to give a preference to these; and--since all cannot be accomplished at once--to assist the schemes which volunteer the opening of a new district rather than the competition of mushroom companies where the field is already occupied. There is also a filching spirit abroad which ought decidedly to be checked. Scarce a main line has been established from which it has not been found necessary for the purposes of accommodation to run several branches. Until about a year ago it was generally understood that these adjuncts ought to be left in the hands of the original companies who for their own sakes were always ready to augment their traffic by such feeders. Now it is widely different. Four or five miles of cross country is reckoned a sufficient justification for the establishment of an independent company who without any consultation with the proprietors of the main line or enquiry as to their ultimate intentions seize upon the vacant ground as a waif and throw themselves confidently upon the public. If the matter does not end in a lease the unfortunate public will be the losers since it is manifestly impossible that a little Lilliput line can be cheaply worked independent of the larger trunk. This class of schemes also should receive their speedy _quietus_; for what would be the use of permitting the promoters to attempt the proof of an impossible case? England has already made a great portion of her railroads but neither Scotland nor Ireland as yet have attained the same point. Now in a general point of view it will hardly be denied that it is of far greater importance to have the country thoroughly opened up throughout its length and breadth than to have an accumulation of cross and intersecting railways in one particular district. We are asking no favouritism for it has become a mere matter of choice between companies as to which shall have the earlier preference. In point of policy the legislature ought certainly to extend every possible favour to the Irish lines. It may be that in this railway system--for Providence works with strange agents--there lies the germ of a better understanding between us and the dawn of a happier day for Ireland. At any rate to its pauper population the employment afforded by companies where no absenteeism can exist is a great and timely boon and may work more social wonders than any scheme of conciliation which the statesman has as yet devised. Idleness and lack of employment are the most fertile sources of agitation; let these be removed and we may look if not with confidence at least with hope for a cessation of the stormy evil. By all means then let Ireland have the precedence. She needs it more than the other countries do and to her claims we are all disposed to yield. But England owes Scotland something also. For a long series of years amidst great political changes through good and through evil report this Magazine has been the consistent champion of our national interests; and whether the blow was aimed at our country by seeming friend or open foe we have never hesitated to speak out boldly. More than twenty years ago a measure was passed by the United Parliament which literally brought down ruin upon the Highlands of Scotland and from the effects of which many of the districts have never recovered. Along all the western coast and throughout the islands the manufacture of kelp was the only branch of industry within the reach of a poor and extended population who from their very poverty were entitled to the most kindly regard of government. But as it is believed at the instigation of one member of the cabinet himself largely connected with foreign trade without enquiry and without warning the market was thrown open to competition from without barilla imported and the staple product of the north of Scotland annihilated. To this fatal and we hesitate not to say most wanton measure we attribute the periods of distress and the long-continued depression which in very many lamentable instances have been the ruin of our ancient families and in consequence of which the Highland glens have been depopulated. It was a cruel thing to do under any circumstances--a wicked thing when we remember the interest by which it was carried. There is now a great opportunity of giving us a reasonable compensation. From the introduction of the railway system we anticipate a new era of prosperity to Scotland--a time when we shall not have to devote ourselves to the melancholy task of decreasing the population by a harsh or inhuman exile--when the crofts of the valleys shall again be tilled and the household fires shall be lighted on the now deserted hearthstone. Therefore in the event of a restriction we so far claim precedence. Let the work however be impartially distributed throughout the kingdoms and there can be no ground any where for complaint. Only let our haste be tempered with prudence and our enthusiasm moderated down to a just coincidence with our means. During all this torrent of speculation what is the Currency doing? No man seems to know. The nation has found a paper of its own quite as effective as that which is doled out by the chartered bank. The brokers are in fact becoming bankers and payments of all kinds are readily made in scrip. This is an instructive fact and may somewhat tend to disturb the triumph of the theorists who uphold the doctrine of a restrictive trade in money. We do not rely on the safety of the system but we look upon it as a strong proof that our monetary regulations are wrong and that there is not only a wish but several practical ways effectually to evade its fetters. We are not however going into that question though it is by no means unconnected with our present subject. At the same time we should like to see this same article of scrip which is fast approximating to notes a little more protected. Has it never occurred to the mind of the Chancellor of the Exchequer or to the Premier who has a most searching eye that a very profitable source of revenue to the public and one which would hardly be grudged might be derived from the simple expedient of requiring that _all scrip should be stamped_? There is no practical difficulty in the matter. Companies already formed if they do not desire the benefit of a stamp--the best and indeed at present the only security against the forger--may be called upon to pay their quota corresponding to the number of their shares from the fund of their Parliamentary deposit. New companies again might be imperatively required to issue stamps; and we confidently believe that no tax whatever would be more cheerfully assented to. Let the currency doctors do what they will they never can drive scrip from the market. Would it not then be a measure of good policy to enlist it as a serviceable ally? Whether these observations of ours may stand the test of another year's experience is certainly matter of doubt. The period of a single month makes wild changes in the prospects of the system and involves us not only in new calculations but in a newer phase of things. At any rate it can do no harm in the present period of excitement to preach a little moderation even though our voice should be as inaudible as the chirp of a sparrow on the house-top. The speculative spirit of the age may be checked and controlled but it cannot be put down nor would we wish to see it pass away. All great improvement is the fruit of speculation upon which indeed commerce itself is based. We have therefore no sympathy for that numerous class of gentlemen who profess a pious horror for every venture of the kind who croak prophetical bankruptcies and would disinherit their sons without scruple if by any accident they detected them in dalliance with scrip. A worthier but a more contracted section of the human race does not exist. They are the genuine descendants of the Picts; and had they lived in remoter days would have been the first to protest against the abolition of ochre as an ornament or the substitution of broadcloth for the untanned buffalo hide. The nation must progress and the true Conservative policy is to lay down a proper plan for the steadiness and endurance of its march. The Roman state was once saved by the judicious dispositions of a Fabius and in our mind Sir Robert Peel cannot do the public a greater service than to imitate the example of the _Cunctator_. He has the power and more than any living statesman the practical ability to grapple with such a subject in all its details. That Parliament must do something is apparent to every reflecting man. The machinery of it cannot dispose as heretofore of the superabundant material. It must devise some method of regulation and that method must be clear and decisive. A question more important can hardly be conceived and so with the legislature we leave it. FOOTNOTE: [7] Since this article was sent to press the Bank of England has raised its rates of discount one-half per cent. Our prognostication therefore has been verified sooner than we expected and we are not sorry to find that great establishment thus early indicating its opinion that speculation has been pushed too far. We see no ground of alarm in the rise but rather a security for a more healthy and moderate market. * * * * * _Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne & Hughes Paul's Work._ "

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generously made available by The Internet Library of Early Journals.) TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: A few obvious misprints have been corrected but in general the originally erratic spelling punctuation and typesetting conventions have been retained. Accents in foreign-language poetry and phrases particularly the Greek are inconsistent in the original and have not been standardised. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCLXII. DECEMBER 1845. VOL. LVIII. CONTENTS. MARLBOROUGH No. II. 649 THE STUDENT OF SALAMANCA Part II. 673 WHITE'S THREE YEARS IN CONSTANTINOPLE 688 THE MOUNTAIN AND THE CLOUD 704 THE SECOND PANDORA 711 THE REIGN OF GEORGE THE THIRD 713 A FEW PASSAGES CONCERNING OMENS DREAMS APPEARANCES &C. 735 A MOTHER TO HER FORSAKEN CHILD 752 SUMMER NOONTIDE _ib._ TO CLARA 753 SECLUSION _ib._ THE LAST HOURS OF A REIGN. Part I. 754 THE SCOTTISH HARVEST 769 EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 45 GEORGE STREET; AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW LONDON. _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._ SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES EDINBURGH. MARLBOROUGH. No. II.[1] It might have been expected that after the march into Bavaria had demonstrated the military genius of the Duke of Marlborough and the battle of Blenheim had in so decisive a manner broken the enemy's power the principal direction of military affairs would have been entrusted to that consummate commander; and that the Allied cabinets without presuming to interfere in the management of the campaigns would have turned all their efforts to place at his disposal forces adequate to carry into execution the mighty designs which he meditated and had shown himself so well qualified to carry into execution. It was quite the reverse. The Allied cabinets did nothing. They did worse than nothing--they interfered only to do mischief. Their principal object after this appeared to be to cramp the efforts of this great general to overrule his bold designs to tie down his aspiring genius. Each looked only to his own separate objects and nothing could make them see that they were to be gained only by promoting the general objects of the alliance. Relieved from the danger of instant subjugation by the victory of Blenheim and the retreat of the French army across the Rhine the German powers relapsed into their usual state of supineness lukewarmness and indifference. No efforts of Marlborough could induce the Dutch either to enlarge their contingent or even render that already in the field fit for active service. The English force was not half of what the national strength was capable of sending forth. Parliament would not hear of any thing like an adequate expenditure. Thus the golden opportunity never likely to be regained of profiting by the consternation of the enemy after the battle of Blenheim and their weakness after forty thousand of their best troops had been lost to their armies was allowed to pass away; and the war was permitted to dwindle into one of posts and sieges when by a vigorous effort it might have been concluded in the next campaign.[2] It was not thus with the French. The same cause which had loosened the efforts of the confederates had inspired unwonted vigour into their councils. The Rhine was crossed by the Allies; the French armies had been hurled with disgrace out of Germany; the territory of the Grand Monarque was threatened both from the side of Alsace and Flanders; and a formidable insurrection in the Cevennes both distracted the force and threatened the peace of the kingdom. But against all these evils Louis made head. Never had the superior vigour and perseverance of a monarchy over that of a confederacy been more clearly evinced. Marshal Villars had been employed in the close of the preceding year to appease the insurrection in the Cevennes and his measures were at once so vigorous and conciliatory that before the end of the following winter the disturbances were entirely appeased. In consequence of this the forces employed in that quarter became disposable; and by this means and the immense efforts made by the government over the whole kingdom the armies on the frontier were so considerably augmented that Villeroi and the Elector of Bavaria took the field in the Low Countries at the head of seventy-five thousand men while Marshal Marsin on the Upper Rhine covered Alsace with thirty thousand. Those armies were much larger than any which the Allies could bring against them; for although it had been calculated that Marlborough was to be at the head of ninety thousand men on the Moselle on the 1st May yet such had been the dilatory conduct of the States-general and the German princes that in the beginning of June there were scarcely thirty thousand men collected round his standards; and in Flanders and on the Upper Rhine the enemy's relative superiority was still greater. The plan of the campaign of 1705 based on the supposition that these great forces were to be at his disposal concerted between him and Prince Eugene was in the highest degree bold and decisive. It was fixed that early in spring ninety thousand men should be assembled in the country between the Moselle and the Saar and after establishing their magazines and base of operations at Treves and Traerbach they should penetrate in two columns into Lorraine; that the column under Marlborough in person should advance along the course of Moselle and the other under the Margrave of Baden by the valley of the Saar and that Saar-Louis should be invested before the French army had time to take the field. In this way the whole fortresses of Flanders would be avoided and the war carried into the enemy's territory would assail France on the side where her iron barrier was most easily pierced through. But the slowness of the Dutch and backwardness of the Germans rendered this well-conceived plan abortive and doomed the English general for the whole of a campaign which promised such important advantages to little else but difficulty delay and vexation. Marlborough's enthusiasm great as it was nearly sank under the repeated disappointments which he experienced at this juncture; and guarded as he was it exhaled in several bitter complaints in his confidential correspondence.[3] But like a true patriot and man of perseverance he did not give way to despair when he found nearly all that had been promised him awanting; but perceiving the greater designs impracticable from the want of all the means by which they could be carried into execution prepared to make the most of the diminutive force which alone was at his disposal. At length some of the German reinforcements having arrived Marlborough in the beginning of June though still greatly inferior to the enemy commenced operations. Such was the terror inspired by his name and the tried valour of the English troops that Villars remained on the defensive and soon retreated. Without firing a shot he evacuated a strong woody country which he occupied and retired to a strong defensive position extending from Haute Sirk on the right to the Nivelles on the left and communicating in the rear with Luxembourg Thionville and Saar-Louis. This position was so strong that it was hopeless to attempt to force it without heavy cannon; and Marlborough's had not yet arrived from the failure of the German princes to furnish the draught-horses they had promised. For nine weary days he remained in front of the French position counting the hours till the guns and reinforcements came up; but such was the tardiness of the German powers and the universal inefficiency of the inferior princes and potentates that they never made their appearance. The English general was still anxiously awaiting the promised supplies when intelligence arrived from the right of so alarming a character as at once changed the theatre of operations and fixed him for the remainder of the campaign in the plains of Flanders. It was the rapid progress which Marshal Villeroi and the Elector of Bavaria at the head of seventy-five thousand men were making in the heart of Flanders which rendered this change necessary. General Overkirk was there entrusted with the army intended to cover Holland; but it was greatly inferior to the enemy in point of numerical amount and still more so in the quality and composition of the troops of which it was composed. Aware of his superiority and of the timid character of the government which was principally interested in that army Villeroi pushed his advantages to the utmost. He advanced boldly upon the Meuse carried by assault the fortress of Huys and marching upon Liege occupied the town without much resistance and laid siege to the citadel. Overkirk in his lines before Maestricht was unable even to keep the field. The utmost alarm seized upon the United Provinces. They already in imagination saw Louis XIV. a second time at the gates of Amsterdam. Courier after courier was dispatched to Marlborough soliciting relief in the most urgent terms; and it was hinted that if effectual protection were not immediately given Holland would be under the necessity of negotiating for a separate peace. There was not a moment to be lost: the Dutch were now as hard pressed as the Austrians had been in the preceding year and in greater alarm than the Emperor was before the battle of Blenheim. A cross march like that into Bavaria could alone reinstate affairs. Without a moment's hesitation Marlborough took his determination. On the 17th June without communicating his designs to any one or even without saying a word of the alarming intelligence he had received he ordered the whole army to be under arms at midnight and setting out shortly after he marched without intermission eighteen miles to the rear. Having thus gained a march upon the enemy so as to avoid the risk of being pursued or harassed in his retreat he left General D'Aubach with eleven battalions and twelve squadrons to cover the important magazines at Treves and Saarbruck; and himself with the remainder of the army about thirty thousand strong marched rapidly in the direction of Maestricht. He was in hopes of being able like the Consul Nero in the memorable cross march from Apulia to the Metaurus in Roman story to attack the enemy with his own army united to that of Overkirk before he was aware of his approach; but in this he was disappointed. Villeroi got notice of his movement and instantly raising the siege of the citadel of Liege withdrew though still superior in number to the united forces of the enemy within the shelter of the lines he had prepared and fortified with great care on the Meuse. Marlborough instantly attacked and carried Huys on the 11th July. But the satisfaction derived from having thus arrested the progress of the enemy in Flanders and wrested from him the only conquest of the campaign soon received a bitter alloy. Like Napoleon in his later years the successes he gained in person were almost always overbalanced by the disasters sustained through the blunders or treachery of his lieutenants. Hardly had Huys opened its gates when advices were received that D'Aubach instead of obeying his orders and defending the magazines at Treves and Saarbruck to the last extremity had fled on the first appearance of a weak French detachment and burned the whole stores which it had cost so much time and money to collect. This was a severe blow to Marlborough for it at once rendered impracticable the offensive movement into Lorraine on which his heart was so set and from which he had anticipated such important results. It was no longer possible to carry the war into the enemy's territory or turn by an irruption into Lorraine the whole fortresses of the enemy in Flanders. The tardiness of the German powers in the first instance the terrors of the Dutch and misconduct of D'Aubach in the last had caused that ably conceived design entirely to miscarry. Great was the mortification of the English general at this signal disappointment of his most warmly cherished hopes; it even went so far that he had thoughts of resigning his command.[4] But instead of abandoning himself to despair he set about like the King of Prussia in after times the preparation of a stroke which should reinstate his affairs by the terror with which it inspired the enemy and the demonstration of inexhaustible resources it afforded in himself. The position occupied by the Elector of Bavaria and Marshal Villeroi was so strong that it was regarded as impregnable and in truth it was so to a front attack. With its right resting on Marche aux Dames on the Meuse it stretched through Leau to the strong and important fortress of Antwerp. This line was long and of course liable to be broken through at points; but such was the skill with which every vulnerable point had been strengthened and fortified by the French engineers that it was no easy matter to say where an impression could be made. Wherever a marsh or a stream intervened the most skilful use had been made of it; while forts and redoubts plentifully mounted with heavy cannon both commanded all the approaches to the lines and formed so many _points d'appui_ to its defenders in case of disaster. Such a position defended by seventy thousand men directed by able generals might well be deemed impregnable. But Marlborough with an inferior force resolved to attempt it. In doing so however he had difficulties more formidable to overcome than even the resistance of the enemy in front; the timidity of the authorities at the Hague the nervousness and responsibility of the Dutch generals were more to be dreaded than Villeroi's redoubts. It required all the consummate address of the English general aided by the able co-operation of General Overkirk to get liberty from the Dutch authorities to engage in any offensive undertaking. At length however after infinite difficulty a council of war at headquarters agreed to support any undertaking which might be deemed advisable; and Marlborough instantly set about putting his design in execution. The better to conceal the real point of attack he gave out that a march to the Moselle was to be immediately undertaken; and to give a colour to the report the corps which had been employed in the siege of Huys was not brought forward to the front. At the same time Overkirk was detached to the Allied left towards Bourdine and Marlborough followed with a considerable force ostensibly to support him. So completely was Villeroi imposed upon that he drew large reinforcements from the centre to his extreme right; and soon forty thousand men were grouped round the sources of the Little Gheet on his extreme right. By this means the centre was seriously weakened; and Marlborough instantly assembled with every imaginable precaution to avoid discovery all his disposable forces to attack the weakened part of the lines. The corps hitherto stationed on the Meuse was silently brought up to the front; Marlborough put himself at the head of his own English and German troops whom he had carried with him from the Moselle; and at eight at night on the 17th July the whole began to march all profoundly ignorant of the service on which they were to be engaged. Each trooper was ordered to carry a truss of hay at his saddle-bow as if a long march was in contemplation. At the same instant on which the columns under Marlborough's orders commenced their march Overkirk repassed the Mehaigne on the left and hid by darkness fell into the general line of the advance of the Allied troops. No fascines or gabions had been brought along to pass the ditch for fear of exciting alarm in the lines. The trusses of hay alone were trusted to for that purpose which would be equally effectual and less likely to awaken suspicion. At four in the morning the heads of the columns wholly unperceived were in front of the French works and covered by a thick fog traversed the morass passed the Gheet despite its steep banks carried the castle of Wange and rushing forward with a swift pace crossed the ditch on the trusses of hay and in three weighty columns scaled the rampart and broke into the enemy's works. Hitherto entire success had attended this admirably planned attack; but the alarm was now given; a fresh corps of fifteen thousand men under M. D'Allegré hastily assembled and a heavy fire was opened upon the Allies now distinctly visible in the morning light from a commanding battery. Upon this Marlborough put himself at the head of Lumley's English horse and charging vigorously succeeded though not till he had sustained one repulse in breaking through the line thus hastily formed. In this charge the Duke narrowly escaped with his life in a personal conflict with a Bavarian officer. The Allies now crowded in in great numbers and the French panic-struck fled on all sides abandoning the whole centre of their intrenchments to the bold assailants. Villeroi who had become aware from the retreat of Overkirk in his front that some attack was in contemplation but ignorant where the tempest was to fall remained all night under arms. At length attracted by the heavy fire he approached the scene of action in the centre only in time to see that the position was broken through and the lines no longer tenable. He drew off his whole troops accordingly and took up a new position nearly at right angles to the former stretching from Elixheim towards Tirlemont. It was part of the design of the Duke to have intercepted the line of retreat of the French and prevented them from reaching the Dyle to which they were tending; but such was the obstinacy and slowness of the Dutch generals that nothing could persuade them to make any further exertion and in defiance of the orders and remonstrances alike of Marlborough and Overkirk they pitched their tents and refused to take any part in the pursuit. The consequence was that Villeroi collected his scattered forces crossed the Dyle in haste and took up new ground about eighteen miles in the rear with his left sheltered by the cannon of Louvain. But though the disobedience and obstinacy of the Dutch thus intercepted Marlborough in the career of victory and rendered his success much less complete than it otherwise would have been yet had a mighty blow been struck reflecting the highest credit on the skill and resolution of the English general. The famous lines on which the French had been labouring for months had been broken through and carried during a nocturnal conflict of a few hours; they had lost all their redoubts and ten pieces of cannon with which they were armed; M. D'Allegré with twelve hundred prisoners had been taken; and the army which lately besieged Liege and threatened Maestricht was now driven back defeated and discouraged to seek refuge under the cannon of Louvain. Overkirk who had so ably co-operated with Marlborough in this glorious victory had the magnanimity as well as candour in his despatch to the States-general to ascribe the success which had been gained entirely to the skill and courage of the English general.[5] But the Dutch generals who had interrupted his career of success had the malignity to charge the consequences of their misconduct on his head and even carried their effrontery so far as to accuse him of supineness in not following up his success and cutting off the enemy's retreat to the Dyle when it was themselves who had refused to obey his orders to do so. Rains of extraordinary severity fell from the 19th to the 23d July which rendered all offensive operations impracticable and gave Villeroi time of which he ably availed himself to strengthen his position behind the Dyle to such a degree as to render it no longer assailable with any prospect of success. The precious moment when the enemy might have been driven from it in the first tumult of success had been lost. The subsequent success in the Flemish campaign by no means corresponded to its brilliant commencement. The jealousy of the Dutch ruined every thing. This gave rise to recriminations and jealousies which rendered it impracticable even for the great abilities and consummate address of Marlborough to effect any thing of importance with the heterogeneous array with the nominal command of which he was invested. The English general dispatched his adjutant-general Baron Hompesch to represent to the States-general the impossibility of going on longer with such a divided responsibility; but though they listened to his representations nothing could induce them to put their troops under the direct orders of the commander-in-chief. They still had "field deputies " as they were called who were invested with the entire direction of the Dutch troops; and as they were civilians wholly unacquainted with military affairs they had recourse on every occasion to the very fractious generals who already had done so much mischief to the common cause. In vain Marlborough repeatedly endeavoured as he himself said "to cheat them into victory " by getting their consent to measures of which they did not see the bearing calculated to achieve that object; their timid jealous spirit interposed on every occasion to mar important operations and the corps they commanded was too considerable to admit of their being undertaken without their co-operation. After nine days' watching the enemy across the Dyle Marlborough proposed to cross the river near Louvain and attack the enemy; the Dutch Deputies interposed their negative to Marlborough's infinite mortification as in his own words "it spoiled the whole campaign."[6] Worn out with these long delays Marlborough at length resolved at all hazards to pass the river trusting that the Dutch when they saw the conflict once seriously engaged would not desert him. But in this he was mistaken. The Dutch not only failed to execute the part assigned them in the combined enterprise but sent information of his designs to the enemy. The consequence was Villeroi was on his guard. All the Duke's demonstrations could not draw his attention from his left where the real attack was intended; but nevertheless the Duke pushed on the English and Germans under his orders who forced the passage in the most gallant style. But when the Duke ordered the Dutch generals to support the attack of the Duke of Wirtemberg who had crossed the river and established himself in force on the opposite bank they refused to move their men. The consequence was that this attack as well planned and likely to succeed as the famous forcing of the lines a fortnight before proved abortive; and Marlborough burning with indignation was obliged to recall his troops when on the high-road to victory and when the river had been crossed before they had sustained a loss of a hundred men. So general was the indignation at this shameful return on the part of the Dutch generals to Marlborough for all the services he had rendered to their country that it drew forth the strongest expressions from one of his ablest but most determined opponents Lord Bolingbroke who wrote to him at this juncture:--"It was very melancholy to find the malice of Slangenberg the fears of Dopf and the ignorance of the deputies to mention no more prevail so to disappoint your Grace to their prejudice as well as ours. We hope the Dutch have agreed to what your Grace desires of them without which the war becomes a jest to our enemies _and can end in nothing but an ill peace which is certain ruin to us_."[7] Still the English general was not discouraged. His public spirit and patriotism prevailed over his just private resentment. Finding it impossible to prevail on the Dutch deputies who in every sense were so many viceroys over him to agree to any attempt to force the passage of the Dyle he resolved to turn it. For this purpose the army was put in motion on the 14th August; and defiling to his left he directed it in three columns towards the sources of the Dyle. The march was rapid as the Duke had information that strong reinforcements detached from the army at Alsace would join Villeroi on the 18th. They soon came to ground subsequently immortalized in English story. On the 16th they reached Genappe where on 17th June 1815 the Life-guards under Lord Anglesea defeated the French lancers; on the day following the enemy retired into the forest of Soignies still covering Brussels and the Allied headquarters were moved to Braine la Leude. On the 17th August a skirmish took place on the plain in front of WATERLOO; and the alarm being given the Duke hastened to the spot and rode over the field where Wellington and Napoleon contended a hundred and ten years afterwards. The French upon this retired into the forest of Soignies and rested at Waterloo for the night. The slightest glance at the map must be sufficient to show that by this cross march to Genappe and Waterloo Marlborough had gained an immense advantage over the enemy. _He had interposed between them and France._ He had relinquished for the time it is true his own base of operations and was out of communication with his magazines; but he had provided for this by taking six days' provisions for the army with him; and he could now force the French to fight or abandon Brussels and retire towards Antwerp--the Allies being between them and France. Still clinging to their fortified lines on the Dyle and desirous of covering Brussels they had only occupied the wood of Soignies with their right wing; while the Allies occupied all the open country from Genappe to Frischermont and Braine la Leude with their advanced posts up to La Haye Sainte and Mount St John. The Allies now occupied the ground afterwards covered by Napoleon's army: the forest of Soignies and approaches to Brussels were guarded by the French. Incalculable were the results of a victory gained in such a position: it was by success gained over an army of half the size that Napoleon established his power in so surprising a manner at Marengo. Impressed with such ideas Marlborough on the 18th August anxiously reconnoitred the ground; and finding the front practicable for the passage of troops moved up his men in three columns to the attack. The artillery was sent to Wavre; the Allied columns traversed at right angles the line of march by which Blucher advanced to the support of Wellington on the 18th June 1815. Had Marlborough's orders been executed it is probable he would have gained a victory which from the relative position of the two armies could not have been but decisive; and possibly the 18th August 1705 might have become as celebrated in history as the 18th June 1815. Overkirk to whom he showed the ground at Over-Ische which he had destined for an attack perfectly concurred in the expedience of it and orders were given to bring the artillery forward to commence a cannonade. By the malice or negligence of Slangenberg who had again violated his express instructions and permitted the baggage to intermingle with the artillery-train the guns had not arrived and some hours were lost before they could be pushed up. At length at noon the guns were brought forward and the troops being in line Marlborough rode along the front to give his last orders. The English and Germans were in the highest spirits anticipating certain victory from the relative position of the armies; the French fighting with their faces to Paris the Allies with theirs to Brussels. But again the Dutch deputies and generals interposed alleging that the enemy was too strongly posted to be attacked with any prospect of success. "Gentlemen " said Marlborough to the circle of generals which surrounded him "I have reconnoitred the ground and made dispositions for an attack. I am convinced that conscientiously and as men of honour we cannot now retire without an action. Should we neglect this opportunity we must be responsible before God and man. You see the confusion which pervades the ranks of the enemy and their embarrassment at our manoeuvres. I leave you to judge whether we should attack to-day or wait till to-morrow. It is indeed late; but you must consider that by throwing up intrenchments during the night the enemy will render their position far more difficult to force." "Murder and massacre " replied Slangenberg. Marlborough upon this offered him two English for every Dutch battalion; but this too the Dutchman refused on the plea that he did not understand English. Upon this the Duke offered to give him German regiments; but this too was declined upon the pretence that the attack would be too hazardous. Marlborough upon this turned to the deputies and said--"I disdain to send troops to dangers which I will not myself encounter. I will lead them where the peril is most imminent. I adjure you gentlemen! for the love of God and your country do not let us neglect so favourable an opportunity." But it was all in vain; and instead of acting the Dutch deputies and generals spent three hours in debating until night came on and it was too late to attempt any thing. Such was Marlborough's chagrin at this disappointment that he said on retiring from the field "I am at this moment _ten years_ older than I was four days ago." Next day as Marlborough had foreseen the enemy had strengthened their position with field-works; so that it was utterly hopeless to get the Dutch to agree to an attack which _then_ would indeed have been hazardous though it was not so the evening before. The case was now irremediable. The six days' bread he had taken with him was on the point of being exhausted and a protracted campaign without communication with his magazines was impracticable. With a heavy heart therefore Marlborough remeasured his steps to the ground he had left in front of the Dyle and gave orders for destroying the lines of Leau which he had carried with so much ability. His vexation was increased afterwards by finding that the consternation of the French had been such on the 18th August when he was so urgent to attack them that they intended only to have made a show of resistance in order to gain time for their baggage and heavy guns to retire to Brussels. To all appearance Marlborough if he had not been so shamefully thwarted would have illustrated the forest of Soignies by a victory as decisive as that of Blenheim and realized the triumphant entrance to Brussels which Napoleon anticipated from his attack on Wellington on the same ground a hundred years afterwards. Nothing further of any moment was done in this campaign except the capture of Leau and levelling of the enemy's lines on the Gheet. Marlborough wrote a formal letter to the States in which he regretted the opportunity which had been lost which M. Overkirk had coincided with him in thinking promised a great and glorious victory; and he added "my heart is so full that I cannot forbear representing to your High Mightinesses on this occasion that I find my authority here to be much less than when I had the honour to command your troops in Germany."[8] The Dutch generals sent in their counter-memorial to their government which contains a curious picture of their idea of the subordination and direction of an army and furnishes a key to the jealousy which had proved so fatal to the common cause. They complained that the Duke of Marlborough "without holding a council of war made two or three marches _for the execution of some design formed by his Grace_; and we cannot conceal from your High Mightinesses that all the generals of our army think it very strange _that they should not have the least notice of the said marches_."[9] It has been already mentioned that Marlborough like every other good general kept his designs to himself from the impossibility of otherwise keeping them from the enemy; and that he had the additional motive in the case of the Dutch deputies and generals of being desirous "to cheat them into victory." Chagrined by disappointment and fully convinced as Wellington was after his campaign with Cuesta and the Spaniards at Talavera that it was in vain to attempt any thing further with such impediments on the part of the Allies thrown in his way Marlborough retired in the beginning of September to Tirlemont the mineral waters of which had been recommended to him; and in the end of October the troops on both sides went into winter quarters. His vexation with the Dutch at this period strongly appeared in his private letters to his intimate friends;[10] but though he exerted himself to the utmost during the suspension of operations in the field both by memorials to his own government and representations to the Dutch rulers to get the direction of the army put upon a better footing yet he had magnanimity and patriotism enough to sacrifice his private feelings to the public good. Instead of striving therefore to inflame the resentment of the Eng

ish cabinet at the conduct of the Dutch generals he strove only to moderate it; and prevailed on them to suspend the sending of a formal remonstrance which they had prepared to the States-general till the effect of his own private representation in that quarter was first ascertained. The result proved that he had judged wisely; his disinterested conduct met with the deserved reward. The Patriotic party both in England and at the Hague was strongly roused in his favour; the factious accusations of the English Tories like those of the Whigs a century after against Wellington were silenced; the States-general were compelled by the public indignation to withdraw from their commands the generals who had thwarted his measures; and without risking the union of the two powers the factious selfish men who had endangered the object of their alliance were for ever deprived of the means of doing mischief. But while the danger was thus abated in one quarter it only became more serious in another. The Dutch had been protected and hindered from breaking off from the alliance only by endangering the fidelity of the Austrians; and it had now become indispensable at all hazards to do something to appease their jealousies. The Imperial cabinet in addition to the war in Italy on the Upper Rhine and in the Low Countries was now involved in serious hostilities in Hungary; and felt the difficulty or rather impossibility of maintaining the contest at once in so many different quarters. The cross march of Marlborough from the Moselle to Flanders however loudly called for by the danger and necessities of the States had been viewed with a jealous eye by the Emperor as tending to lead the war away from the side of Lorraine with which the German interests were wound up; and the instances were loud and frequent that now that the interests of the Dutch were sufficiently provided for he should return with the English contingent to that the proper theatre of offensive operations. But Marlborough's experience had taught him that as little reliance was to be placed on the co-operation of the Margrave of Baden and the lesser German powers as on that of the Dutch; and he felt that it was altogether in vain to attempt another campaign either in Germany or Flanders unless some more effectual measures were taken to appease the jealousies and secure the co-operation of this discordant alliance than had hitherto been done. With this view after having arranged matters to his satisfaction at the Hague when Slangenberg was removed from the command he repaired to Vienna in November and thence soon after to Berlin. Marlborough's extraordinary address and powers of persuasion did not desert him on this critical occasion. Never was more strongly exemplified the truth of Chesterfield's remark that manner had as much weight as matter in procuring him success; and that he was elevated to greatness as much on the wings of the Graces as by the strength of Minerva. Great as were the difficulties which attended the holding together the grand alliance they all yielded to the magic of his name and the fascination of his manner. At Bernsberg he succeeded in obtaining from the Elector a promise for the increase of his contingent and leave for it to be sent into Italy where its co-operation was required; at Frankfort he overcame by persuasion and address the difficulties of the Margrave of Baden; and at Vienna he was magnificently received and soon obtained unbounded credit with the Emperor. He was raised to the rank of prince of the empire with the most flattering assurances of esteem; and fêted by the nobles who vied with each other in demonstrations of respect to the illustrious conqueror of Blenheim. During his short sojourn of a fortnight there he succeeded in allaying the suspicions and quieting the apprehensions of the Emperor which no other man could have done; and having arranged the plan of the next campaign and raised on his own credit a loan of 100 000 crowns for the imperial court from the bankers as well as promised one of L.250 000 more which he afterwards obtained in London he set out for Berlin where his presence was not less necessary to stimulate the exertions and appease the complaints of the King of Prussia. He arrived there on the 30th November and on the same evening had an audience of the King to whose strange and capricious temper he so completely accommodated himself that he allayed all his discontents and brought him over completely to his views. He prevailed on him to renew the treaty for the furnishing of eight thousand men to aid the common cause and to repair the chasms occasioned by the campaign in their ranks as well as revoke the orders which had been issued for their return from Italy where their removal would have proved of essential detriment. This concession in the words of the prime minister who announced it was granted ""as a mark of respect to the Queen and of particular friendship to the Duke."" From Berlin he went loaded with honours and presents to Hanover where jealousies of a different kind but not less dangerous had arisen in consequence of the apprehensions there entertained that the Whigs were endeavouring to thwart the eventual succession of the House of Hanover to the throne of England. Marlborough's address however here also succeeded in overcoming all difficulties; and after a sojourn of only a few days he departed in the highest favour both with the Elector and his mother. From thence he hastened to the Hague where he remained a fortnight and succeeded in a great degree in removing those difficulties and smoothing down those jealousies which had proved so injurious to the common cause in the preceding campaign. He prevailed on the Dutch to reject separate offers of accommodation which had been made to them by the French government. Having thus put all things on as favourable a footing as could be hoped for on the Continent he embarked for England in the beginning of January 1705--having overcome greater difficulties and obtained greater advantages in the course of this winter campaign with his divided allies than he ever did during a summer campaign with the enemy. Every one how cursorily soever he may be acquainted with Wellington's campaigns must be struck with the great similarity between the difficulties which thus beset the Duke of Marlborough in the earlier periods of his career and those which at a subsequent period so long hampered the genius and thwarted the efforts of England's greatest general. Slangenberg's jealousy as an exact counterpart of that of Cuesta at Talavera; the timidity of the Dutch authorities was precisely similar to that of the Portuguese regency; the difficulty of appeasing the jealousy of Austria and Prussia identical with that which so often compelled Wellington to hurry from the field to Lisbon and Cadiz. Such is the selfishness of human nature that it seems impossible to get men actuated by different interests to concur in any measures for the general good but under the pressure of immediate danger so threatening as to be obvious to every understanding or by the influence of ability and address of the very highest order. It is this which in every age has caused the weakness of the best-cemented confederacies and so often enabled single powers not possessing a fourth part of their material resources to triumph over them. And it is in the power of overcoming these difficulties and allaying those jealousies that one of the most important qualities of the general of an alliance is to be found. Marlborough sailed for the Continent to take the command of the armies in the Low Countries on the 20th April 1706. His design was to have transferred the seat of war into Italy as affairs had become so unpromising in that quarter as to be well-nigh desperate. The Imperialists had been surprised by the French general Vendôme in their quarters near Como and driven into the mountains behind that town with the loss of three thousand men; so that all hold of the plain of Lombardy was lost. The Duke of Savoy was even threatened with a siege in his capital of Turin. The Margrave of Baden was displaying his usual fractious and impracticable disposition on the Upper Rhine: it seemed in Marlborough's words ""as if he had no other object in view but to cover his own capital and residence."" In Flanders the habitual procrastination and tardiness of the Dutch had so thrown back the preparations that it was impossible to begin the campaign so early as he had intended; and the jealousies of the cabinets of Berlin and Copenhagen had again revived to such a degree that no aid was to be expected either from the Prussian or Danish contingents. It was chiefly to get beyond the reach of such troublesome and inconstant neighbours that Marlborough was so desirous of transferring the seat of war to Italy where he would have been beyond their reach. But all his efforts failed in inducing the States-general to allow any part of their troops to be employed to the south of the Alps; nor indeed could it reasonably have been expected that they would consent to hazard their forces in an expedition not immediately connected with their interests to so distant a quarter. The umbrage of the Elector of Hanover at the conduct of Queen Anne had become so excessive that he positively refused to let his contingent march. The Danes and Hessians excused themselves on various pretences from moving their troops to the south; and the Emperor instead of contributing any thing to the war in Flanders was urgent that succour should be sent and that the English general should in person take the command on the Moselle. Marlborough was thus reduced to the English troops and those in the pay of Holland; but they amounted to nearly sixty thousand men; and on the 19th May he set out from the Hague to take the command of this force which lay in front of the old French frontier on the river Dyle. Marshal Villeroi had there collected sixty-two thousand men; so that the two armies in point of numerical strength were very nearly equal. The English general had established a secret correspondence with one Pasquini an inhabitant of Namur through whose agency and that of some other citizens of the town who were inclined to the Imperial interest he hoped to be able to make himself master of that important fortress. To facilitate that attempt and have troops at hand ready to take advantage of any opening that might be afforded them in that quarter he moved towards Tirlemont directing his march by the sources of the Little Gheet. Determined to cover Namur and knowing that the Hanoverians and Hessians were absent Villeroi marched out of his lines in order to stop the advance of the Allies and give battle in the open field. On the 20th May the English and Dutch forces effected their junction at Bitsia; and on the day following the Danish contingent arrived Marlborough having by great exertions persuaded them to come up from the Rhine upon receiving a guarantee for their pay from the Dutch government. This raised his force to seventy-three battalions and one hundred and twenty-four squadrons. The French had seventy-four battalions and one hundred and twenty-eight squadrons; but they had a much greater advantage in the homogeneous quality of their troops who were all of one country; while the forces of the confederates were drawn from three different nations speaking different languages and many of whom had never acted in the field together. Cadogan with six hundred horse formed the vanguard of Marlborough's army; and at daybreak on the 22d he beheld the enemy's army grouped in dense masses in the strong camp of Mont St André. As their position stretched directly across the allied line of march a battle was unavoidable; and Marlborough no sooner was informed of it than with a joyous heart he prepared for the conflict. The ground occupied by the enemy and which has become so famous by the battle of RAMILIES which followed was on the summit of an elevated plateau forming the highest ground in Brabant immediately above the two sources of the Little Gheet. The plateau above them is varied by gentle undulations interspersed with garden grounds and dotted with coppice woods. From it the two Gheets the Mehaigne and the Dyle take their source and flow in different directions so that it is the most elevated ground in the whole country. The descents from the summit of the plateau to the Great Gheet are steep and abrupt; but the other rivers rise in marshes and mosses which are very wet and in some places impassable. Marlborough was well aware of the strength of the position on the summit of this eminence and he had used all the dispatch in his power to reach it before the enemy; but Villeroi had less ground to go over and had his troops in battle array on the summit before the English appeared in sight. The position which they occupied ran along the front of a curve facing inwards and overhanging the sources of the Little Gheet. Their troops extended along the crest of the ridge above the marshes having the village of Autre Eglise in its front on the extreme left the villages of Offuz and Ramilies in its front and its extreme right on the high grounds which overhung the course of the Mehaigne and the old _chaussée_ of Brunehand which ran near and parallel to its banks. Their right stretched to the Mehaigne on which it rested and the village of Tavieres on its banks was strongly occupied by foot-soldiers. The French foot were drawn up in two lines with the villages in their front strongly occupied by infantry. In Ramilies alone twenty battalions were posted. The great bulk of their horse was arranged also in two lines on the right across the chaussée of Brunehand by which part of the Allied column was to advance. On the highest point of the ridge occupied by the French and in the rear of their extreme right commanding the whole field of battle behind the mass of cavalry was the tomb or barrow of Ottomond a German hero of renown in ancient days which it was evident would become the subject of a desperate strife between the contending parties in the conflict which was approaching. Marlborough no sooner came in sight of the enemy's position than he formed his own plan of attack. His troops were divided into ten columns; the cavalry being into two lines on each wing the infantry in six columns in the centre. He at once saw that the French right surmounted by the lofty plateau on which the tomb of Ottomond was placed was the key of the position and against that he resolved to direct the weight of his onset; but the better to conceal his real design he determined to make a vehement false attack on the village of Autre Eglise and the French left. The nature of the ground occupied by the allies and enemy respectively favoured this design; for the French were posted round the circumference of a segment while the allies occupied the centre and chord so that they could move with greater rapidity than their opponents from one part of the field to another. Marlborough's stratagem was entirely successful. He formed in the first instance with some ostentation a weighty column of attack opposite to the French left menacing the village of Autre Eglise. No sooner did Villeroi perceive this than he drew a considerable body of infantry from his centre behind Offuz and marched them with the utmost expedition to reinforce the threatened point on his left. When Marlborough saw this cross-movement fairly commenced skilfully availing himself of a rising ground on which the front of his column of attack on his right was placed he directed the second line and columns in support when the front had reached the edge of the plateau where they obstructed the view of those behind them to halt in a hollow where they could not be seen and immediately after still concealed from the enemy's sight to defile rapidly to the left till they came into the rear of the left centre. The Danish horse twenty squadrons strong under the Duke of Wirtemberg were at the same time placed in a third line behind the cavalry of the left wing so as to bring the weight of his horse as well as foot into that quarter. At half past twelve the cannonade began on both sides and that of the French played heavily on the columns of the confederates advancing to the attack. The Allied right wing directed against Autre Eglise steadily advanced up the slopes from the banks of the Little Gheet to the edge of the plateau; but there they halted deployed into line and opened their fire in such a position as to conceal entirely the transfer of the infantry and cavalry in their rear to the Allied left. No sooner had they reached it than the attack began in real earnest and with a preponderating force in that direction. Colonel Wertonville with four Dutch battalions advanced against Tavieres while twelve battalions in columns of companies supported by a strong reserve began the attack on Ramilies in the left centre. The vehemence of this assault soon convinced Villeroi that the real attack of the Allies was in that quarter; but he had no reserve of foot to support the troops in the villages every disposable man having been sent off to the left in the direction of Autre Eglise. In this dilemma he hastily ordered fourteen squadrons of horse to dismount and supported by two Swiss battalions moved them up to the support of the troops in Tavieres. Before they could arrive however the Dutch battalions had with great gallantry carried that village; and Marlborough directing the Danish horse under the brave Duke of Wirtemberg against the flank of the dismounted dragoons as they were in column and marching up speedily cut them in pieces and hurled back the Swiss in confusion on the French horse who were advancing to their support. Following up his success Overkirk next charged the first line of advancing French cavalry with the first line of the Allied horse and such was the vigour of his onset that the enemy were broken and thrown back. But the second line of French and Bavarian horse soon came up and assailing Overkirk's men when they were disordered by success and little expecting another struggle overthrew them without difficulty drove them back in great confusion and almost entirely restored the battle in that quarter. The danger was imminent that the victorious French horse having cleared the open ground of their opponents would wheel about and attack in rear the twelve battalions who were warmly engaged with the attack on Ramilies. Marlborough instantly saw the danger and putting himself at the head of seventeen squadrons at hand himself led them on to stop the progress of the victorious horse; while at the same time he sent orders for every disposable sabre to come up from his right with the utmost expedition. The moment was critical and nothing but the admirable intrepidity and presence of mind of the English general retrieved the Allied affairs. Leading on the reserve of the Allied horse with his wonted gallantry under a dreadful fire from the French batteries on the heights behind Ramilies he was recognised by some French troopers with whom he had formerly served in the time of Charles II. who made a sudden rush at him. They had well-nigh made him prisoner for they succeeded in surrounding the Duke before his men could come up to the rescue and he only extricated himself from the throng of assailants by fighting his way out like the knights of old sword in hand. He next tried to leap a ditch but his horse fell in the attempt; and when mounting another horse given him by his aide-de-camp Captain Molesworth Colonel Bingfield his equery who held the stirrup had his head carried off by a cannon ball. The imminent danger of their beloved general however revived the spirit of his troops whom the dreadful severity of the cannonade had during the scuffle thrown into disorder; and re-forming with great celerity they again returned with desperate resolution to the charge. At this critical moment when nothing was as yet decided the twenty fresh squadrons whom Marlborough had so opportunely called up from the Allied right were seen galloping at full speed but still in regular order on the plain behind this desperate conflict. Halting directly in rear of the spot where the horse on both sides were so vehemently engaged they wheeled into line and advanced in close order and admirable array to the support of the Duke. Encouraged by this powerful reinforcement the whole Allied cavalry re-formed and crowded forward in three lines with loud shouts to the attack of the now intimidated and disheartened French. They no longer withstood the onset but turning their horses' heads fled with precipitation. The low grounds between Ramilies and the old chaussée were quickly passed and the victorious horse pressing up the slope on the opposite side erelong reached the summit of the plateau. The tomb of Ottomond its highest point and visible from the whole field of battle was soon seen resplendent with sabres and cuirasses amidst a throng of horse; and deafening shouts heard over the whole extent of both armies announced that the crowning point and key of the whole position was carried. But Villeroi was an able and determined general and his soldiers fought with the inherent bravery of the French nation. The contest thus virtually decided was not yet over. A fierce fight was raging around Ramilies where the garrison of twenty French battalions opposed a stout resistance to Schultz's grenadiers. By degrees however the latter gained ground; two Swiss battalions which had long and resolutely held their ground were at length forced back into the village and some of the nearest houses fell into the hands of the Allies. Upon this the whole rushed forward and drove the enemy in a mass out of it towards the high grounds in their rear. The Marquis Maffei however rallied two regiments of Cologne guards in a hollow way leading up from the village to the plateau and opposed so vigorous a resistance that he not only checked the pursuit but regained part of the village. But Marlborough whose eye was every where no sooner saw this than he ordered up twenty battalions in reserve behind the centre and they speedily cleared the village; and Maffei with his gallant troops being charged in flank by the victorious horse at the very time that he was driven out of the village by the infantry was made prisoner and almost all his men taken or destroyed. The victory was now decided on the British left and centre where alone the real attack had been made. But so vehement had been the onset so desperate the passage of arms which had taken place that though the battle had lasted little more than three hours the victors were nearly in as great disorder as the vanquished. Horse foot and artillery were blended together in wild confusion; especially between Ramilies and the Mehaigne and thence up to the tomb of Ottomond in consequence of the various charges of all arms which had so rapidly succeeded each other on the same narrow space. Marlborough seeing this halted his troops before hazarding any thing further on the ground where they stood which in the left and centre was where the enemy had been at the commencement of the action. Villeroi skilfully availed himself of this breathing-time to endeavour to re-form his broken troops and take up a new line from Geest-a-Gerompont on his right through Offuz to Autre Eglise still held by its original garrison on his left. But in making the retrograde movement so as to get his men into this oblique position he was even more impeded and thrown into disorder by the baggage waggons and dismounted guns on the heights than the Allies had been in the plain below. Marlborough seeing this resolved to give the enemy no time to rally but again sounding the charge ordered infantry and cavalry to advance. A strong column passed the morass in which the Little Gheet takes its rise directing their steps towards Offuz; but the enemy panic-struck as at Waterloo by the general advance of the victors gave way on all sides. Offuz was abandoned without firing a shot; the cavalry pursued with headlong fury and soon the plateau of Mont St André was covered with a mass of fugitives. The troops in observation on the right seeing the victory gained on the left and centre of their own accord joined in the pursuit and soon made themselves masters of Autre Eglise and the heights behind it. The Spanish and Bavarian horse-guards made a gallant attempt to stem the flood of disaster but without attaining their object; it only led to their own destruction. Charged by General Wood and Colonel Wyndham at the head of the English horse-guards they were cut to pieces. The rout now became universal and all resistance ceased. In frightful confusion a disorganized mass of horse and foot abandoning their guns streamed over the plateau poured headlong down the banks of the Great Gheet on the other side and fled towards Louvain which they reached in the most dreadful disorder at two o'clock in the morning. The British horse under Lord Orkney did not draw bridle from the pursuit till they reached the neighbourhood of that fortress; having besides fighting the battle marched full five-and-twenty miles that day. Marlborough halted for the night and established headquarters at Mildert thirteen miles from the field of battle and five from Louvain. The trophies of the battle of Ramilies were immense; but they were even exceeded by its results. The loss of the French in killed and wounded was 7000 men and in addition to that 6000 prisoners were taken. With the desertion in the days after the battle they were weakened by full 15 000 men. They lost fifty-two guns their whole baggage and pontoon train all their caissons and eighty standards wrested from them in fair fight. Among the prisoners were the Princes de Soubise and Rohan and a son of Marshal Tallard. The victors lost 1066 killed and 2567 wounded in all 3633. The great and unusual proportion of killed to the wounded shows how desperate and hand to hand as in ancient battles the fighting had been. Overkirk nobly supported the Duke in this action and not only repeatedly charged at the head of his horse but continued on horseback in the pursuit till one in the morning when he narrowly escaped death from a Bavarian officer whom he had made prisoner and given back his sword saying ""You are a gentleman and may keep it."" The base wretch no sooner got it into his hand than he made a lounge at the Dutch general but fortunately missed his blow and was immediately cut down for his treachery by Overkirk's orderly. The immediate result of this splendid victory was the acquisition of nearly all Austrian Flanders--Brussels Louvain Mechlin Alort Luise and nearly all the great towns of Brabant opened their gates immediately after. Ghent and Bruges speedily followed the example; and Daun and Oudenarde also soon declared for the Austrian cause. Of all the towns in Flanders Antwerp Ostend Nieuport and Dunkirk alone held out for the French; and to their reduction the Duke immediately turned his attention. The public transports in Holland knew no bounds; they much exceeded what had been felt for the victory of Blenheim for that only saved Germany but this delivered themselves. The wretched jealousy which had so long thwarted the Duke as it does every other really great man was fairly overpowered in ""the electric shock of a nation's gratitude."" In England the rejoicings were equally enthusiastic and a solemn thanksgiving at which the Queen attended in person at St Paul's gave a willing vent to the general thankfulness. ""Faction and the French "" as Bolingbroke expressed it [11] were all that Marlborough had to fear and he had fairly conquered both. But the snake was scotched not killed and he replenished his venom and prepared future stings even during the roar of triumphant cannon and the festive blaze of rejoicing cities.[12] The French army after this terrible defeat retired in the deepest dejection towards French Flanders leaving garrisons in the principal fortresses which still held out for them. Marlborough made his triumphant entry into Brussels in great pomp on the 28th May amidst the acclamations of the inhabitants. The Three Estates of Brabant assembled there acknowledged Charles III. for their sovereign and received in return a guarantee from the English government and the States-general that the _joyeuse entrée_ the Magna Charta of Flanders should be faithfully observed. ""Every where says Marlborough the joy was great at being delivered from the insolence and exactions of the French."" The victory of Ramilies produced no less effect on the northern courts where jealousies and lukewarmness had hitherto proved so pernicious to the common cause. The King of Prussia who had hitherto kept aloof and suspended the march of his troops now on the mediation of Marlborough became reconciled to the Emperor and the States-general; and the Elector of Hanover forgetting his apprehensions about the English succession was among the foremost to offer his congratulations and make a tender of his forces to the now triumphant cause. It is seldom that the prosperous want friends. The Dutch were clear after the submission of Brabant to levy contributions in it as a conquered country to relieve themselves of part of the expenses of the war; and Godolphin actuated by the same short-sighted views was eager to replenish the English exchequer from the same source. But Marlborough like Wellington in after days had magnanimity and wisdom enough to see the folly as well as injustice of thus alienating infant allies at the moment of their conversion and he combated the project so successfully that it was abandoned.[13] At the same time he preserved the strictest discipline on the part of his troops and took every imaginable precaution to secure the affections and allay the apprehensions of the inhabitants of the ceded provinces. The good effects of this wise and conciliatory policy were soon apparent. Without firing a shot the Allies gained greater advantages during the remainder of the campaign than they could have done by a series of bloody sieges and the sacrifice of thirty thousand men. Nor was it less advantageous to the English general than to the common cause; for it delivered him for that season at least from the thraldom of a council of war the invariable resource of a weak and bane of a lofty mind.[14] The Estates of Brabant assembled at Brussels sent injunctions to the governor of Antwerp Ghent and all the other fortresses within their territories to declare for Charles III. and admit these troops. The effects of this coupled with the discipline preserved by the Allied troops and the protection from contributions was incredible. No sooner were the orders from the States at Brussels received at Antwerp than a schism broke out between the French regiments in the garrison and the Walloon guards the latter declaring for Charles III. The approach of Marlborough's army and the intelligence of the submission of the other cities of Brabant brought matters to a crisis; and after some altercation it was agreed that the French troops should march out with the honours of war and be escorted to Bouchain within the frontier of their own country. On the 6th June this magnificent fortress which it had cost the Prince of Parma so vast an expenditure of blood and treasure to reduce and which Napoleon said was itself worth a kingdom was gained without firing a shot. Oudenarde which had been in vain besieged in the last war by William III. at the head of sixty thousand men at the same time followed the example; and Ghent and Bruges opened their gates. Flanders bristling with fortresses and the possession of which in the early part of the war had been of such signal service to the French was with the exception of Ostend Dunkirk and two or three smaller places entirely gained by the consternation produced by a single battle. Well might Marlborough say ""the consequences of our victory are almost incredible. A whole country with so many strong places delivered up without the least resistance shows not only the great loss they must have sustained but likewise the terror and consternation they are in.""[15] At this period Marlborough hoped the war would be speedily brought to a close and that a glorious peace would reward his own and his country's efforts. His thoughts reverted constantly as his private correspondence shows to home quiet and domestic happiness. To the Duchess he wrote at this period--""You are very kind in desiring I would not expose myself. Be assured I love you so well and am so desirous of ending my d

ys quietly with you that I shall not venture myself but when it is absolutely necessary; and I am sure you are so kind to me and wish so well to the common cause that you had rather see me dead than not do my duty. I am persuaded that this campaign will bring in a good peace; and I beg of you to do all that you can that the house of Woodstock may be carried up as much as possible that I may have the prospect of living in it.""[16]--But these anticipations were not destined to be realized; and before he retired into the vale of years the hero was destined to drain to the dregs the cup of envy jealousy and ingratitude. His first step of importance after consolidating the important conquests he had made and averting the cupidity of the Dutch which by levying contributions on their inhabitants threatened to endanger them before they were well secured was to undertake the siege of Ostend the most considerable place in Flanders which still held out for the French interest. This place celebrated for its great strength and the long siege of three years which it had withstood against the Spanish under Spinola was expected to make a very protracted resistance; but such was the terror now inspired by Marlborough's name that it was reduced much sooner than had been anticipated. Every preparation had been made for a protracted resistance. A fleet of nine ships of the line lay off the harbour and a formidable besieging train was brought up from Antwerp and Brussels. Trenches were opened on the 28th June; the counterscarp was blown in on the 6th July; and the day following the besieged after a fruitless sally capitulated and the Flemish part of the garrison entered the service of the Allies. The garrison was still five thousand strong when it surrendered; two ships of the line were taken in the harbour; and the total loss of the besiegers was only five hundred men. Menin was next besieged but it made a more protracted resistance. Its great strength was derived from the means which the governor of the fortress possessed of flooding at will the immense low plains in which it is situated. Its fortifications had always been considered as one of the masterpieces of Vauban; the garrison was ample; and the governor a man of resolution who was encouraged to make a vigorous resistance by the assurances of succour which he had received from the French government. In effect Louis XIV. had made the greatest efforts to repair the consequences of the disaster at Ramilies. Marshal Marsin had been detached from the Rhine with eighteen battalions and fourteen squadrons; and in addition to that thirty battalions and forty squadrons were marching from Alsace. These great reinforcements with the addition of nine battalions which were in the lines on the Dyle when the battle of Ramilies was fought would when all assembled have raised the French army to one hundred and ten battalions and one hundred and forty squadrons--or above one hundred thousand men; whereas Marlborough after employing thirty-two battalions in the siege could only spare for the covering army about seventy-two battalions and eighty squadrons. The numerical superiority therefore was very great on the side of the enemy especially when the Allies were divided by the necessity of carrying on the siege; and Villeroi who had lost the confidence of his men had been replaced by the Duke de Vendôme one of the best generals in the French service illustrated by his recent victory over the Imperialists in Italy. He loudly gave out that he would raise the siege and approached the covering army closely as if with that design. But Marlborough persevered in his design; for to use his own words ""The Elector of Bavaria says he is promised a hundred and ten battalions and they are certainly stronger in horse than we. But even if they had greater numbers I neither think it is their interest nor their inclination to venture a battle; for our men are in heart and theirs are cowed.""[17] Considerable difficulties were experienced in the first instance in getting up the siege equipage in consequence of the inundations which were let loose; but a drought having set in when the blockade began in the beginning of August these obstacles were erelong overcome and on the 9th August the besiegers' fire began while Marlborough took post at Helchin to cover the siege. On the 18th the fire of the breaching batteries had been so effectual that it was deemed practicable to make an assault on the covered way. As a determined resistance was anticipated the Duke repaired to the spot to superintend the attack. At seven in the evening the signal was given by the explosion of two mines and the troops the English in front rushed to the assault. They soon cut down the palisades and throwing their grenades before them erelong got into the covered way; but there they were exposed to a dreadful fire from two ravelins which enfiladed it. For two hours they bore it without flinching labouring hard to erect barricades so as to get under cover; which was at length done but not before fourteen hundred of the brave assailants had been struck down. This success though thus dearly purchased was however decisive. The establishment of the besiegers in this important lodgement in the heart as it were of their works so distressed the enemy that on the 22d they hoisted the white flag and capitulated still 4300 strong on the following day. The reduction of this strong and celebrated fortress gave the most unbounded satisfaction to the Allies as it not only materially strengthened the barrier against France; but having taken place in presence of the Duke de Vendôme and his powerful army drawn together with such diligence to raise the siege it afforded the strongest proof of the superiority they had now acquired over their enemy in the field.[18] Upon the fall of Menin Vendôme collected his troops and occupied a position behind the Lys and the Dyle in order to cover Lille against which he supposed the intentions of Marlborough were directed. But he had another object in view and immediately sat down before Dendermonde still keeping post with his covering army at Helchin which barred the access to that fortress. Being situated on the banks of the Scheldt it was so completely within the power of the governor to hinder the approaches of the besiegers by letting out the waters that the King of France said on hearing they had commenced its siege--""They must have an army of ducks to take it."" An extraordinary drought at this period however which lasted seven weeks had so lowered the Scheldt and canals that the approaches were pushed with great celerity and on the 5th September the garrison surrendered at discretion. Marlborough wrote to Godolphin on this occasion--""The taking of Dendermonde making the garrison prisoners of war was more than could have been expected; but I saw they were in a consternation. That place could never have been taken but by the hand of God which gave us seven weeks without rain. The rain began the day after we had taken possession and continued without intermission for the three next days.""[19] Ath was the next object of attack. This small but strong fortress is of great importance as lying on the direct road from Mons to Brussels by Halle; and in consequence of that circumstance it was rendered a fortress of the first order when the barrier of strongholds insanely demolished by Joseph II. before the war of the Revolution was restored by the Allies under the direction of Wellington after its termination. Marlborough entrusted the direction of the attack to Overkirk while he himself occupied with the covering army the position of Leuze. Vendôme's army was so much discouraged that he did not venture to disturb the operations; but retiring behind the Scheldt between Condé and Montagne contented himself with throwing strong garrisons into Mons and Charleroi which he apprehended would be the next object of attack. The operations of the besiegers against Ath were pushed with great vigour; and on the 4th October the garrison eight hundred strong all that remained out of two thousand who manned the works when the siege began surrendered prisoners of war. Marlborough was very urgent after this success to undertake the siege of Mons which would have completed the conquest of Brabant and Flanders; but he could not persuade the Dutch authorities to furnish him with the requisite stores to undertake it.[20] After a parade of his army in the open field near Cambron in the hope of drawing Vendôme who boasted of having one hundred and forty battalions and one hundred and eighty squadrons at his command to a battle in which he was disappointed he resigned the command to Overkirk put the army into winter quarters and hastened to Brussels to commence his arduous duties of stilling the jealousies and holding together the discordant powers of the alliance.[21] Marlborough was received in the most splendid manner and with unbounded demonstrations of joy at Brussels not only by the inconstant populace but by the deputies of the Three Estates of Brabant which were there assembled in regular and permanent sovereignty. Well might they lavish their demonstrations of respect and gratitude on the English general; for never in modern times had more important or glorious events signalized a successful campaign. In five months the power of France had been so completely broken and the towering temper of its inhabitants so lowered that their best general at the head of above a hundred thousand men did not venture to measure swords with the Allies not more than two-thirds of their numerical strength in the field. By the effects of a single victory the whole of Brabant and Flanders studded with the strongest fortresses in Europe each of which in former wars had required months--some years--for their reduction had been gained to the Allied arms. Between those taken on the field of Ramilies and subsequently in the besieged fortresses above twenty thousand men had been made prisoners and twice that number lost to the enemy by the sword sickness and desertion; and France now made head against the Allies in Flanders only by drawing together their forces from all other quarters and starving the war in Italy and on the Rhine as well as straining every nerve in the interior. This state of almost frenzied exertion could not last. Already the effects of Marlborough's triumph at the commencement of the campaign had appeared in the total defeat of the French in their lines before Turin by Prince Eugene on the 18th September and their expulsion from Italy. It was the reinforcements procured for him and withheld from his opponents by Marlborough which obtained for him this glorious victory at which the English general with the generosity of true greatness rejoiced even more sincerely than he had done in any triumphs of his own;[22] while Eugene with equal greatness of mind was the first to ascribe his success mainly to the succours sent him by the Duke of Marlborough.[23] But all men are not Marlboroughs or Eugenes: the really great alone can witness success without envy or achieve it without selfishness. In the base herd of ignoble men who profited by the efforts of these great leaders the malignant passions were rapidly gaining strength by the very magnitude of their triumphs. The removal of danger was producing its usual effect among the Allies of reviving jealousy. Conquest was spreading its invariable discord in the cupidity to share its fruits. These divisions had early appeared after the battle of Ramilies when the Emperor Joseph as a natural mark of gratitude to the general who had delivered his people from their oppressors as well as from a regard to his own interests appointed Marlborough to the general command as viceroy of the Netherlands. The English general was highly gratified by this mark of confidence and gratitude; and the appointment was cordially approved of by Queen Anne and the English cabinet who without hesitation authorized Marlborough to accept the proffered dignity. But the Dutch who had already begun to conceive projects of ambition by an accession of territory to themselves on the side of Flanders evinced such umbrage at this appointment as tending to throw the administration of the Netherlands entirely into the hands of the English and Austrians that Marlborough had the magnanimity to solicit permission to decline an honour which threatened to breed disunion in the alliance.[24] This conduct was as disinterested as it was patriotic; for the appointments of the government thus declined from a desire for the public good were no less than sixty thousand pounds a-year. Although however Marlborough thus renounced this splendid appointment yet the court of Vienna were not equally tractable and evinced the utmost jealousy at the no longer disguised desire of the Dutch to gain an accession of territory and the barrier of which they were so passionately desirous at the expense of the Austrian Netherlands. The project also got wind and the inhabitants of Brabant whom difference of religion and old-established national rivalry had long alienated from the Dutch were so much alarmed at the prospect of being transferred to their hated neighbours that it at once cooled their ardour in the cause of the alliance and went far to sow the seeds of irrepressible dissension among them. The Emperor therefore again pressed the appointment on Marlborough; but from the same lofty motives he continued to decline professing a willingness at the same time to give the Emperor every aid privately in the new government which was in his power; so that the Emperor was obliged to give a reluctant consent. Notwithstanding this refusal the jealousy of the Dutch was such that on the revival of a report that the government had been again confirmed to the Duke of Marlborough they were thrown into such a ferment that in the public congress the Pensionary could not avoid exclaiming in the presence of the English ambassador ""Mon Dieu! est-il possible qu'on voudrait faire ce pas sans notre participation?""[25] The French government were soon informed of this jealousy and of the open desire of the Dutch for an accession of territory on the side of Flanders at the expense of Austria; and they took advantage of it early in the summer of 1706 to open a secret negotiation with the States-general for the conclusion of a separate peace with that republic. The basis of this accommodation was to be a renunciation by the Duke of Anjou of his claim to the crown of Spain upon receiving an equivalent in Italy: he offered to recognize Anne as Queen of England and professed the utmost readiness to secure for the Dutch _at the expense of Austria_ that barrier in the Netherlands to which he conceived them to be so well entitled. These proposals elated the Dutch government to such a degree that they began to take a high hand and assume a dictatorial tone at the Hague: and it was the secret belief that they would if matters came to extremities be supported by France in this exorbitant demand for a slice of Austria that made them resist so strenuously the government of the Low Countries being placed in such firm and vigorous hands as those of Marlborough. Matters had come to such a pass in October and November 1706 that Godolphin regarded affairs as desperate and thought the alliance was on the point of being dissolved.[26] Thus was Marlborough's usual winter campaign with the confederates rendered more difficult on this than it had been on any preceding occasion; for he had now to contend with the consequences of his own success and allay the jealousies and stifle the cupidity which had sprung up out of the prospect of the magnificent spoil which he himself had laid at the feet of the Allies. But in this dangerous crisis Marlborough's great diplomatic ability consummate address and thorough devotion to the common good stood him in as good stead as his military talents had done him in the preceding campaign with Villeroi and Vendôme. In the beginning of November he repaired to the Hague and though he found the Dutch in the first instance so extravagant in their ideas of the barrier they were to obtain that he despaired of effecting any settlement of the differences between them and the Emperor;[27] yet he at length succeeded though with very great difficulty in appeasing for the time the jealousies between them and the cabinet of Vienna and obtaining a public renewal of the alliance for the prosecution of the war. The publication of this treaty diffused the utmost satisfaction among the ministers of the Allied powers assembled at the Hague; and this was further increased by the breaking off at the same time of a negotiation which had pended for some months between Marlborough and the Elector of Bavaria for a separate treaty with that prince who had become disgusted with the French alliance. But all Marlborough's efforts failed to make any adjustment of the disputed matter of the barrier on which the Dutch were so obstinately set; and finding them equally unreasonable and intractable on that subject he deemed himself fortunate when he obtained the adjourning of the question by the consent of all concerned till the conclusion of a general peace. After the adjustment of this delicate and perilous negotiation Marlborough returned to England where he was received with transports of exultation by all classes of the people. He was conducted in one of the royal carriages amidst a splendid procession of all the nobility of the kingdom to Temple Bar where he was received by the city authorities by whom he was feasted in the most magnificent manner at Vintners' Hall. Thanks were voted to him by both Houses of Parliament; and when he took his seat in the House of Peers the Lord Keeper addressed him in these just and appropriate terms--""What your Grace has performed in this last campaign has far exceeded all hopes even of such as were most affectionate and partial to their country's interest and glory. The advantages you have gained against the enemy are of such a nature so conspicuous in themselves so undoubtedly owing to your courage and conduct so sensibly and universally beneficial to the whole confederacy that to attempt to adorn them with the colouring of words would be vain and inexcusable. Therefore I decline it the rather because I should certainly offend that great modesty which alone can and does add lustre to your actions and which in your Grace's example has successfully withstood as great trials as that virtue has met with in any instance whatsoever."" The House of Commons passed a similar resolution; and the better to testify the national gratitude an annuity of £5000 a-year charged upon the Post-Office was settled upon the Duke and Duchess and their descendants male or female; and the dukedom which stood limited to heirs-male was extended also to heirs-female ""in order "" as it was finely expressed ""that England might never be without a title which might recall the remembrance of so much glory."" So much glory however produced its usual effect in engendering jealousy in little minds. The Whigs had grown spiteful against that illustrious pillar of their party; they were tired of hearing him called the just. Both Godolphin and Marlborough became the objects of excessive jealousy to their own party; and this combined with the rancour of the Tories who could never forgive his desertion of his early patron the Duke of York had well-nigh proved fatal to him when at the very zenith of his usefulness and popularity. Intrigue was rife at St James's. Parties were strangely intermixed and disjointed. Some of the moderate Tories were in power; many covetous Whigs were out of it. Neither party stood on great public principle a sure sign of instability in the national councils and ultimate neglect of the national interests. Harley's intrigues had become serious; the prime minister Godolphin had threatened to resign. In this alarming juncture of domestic affairs the presence of Marlborough produced its usual pacifying and benign influence. In a long interview which he had with the Queen on his first private audience he settled all differences; Godolphin was persuaded to withdraw his resignation; the cabinet was re-constructed on a new and harmonious basis Harley and Bolingbroke being the only Tories of any note who remained in power; and this new peril to the prosecution of the war and the cause of European independence was removed. Marlborough's services to England and the cause of European independence in this campaign recall one mournful feeling to the British annalist. All that he had won for his country--all that Wellington with still greater difficulty and amidst yet brighter glories regained for it has been lost. It has been lost too not by the enemies of the nation but by itself; not by an opposite faction but by the very party over whom his own great exploits had shed such imperishable lustre. Antwerp the first-fruits of Ramilies--Antwerp the last reward of Waterloo--Antwerp to hold which against England Napoleon lost his crown has been abandoned to France! An English fleet has combined with a French army to wrest from Holland the barrier of Dutch independence and the key to the Low Countries. The barrier so passionately sought by the Dutch has been wrested from them and wrested from them by British hands; a revolutionary power has been placed on the throne of Belgium; Flanders instead of the outwork of Europe against France has become the outwork of France against Europe. The tricolor flag waves in sight of Bergen-op-Zoom; within a month after the first European war the whole coast from Bayonne to the Texel will be arrayed against Britain! The Whigs of 1832 have undone all that the Whigs of 1706 had done--all that the glories of 1815 had secured. Such is the way in which nations are ruined by the blindness of faction. [Footnote 1: Continued from No. I. in July 1845 Vol. lviii. p. 1.] [Footnote 2: ""C'est le retard de toutes les troupes Allemandes qui dérange nos affaires. Je ne saurais vous expliquer la situation où nous sommes qu'en vous envoyant les deux lettres ci jointes --l'une que je viens de recevoir du Prince de Bade et l'autre la réponse que je lui fais. En vérité notre état est plus à plaindre que vous ne croyez; mais je vous prie que cela n'aille pas outre. _Nous perdons la plus belle occasion du monde--manque des troupes qui devaient être ici il y a deja longtemps._ Pour le reste de l'artillerie Hollandaise et les provisions qui peuvent arriver de Mayence vous les arrêterez s'il vous plait pour quelques jours jusqu'à ce que je vous en écrive.""--_Marlborough à M. Pesters; Trêves 31 Mai 1705. Despatches_ II. 60-1.] [Footnote 3: Even so late as the 8th June Marlborough wrote.--""J'ai d'abord pris poste dans ce camp où je me trouve à portée d'entreprendre la siège de Saar-Louis si les troupes qui devaient avoir été ici il y a quelques jours m'avaient joint. Cependant je n'ai pas jusqu'ici un seul homme qui ne soit à la solde d'Angleterre ou de la Hollande. Les troupes de Bade ne peuvent arriver avant le 21 au plutôt; quelques-uns des Prussiens sont encore plus en arrière; et pour les trois mille chevaux que les princes voisins devaient nous fournir pour méner l'artillerie et les munitions et sans quoi il nous sera impossible d'agir je n'en ai aucune nouvelle nonobstant toutes mes instances. J'ai grand peur même qu'il n'y ait à l'heure même que je vous écris celle-ci des regulations en chemin de la Haye qui détruiront entièrement tous nos projets de ce côté. Cette situation me donne tant d'inquiétude que je ne saurais me dispenser de vous prier d'en vouloir part à sa Majesté Impériale.""--_Marlborough au Comte de Wroteslau; Elft 8 Juin 1705. Despatches_ II. 85.] [Footnote 4: ""Par ces contretemps tous nos projets de ce côté-ci sont évanouis au moins pour le present; et j'espère que V.A. me fera la justice de croire que j'ai fait tout ce qui a dependu de moi pour les faire réussir. Si je pouvais avoir l'honneur d'entretenir V.A. pour une seule heure je lui dirai bien des choses par où elle verrait combien je suis à plaindre. J'avais 94 escadrons et 72 bataillons tous à la solde de l'Angleterre et de la Hollande; de sorte que si l'on m'avait secondé nous aurions une des plus glorieuses campagnes qu'on pouvait souhaiter. Après un tel traitment V.A. je suis sûr ne m'aurait pas blâmé si j'avais pris la résolution _de ne jamais plus servir_ comme je ne ferai pas aussi je vous assure après cette campagne à moins que de pouvoir prendre des mésures avec l'empereur sur lesquelles je pourrais entièrement me fier.""--_Marlborough à Eugène 21 Juin 1705. Despatches_ II. 124.] [Footnote 5: ""It is a justice I owe to the Duke of Marlborough to state that the whole honour of the enterprise executed with so much skill and courage is entirely due to him.""--_Overkirk to States-general 19th July 1705. Coxe_ II. 151.] [Footnote 6: ""On Wednesday it was unanimously resolved we should pass the Dyle but that afternoon there fell so much rain as rendered it impracticable; but the fair weather this morning made me determine to attempt it. Upon this the deputies held a council with all the generals of Overkirk's army who have unanimously retracted their opinions and declared the passage of the river too dangerous which resolution in my opinion _will ruin the whole campaign_. They have at the same time proposed to me to attack the French on their left; but I know they will let that fall also as soon as they see the ground. It is very mortifying to meet more obstruction from friends than from enemies; but that is now the case with me; yet I dare not show my resentment for fear of alarming the Dutch.""--_Marlborough to Godolphin 29th July 1705. Coxe_ II. 158.] [Footnote 7: Bolingbroke to Marlborough August 18 1705. _Coxe_ II. 160.] [Footnote 8: Marlborough to the States Wavre 19th August 1705. _Desp._ II. 224.] [Footnote 9: Dutch Generals' Mem. _Coxe_ II. 174.] [Footnote 10: ""Several prisoners whom we have taken as well as the deserters assure us that they should have made no other defence but such as might have given them time to draw off their army to Brussels where their baggage was already gone. By this you may imagine how I am vexed seeing very plainly I am joined with people who will never do any thing.""--_Marlborough to Godolphin August 24 1705._ ""M. Overkirk et moi avons d'abord été reconnaitre les postes que nous voulions attaquer et l'armée étant rangée en bataille sur le midi nous avions tout d'esperer avec la benediction du ciel vu notre supériorité et la bonté des troupes une heuruse journée; mais MM. les deputés de l'état ayant voulu consulter leurs généraux et les trouvant de differentes sentiments d'avec M. Overkirk et moi ils n'ont pas voulu passer outre. De sorte que tout notre dessein après l'avoir méné jusque là a échoué et nous avons rebroussé chemin pour aller commencer la démolition des Lignes et prendre Leau. Vous pouvez bien croire Monsieur que je suis au désespoir d'être obligé d'essuyer encore ce contretemps; mais je vois bien qu'il ne faut pas plus songer à agir offensivement avec ces messieurs puisqu' ils ne veulent rien risquer quand même ils ont tout l'advantage de leur côté.""--_Marlborough au Comte de Wartenberg Wavre 20 Août 1705. Despatches_ II. 226.] [Footnote 11: ""This vast addition of renown which your Grace has acquired and the wonderful preservation of your life are subjects upon which I can never express a thousandth part of what I feel. _France and faction are the only enemies England has to fear_ and your Grace will conquer both; at least while you beat the French you give a strength to the Government which the other dares not contend with.""--_Bolingbroke to Marlborough May 28 1706. Coxe_ II. 358.] [Footnote 12: ""I shall attend the Queen at the thanksgiving on Thursday next: I assure you I shall do it from every vein within me having scarce any thing else to support either my head or heart. The _animosity and inveteracy one has to struggle against is unimaginable_ not to mention the difficulty of obtaining things to be done that are reasonable or of satisfying people with reason when they are done.""--_Godolphin to Marlborough May 24 1706._] [Footnote 13: Duke of Marlborough to Mr Secretary Harley June 14 1706.] [Footnote 14: ""The consequences of this battle are likely to be greater than that of Blenheim; for we have now the whole summer before us and with the blessing of God I will make the best use of it. _For as I have had no council of war before this battle so I hope to have none during the whole campaign_; and I think we may make such work of it as may give the Queen the glory of making a safe and honourable peace for the blessing of God is certainly with us.""--_Marlborough to Lord Godolphin May 27 1706. Coxe II. 365._] [Footnote 15: Marlborough to Mr Secretary Harley 3d June 1706. _Desp. II._ 554.] [Footnote 16: Marlborough to Duchess of Marlborough May 31 1706.] [Footnote 17: Marlborough to Secretary Harley Helchin 9th August 1706. _Desp._ III. 69.] [Footnote 18: Marlborough to Duke of Savoy Helchin 25th August 1706. _Desp._ III. 101.] [Footnote 19: Marlborough to Godolphin September 4 1706. _Coxe_ III. 10.] [Footnote 20: ""If the Dutch can furnish ammunition for the siege of Mons we shall undertake it; for if the weather continues fair we shall have it much cheaper this year than the next when they have had time to recruit their army. The taking of that town would be a very great advantage to us for the opening of next campaign which we must make if we would bring France to such a peace as will give us quiet hereafter.""--_Marlborough to Godolphin October 14 1706. Coxe_ III. 14.] [Footnote 21: ""M. de Vendôme tells his officers he has one hundred and forty battalions and one hundred and eighty squadrons and that if my Lord Marlborough gives him an opportunity he will pay him a visit before this campaign ends. I believe he has neither will nor power to do it which we shall see quickly for we are now camped in so open a country that if he marches to us we cannot refuse fighting.""--_Marlborough to Lord Godolphin October 14 1706. Ibid._] [Footnote 22: ""I have now received confirmation of the success in Italy from the Duke of Savoy and Prince Eugene and it is impossible for me to express the joy it has given me; _for I not only esteem but really love that Prince_. This glorious action must bring France so low that if our friends can be persuaded to carry on the war one year longer with vigour we could not fail with God's blessing to have such a peace as would give us quiet in our days. But the Dutch are at this time unaccountable.""--_Marlborough to the Duchess Sept. 26 1706. Coxe_ III. 20 21.] [Footnote 23: ""Your highness I am sure will rejoice at the signal advantage which the arms of his Imperial Majesty and the Allies have gained. _You have had so great a hand in it by the succours you have procured_ that you must permit me to thank you again.""--_Eugene to Marlborough 20th Sept. 1706. Coxe_ III. 20.] [Footnote 24: ""This appointment by the Emperor has given some uneasiness in Holland by thinking that the Emperor has a mind to put the power in this country into the Queen's hands in order that they may have nothing to do with it. If I should find the same thing by the Pensionary and that nothing can cure this jealousy but my desiring to be excused from accepting this commission I hope the Queen will allow of it; for the advantage and honour I have by this commission is _very insignificant in comparison of the fatal consequences that might be if it should cause a jealousy between the two nations_. And though the appointments of this government are sixty thousand pounds a-year I shall with pleasure excuse myself since I am convinced it is for her service if the States should not make it their request which they are very far from doing.""--_Marlborough to Godolphin July 1 and 8 1706. Coxe_ III. 391 393.] [Footnote 25: Mr Stepney to Duke of Marlborough _Hague Jan. 4 1707. Coxe_ II. 407.] [Footnote 26: ""Lord Somers has shown me a long letter which he has had from the Pensionary very intent _upon settling the barrier_. The inclinations of the Dutch are so violent and plain that I am of opinion nothing will be able to prevent their taking effect but our being as plain with them upon the same subject and threatening to publish to the whole world the terms for which they solicit.""--_Lord Godolphin to Marlborough_ Oct. 24 1706. Coxe III. 74.] [Footnote 27: ""My inclinations will lead

me to stay as little as possible at the Hague though the Pensionary tells me I must stay to finish the succession treaty and their barrier which should I stay the whole winter I am very confident would not be brought to perfection. For they are of so many minds and are all so very extravagant about their barrier that I despair of doing any thing good till they are more reasonable which they will not be till they see that they have it not in their power to dispose of the whole Low Countries at their will and pleasure in which the French flatter them.""--_Marlborough to Godolphin Oct. 29 1706. Coxe_ III. 79.] THE STUDENT OF SALAMANCA. PART II. ""Por estas montañas Facciosos siguiendo Vamos defendiendo La Constitucion."" _Himno de Navarra._ Rarely had the alameda of the picturesque old town of Logroño presented a gayer or more brilliant appearance than on a certain July evening of the year 1834. The day had been sultry in the extreme and the sun was touching the horizon before the fair Riojanas ventured to quit their artificially darkened rooms and the cool shelter of their well-screened _miradores_ for the customary promenade. It was pleasant certainly in those sombre apartments and beneath those thick awnings which excluded each ray of sun although they did not prevent what little breeze there was from circulating freely between the heavy stone balustrades or quaintly moulded iron-work of the spacious balconies rustling the leaves and blossoms of the orange-trees and wafting their fragrance to the languid beauties who sat dozing chatting or love-making within. But if the _farniente_ and languor induced by the almost tropical heat were so agreeable as to tempt to their longer indulgence on the other hand the _paseo_ that indispensable termination to a Spaniard's day had upon the evening in question peculiar attractions for the inhabitants of Logroño and especially for their fairer portion. Within the preceding three days a body of troops in number nearly twenty thousand men a large portion of them the pick and flower of the Spanish army had been concentrated at Logroño whence under the command of Rodil--a general of high reputation--they were to advance into Navarre and exterminate the daring rebels who for some months past had disturbed the peace of Spain. All had been noise and movement in the town during those three days; every stable full of horses every house crowded with soldiers; artillery and baggage-waggons encumbering the squares and suburbs; the streets resounding with the harsh clang of trumpets and monotonous beat of drums; muleteers loading and unloading their beasts; commissaries bustling about for rations; beplumed and embroidered staff-officers galloping to and fro with orders; the clash of arms and tramp of horses in the barrack-yards; the clatter of wine-cups joyous song and merry tinkle of the guitar from the various wine-houses in which the light-hearted soldiery were snatching a moment of enjoyment in the intervals of duty;--such were a few of the sights and sounds which for the time animated and gave importance to the usually quiet town of Logroño. Towards evening the throng and bustle within the town diminished and were transferred to the pleasant walks around it and especially to the shady and flower-bordered avenues of the alameda. Thither repaired the proud and graceful beauties of Castile and Navarre their raven locks but partially veiled by the fascinating mantilla their dark and lustrous eyes flashing coquettish glances upon the gay officers who accompanied or hovered around them. Every variety of uniform was there to be seen; all was blaze and glitter and brilliancy; the smart trappings of these fresh troops had not yet been tattered and tarnished amidst the hardships of mountain warfare. The showy hussar the elegant lancer the helmeted dragoon aides-de-camp with their cocked-hats and blue sashes crossed and mingled in the crowd that filled the alameda at either end of which a band of music was playing the beautiful and spirit-stirring national airs of Spain. On the one hand arose the dingy masses of the houses of Logroño speckled with the lights that issued from their open casements their outline distinctly defined against the rapidly darkening sky; on the other side was a wide extent of corn-field intersected and varied by rows and clusters of trees amongst the branches of which and over the waving surface of the corn innumerable fire-flies darted and sparkled. Here a group of soldiers and country girls danced a bolero to the music of a guitar and tambourine; there another party was collected round an Andalusian ballad-singer of whose patriotic ditties ""_la Libertad_"" and ""_la inocente Isabel_"" were the usual themes. In a third place a few inveterate gamblers--as what Spanish soldiers are not?--had stretched themselves upon the grass in a circle and by the flickering light of a broken lantern or of a candle stuck in the earth were playing a game at cards for their day's pay or for any thing else they might chance to possess. On all sides ragged bare-footed boys ran about carrying pieces of lighted rope in their hands the end of which they occasionally dashed against the ground causing a shower of sparks to fly out whilst they recommended themselves to the custom of the cigar-smokers by loud cries of ""_Fuego! Buen fuego! Quien quiere fuego?_"" At few of the young officers who on the evening referred to paraded the alameda of Logroño was the artillery of eyes and fan more frequently levelled by the love-breathing beauties there assembled than at Luis Herrera who in the uniform of the cavalry regiment to which he now belonged was present upon the paseo. But for him fans waved and bright eyes sparkled in vain. He was deeply engaged in conversation with Mariano Torres who having recently obtained a commission in the same corps with his friend had arrived that evening to join it. The two young men had parted soon after the death of Don Manuel Herrera and had not met since. One of Mariano's first questions concerned the Villabuenas. ""The count went to France some months ago I believe "" replied Luis dryly. ""Yes "" said Torres ""so I heard and took his daughter with him. But I thought it probable that he might have returned in the train of his self-styled sovereign. He is capable of any folly I should imagine since he was mad enough to sacrifice his fine fortune and position in the country by joining in this absurd rebellion. You of course know that he has been declared a traitor and that his estates have been confiscated?"" Luis nodded assent. ""Well in some respects the count's losses may prove a gain to you "" continued Torres pursuing the train of his own thoughts and not observing that the subject he had started was a painful one to his friend. ""When we have put an end to the war in a month or two at furthest you can go to France and obtain his consent to your marriage with his daughter. In the present state of his fortunes he will hardly refuse it; and you may then return to Spain and make interest for your father-in-law's pardon."" ""I am by no means certain "" said Herrera ""that the war will be over so soon as you imagine. But you will oblige me Mariano by not speaking of this again. My engagement with Rita is long at an end and not likely ever to be renewed. It was a dream a vision of happiness not destined to be realized and I endeavour to forget it. I myself put an end to it; and not under present circumstances perhaps under none should I think myself justified in seeking its renewal. Let us talk of something else--of the future if you will but not of the past."" The hours passed by Luis beside Don Manuel's death-bed had witnessed a violent revolution in his feelings and character. Devotedly attached to his father who had been the sole friend almost the only companion of his boyhood the fiercer passions of Herrera's nature were awakened into sudden and violent action by his untimely fate. A burning desire of revenge on the unscrupulous faction to which the persecution exile and cruel death of Don Manuel were to be attributed took possession of him; and in order to gratify this desire and at the same time to fulfil the solemn pledge he had given to his dying parent he felt himself at the moment capable of sacrificing even his love for Rita. No sooner was the mournful ceremony of the interment over than he wrote to Villabuena informing him in a few stern words how those who professed like him to be the defenders of religion and legitimacy had enacted the part of assassins and incendiaries and shed his father's blood upon his own threshold. This communication he considered to be without further comment a sufficient reply to the proposition made to him by the count a few days previously. At the same time--and this was by far the most difficult part of his self-imposed task--he addressed a letter to Rita releasing her from her engagement. He felt he told her that by so doing he renounced all his fondest hopes; but were he to act otherwise and at once violate his oath and forego his revenge he should despise himself and deserve her contempt. He implored her to forget their ill-fated attachment for his own misery would be endurable only when he knew that he had not compromised her happiness. Scarcely had he dispatched these letters written under a state of excitement almost amounting to frenzy when Herrera in pursuance of a previously formed plan and as if to stifle the regrets which a forced and painful determination occasioned him hastened to join as a volunteer the nearest Christino column. It was one commanded by General Lorenzo then operating against Santos Ladron and the Navarrese Carlists. In several skirmishes Herrera signalized himself by the intrepidity and fury with which he fought. Ladron was taken and shot and Lorenzo marched to form the advanced guard of a strong division which under the command of Sarsfield was rapidly nearing the scene of the insurrection. On the mere approach of the Christino army the battalions of Castilian Realistas which formed numerically speaking an important part of the forces then under arms for Don Carlos disbanded themselves and fled to their homes. Sarsfield continued his movement northwards took possession after trifling resistance of Logroño Vittoria Bilboa and other towns occupied by the Carlists; and after a few insignificant skirmishes succeeded in dispersing and disarming the whole of the insurgents in the three Basque provinces. A handful of badly armed and undisciplined Navarrese peasants were all that now kept the field for Charles V. and of the rapid capture or destruction of these the sanguine Christinos entertained no doubt. The principal strength of the Carlists was broken; their arms were taken away; the majority of the officers who had joined and of the men of note and influence in the country who had declared for them had been compelled to cross the Pyrenees. But the tenacious courage and hardihood of the Navarrese insurgents and the military skill of the man who commanded them baffled the unceasing pursuit kept up by the Queen's generals. During the whole of the winter the Carlists lived like wolves in the mountains surrounded by ice and snow cheerfully supporting the most incredible hardships and privations. Nay even under such disadvantageous circumstances their numbers increased and their discipline improved; and when the spring came they presented the appearance not of a band of robbers as their opponents had hitherto designated them but of a body of regular troops hardy and well organized devoted to their general and enthusiastic for the cause they defended. Their rapid movements their bravery and success in several well-contested skirmishes some of which almost deserved the name of regular actions the surprise of various Christino posts and convoys the consistency in short which the war was taking began seriously to alarm the Queen's government; and the formidable preparations made by the latter for a campaign against the Carlists were a tacit acknowledgment that Spain was in a state of civil war. In the wild and beautiful valley of the Lower Amezcoa in the _merindad_ or district of Estella a large body of Christino troops was assembled on the fifteenth day after Rodil's entrance into Navarre. The numerous forces which that general found under his command after uniting the troops he had brought with him with those already in the province had enabled him to adopt a system of occupation the most effectual it was believed for putting an end to the war. In pursuance of this plan he established military lines of communication between the different towns of Navarre and Alava garrisoned and fortified the principal villages and having in this manner disseminated a considerable portion of his army through the insurgent districts he commenced with a column of ten thousand men that remained at his disposal a movement through the mountainous regions to which upon his approach the Carlists had retired. His object was the double one of attacking and destroying their army and if possible of seizing the person of Don Carlos who but a few days previously had arrived in Spain. The heat of the weather was remarkable even for that usually sultry season; the troops had had a long and fatiguing march over the rugged sierra of Urbasa; and Rodil either with a view of giving them rest or with some intention of garrisoning the villages scattered about the valley which had hitherto been one of the chief haunts of the Carlists had come to a halt in the Lower Amezcoa. It was two in the afternoon and notwithstanding the presence of so large a body of men all was stillness and repose in the valley. The troops had arrived that morning and after taking up their cantonments in the various villages and hamlets had sought refuge from the overpowering heat. In the houses the shutters of which were carefully closed to exclude the importunate sunbeams in the barns and stables under the shadow cast by balconies or projecting eaves and along the banks of the stream which traverses the valley and is noted in the surrounding country for the crystal clearness and extreme coldness of its waters the soldiers were lying their uniforms unbuttoned the stiff leathern stock thrown aside enjoying the mid-day slumber which the temperature and their recent fatigue rendered doubly acceptable. Here and there at a short distance from the villages and further off near the different roads and passes that give access to the valley through or over the gigantic mountain-wall by which it is encircled the sun flashed upon the polished bayonets and musket-barrels of the pickets. The men were lying beside their piled arms or had crept under some neighbouring bush to indulge in the universal _siesta_; and even the sentries seemed almost to sleep as they paced lazily up and down or stood leaning upon their muskets keeping but a drowsy watch and careless look-out for an enemy whose proximity was neither to be anticipated nor dreaded by a force so superior to any which he could get together. Such was the scene that presented itself to one who having approached the valley from the south and ascended the mountains that bound it on that side now contemplated from their summit the inactivity of its occupants. He was a man of the middle height but appearing rather shorter from a slight stoop in the shoulders; his age was between forty and fifty years his aspect grave and thoughtful. His features were regular his eyes clear and penetrating a strong dark mustache covered his upper lip and joined his whisker which was allowed to extend but little below the ear. His dress consisted of a plain blue frock girt at the waist by a belt of black leather to which a sabre was suspended and his head was covered with a _boina_ or flat cap of the description commonly worn in the neighbourhood of the Pyrenees woven in one piece of fine scarlet wool and decorated with a _borla_ or tassel of gold cord spreading like a star over the crown of the head. In his hand he held a telescope which he rested on the top of a fragment of rock and through which he attentively noted what passed in the valley below. The case of the field-glass was slung across his body by a strap and upon inspection a name would have been found stamped upon its leathern surface. It was that of Tomas Zumalacarregui. A short distance in rear of the Carlist leader and so posted as not to be visible from the valley stood a little group of officers and persons in civilian garb and a few orderlies one of whom held the general's horse. Behind a battalion of infantry was drawn up--fine muscular active fellows inured to every hardship and as indifferent to the scorching heat to which they were now exposed as they had been to the bitter cold in the mountains amongst which they had passed the preceding winter. Their appearance was not very uniform in its details; short jackets loose trousers and sandals composed the dress of most of them--one well adapted to long marches and active movements--and they all wore caps similar to those of the officers but of a blue colour and coarser material. A second battalion of these hardy guerillas was advancing with light and elastic step up the rugged and difficult path; and this was followed by two others which as fast as they arrived were formed up by their officers in the best manner that the uneven nature of the ground would admit. Half a dozen mules laden with ammunition brought up the rear. When the four battalions consisting together of nearly three thousand men were assembled on the summit of the mountain the arms were piled and the soldiers allowed to sit down or repose themselves as they chose from the fatigues of their long and wearisome ascent and of a march that had lasted from early dawn. The mountain upon which these troops were now stationed was less precipitous upon its inner side than most of those that surrounded the valley. It shelved gradually downwards broken here and there by ravines its partially wooded slopes forming a succession of terraces which extended right and left for a distance of more than a mile. At the foot of these slopes and immediately below the spot occupied by the Carlists a low hill ran off at right angles from the higher range projecting into the valley as a promontory does into the sea. With the exception of the side furthest from the mountains which consisted of pasture land the base and skirts of this hill were covered with oak and chestnut and upon the clearing on its summit stood a shepherd's hut whence was commanded a view of a considerable extent of the face of the sierra as well as of the entrance of a neighbouring pass that led out of the valley in the direction of Estella. At this hut a Christino picket was stationed to which when the Carlist chief had completed his general survey of the valley his attention became more particularly directed. The outpost consisted of about thirty men little brown-complexioned monkey-faced creatures from the southern provinces who sunk in fancied security and in the indolence natural to them were neglecting their duty to an extent which might seriously have compromised the safety of the Christino army had it depended upon their vigilance. The majority of them were lying asleep in and around the picket-house which was situated on one side of the platform within fifty yards of the trees. Of the three sentinels one had seated himself on a stone with his musket between his knees and having unbuttoned the loose grey coat that hung like a sack about his wizened carcass was busily engaged in seeking between his shirt and his skin for certain companions whom he had perhaps picked up in his quarters of the previous night and by whose presence about his person he seemed to be but moderately gratified. One of the other two sentries had wandered away from the post assigned to him and approached his remaining comrade with the charitable view of dividing with him a small quantity of tobacco which the two were now deliberately manufacturing into paper cigars beguiling the time as they did so by sundry guardroom jokes and witticisms. An almost imperceptible smile of contempt curled the lip of Zumalacarregui as he observed the unmilitary negligence apparent in the advanced post of the Christinos. It was exchanged for a proud and well-pleased glance when he turned round and saw his gallant Navarrese awaiting in eager suspense a signal to advance upon the enemy whom they knew to be close at hand. Zumalacarregui walked towards the nearest battalion and on his approach the men darted from their various sitting and reclining postures and stood ready to seize their muskets and fall into their places. Their chief nodded his approbation of their alacrity but intimated to them by a motion of his hand that the time for action was not yet come. ""_Paciencia muchachos!_"" said he. ""Patience you will not have long to wait. Refresh yourselves men whilst the time is given you. Captain Landa!"" cried he raising his voice. The officer commanding the light company of the battalion stepped forward and halting at a short distance from his general stood motionless with his hand to his cap awaiting orders. ""Come with me Landa "" said Zumalacarregui; and taking the officer's arm he led him to the spot whence he had been observing the valley and pointed to the Christino picket. ""Take your company "" said he ""and fetch me those sleepy fellows here; without firing a shot if it be possible."" The officer returned to his men and forming them up with all speed marched them off at a rapid pace. When they had disappeared amongst the rocks Zumalacarregui turned to the chief of his staff. ""Colonel Gomez "" said he ""take the third and fourth battalions and move them half a mile to our left keeping them well out of sight. We are not strong enough to attack in the plain but we shall perhaps get our friends to meet us in the mountain."" Gomez--a tall portly man of inexpressive countenance and whose accent when he spoke betrayed the Andalusian--proceeded to execute the orders he had received and Zumalacarregui once more resumed his post of observation. The carelessness of the Christino picket and the practice which the Carlists had already had in a warfare of stratagem and surprise enabled the company of light infantry to execute with great facility the instructions they had received. The young ensign who commanded the outpost was walking listlessly along the edge of the wood cursing the wearisome duty entrusted to him and referring to his watch to see how far still the hour of relief was off when he was suddenly struck to the ground by a blow from a musket-butt and before he could attempt to rise the point of a bayonet was at his throat. At the same instant three score long-legged Navarrese dashed from under cover of the wood bayoneted the sentinels surrounded the picket-house and made prisoners of the picket. The surprise was complete; not a shot had been fired and all had passed with so little noise that it appeared probable the _coup-de-main_ would only become known to the Christinos when the time arrived for relieving the outposts. A trifling oversight however on the part of the Carlists caused things to pass differently. A soldier belonging to the picket and who was sleeping amongst the long grass just within the wood had escaped all notice. The noise of the scuffle awoke him; but on perceiving how matters stood he prudently remained in his hiding-place till the Carlists having collected the arms and ammunition of their prisoners began to reascend the mountain. At a distance of three hundred yards he fired at them and then scampered off in the contrary direction. His bullet took no effect and the retreating guerillas seeing how great a start he had allowed him to escape unpursued. But the report of his musket spread the alarm. The pickets right and left of the one that had been surprised saw the Carlists winding their way up the mountain; the vedettes fired and the drums beat to arms. The alarm spread rapidly from one end of the valley to the other and every part of it was in an instant swarming with men. Dragoons saddled and artillery harnessed; infantry formed up by battalions and brigades; generals and aides-de-camp dashed about hurrying the movements of the troops and asking the whereabouts of the enemy. This information they soon obtained. No sooner was the alarm given than Zumalacarregui relying upon the tried courage of his soldiers and on the advantage of his position which must render the enemy's cavalry useless and greatly diminish the effect of the artillery put himself at the head of his two battalions and rapidly descended the mountain dispatching an officer after Gomez with orders for a similar movement on his part. Before the Carlists reached the plain the Christinos quartered in the nearest village advanced to meet them and a smart skirmish began. Distributed along the clifts and terraces of the mountain kneeling amongst the bushes and sheltered behind the trees that grew at its base the Carlists kept up a steady fire which was warmly replied to by their antagonists. In the most exposed situations the Carlist officers of all ranks from the ensign to the general showed themselves encouraging their men urging them to take good aim and not to fire till they could distinguish the faces of their enemies themselves sometimes taking up a dead man's musket and sending a few well-directed shots amongst the Christinos. Here a man was seen binding the sash which forms part of the dress of every Navarrese peasant over a wound that was not of sufficient importance to send him to the rear; in another place a guerilla replenished his scanty stock of ammunition from the cartridge-belt of a fallen comrade and sprang forward to meet perhaps the next moment a similar fate. On the side of the Christinos there was less appearance of enthusiasm and ardour for the fight; but their numbers were far superior and each moment increased and some light guns and howitzers that had been brought up began to scatter shot and shell amongst the Carlists although the manner in which the latter were sheltered amongst wood and rock prevented those missiles from doing them very material injury. The fight was hottest around the hill on which the picket had been stationed now the most advanced point of the Carlist line. It was held by a battalion which dispersed amongst the trees that fringed its sides opposed a fierce resistance to the assaults of the Christinos. At last the latter weary of the protracted skirmishing by which they lost many men but were unable to obtain any material advantage sent forward two battalions of the royal guards to take the hill at the point of the bayonet. With their bugles playing a lively march these troops the finest infantry in the Spanish army advanced in admirable order and without firing a shot to perform the duty assigned to them. On their approach the Carlists retreated from the sides of the hill and assembled in the wood on its summit at the foot of the higher mountains. One battalion of the guards ascended the hill in line and advanced along the open ground whilst the other marched round the skirt of the eminence to take the Carlists in flank. The Navarrese reserved their fire till they saw the former battalion within fifty yards of them and then poured in a deadly volley. The ranks of the Christinos were thinned but they closed them again and with levelled bayonets and quickened step advanced to clear the wood little expecting that the newly-raised troops opposed to them would venture to meet them at close quarters. The event however proved that they had undervalued their antagonists. Emerging from their shelter the Carlists brought their bayonets to the charge and with a ringing shout of ""_Viva Carlos Quinto!_"" rushed upon their foe. A griding clash of steel and a shrill cry of agony bore witness to the fury of the encounter. The loss on both sides was severe but the advantage remained with the Carlists. The guards unprepared for so obstinate a resistance were borne back several paces and thrown into some confusion. But the victors had no time to follow up their advantage for the other Christino battalion had entered the wood and was advancing rapidly upon their flank. Hastily collecting their wounded the Carlists retired still fighting to the higher ground in their rear. At the same moment Zumalacarregui observing a body of fresh troops making a movement upon his right as if with the intention of outflanking him ordered the retreat to be sounded and the Carlist line retired slowly up the mountains. Some of Rodil's battalions followed and the skirmishing was kept up with more or less spirit till an end was put to it by the arrival of night. From the commencement of the fight several squadrons of the Queen's cavalry had remained drawn up near a village in which they had their quarters at about a mile from the left of the Carlists. A short distance in front of the line a number of officers had collected together and were observing the progress of the combat in which the impracticability of the ground for horsemen prevented them from taking a share. There was considerable grumbling especially amongst the juniors at the inactivity to which they found themselves condemned. ""If this is the kind of fighting we are always to have "" said a young cornet sulkily ""they might as well have left us in our garrisons. We were a deuced deal more comfortable and quite as useful in our snug quarters at Valladolid. The faction it is well known have no cavalry and you will not catch their infernal guerillas coming down into the plain to be sabred at leisure."" ""No "" said another subaltern ""but they are forming cavalry it is said. Besides we may catch their infantry napping some day as they did our picket just now."" ""Pshaw!"" replied the first speaker. ""Before that time comes every horse in the brigade will be lame or sore-backed and we ourselves shall be converted into infantry men. All respect for lance and sabre--but curse me if I would not rather turn foot-soldier at once than have to crawl over these mountains as we have done for the last fortnight dragging our horses after us by the bridle. For six hours yesterday did I flounder over ground that was never meant to be trod by any but bears or izards breaking my spurs and shins whilst my poor nag here was rubbing the skin off his legs against rocks and tree-stumps. When I entered the cavalry I expected my horse would carry me; but if this goes on it is much more likely I shall have to carry him."" ""A nice set of fellows you are "" said an old grey-mustached captain ""to be grumbling before you have been a month in the field. Wait a bit my boys till your own flesh and your horses' have been taken down by hard marching and short commons and until if you mount a hill you are obliged to hold on by the mane lest the saddle should slip back over the lean ribs of your charger. The marches you have as yet seen are but child's play to what you _will_ see before the campaign is over."" ""Then hang me if I don't join the footpads "" returned the dissatisfied cornet. ""At any rate one would have a little fighting then--a chance of a broken head or t'other epaulet; and that is better than carrying a sabre one never has to draw. Why the very mules cannot keep their footing amongst these mountains. Ask our quartermaster whom I saw yesterday craning over the edge of a precipice and watching two of his beasts of burden which were going down hill a deal quicker than they had come up--their legs in the air and the sacks of corn upon their backs hastening their descent to some ravine or other where the crows no doubt at the present moment are picking their bones. You should have heard old Skinflint swear. I thought he would have thrown the muleteer after the mules. And they call this a country for cavalry!"" ""I certainly fear "" said Herrera who had been listening to the colloquy ""that as long as the war is confined to these provinces cavalry will not be very often wanted."" ""And if they were not here they would be wanted immediately "" said a field-officer who was observing the skirmish through a telescope. ""Besides you young gentlemen have less cause for discontent than any body else. There may be no opportunity for brilliant charges but there is always work for a subaltern's party in the way of cutting off detachments or some such _coup-de-main_. I see a group of fellows yonder who will get themselves into trouble if they do not take care."" All eyes and glasses turned towards the direction in which the major was looking

It was the hottest moment of the fight; by their impetuosity and courage the Carlists were keeping at bay the superior numbers of their antagonists; and on their extreme left a small party of horsemen consisting of four or five officers and a dozen lancers had ventured to advance a short distance into the plain. They had halted at the edge of a _manzanal_ or cider orchard; and although some way in advance of their own line they were at a considerable distance from any Christino troops; whilst a tolerably good path which led up the least precipitous part of the mountains in their rear seemed to ensure them an easy retreat whenever it might become necessary. So confident were they of their safety that the officers had dismounted and were observing the Christino reserves and the various bodies of infantry which were advancing from the more distant cantonments. At this moment the officer commanding the cavalry rode up to the spot where Herrera and his comrades were assembled. ""Major Gonzalez "" said he ""send half a troop to cut off those gentlemen who are reconnoitring. Let the party file off to the rear or their intention will be perceived."" The subalterns belonging to the squadron under command of Gonzalez pressed round him eager to be chosen for the duty that was to vary the monotony and inaction of which they had so recently been complaining. ""Herrera "" said the major ""you have most practice in this sort of thing. Take thirty men and march them back into the village out on the other side and round that rising ground upon our right. There is plenty of cover and if you make the most of it the game cannot escape. And a hint to you--your fellows generally grind their sabres pretty sharp I know and you are not fond of encumbering yourself with prisoners; but yonder party judging from their appearance may be men of note amongst the rebels worth more alive than dead. Bring them in with whole skins if you can. As to the fellows with the red and white lance-flags I leave them entirely at your discretion."" ""I shall observe your orders major "" replied Herrera whose eyes sparkled at the prospect of a brush with the enemy. ""Sergeant Velasquez tell off thirty men from the left of the troop."" The non-commissioned officer who was introduced to the reader at the commencement of this narrative and who now found himself in consequence of a change of regiment in the same squadron as Herrera obeyed the order he had received and the party marched leisurely into the village. No sooner however had they entered the narrow street and were concealed from the view of those whom they intended to surprise than their pace was altered to a brisk trot which became a hand-gallop when they got into the fields beyond the rising ground referred to by the major. They then struck into a hollow road sheltered by bush-crowned banks and finally reached the long narrow strip of apple-orchard at the further angle of which the group of Carlists was posted. Skirting the plantation on the reverse side to the enemy they arrived at its extremity and wheeling to the left cantered on in line their sabre scabbards hooked up to their belts to diminish the clatter the noise of their horses' feet inaudible upon the grass and fern over which they rode. ""Charge!"" shouted Herrera as they reached the second angle of the orchard; and with a loud hurra and brandished sabres the dragoons dashed down upon the little party of Carlists now within a hundred paces of them. The dismounted officers hurried to their horses and the lancers hastily faced about to resist the charge; but before they could complete the movement they were sabred and ridden over. Herrera mindful of the orders he had received hurried to protect the officers from a similar fate. One of the latter who had his back turned to Herrera and who although he wore a sword by his side was dressed in plain clothes was in the very act of getting into the saddle when a dragoon aimed a furious cut at his head. Herrera was in time to parry the blow and as he did so the person whose life he had saved turned round and disclosed the well-known features of the Conde de Villabuena. ""Señor Conde!"" exclaimed the astonished Luis ""I am grieved""---- ""It is unnecessary sir "" said the count coldly. ""You are obeying orders I presume and doing what you consider your duty. Am I to be shot here or taken to your chief?"" ""It is much against my will "" answered Herrera ""that I constrain you in any way. I am compelled to conduct you to General Rodil."" The count made no reply but turning his horse's head in the direction of the Christino camp rode moodily onwards followed rather then accompanied by his captor. A Carlist officer and three members of the rebel junta were the other prisoners. The lancers had all been cut to pieces. The position in which Herrera now found himself was in the highest degree embarrassing and painful. Old affection and friendship were revived by the sight of the count; and had he obeyed his first impulse he would frankly have expressed his sorrow at the chance which had thrown Villabuena into the hands of his foes and have said what he could to console him under his misfortune. But the count's manner was so haughty and repulsive and he so studiously avoided recognising in Luis any thing more than an opponent and a captor that the words of kindness froze upon the young man's tongue and during the few minutes that were required to rejoin the regiment the silence remained unbroken. On reaching the spot where the cavalry was still halted the detachment was received with loud congratulations on the successful issue of the expedition. ""Cleverly managed Señor Herrera!"" said the colonel; ""and the prisoners are of importance. Take them yourself to the general."" In obedience to this order Herrera moved off to the part of the field in which Rodil surrounded by a numerous and brilliant staff had taken his post. ""Ha!"" said the general when the young officer had made his report his quick eye glancing at the prisoners some of whom were known to him by sight. ""Ha! you have done well sir and your conduct shall be favourably reported at Madrid. The Marquis of Torralva and Count Villabuena--an important capture this. Your name sir--and yours and yours?"" said he sharply to the other prisoners. The answers visibly increased his satisfaction. They were all men well known as zealous and influential partizans of the Pretender. Rodil paused an instant and then turned to one of his aides-de-camp. ""A priest and a firing party "" said he. ""You have half an hour to prepare for death "" he added addressing the prisoners. ""Rebels taken with arms in their hands can expect no greater favour."" Herrera felt a cold chill come over him as he heard this order given for the instant execution of a man whom he had so long regarded as his friend and benefactor. Forgetting in the agitation of the moment his own subordinate position and the impropriety of his interference he was about to address the general and petition for the life of Villabuena when he was saved from the commission of a breach of discipline by the interposition of a third party. A young man in the uniform of a general officer of sallow complexion and handsome countenance who was stationed upon Rodil's right hand moved his horse nearer to that of the general and spoke a few words to him in a low tone of voice. Rodil seemed to listen with attention and to reflect a moment before replying. ""You are right Cordova "" said he; ""they may be worth keeping as hostages; and I will delay their death till I can communicate with her Majesty's government. Let them be strictly guarded and sent to-morrow to Pampeluna under good escort. Your name sir?"" said he turning to Herrera. Herrera told his name and regiment. ""Luis Herrera "" repeated Rodil; ""I have heard it before as that of a brave and promising officer. Well sir since you have taken these prisoners you shall keep them. Yourself and a detachment of your squadron will form part of their escort to Pampeluna."" The flattering words of his general went but a short way towards reconciling Luis to the unpleasant task of escorting his former friend to a captivity which would in all probability find its termination in a violent death. With a heavy heart he saw Villabuena and the other prisoners led off to the house that was to serve as their place of confinement for the night; and still more painful were his feelings when he thought of Rita's grief on receiving intelligence of her father's peril perhaps of his execution. In order to alleviate to the utmost of his power the present position of the count he recommended him to the care of the officer placed on guard over him who promised to allow his prisoner every indulgence consistent with his safe keeping. And although the escort duty assigned to him was in some respects so unpleasant to fulfil Herrera became almost reconciled to it by the reflection that he might be able to spare Villabuena much of the hardship and rough treatment to which his captivity exposed him. The first grey light of morning had scarcely appeared in the Lower Amezcoa stealing over the mountain-tops and indistinctly shadowing forth the objects in the plain when the stillness that had reigned in the valley since the conclusion of the preceding day's skirmish was broken by the loud and joyous clang of the reveillé. At various points of the Christino cantonments the brazen instruments of the cavalry and the more numerous but perhaps less martially sounding bands of the infantry regiments were rousing the drowsy soldiers from their slumbers and awakening the surrounding echoes by the wild melody of Riego's hymn. Gradually the sky grew brighter the last lingering stars disappeared the summits of the western mountains were illuminated with a golden flush and the banks and billows of white mist that rested on the meadows and hung upon the hillsides began to melt away and disappear at the approach of the sun's rays. In the fields and on the roads near the different villages the troops were seen assembling the men silent and heavy-eyed but refreshed and invigorated by the night's repose the horses champing their bits and neighing with impatience. Trains of mules laden with sacks of corn and rations that from their weight might be deemed sufficient load for as many dromedaries issued from barn and stable expending their superfluous strength and spirit by kicking and biting viciously at each other and were ranged in rear of the troops where also carts and litters containing wounded men awaited the order for departure. The sergeant-majors called the roll of their troops and companies; whilst the men leaning upon their muskets or sitting at ease in their saddles munched fragments of the brown ration bread smoked the cigarette or received from the hands of the tawny-visaged sutlers and _cantinieras_ who walked up and down the ranks an antidote to the effects of the cool morning air in the shape of a glass of _aguardiente_. When all preparations were completed and the time necessary for the forming up of so numerous a body of men had elapsed the order to march was given and the troops moved off in a southerly direction. Whilst this general movement took place a detachment consisting of four companies of infantry and fifty dragoons separated itself from the main body and took the road to Pampeluna whither it was to escort Count Villabuena and his fellow captives. The country to the north-east of the Amezcoa through which they would have to pass was known to be free from Carlists with the exception of unimportant parties of armed peasants; Rodil himself had gone in pursuit of Zumalacarregui who had retired in the same direction whence he had approached the valley; and therefore this escort although so few in number was deemed amply sufficient to convey the prisoners in all safety to their destination to which one long day's march would bring them. The detachment was commanded by a major of infantry--a young man who had acquired what military experience he possessed in the ease and sloth of a garrison life during which however thanks to certain influential recommendations he had found promotion come so quickly that he had not the same reason with many of his comrades to be satisfied with the more active and dangerous service to which he had recently been called. Inwardly congratulating himself on the change which his present duty ensured him from the hardships of bivouacs and bad quarters to at least a day or two's enjoyment of the fleshpots of Pampeluna he rode gaily along at the head of the escort chatting and laughing with his second in command. Behind him came Herrera and his dragoons and in rear of them the prisoners on either side of whom marched foot-soldiers with fixed bayonets. The body of infantry brought up the rear. Strict orders had been given against conversing with the captives; and Herrera was compelled therefore to abandon the intention he had formed of endeavouring to break down the barrier of cold reserve within which Count Villabuena had fenced himself and of offering such assistance and comfort as it was in his power to give. He was forced to be contented with keeping near the prisoners in order to protect them from any abuse or ill-treatment on the part of the soldiery. For some hours the march continued without incident or novelty to vary its monotony. There was no high-road in the direction the escort was taking; the way which was shown them by a peasant led through country lanes over hills and across fields as nearly in a straight line as the rugged and mountainous nature of the country would allow. Towards noon the heat endurable enough during the first hours of the morning became excessive. The musket barrels and sabre scabbards almost burned the fingers that touched them; the coats of the horses were caked with sweat and dust; and the men went panting along looking out eagerly but in vain for some roadside fountain or streamlet at which to quench the thirst that parched their mouths. They had reached a beaten road which although rough and neglected yet afforded a better footing than they had hitherto had when such means of refreshment at last presented themselves. It was near the entrance of a sort of defile formed by two irregular lines of low hills closing in the road which was fringed with patches of trees and brushwood and with huge masses of rock that seemed to have been placed there by the hands of the Titans or to have rolled thither during some mighty convulsion of nature from the distant ranges of mountains. At a short distance from this pass there bubbled forth from under a moss-grown block of granite a clear and sparkling rivulet which overflowing the margin of the basin it had formed for itself rippled across the road and entered the opposite fields. Here a five minutes' halt was called the men were allowed to quit their ranks and in an instant they were kneeling by scores along the side of the little stream collecting the water in canteens and foraging-caps and washing their hands and faces in the pure element. The much-needed refreshment taken the march was resumed. Notwithstanding that the pass through which the prisoners and their escort were now advancing was nearly a mile in length and in many places admirably adapted for a surprise the officer in command either through ignorance or over-confidence neglected the usual precaution of sending scouts along the hills that on either side commanded the road. This negligence struck Herrera who knew by experience that with such active and wily foes as the Carlists no precaution could be dispensed with however superfluous it might seem. Scarcely had the troops entered the defile when he suggested to the major the propriety of sending out skirmishers to beat the thickets and guard against an ambuscade. ""Quite unnecessary sir "" was the reply. ""There is no rebel force in this part of the country that would venture to come within a league of us."" ""So we are told "" said Herrera; ""but I have had occasion to see that one must not always rely on such assurances."" ""I shall do so nevertheless in this instance "" said the major. ""We have a long march before us and if I fag the men by sending them clambering over hills and rocks I shall lose half of them by straggling and perhaps not reach Pampeluna to-night."" ""If you will allow me "" said Herrera ""I will send a few of my dragoons to do the duty. They will hardly be so effective as infantry for such a service but it will be better than leaving our flanks entirely unguarded."" ""I have already told you sir "" replied the major testily ""that I consider such precaution overstrained and unnecessary. I believe Lieutenant Herrera that it is I who command this detachment."" Thus rebuked Herrera desisted from his remonstrances and fell back into his place. The march continued in all security through the wild and dangerous defile; the men refreshed by their momentary halt tramping briskly along chattering smoking and singing snatches of soldier's songs. It appeared as if the negligence of the major was likely to be justified as far as it could be by the result; for they were now within two hundred yards of the extremity of the pass and in view of the open country. The defile was each moment widening and the space between the road and the hills was filled up with a wood of young beech and oak. Herrera himself who had each moment been expecting to receive a volley from some ambushed foe was beginning to think the danger over when a man dressed in red uniform with a scarlet cap upon his head and mounted on a white horse suddenly appeared at the end of the pass and tossing his lance which he carried at the trail into his bridle hand put a trumpet that was slung round his neck to his mouth and blew a loud and startling blast. The signal for such it was did not long remain unanswered. A hoarse wild shout issued from the wood on either side of the road and a volley of musketry resounded through the pass. In an instant the hills were alive with Carlist soldiers some reloading the muskets they had just fired others taking aim at the Christinos or fixing their bayonets in preparation for a closer encounter. Another minute had scarcely elapsed when a strong squadron of cavalry which the trumpeter had preceded dashed out of the fields at the extremity of the pass formed column upon the road and levelling their long light lances advanced led on by Zumalacarregui himself to charge the astonished Christinos. Extreme was the confusion into which the escort was thrown by this attack so totally unexpected by every body but Herrera. All was bewilderment and terror; the men stood staring at each other or at their dead and wounded comrades without even thinking of defending themselves. This state of stupefaction lasted however but a second; and then the soldiers without waiting for orders turned back to back and facing the points where the Carlists had stationed themselves returned their fire with all the vigour and promptness which desperation could give. The major--a really brave man but quite unequal to an emergency of this nature--knew not what orders to give or how to extricate himself and his men from the scrape into which his own headstrong imprudence had brought them. Foreseeing no possibility of escape from an enemy who in numbers and advantage of position so far overmatched him his next thought regarded the prisoners and he galloped hastily back to where they stood. The Carlists had probably received orders concerning them; for neither they nor their immediate escort had suffered injury from the volley that had played such havoc with the main body of the detachment. ""Fire on the prisoners!"" shouted the major. The guard round Villabuena and his fellow-captives stared at their officer without obeying. Some of them were reloading and the others apparently did not comprehend the strange order. ""Fire I say!"" repeated the commandant. ""By the holy cross! if we are to leave our bones here theirs shall whiten beside them."" More than one musket was already turned in the direction of the doomed captives when Herrera who at the moment that he was about to lead his dragoons to the encounter of the Carlist cavalry just then appearing on the road had overheard the furious exclamation of his superior came galloping back to the rescue. ""Stop!"" shouted he striking up the muzzles of the muskets. ""You have no warrant for such cruelty."" ""Traitor!"" screamed the major almost breathless with rage and raising his sword to make a cut at Herrera. Before however he could give force to the blow his eyes rolled frightfully his feet left the stirrups and dropping his weapon he fell headlong into the dust. A Carlist bullet had pierced his heart. ""Fire at your foes and not at defenceless prisoners "" said Herrera sternly to the dismayed soldiers. ""Remember that your lives shall answer for those of these men."" And again placing himself at the head of the cavalry he led them to meet Zumalacarregui and his lancers who were already charging down upon them. But the few seconds that had been occupied in saving Villabuena and his companions from the slaughter had made all the difference in the chances of success. Could Herrera have charged as he had been about to do before the Carlists formed up and advanced he might in all probability owing to the greater skill of his men in the use of their weapons and to the superiority of their horses have broken and sabred his opponents and opened the road for the Christino infantry. Once in the plain where the dragoons could act with advantage the Carlists might have been kept at bay and a retreat effected. Now however the state of affairs was very different. The lancers with Zumalacarregui and several of his staff charging at their head like mere subalterns came thundering along the road and before Herrera could get his dragoons into full career the shock took place. In an instant the way was blocked up with a confused mass of men and horses. The rear files of the contending cavalry unable immediately to check their speed pushed forward those in front or forced them off the road upon the strip of broken ground and brushwood on either side; friends and foes were mingled together cutting thrusting swearing and shouting. But the dragoons besides encountering the lances of the hostile cavalry suffered terribly from the fire of the foot-soldiers who came down to the side of the road blazing at them from within a few paces and even thrusting them off their horses with the bayonet. In so confused a struggle and against such odds the superior discipline and skill of the Christinos was of small avail. Herrera who at the first moment of the encounter had crossed swords with Zumalacarregui himself but who the next instant had been separated from him by the mêlée fought like a lion till his right arm was disabled by a lance-thrust. The soldier who had wounded him was about to repeat the blow when a Carlist officer interfered to save him. He was made prisoner and his men discouraged by his loss and reduced already to little more than a third of their original numbers threw down their arms and asked for quarter. Their example was immediately followed by those of the infantry who had escaped alive from the murderous volleys of their opponents. Of all those who took part in this bloody conflict not one bore himself more gallantly or did more execution amongst the enemy than our old acquaintance Sergeant Velasquez. When the charge had taken place and the desperate fight above described commenced he backed his horse off the narrow road upon which the combatants were cooped up into a sort of nook formed by a bank and some trees. In this advantageous position his rear and flanks protected he kept off all who attacked him replying with laugh and jeer to the furious oaths and imprecations of his baffled antagonists. His fierce and determined aspect and still more the long and powerful sweep of his broad sabre struck terror into his assailants who found their best aimed blows and most furious assaults repelled and returned with fatal effect by the practised arm of the dragoon. At the moment that Herrera was wounded and the fight brought to a close the mass of combatants had pressed further forward into the defile and only three or four of the rearmost of the Carlists occupied the portion of the pass between Velasquez and the open country. Just then a shout in his rear and a bullet that pierced his shako warned the sergeant that the infantry were upon him; and at the same moment he saw his comrades desist from their defence. Setting spurs to his charger he made the animal bound forward upon the road clove the shoulder of the nearest lancer rode over another and passing unhurt through the rain of bullets that whistled around him galloped out of the defile. But although unwounded Velasquez was not unpursued. A dozen lancers spurred their horses after him; and although more than half of these seeing that they had no chance of overtaking the well-mounted fugitive soon pulled up and retraced their steps three or four still persevered in the chase. Fortunate was it for the sergeant that the good horse which he had lost at the venta near Tudela had been replaced by one of equal speed and mettle. With unabated swiftness he scoured along the road through the whirlwind of dust raised by his charger's feet until the Carlists seeing the distance between them and the object of their pursuit rapidly increasing gradually abandoned the race. One man alone continued stanch and seemed not unlikely to overtake the dragoon. This was no other than the sergeant's former opponent in the ball-court Paco the muleteer now converted into a Carlist lancer and who his sharp-rowelled spurs goring his horse's sides his lance in his hand his body bent forward as though he would fain have outstripped in his eagerness the speed of the animal he bestrode dashed onward with headlong and reckless violence. His lean and raw-boned but swift and vigorous horse scarcely felt the light weight of its rider; whilst Velasquez' charger in addition to the solid bulk of the dragoon was encumbered with a well-filled valise and heavy trappings. The distance between pursued and pursuer was rapidly diminishing; and the sergeant hearing the clatter of hoofs each moment drawing nearer looked over his shoulder to see by how many of his enemies he was so obstinately followed. Paco immediately recognised him and with a shout of exultation again drove the rowels into his horse's belly. ""_Halto! traidor! infame!_"" yelled the ex-muleteer. ""Stop coward and meet your death like a man!"" His invitation was not long disregarded. Velasquez having ascertained that he had but a single pursuer and that pursuer a man to whom he owed a grudge and was by no means sorry to give a lesson pulled up his horse and confronted Paco who nothing daunted came tearing along waving his lance above his head like a mad Cossack and shouting imprecations and defiance. As he came up Velasquez who had steadily awaited his charge parried the furious thrust that was aimed at him and at the same time by a movement of leg and rein which he had often practised in the _manège_ caused his horse to bound aside. Unable immediately to check his steed Paco passed onwards; but as he did so Velasquez dealt him a back-handed blow of his sabre and the unlucky Carlist fell bleeding and senseless from the saddle. His horse terrified at its rider's fall galloped wildly across the country. ""That makes the half-dozen "" said the sergeant coolly as he looked down on his prostrate foe; ""if every one of us had done as much the day's work would have been better."" And sheathing his sabre he resumed but at a more moderate pace the flight which had for a moment been interrupted. WHITE'S THREE YEARS IN CONSTANTINOPLE. The title of ""_Domestic_ Manners of the Turks ""[28] given to the volumes before us can scarcely be considered as a correct designation; since it is not in the privacy of their own families in their harems and among their children (scenes in which it would indeed be rash to challenge comparison with the eloquent author of the _Spirit of the East_ ) that Mr White has depicted the Turks of the present day: but rather in the places ""where men most do congregate""--in the _bezestans_ and _tcharshys_ or markets commonly called bazars:[29] in the exercise of the various trades and callings and the intercourse of professional and commercial relations. The work is rather a treatise on the corporate bodies and municipal institutions of Constantinople--a subject hitherto almost untouched by European writers and in the investigation of which Mr White has diligently availed himself of the opportunities afforded him by the liberal spirit which the events of late years have fostered among the Turks. The results of these researches are now laid before us in a form which though perhaps not the most popular which might have been adopted is not ill calculated to embrace the vast variety of subjects included in the range of the author's observations. Taking the bezestans and markets--the focus of business and commerce to which the various classes of the Stamboul population converge--as the ground-work of his lucubrations Mr White proceeds to enumerate in detail the various trades and handicrafts carried on within the precincts of these great national marts the articles therein sold and the guilds or incorporated companies to many of which extensive privileges have been granted by the sultans for their services to the state. These topics are diversified by numerous digressions on politics religion criminal law the imperial harem the language of flowers--in short _de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis_--in the course of which Mr White gives his readers the benefit of all the miscellaneous information which has fallen in his way during his three years' residence among the Osmanlis. Of a work so diffuse in its nature it is impossible to give more than an outline; and accordingly omitting all mention of those subjects which have been rendered tolerably familiar to European readers by the narratives of former travellers we shall select from these ""orient pearls "" strung most literally ""at random "" such topics as possess most novelty or on which Mr White has imparted some novel information. The space of ground occupied by the two great bezestans--the jewel or arms' bezestan and the silk bezestan--with the surrounding _tcharshys_ and other buildings appropriated to trade forms an irregular quadrangle of about three hundred and fifty square yards to the north of the Mosque of Sultan Bajazet and west of that of Noor-Osmanya. ""The bezestans originally consisted of isolated buildings each with four gates opening nearly to the cardinal points which were and still are designated after the trades carried on in booths around or beneath their respective porches. By degrees new shops alleys and enclosures clustered around the original depots until the whole were enclosed within walls arched roofed and provided with lock-up gates and posterns of which there are twelve large and about twenty small. They were then subjected to the same syndical laws that regulate the police and administration of the parent buildings."" They are opened soon after dawn and closed at afternoon prayer; and the same regulations are observed at the _Missr Tcharshy_ or Egyptian drug-market hereafter to be noticed. The jewel bezestan alone shuts at mid-day--the former occupants having been principally janissaries who held it beneath their dignity to keep their shops open all day; on Fridays they are closed; and during Ramazan are open only from mid-day to afternoon prayer. The silk bezestan being tenanted only by Armenians is closed on Sundays and the saints' days of their calendar amounting to nearly a fourth of the year. ""With the exception of the two bezestans the bazars are not surmounted by domes the distinctive ornament of almost all public edifices; ... so that the whole surface when seen from the Serasker's Tower presents a vast area of tiles without any architectural relief and exhibits a monotonous vacuum in the midst of the surrounding noble mosques and lofty khans."" The Jewel or Arms' Bezestan (Djevahir or Silah-Bezestany) is the oldest of these establishments dating from the time of the conquest by Mahommed II.; but having been repeatedly destroyed by fire the present edifice of stone was constructed in 1708. It is a lofty oblong quadrangular building with fifteen cupolas and four arched gates--the booksellers' the goldsmiths' the mercers' and

he beltmakers'. The interior consists of a broad alley intersected by four transverse alleys with double rows of shops where the dealers who are all Moslems sit on platforms raised about three feet and a half from the pavement. They constitute a guild among themselves presided over by a sheikh with a deputy and six elders; and are so highly esteemed for their probity that valuable deposits are frequently left in their charge by persons going on pilgrimage or to distant countries; but this privilege has lately been interfered with by government which has claimed in failure of heirs the reversions which formerly fell to the guild. ""It would be an endless task to describe the articles exposed to sale in Djevahir-Bezestany which from jewels being rarely sold there at present might be more appropriately called the bezestan of antiquities."" The principal objects of attraction especially to foreigners are the arms to which Mr White accordingly confines his remarks: but the once famed Damascus sabres (called _Sham_ or Syrian) are now held as inferior to those of Khorassan and Persia (_Taban_ or polished ) unless anterior to the destruction of the old manufactory by Timour in 1400; and those of this ancient fabric are now of extreme rarity and value. ""A full-sized Khorassan or ancient Damascus sabre should measure about thirty-five inches from guard to point; the back should be free from flaws the watering even and distinct throughout the whole length: the colour a bluish grey. A perfect sabre should possess what the Turks call the Kirk Merdevend (forty gradations:) that is the blade should consist of forty compartments of watered circles diminishing in diameter as they reach the point. A tolerable _taban_ of this kind with plain scabbard and horn handle is not easily purchased for less than 2000 piastres; some fetch as much as 5000 and when recognised as extraordinary there is no limit to the price. Damascus sabres made prior to 1600 are seldom seen but modern blades of less pure temper and lighter colour are common. Their form is nearly similar to the Khorassan; but the latter when of extraordinary temper will cut through the former like a knife through a bean-stalk."" The shorter swords of bright steel called _pala_ watered not in circles but in waving lines are mostly from the manufactory established at Stamboul by Mahommed II. soon after the conquest and which maintained its celebrity up to the time of Mourad IV. the last sultan who headed his armies in person:--""After his death the fashion of wearing Khorassan and old Syrian blades was revived: and the Stamboul manufactory was gradually neglected."" It is needless to follow Mr White through his dissertations on handjars yataghans and other Oriental varieties of cold steel; but passing through the booksellers' (Sahhaf) gate of the bezestan we find ourselves in the Paternoster Row of Stamboul--a short space exclusively inhabited by the trade from which the gate derives its name. The booksellers' guild consists of about forty members presided over by a sheikh and a council of elders; and is conducted on principles as rigidly exclusive as those of some corporations nearer home it being almost impossible for any one to purchase the good-will of a shop unless connected by blood with some of the fraternity: but Mr White's account of ""the trade "" and of the bearded Murrays and Colburns by whom it is carried on is far from favourable. Competition being excluded by this monopoly the prices demanded are so exorbitant ""that it is common to say of a close-fisted dealer 'he is worse than a sahhaf.' The booksellers' stalls are the meanest in appearance in all the bazars; and the effendy who lord it over the literary treasures are the least prepossessing and by no means the most obliging of the crafts within this vast emporium."" There are some exceptions however to this sweeping censure. Suleiman Effendi father of the imperial historiographer Sheikh-Zadeh Assad Effendi is celebrated as a philologist; and Hadji-Effendi though blind ""appears as expert in discovering the merits of a MS. or printed work as the most eagle-eyed of his contemporaries and is moreover full of literary and scientific information."" Catalogues are unknown and the price even of printed books after they have passed out of the hands of the editor is perfectly arbitrary; but the commonest printed books are double the relative rate in Europe. The value of MSS. of course depends on their rarity and beauty of transcription; a finely illuminated Koran cannot be procured for less than 5000 or 6000 piastres and those written by celebrated caligraphers fetch from 25 000 to even 50 000. Mr White estimates the average number of volumes on a stall at about 700 or less than 30 000 in the whole bazar; but among these are frequently found works of great rarity in the ""three languages "" (Arabic Persian and Turkish.) Of those most in request a catalogue is given comprising the usual range of Oriental literature. There are about forty public libraries in Constantinople but many of these are within the principal mosques and therefore not easily accessible to Europeans. They are all endowed with ample funds for their maintenance and the salaries of their librarians who frequently add considerably to their emoluments by transcribing MSS:--""but it does not appear that these funds are employed in adding to these collections; so that in point of numbers they remain nearly as when first founded."" Each library has not only a simple nomenclature but a _catalogue raisonnée_ containing a summary of each work; and the books most of which are transcribed on vellum or highly glazed paper are bound in the manner of a tuck pocket-book in dark morocco or calf with the titles written on the outside of the margin and are laid on their sides on the shelves. The floors are covered with mats and on one or more sides are low divans for the use of the students who leave their slippers at the door; a narrow desk in front of the divans supports the volumes in use. Neither fire candle nor smoking is permitted; and the libraries in general are open daily except on Friday and during Ramazan and the two Beirams from about 9 A.M. to afternoon prayer; those present at the time of mid-day prayer quit their studies and perform their devotions in common. Many of the most valuable and costly of the illuminated MSS. are in the two libraries of the seraglio the larger of which containing at present 4400 volumes is the most extensive collection of books in Constantinople: but they can scarcely be reckoned among the public libraries as admission to them is obtained with difficulty and only by special permission even by Moslems. Besides the MSS. in the great seraglio library among the most valuable of which is a magnificent copy of the Arabic poem of Antar and another of the Gulistan the great moral poem of Saadi there is a canvass genealogical tree containing portraits of all the sovereigns of the house of Osman from originals preserved in the sultan's private library. Next in importance is the library of the mosque of Aya Sofia (St Sophia ) founded by Mohammed the Conqueror which is rich in valuable MSS. and contains a Koran said to have been written by the hand of the Khalif Ali the son-in-law of the Prophet: another attributed to the same source as well as one ascribed to the Khalif Omar are in the library of Osman III. attached to the beautiful mosque of Noor-Osmanya. But the most interesting of the public libraries though the number of its volumes does not exceed sixteen hundred is that of the grand-vizir Raghib Pasha a celebrated patron of learning in the middle of the last century. It stands in an enclosed court which also contains a free school fountains and the monuments of the founder and his family. The library itself is a lofty square chamber with a central dome and four semi-domes supported by marble columns and round the apartment ""runs a complete and most correct version of the celebrated Boorda of the poet Keab "" (a poem composed in honour of Mohammed by an Arab contemporary ) ""in gold letters fourteen inches long on a green ground forming an original and brilliant embellishment."" Its contents include some of the richest and rarest specimens of Persian and Arabic caligraphy; and the founder's note-book with a copy of his divan (poetical works ) is also exhibited: ""the former proves that he was not unaccomplished as a draughtsman and architect.... There is a lightness and elegance in this building which renders it superior to all others: but he survived its foundation only three years. His remains are deposited in the north-east angle of the court on an elevated terrace beneath open marble canopy protected by a wirework trellis. This with the roses and myrtles and the figs vines pomegranates and cypresses that cast their shade around gives it the appearance of a noble aviary more than that of a repository for the dead: and the doves that nestle in the overhanging branches and fill the air with their querulous notes add to the delusion."" The total number of volumes in all the public libraries is believed not to exceed 75 000 of which at least a fourth are duplicates; ""it must be remembered however that with a few modern exceptions the whole are MSS. admirably transcribed elaborately embellished: and thus taking one volume with another the sums paid for each work far exceed the average price of rare printed editions in Europe."" Besides these stores of Oriental lore the library of the medical academy established by Mahmood II. in the palace of Galata Serai contains several hundred volumes of the best French medical works which the professors are allowed to carry to their own apartments--a privilege not allowed in any other library. The art of printing was first introduced in 1726 by a Hungarian renegade named Ibrahim (known as _Basmadji_ or the printer ) who was patronised by the Sultan Achmet III;--but the establishment languished after his death; and though revived in 1784 by Sultan Abdoul Hamid it was only after the destruction of the janissaries the enemies of every innovation that the press began to exhibit any thing like activity. At present there are four imperial printing establishments; and the types which were formerly cast in Venice being now manufactured in Stamboul a marked improvement has taken place in the character. Though the Koran and all religious and doctrinal works are still transcribed exclusively by hand the art of printing is regarded with great jealousy by the booksellers who hold that ""presses are made from the calcined wood of Al-Zacum the dread tree of the lowest pit; while transcribers have their seats near the gate of the seventh heaven."" The newspaper press of Stamboul is still in its infancy--for though the _Takwim_ or _Moniteur Ottoman_ established in 1831 by Mahmood II. as an official gazette was conducted with considerable ability by the original editor M. Blaque and his successor M. Francesschi the sudden death of both these gentlemen within a short period of each other awakened strong suspicions of foul play; and the French translation published for European circulation has since sunk into a mere transcript of the Turkish original which consists of little but official announcements. Several attempts made by Mr Churchill and others to establish a non-official paper for the advocacy of Turkish interests have been smothered after a brief existence by the jealousy of Russia and France: ""the result is that the _Moniteur_ is a dull court-circular and the Smyrna journals abandoned to chance communications are neither prompt nor exact in circulating or detailing events.""[30] The spread of literary cultivation among the Turks of the present day and the European education which many of the rising generation have received has naturally led to a taste for European literature; and many possess libraries stored not only with the lore of the East but with the choicest treasures of the French and English classics. Ali Effendi late ambassador from the Porte to the court of St James's is well known to have collected a most extensive and valuable library during his residence in the regions of the West; and Mr White enumerates several young Osmanlis distinguished for their accomplishments in the literature and science of the Franks. Emin Pasha the director of the Imperial Military Academy and Bekir Pasha late superintendent of the small-arm manufactory at Dolma-Baktchi were both educated in England the latter at Woolwich and the former at Cambridge where he gained a prize for his mathematical attainments. Fouad Effendi son of the celebrated poet Izzet-Mollah and himself a poet of no small note ""possesses a choice library of some 2000 volumes in French English and Italian;"" and Derwish Effendi professor of natural history in the academy of Galata Serai ""has studied in France and England and is not less esteemed for his knowledge than for his modesty."" But foremost among this _Tugenbund_ the future hopes of Turkey stands one whose name has already appeared in the pages of _Maga_ (Sept. 1841 p. 304 ) Achmet Wekif Effendi now third dragoman to the Porte and son of Rouh-ed-deen Effendi late Secretary of Legation at Vienna whom Mr White pronounces with justice ""one of the most rising and enlightened young men of the Turkish empire. His knowledge of the French language is perfect and he adds to this an intimate acquaintance with the literature of that country and of England."" While men like these (and we could add other names to those enumerated by Mr White from our personal knowledge) are in training for the future administration of the empire there is yet hope of the regeneration of the Osmanli nation. In no country is primary instruction more general than in Turkey. Each of the smaller mosques has attached to it an elementary school superintended by the imam where the children of the lower classes are taught to read and write and to repeat the Koran by heart; while those intended for the liberal professions undergo a long and laborious course of study at the medressehs or colleges of the great mosques some of which are intended to train youth in general literature or qualify them for government employments while others are devoted to the study of theology and jurisprudence. Mr White states the number of students in Stamboul in 1843 at not less than 5000 all of whom were lodged instructed and furnished with one meal a-day at the expense of the _wakoof_ or foundation (a term which we shall hereafter more fully explain ) all their other expenses being at their own charge; but ""the sallow complexions and exhausted appearance of these young men indicate intense labour or most limited commons."" After thus successfully vindicating the Turks from the charge so often brought against them by travellers who have only spent a few weeks at Pera of ignorance and indifference to knowledge Mr White thus sums up the general question of education. ""For ten men that _can_ read among Perotes and Fanariotes there are an equal number that _do_ read at Constantinople; and taking the mass of the better classes indiscriminately it will be found also that there are more libraries of useful books in Turkish houses than in those of Greeks and Armenians."" And though ""the number of Turkish ladies that can read is much less than those of Pera and the Fanar those who can read among the former never open a bad book; while among the latter there is scarcely one that ever reads a good work unless it be the catechism or breviary on certain forced occasions. And while neither Greek nor Armenian women occupy themselves with literature Constantinople can boast of more than one female author. Among the most celebrated of these is Laila Khanum niece to the above-mentioned Izzet-Mollah. Her poems are principally satirical and she is held in great dread by her sex who tremble at her cutting pen. Her _divan_ (collection of poems) has been printed and amounts to three volumes. Laila Khanum is also famed for her songs which are set to music and highly popular. Hassena Khanum wife of the Hakim Bashy (chief physician ) is likewise renowned for the purity and elegance of her style as a letter-writer which entitles her to the appellation of the Turkish Sevigné."" But we must again diverge in following Mr White's desultory steps from the Turkish fair ones--whom he has so satisfactorily cleared from Lord Byron's imputation that ""They cannot read and so don't lisp in criticism; Nor write and so they don't affect the muse--"" to his dissertation on the _wakoofs_ above referred to;--a word implying a deposit or mortgage and used to designate a species of tenure under which the greater part of the landed property throughout the empire is held and the nature of which is but imperfectly understood in Europe. These institutions have existed from the earliest period of Islam; but nowhere to so great an extent as in the Ottoman empire; where they were divided by Soliman the Magnificent into three classes all alike held sacred and exempt from confiscation either by the sovereign or courts of law. The first class comprises the lands or funds absolutely bequeathed to the mosques either by founders or subsequent benefactors the revenues of which are employed in the payment of the imams khatibs and other ministers of religion attached to their service and to the gratuitous maintenance of the colleges and hospitals dependent on them; and which are in all cases amply sufficient for these purposes. ""No demands in the shape of tithes collections or entrance-money are ever made: the doors of all temples are open to the public without distinction:"" and although the imam usually receives a fee for marriages name-givings circumcisions and funerals no demand can be legally made. The author proceeds to enumerate the endowments in 1842 as nearly as they could be ascertained of the seventeen mosques in the capital entitled to rank as imperial foundations--the richest being that of Aya-Sofia amounting to 1 500 000 piastres annually while the others vary from 710 000 to 100 000 piastres. The ecclesiastical staff of an imperial mosque comprehends in general from thirty to forty persons--the sheikh who preaches after mid-day prayer on Friday and who is a member of the superior ecclesiastical synod with rank and privileges nearly similar to those of our bishops:--two or more khatibs who recite the khotbah or prayer for the Prophet and sultan:--four imams who alternately read prayers:--twelve to twenty muezzins who call to prayers from the minarets:--with fifteen to twenty subordinate functionaries. The finances of each of the mosques are regulated by a _nazir_ (inspector) and _mutawelly_ (accountant ) who are bound by law to render half-yearly statements; and these offices lucrative from the opportunities they afford for malversation are usually held for life by the holders for the time being of high official stations or sometimes by the heirs of the founders who thus secure their lands from forfeiture or confiscation; or by persons to whom they have been bequeathed with power to nominate their successors. The annual revenues of the imperial mosques being triple their expenditure the wakoof fund has been often encroached upon by the Sultan nominally as a loan under the warrant of the minister of finance who checks the accounts of the imperial nazir; and by these not unfrequent inroads as well as by the peculations of the superintendents the accumulations though great are not so enormous as they would otherwise become. The second class comprises the funds devoted to the maintenance of public baths libraries fountains alms-houses and of useful and charitable institutions in general. They are frequently charged with annuities to the representatives of the founder; and in all foundations for gratuitous education or distribution of alms or food founders' kin have the preference. They are all registered in the treasury; but the foundation is invalidated if the property assigned for its support be encumbered by mortgages or other obligations:--nor can any one labouring under an incurable disease convert freehold property into wakoof except as a testator in which case the inalienable rights of the heirs to two-thirds of the property are secured:--a third part only according to law being otherwise disposable by will. The third class of wakoofs (called _ady_ or customary the others being termed _shary_ or legal as sanctioned by religious law) are considered as secular foundations consisting of lands purchased by the religious wakoofs from their accumulations on reversion at the death of the assigner or failure of his direct heirs for an inconsiderable portion of their value leaving to the vendors in the interim the full enjoyment of the property which is frequently continued to their nephews and brothers on the same terms. ""At first this plan was not considered lucrative for the wakoofs: but when the system was widely extended the multitude of assignments which fell in every year from death and default of issue soon crowned the speculation with success in a country where the tenure of life is eminently uncertain not only from the caprices of sultans but from the constant ravages of plague.... The advantages to sellers were equally great. They secured themselves from confiscation and their heirs from spoliation at their demise. They were enabled to raise money to the value of a sixth or eighth of their capital on payment of a trifling interest and yet retained the full enjoyment of the whole for themselves and immediate issue. By founding these wakoofs sellers are also enabled to check the extravagance of their children who can neither mortgage nor alienate the property--a practice nearly as common in Turkey as in other countries."" Not less than three-fourths of the buildings and cultivated lands throughout the empire according to the author and even the imperial domains are held under one or other of these wakoof tenures which thus represent the great landed interests of the country. Formerly the domains belonging to the mosques in each pashalik were let on annual leases (as the public revenues are still farmed) to _multezim_ or contractors generally the pashas of the provinces: but the system of subletting and dilapidation to which this course of short leases gave rise was so ruinous to the agricultural population and the property of the wakoofs that a thorough reform was introduced in the reign of Abdoul-Hamid the father of Mahmood II. The lands were now let on life tenancies (_malikania_ ) on the same system of beneficial leases and large fines on renewals which prevails with respect to the property of collegiate and other corporate bodies in England; which has greatly improved their condition as it is no longer the interest of the lessee to rack the peasantry or damage the property for the sake of present advantage. ""More than one monarch has entertained projects of dispossessing the mosques of these privileges and of placing the wakoofya under the exclusive superintendence of government. Sultan Mahmood II. seriously contemplated carrying this plan into effect and probably would have done so had his life been spared. The government in this case would have paid the salaries of all sheikhs priests and persons attached to the sacred edifices together with all repairs and expenses of their dependent institutions and would have converted the surplus to state purposes. Various plans were suggested to Mahmood's predecessors; but during the existence of the janissaries no one dared to interfere with institutions whence the Oolema (men of law and religion ) intimately connected with the janissaries derived invariable profit."" Returning at length from this long digression to the jewel bezestan and passing from the south-eastern or mercers' gate ""through lines of shops stored with a variety of ready-made articles required by ladies "" we reach the Silk Bezestan (Sandal Bezestany ) which like the other has four arched gates named after different trades and is surmounted by twenty domes four in a line. Though occupied solely by Armenians and regulated by a committee of six Armenian elders it is directed by a Turkish kehaya or president with his deputy whose duty it is to superintend the police and collect the government dues. The scene presented by the interior presents a striking contrast to the other and (we regret to say) not at all to the advantage of the Christians. ""The building is gloomy and badly lighted and appears not to have been white-washed or cleansed since the first construction; and while a stranger may repeatedly enter the jewel bezestan and its tenants though they see him gazing with covetous eyes on some antiquated object will scarcely condescend to say 'Né istersiniz?' (what want you?) ... the clamours of the Armenians to attract purchasers are only to be surpassed by their want of honesty. Strangers may often pay too much to Turkish shopkeepers but they will receive fair weight to a hair: whereas they will be subject not only to overcharge but to short quantity at the hands of the Armeninians and their more profligate imitators the Greek dealers."" The original silk manufactories were established before the conquest of Constantinople at the old capital of Broussa whence most of the raw material is still derived the abundance of mulberry trees in its neighbourhood being favourable to the nurture of the silkworm; little Broussa silk is however now sold in the sandal bezestany the manufacture being principally carried on along the shores of the Bosphorus. ""But within the last ten years and especially since the conclusion of commercial treaties with the Porte the silk trade in home-made articles has decreased 50 per cent. A large supply of common imitation goods is now received from England France and Italy and the richer articles principally manufactured at Lyons have completely superseded those formerly received from Broussa or fabricated at Scutari and Constantinople."" The trade in furs as well as that in silk is entirely in the hands of the Armenians but has greatly fallen off since the European dress now worn by the court and the official personages replaced the old Turkish costume. In former times the quality of the fur worn by different ranks and at different seasons of the year was a matter of strict etiquette regulated by the example of the sultan who on a day previously fixed by the imperial astrologer repaired in state to the mosque arrayed in furs varying from the squirrel or red fox assumed at the beginning of autumn to the samoor or sable worn during the depth of winter; while all ranks of persons in office changed their furs on the same day with the monarch for those appropriated to their respective grades. The most costly were those of the black fox and sable the former of which was restricted unless by special permission to the use of royalty: while sable was reserved for vizirs and pashas of the highest rank. The price of these furs indeed placed them beyond the reach of ordinary purchasers 15 000 or 20 000 piastres being no unusual price for a sable lined pelisse while black fox cost twice as much. In the present day the _kurk_ or pelisse is never worn by civil or military functionaries except in private: but it still continues in general use among the sheikhs and men of the law ""who may be seen mounted on fat ambling galloways with richly embroidered saddle-cloths and embossed bridles attired in kurks faced with sables in all the pomp of ancient times."" The kurk is moreover in harem etiquette the recognised symbol of matronly rank:--and its assumption by a Circassian is a significant intimation to the other inmates of the position she has assumed as the favourite of their master. The same rule extends to the imperial palace where the elevation of a fair slave to the rank of _kadinn_ (the title given to the partners of the sultan) is announced to her by her receiving a pelisse lined with sables from the _ket-khoda_ or mistress of the palace the principal of the seven great female officers to whom is entrusted the management of all matters connected with the harem. The imperial favourites are limited by law to seven but this number is seldom complete; the present sultan has hitherto raised only five to this rank one of whom died of consumption in 1842. These ladies are now always Circassian slaves and though never manumitted have each their separate establishments suites of apartments and female slaves acting as ladies of honour &c. Their slipper or (as we should call it) pin money is about 25 000 piastres (£240) monthly--their other expenses being defrayed by the sultan's treasurer. Mr White enters into considerable detail on the interior arrangements of the seraglio the private life of the sultan &c.; but as it does not appear from what sources his information is derived we shall maintain an Oriental reserve on these subjects. The slave-markets and condition of slaves in the East is treated at considerable length: but as the erroneous notions formerly entertained have been in a great measure dispelled by more correct views obtained by modern travellers it is sufficient to observe that ""the laws and customs relative to the treatment of slaves in Turkey divest their condition of its worst features and place the slave nearly on a level with the free servitor: nay in many instances the condition of the slave especially of white slaves is superior to the other; as the path of honour and fortune is more accessible to the dependent and protected slave than to the independent man of lower degree."" It is well known that many of those holding the highest dignities of the state--Halil Pasha brother-in-law of the Sultan--Khosref who for many years virtually ruled the empire with numberless others were originally slaves: and in all cases the liberation of male slaves after seven or nine years' servitude is ordained by _adet_ or custom which in Turkey is stronger than law. This rule is rarely infringed:--and excepting the slaves of men in the middle ranks of life who frequently adopt their master's trade and are employed by him as workmen they in most cases become domestic servants or enter the army as holding out the greatest prospect of honour and promotion. The condition of white female slaves is even more favourable. In point of dress and equipment they are on a par with their mistresses the menial offices in all great harems being performed by negresses;--and frequent instances occur where parents prefer slaves educated in their own families to free women as wives for their sons:--the only distinction being in the title of _kadinn_ which may be considered equivalent to _madame_ and which is always borne by these emancipated slaves instead of _khanum_ (or _lady_ ) used by women of free birth. Female slaves are rarely sold or parted with except for extreme misconduct; and though it is customary for their masters in the event of their becoming mothers to enfranchise and marry them ""the facility of divorce is such that women if mothers prefer remaining slaves to being legally married: as they are aware that custom prevents their being sold when in the former condition: whereas their having a family is no bar to divorce when married."" The guilds or corporations of the different trades and professions to which allusion has more than once been made and which constitute what may be called the municipality of Constantinople were formerly mustered and paraded through the city on every occasion when the Sandjak-Shereef (or holy banner of Mahommed) was taken from the seraglio to accompany the army. This gathering the object of which was to ascertain the number of men who could be levied in case of extremity for the defence of the capital was first ordained by Mourad IV. [31] before his march against Bagdad in 1638; when according to Evliya Effendi 200 000 men fit to bear arms passed in review--and the last muster was in the reign of Mustapha III. at the commencement of the disastrous war with Russia in 1769. Its subsequent discontinuance is said to have been owing to an insult then offered by the guild of _emirs_ (or descendants of the Prophet) to the Austrian Internuncio who was detected in witnessing incognito the procession of the Sandjak-Shereef deemed too sacred for the eyes of an infidel--and a tumult ensued in which many Christians were maltreated and murdered and which had nearly led to a rupture with the court of Vienna. On this occasion the number of guilds was forty-six subdivided into 554 minor sections; and excepting the disappearance of those more immediately connect

d with the janissaries it is probable that little or no change has since taken place. These guilds included not only the handicraft and other trades but the physicians and other learned professions and even the _Oolemah_ and imams and others connected with the mosques. Each marched with its own badges and ensigns headed by its own officers of whom there were seven of the first grade with their deputies and subordinates all elected by the crafts and entrusted with the control of its affairs subject to the approbation of a council of delegates: while the property of these corporations is invariably secured by being made _wakoof_ the nature of which has been already explained. The shoemakers' saddlers' and tanners' guilds are among the strongest in point of numbers and from them were drawn the _élite_ of the janissaries stationed in the capital after the cruel system of seizing Christian children for recruits had been discontinued; the tailors are also a numerous and resolute craft generally well affected to government to which they rendered important services in the overthrow of the janissaries in 1826 when the Sandjak-Shereef[32] was displayed in pursuance of the _Fethwa_ of the mufti excommunicating the sons of Hadji-Bektash and the guilds mustered in arms by thousands for the support of the Sheikh al Islam and the Commander of the Faithful. Among these fraternities one of the most numerous is that of the _kayikjees_ or boatmen of whom there are not fewer than 19 000 mostly Turks in the city and its suburbs; while 5000 more nearly all of whom are Greeks are found in the villages of the Bosphorus. They are all registered in the books of the _kayikjee-bashi_ or chief of the boatmen paying each eight piastres monthly (or twice as much if unmarried) for their _teskera_ or license: and cannot remove from the stations assigned them without giving notice. The skill and activity of these men in the management of their light and apparently fragile skiffs has been celebrated by almost every tourist who has floated on the waters of the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus: and not less precise is the accuracy with which is adjusted the number of oars to be employed by the members of the European _corps diplomatique_ and the great officers of the Porte according to their relative ranks; the smallest infringement of which would be regarded as an unpardonable breach of etiquette. The oars and mouldings are painted of the national colours with the hulls white or black; the latter colour is usually affected by the Turkish grandees with the exception of the capitan-pasha who is alone privileged to use a green boat. Ambassadors-extraordinary are entitled to ten oars; and the same number is assigned to the grand-vizir the mufti and ministers holding the rank of _mushir_ or marshal the highest degree in the new scale of Ottoman precedence. Pashas of the second rank the _cazi-askers_ or grand judges of Anatolia and Roumelia with other functionaries of equivalent grade are allowed eight oars the number employed by the Austrian Internuncio and by ministers-plenipotentiary; while three or five pair of sculls are allotted to _chargés d'affaires_ and the heads of different departments at the Porte. The procession of the sultan when he proceeds to the mosque by water consists of six kayiks the largest of which is seventy-eight feet in length and pulled by twenty-four rowers--under the old _régime_ the crew was taken from the bostandjis whose chief the bostandji-bashi held the helm; but since the abolition of that corps they have been chosen without distinction of creed from the common boatmen. The imperial barge is distinguished independent of its superior size by the gold-embroidered canopy of crimson silk surmounted by crescents at the stern; it is painted white within and without with rich gilt mouldings under which runs a broad external green border ornamented with gilded arabesques. The oars are painted white with gold scrolls; the stern is adorned with massive gilt carvings; and the long projecting prow with a richly-gilded ornament representing a palm-branch curling upwards. Behind this flutters a gilded falcon the emblem of the house of Osman. The carvings and ornaments of these boats are elaborately finished and exquisitely light and graceful. These embellishments combined with the loose white dresses blue-tasselled red caps and muscular forms of the boatmen as they rise from their seats vigorously plunge their oars into the dark blue waters and propel the kayiks with racehorse speed give to these splendid vessels an air of majesty and brilliancy not less characteristic than original and imposing. Many instances have occurred in which men have risen from the class of boatmen to stations of high honour and dignity; the most recent instance of which was in the case of the arch-traitor Achmet Fevzy Pasha who in 1839 betrayed the Ottoman fleet under his command into the hands of Mohammed Ali--a deed of unparalleled perfidy for which he righteously received a traitor's reward perishing in January 1843 (as was generally believed) by poison administered by the orders of the Egyptian Viceroy. The kayikjees as a class are generally considered in point of personal advantages the finest body of men in the empire; and share with the _sakkas_ or water-carriers--another numerous and powerful guild equally remarkable with the kayikjees for their symmetry and athletic proportions--the dangerous reputation of being distinguished favourites of the fair sex--doubly dangerous in a country where in such cases ""the cord or scimitar is the doom of the stronger sex--the deep sea-bed that of the weaker. Money will counterbalance all crimes in Turkey save female frailty. For this neither religious law nor social customs admit atonement. Tears beauty youth gold--untold gold--are of no avail. The fish of the Bosphorus and Propontis could disclose fearful secrets even in our days:""--and as a natural transition apparently from cause to effect Mr White proceeds in the next chapter to give an account of the Balyk-Bazary the Billingsgate of Stamboul. But we shall not follow him through his enumeration of such a carte as throws the glories of a Blackwall dinner into dim eclipse and which no other waters of Europe could probably rival:--since in Mr White's usual course of digression upon digression the mention of the Fishmarket Gate the usual place of executions leads him off again at a tangent to the consideration of the criminal law and its present administration in the Ottoman Empire. There is no change among those wrought since the introduction of the new system more calculated forcibly to impress those who had known Constantinople in former years than the almost total cessation of those public executions the sanguinary frequency of which formed so obtrusive and revolting a feature under the old _régime_. Since the fate of the unfortunate Pertef Pasha in 1837 no one has suffered death for political offences:--and the abolition by Sultan Mahmoud immediately after the destruction of the janissaries of the _Moukhallafat Kalemy_ or Court of Confiscations put an end to the atrocious system which had for centuries made wealth a sufficient pretext for the murder of its possessors. In all cases of banishment or condemnation to death however arbitrary confiscation of property inevitably followed: but the wealthy Armenians and Greeks were usually selected as the victims of these ruthless deeds of despotism and rapacity; numerous records of which may be seen in the Christian burying-grounds where the rudely-carved figure of a headless trunk or a hanging man indicates the fate of the sufferer. But the humane and politic act of Mahmoud which rendered riches no longer a crime has produced its natural effects in the impulse which has been given to commercial activity and public confidence by the security thus afforded to life and property. ""The government finds the Armenians willing to advance money in case of need; and there is scarcely a pasha of rank who has not recourse to their assistance which is the more readily afforded as the Armenians are aware that their debtors' lives and property as well as their own are secure and that they shall not endure extreme persecution in the event of suing those on whom they have claims."" In criminal cases the administration of justice by the Moslem law appears at all times to have been tempered by lenity; and the extreme repugnance of the present sultan to sign death-warrants even in cases which in this country would be considered as amounting to wilful murder has rendered capital punishments extremely rare: while the horrible death by impalement and the amputation of the hand for theft have fallen into complete disuse. Offences are tried in the first instance in the court of the Cazi-asker or grand judge of Roumelia or Anatolia according as the crime has been committed in Europe or Asia: from this tribunal an appeal lies to the Supreme Council of justice the decisions of which require to be further ratified by the Mufti. The _procès-verbal_ of two of the cases above referred to is given at length; in one of which the murderer escaped condign punishment only because the extreme youth of the only eye-witness a slave nine years old prevented his testimony from being received otherwise than as _circumstantial_ evidence:--in the other ""it being essential to make a lasting and impressive public example it was resolved that the criminals should not be put to death but condemned to such ignominious public chastisement as might serve during many years as a warning to others."" The sentence in the former case was ten and in the latter seven years' public labour in heavy irons--a punishment of extreme severity frequently terminating in the death of the convict. Nafiz Bey the principal offender in the second of the above cases did not survive his sentence more than twenty months. ""On examining a multitude of condemnations for crimes of magnitude the maximum average when death was not awarded was seven years' hard labour in chains and fine for which the convict is subsequently imprisoned as a simple debtor till the sum is paid. The average punishment for theft robbery assault and slightly wounding is three years' hard labour with costs and damages. These sentences (of which several examples are given) were referred according to established forms from the local tribunals to the supreme council: and before being carried into effect were legalized by a _fethwa_ (decree) of the Sheikh-Islam (Mufti ) and after that by the sultan's warrant; a process affording a triple advantage to the accused each reference serving as an appeal."" The exclusive jurisdiction over the subjects of their own nation exercised by the legations of the different European powers in virtue of capitulations with the Porte was doubtless at one time necessary for the protection of foreigners from the arbitrary proceedings of Turkish despotism; it has however given rise to great abuses and at the present day its practical effect is only to secure impunity to crime by impeding the course of justice. The system in all the legations is extremely defective; ""but in none is it more flagrantly vicious and ineffective than in that of Great Britain."" This is a grave charge; but only too fully borne out by the facts adduced. Not fewer than three thousand British subjects are now domiciled in and about the Turkish capital chiefly vagabonds and desperadoes driven by the rigour of English law from Malta and the Ionian Isles:--and half the outrages in Stamboul ""are committed by or charged to the Queen's adopted subjects who well knowing that eventual impunity is their privilege are not restrained by fear of retribution."" All the zeal and energy of our consul-general Mr Cartwright (in whom are vested the judicial functions exercised by chancellors of other legations ) are paralysed by the necessity of adhering to the forms of British law the execution of which is practically impossible. ""In a case of murder or felony for instance --a case which often occurs--a _pro formâ_ verdict of guilty is returned; but what follows? The ambassador has no power to order the law to be carried into effect: nothing remains therefore but to send the accused with the depositions to Malta or England. But the Maltese courts declare themselves incompetent and either liberate or send back the prisoner; and English tribunals do not adjudicate on documentary evidence. The consequence is that unless witnesses proceed to England criminals must be liberated at Pera or sent to be liberated at home for want of legal testimony. They have then their action at law against the consul-general for illegal arrest."" It appears scarcely credible that a state of things so calculated to degrade the British national character in the eyes of the representatives of the other European powers should ever have been suffered to exist and still more that it should have remained so long unheeded. A bill was indeed carried through Parliament in 1835 in consequence of the urgent reclamations of Lord Ponsonby and Mr Cartwright for empowering the Crown to remedy the evil; but though the subject was again pressed by Sir Stratford Canning in 1842 it still remains a dead letter. Mr White has done good service in placing this plain and undeniable statement of facts before the public eye; and we trust that the next session of Parliament will not pass over without our seeing the point brought forward by Mr D'Israeli Mr Monckton Milnes or some other of those members of the legislature whose personal knowledge of the East qualifies them to undertake it. ""One plan ought to be adopted forthwith that of investing the consul-general with such full powers as are granted to London police magistrates or if possible to any magistrates at quarter-sessions. He would then be able to dispose of a multitude of minor correctional cases which now pass unpunished to the constant scandal of all other nations. The delegated power might be arbitrary and inconsistent with our constitutional habits but the evil requires extrajudicial measures."" In pursuing Mr White's devious course through the various marts of Constantinople we have not yet brought our readers to the Missr Tcharshy or Egyptian market probably the most diversified and purely Oriental scene to be seen in Constantinople and a representation of which forms the frontispiece to one of the volumes. The building the entrance to which is between the Fishmarket Gate and the beautiful mosque of the Valida (built by the mother of Mohammed IV. ) consists of an arcade lighted from the roof like those of our own capital 140 yards long and 20 wide filled on each side with shops not separated from each other by partitions so as to impede the view; the tenants of which are all Osmanlis and dealers exclusively in perfumes spices &c. imported chiefly through Egypt from India Arabia &c. Here may be found ""the Persian atar-gul's perfume "" sandalwood and odoriferous woods of all kinds from the lands of the East; opium for the _Teryakis_ a race whose numbers are happily now daily decreasing; ambergris for pastilles; ""cinnamon and ginger nutmegs and cloves;"" the pink henna powder brought from Mekka by the pilgrims for tinging ladies' fingers though these ""rosy-fingered Auroras"" (as Mr W. kindly warns the poetasters of Franguestan) are now only to be found among slaves and the lower orders the custom being now utterly exploded among dames of high degree: ""add to the above spices roots dyewoods and minerals and colours of every denomination and an idea may be formed of the contents of this neatly-arranged and picturesque bazar. Its magnitude its abundance and variety of goods the order that reigns on every side and the respectability of the dealers render it one of the most original and interesting sights of the city; it serves to refresh the senses and to dispel the unfavourable impressions caused on first landing."" In the foregoing remarks and extracts it has been our aim rather to give a condensed view of the information to be derived from the volumes before us on topics of interest than to attempt any thing like a general abstract of a work so multifarious in its nature and so broken into detail as to render the ordinary rules of criticism as inapplicable to it as they would be to an encylopædia. In point of arrangement indeed the latter would have the advantage; for a total absence of _lucidus ordo_ pervades Mr White's pages to a degree scarcely to be excused even by the very miscellaneous nature of the subject. Thus while constant reference is made from the first to the bezestans the names of their different gates &c. no description of these edifices occurs till the middle of the second volume where it is introduced apropos to nothing between the public libraries and the fur-market. The chapter headed ""Capital Punishments "" (iv. vol. 1.) is principally devoted to political disquisitions with an episode on lunatic asylums and the medical academy of Galata Serai while only a few pages are occupied by the subject implied in the title; which is treated at greater length and illustrated by the _procès-verbaux_ of several criminal trials at the end of the second volume where it is brought in as a digression from the slavery laws on the point of the admissibility of a slave's evidence! But without following Mr White further through the slipper-market the poultry-market the coffee-shops and tobacco-shops the fruit and flower market the Ozoon Tcharshy or long market devoted to the sale of articles of dress and household furniture _cum multis aliis_; it will suffice to say that there is no article whatever either of luxury or use sold in Constantinople from diamonds to old clothes of which some account with the locality in which it is procurable is not to be found in some part or other of his volumes. We have besides disquisitions on statistics and military matters; aqueducts and baths marriages and funerals farriery and cookery &c. &c.--in fact on every imaginable subject except the price of railway shares which are as yet to the Turks a pleasure to come. It would be unpardonable to omit mentioning however for the benefit of gourmands that for the savoury viands called kabobs and other Stamboul delicacies the shop of the worthy Hadji Mustapha on the south side of the street called Divan-Yolly stands unequaled; while horticulturists and poetasters should be informed that in spite of Lord Byron's fragrant descriptions of ""the gardens of Gul in their bloom "" the finer European roses do not sympathize with the climate. Lady Ponsonby's attempts to introduce the moss-rose at Therapia failed; and the only place where they have succeeded is the garden of Count Stürmer the Austrian Internuncio whose palace is in more respects than one according to Mr White the Gulistan of Stamboul society. But we cannot take leave of this part of the subject without remarking that while all praise is due to Mr White's accuracy in describing the scenes and subjects on which he speaks from personal knowledge his acquaintance with past Turkish history appears to be by no means on a par with the insight he has succeeded in acquiring into the usages and manners of the Turks of the present day. The innumerable anecdotes interspersed through his pages and which often mar rather than aid the effect of the more solid matter are frequently both improbable and pointless; and the lapses which here and there occur in matters of historical fact are almost incomprehensible. Thus we are told (i. 179 ) that the favour enjoyed (until recently) by Riza Pasha was owing to his having rescued the present sultan when a child from a reservoir in the Imperial Gardens of Beglerbey into which he had been hurled by his father in a fit of brutal fury--an act wholly alien to the character of Mahmoud but which (as Mr W. observes ) ""will not appear improbable to those acquainted with Oriental history""--since it is found related in all its circumstances in Rycaut's history of the reign of Ibrahim whose infant son afterwards Mohammed IV. nearly perished in this manner by his hands and retained through life the scar of a wound on the face received in the fall. This palpable anachronism is balanced in the next page by a version of the latter incident in which Mohammed's wound is said to have been inflicted by the dagger of his intoxicated father irritated by a rebuke from the prince (who be it remarked was only seven years old at Ibrahim's death some years later) on his unseemly exhibition of himself as a dancer. As a further instance of paternal barbarity in the Osmanli sultans it is related how Selim I. was bastinadoed by command of his father Bajazet II. for misconduct in the government of Bagdad! with the marvellous addition (worthy of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ ) that from the sticks used for his punishment and planted by his sorrowing tutor sprung the grove of Tchibookly opposite Yenikouy! History will show that Selim and Bajazet never met after the accession of the latter except when the rebellious son met the father in arms at Tchourlou; and it is well known that Bagdad did not become part of the Ottoman empire till the reign of Soliman the Magnificent the son of Selim. The mention of the City of the Khalifs indeed seems destined to lead Mr White into error; for in another story the circumstances of which differ in every point from the same incident as related by Oriental historians we find the Ommiyade Khalif Yezid III. who died A.D. 723 (twenty-seven years before the accession of the Abbasides and forty before the foundation of Bagdad ) spoken of as an Abbaside khalif of Bagdad! Again we find in the list of geographical writers (ii. 172 ) ""Ebul Feredj Prince of Hama 1331""--thus confounding the monk Gregory Abulpharagius with the Arabic Livy Abulfeda a prince of the line of Saladin! This last error indeed can scarcely be more than a slip of the pen. But instances of this kind might be multiplied; and it would be well if such passages with numerous idle legends (such as the patronage of black bears by the Abbasides and brown bears by the Ommiyades ) be omitted in any future edition. We have reserved for the conclusion of our notice the consideration of Mr White's observations on the late _constitution_ (as it has been called) of Gul-khana a visionary scheme concocted by Reshid Pasha under French influence by which it was proposed to secure equal rights to all the component parts of the heterogeneous mass which constitutes the population of the Ottoman empire. The author's remarks on this well-meant but crude and impracticable _coup-d'état_ evince a clear perception of the domestic interests and relative political position of Turkey which lead us to hope that he will erelong turn his attention on a more extended scale to the important subject of Ottoman politics. For the present we must content ourselves with laying before our readers in an abridged form the clear and comprehensive views here laid down on a question involving the future interests of Europe and of no European power more than of Great Britain. ""The population of the Turkish empire consists of several distinct races utterly opposed to each other in religion habits descent objects and in every moral and even physical characteristic. The Turkomans Kurds Arabs Egyptians Druses Maronites Albanians Bosnians Bulgarians Greeks Jews and Armenians are so many distinct nations inhabiting the same or contiguous soils without having intermixed in the slightest degree from their earliest conquest and without having a single object in common. Over these dissentient populations stands the pure Ottoman race the paramount nation charged with maintaining the equilibrium between all and with neutralizing the ascendancy of one faction by the aid of others. Were this control not to exist--were the Turks who represent their ancestors the conquerors of the land to be reduced to a level with those now beneath them or were the preponderating influence of the former to be destroyed by the elevation and equalization of the latter perpetual revolts and civil wars could not fail to ensue. The dependent populations now constituting so large a portion of the empire would continue the struggle until one of them obtained the supremacy at present exercised by the Turkish race or until the territory were divided among themselves or parcelled out by foreign powers. In this last hypothesis will be found the whole secret of the ardent sympathy evinced by most foreigners especially by the press of France for the subjugated races. ""Many benevolent men argue that the surest means of tranquillizing the tributaries of the Porte and attaching them to the government is by raising them in the social scale and by granting to all the same rights and immunities as are enjoyed by their rulers. But it has been repeatedly proved that concessions do but lead to fresh demands and that partial enfranchisement conducts to total emancipation. 'And why should they not?' is often asked. To this may be replied that the possession of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles by any other power or fraction of power than the Porte would be a source of interminable discord to Europe and irreparable detriment to England. It would not only affect our commerce and undermine our political influence throughout the East but would add enormously to our naval expenditure by requiring an augmentation of our maritime force equivalent to that now remaining neuter in the Golden Horn. Treaties it is said might be concluded exacting maritime restrictions. But what are treaties in the face of events? Whoever possesses the Bosphorus Propontis and Archipelago _must_ become a maritime nation in spite of treaties. Whoever possesses Constantinople _must_ become a great manufacturing and exporting nation in defiance of competition. In less than half a century the romantic villas and tapering cypresses that now fringe the blue Bosphorus would be replaced by factories and steam-chimneys--every one of which would be a deadly rival to a similar establishment in Great Britain. I argue as an Englishman whose duty it is to consider the material interests of his country now and hereafter and not to occupy himself with the theories of political philanthropists. ""According to the levelling system recommended as the basis of reforms all classes would eventually be assimilated--the desert Arabs to the laborious Maronites the intractable Arnoots to the industrious Bulgarians the thrifty Armenians to the restless and ambitious Greeks and the humble and parsimonious Jews to the haughty and lavish Osmanlis. Thus contiguous populations which now keep each other in check because their interests are divergent and their jealousies inveterate would find their interests assimilated; and in the event of opposition to government the Porte in lieu of being able to overcome one sect through the rivalry of another would find them all united against the dominant power. The Ottoman government should therefore avoid establishing any community of rights or interests among the races subjected to its rule. Each of these races ought to be governed according to its own usages and individual creed; there should be uniformity in the principles of administration but diversity in the application. The Ottoman tenure cannot be maintained but by decided and peremptory superiority. Adhesion on the part of the subjugated is impossible; connexion is all that can be expected; and to preserve this connexion the supremacy of conquest must not be relaxed. The Porte cannot expect attachment; it must consequently enforce submission. When this absolutism ceases to exist the power will pass into other hands; and where is the politician that can calculate the results of the transfer? One issue may be safely predicted--England must lose but cannot gain by the change. With the increasing embarrassments to commerce and industry which continental states are raising against Britain it is essential that we should not allow a false cry of philanthropy to throw us off our guard in the Levant. France in Africa and Russia on the Danube are intent on the same object. Their battle-cries are civilization and religion; their pretext the improvement of the Christian populations. But who is there that has studied the recent policy of the one and the undeviating system of the other since the days of Catherine that can question for a moment the purport of both? _And yet England and Austria have acted recently as if France were sincere and Russia disinterested._"" [Footnote 28: _Three Years in Constantinople; or Domestic Manners of the Turks in 1844._ By CHARLES WHITE ESQ.] [Footnote 29: The root of bezestan and bazar is _bez_ cloth;--of tcharshy _tchar_ four meaning a square.] [Footnote 30: A catalogue of works printed from the establishment of the press in 1726 to 1820 is given in the notes to Book 65 of Von Hammer Purgstall's Ottoman History.] [Footnote 31: Mr White erroneously calls him Mourad III. and places the expedition against Bagdad in 1834.] [Footnote 32: Mr White here introduces a digression on the other relics of the Prophet the Moslem festivals &c. his account of which presents little novelty; but he falls into the general error of describing the Mahmil borne by the holy camel in the pilgrim caravan as containing the brocade covering of the Kaaba when it is in fact merely an emblem of the presence of the monarch like an empty carriage sent in a procession.--(See _Lane's Modern Egyptians_ ii. p. 204 8vo. ed.) It is indeed sufficiently obvious that a box six feet high and two in diameter could not contain a piece of brocade sufficient to surround a building described by Burckhardt as eighteen paces long fourteen broad and from thirty-five to forty feet high.] THE MOUNTAIN AND THE CLOUD. (A REMINISCENCE OF SWITZERLAND) The cloud is to the mountain what motion is to the sea; it gives to it an infinite variety of expression--gives it a life--gives it joy and sufferance alternate calm and terror and anger. Without the cloud the mountain would still be sublime but monotonous; it would have but a picture-like existence. How thoroughly they understand and sympathize with each other--these glorious playmates these immortal brethren! Sometimes the cloud lies supported in the hollow of the hill as if out of love it feigned weariness and needed to be upheld. At other times the whole hill stands enveloped in the cloud that has expanded to embrace and to conceal it. No jealousy here. Each lives its own grand life under the equal eye of heaven. As you approach the mountains it seems that the clouds begin already to arrange themselves in bolder and more fantastic shapes. They have a fellowship here. They built their mountains upon mountains--their mountains which are as light as air--huge structures built at the giddy suggestion of the passing breeze. Theirs is the wild liberty of endless change by which they compensate themselves for their thin and fleeting existence and seem to mock the stationary forms of their stable brethren fast rooted to the earth. And how genially does the sun pour his beam upon these twin grandeurs! For a moment they are assimilated; his ray has permeated has etherealized the solid mountain has fixed and defined the floating vapour. What now is the one but a stationary cloud? what is the other but a risen hill?--poised not in the air but in the flood of light. I am never weary of watching the play of these giant children of the earth. Sometimes a soft white cloud so pure so bright sleeps amidst open sunshine nestled like an infant in the bosom of a green mountain. Sometimes the rising upcurling vapour will linger Just above the summit and seem for a while an incense exhaling from this vast censer. Sometimes it will descend and _drape_ the whole side of the hill as with a transparent veil. I have seen it sweep between me and the mountain like a sheeted ghost tall as the mountain till the strong daylight dissolved its thin substance and it rose again in flakes to decorate the blue heavens. But oh glorious above all! when on some brightest of days the whole mass of whitest clouds gathers midway upon the snow-topped mountain. How magnificent then is that bright eminence seen above the cloud! How it seems rising upwards--how it seems borne aloft by those innumerable wings--by those enormous pinions which I see stretching from the cloudy mass! What an ascension have we here!--what a transfiguration! O Raphael! I will not disparage thy name nor thy art but thy angels bearing on their wings the brightening saint to Heaven--what are they to the picture here? Lo

k! there--fairly in the sky--where we should see but the pure ether--above the clouds which themselves are sailing high in serenest air--yes there in the blue and giddy expanse stands the solid mountain glittering like a diamond. O God! the bewildered reason pent up in cities toils much to prove and penetrate thy being and thy nature--toils much in vain. Here I reason not--I see. The Great King lives--lo there is his throne. * * * * * To him who quits the plain for the mountain how the character of the cloud alters. That which seemed to belong exclusively to the sky has been drawn down and belongs as plainly to the earth. Mount some noble eminence and look down--you will see the clouds lying _on_ and _about_ the landscape as if they had fallen on it. You are on the steadfast earth and they are underneath you. You look down perhaps on the lake and there is a solitary cloud lying settled on it; when the rest of the fleecy drove had risen from their couch this idle sleeper had been left dreaming there. Or stay below and see the sun rise in the valley. When all is warm and clear upon the heights and the tops of the hills are fervid with the beams of heaven there still lies a cold white mass of cloud about your feet. It is not yet morning in the valley. There the cloud has been slumbering all night--there it found its home. It also will by and by receive the beam and then it will arise enveloping the hill as it ascends; the hill will have a second dawn; the cloud will assume its proud station in the sky; but it will return again to the valley at night. I am sailing on the lake of Brienz on a day golden with sunbeams. The high ridge of its rocky castellated hills is distinct as light can make it. Yet half-way up amidst the pine forests there lies upon the rich verdure a huge motionless cloud. What does it there? Its place was surely in the sky. But no; it belongs like ourselves to the earth. Is nature gaily mocking us when upon her impregnable hills she builds these _castles in the air_? But good heavens! what a military aspect all on a sudden does this mountain-side put on. Mark that innumerable host of pine-trees. What regiments of them are marching up the hill in the hot sun as if to storm those rocky forts above! What serried ranks! and yet there are some stragglers--some that have hastened on in front some that have lingered in the rear. Look at that tall gigantic pine breasting the hill alone like an old grenadier. How upright against the steep declivity! while his lengthened shadow is thrown headlong back behind him down the precipice. I should be giddy to see such a shadow of my own. I should doubt if it would consent to be drawn up by the heels to the summit of the mountain--whether it would not rather drag me down with it into the abyss. * * * * * I have seen hills on which lay the clear unclouded sky making them blue as itself. I have gazed on those beautiful far-receding valleys--as the valley of the Rhone--when they have appeared to collect and retain the azure ether. They were full of Heaven. Angels might breathe that air. And yet I better love the interchange the wild combination of cloud and mountain. Not cloud that intercepts the sun but that reflects its brilliancy and brightens round the hills. It is but a gorgeous drapery that the sky lets fall on the broad Herculean shoulders of the mountain. No it should not intercept the beams of the great luminary; for the mountain loves the light. I have observed that the twilight so grateful to the plain is mortal to the mountain. It craves light--it lifts up its great chalice for light--this great flower is the first to close to fade at the withdrawal of the sun. It stretches up to heaven seeking light; it cannot have too much--under the strongest beam it never droops--its brow is never dazzled. But then these clouds you will tell me that hover about the mountain all wing all plumage with just so much of substance for light to live in them--these very clouds can descend and thicken and blacken and cover all things with an inexpressible gloom. True and the mountain or what is seen of it becomes now the very image of a great and unfathomable sorrow. And only the great can express a great sadness. This aspect of nature shall never by me be forgotten; nor will I ever shrink from encountering it. If you would know the gloom of heart which nature can betray as well as the glory it can manifest you must visit the mountains. For days together clouds huge dense unwieldy lie heavily upon the hills--which stand how mute how mournful!--as if they too knew of death. And look at the little lake at their feet. What now is its tranquillity when not a single sunbeam plays upon it? Better the earth opened and received it and hid for ever its leaden despondency. And now there comes the paroxysm of terror and despair; deep thunders are heard and a madness flashes forth in the vivid lightning. There is desperation amongst the elements. But the elements like the heart of man must rage in vain--must learn the universal lesson of submission. With them as with humanity despair brings back tranquillity. And now the driving cloud reveals again the glittering summits of the mountains and light falls in laughter on the beaming lake. How like to a ruined Heaven is this earth! Nay is it not more beautiful for being a ruin? * * * * * Who can speak of lakes and not think of thee beautiful Leman? How calm! how exquisitely blue! Let me call it a liquid sky that is spread here beneath us. And note how where the boat presses or the oar strikes it yields ever a still more exquisite hue--akin to the violet which gives to the rude pressure a redoubled fragrance--akin to the gentlest of womankind whose love plays sweetest round the strokes of calamity. Oh there is a woman's heart in thy waters beautiful Leman! I have seen thee in all thy moods in all thy humours. I have watched thee in profoundest calm; and suddenly with little note of preparation seen thee lash thy blue waves into a tempest. How beautiful in their anger were those azure waves crested with their white foam! And at other times when all has been a sad unjoyous calm I have seen without being able to trace whence the light had broken a soft expanse of brightness steal tremulous over the marble waters. A smile that seemed to speak of sweet caprice--that seemed to say that half its anger had been feint. Yes verily there is a woman's heart in thy waters beautiful Leman! I lie rocking in a boat midway between Vevay and Lausanne. On the opposite coast are the low purple hills _couching_ beside the lake. But there to the left what an ethereal structure of cloud and snowy mountain is revealed to me! What a creation of that spirit of beauty which works its marvels in the unconscious earth! The Alps here while they retain all the aërial effect gathered from distance yet seem to arise from the very margin of the lake. The whole scene is so ethereal you fear to look aside lest when you look again it may have vanished like a vision of the clouds. And why should these little boats with their tall triangular sails which glide so gracefully over the water be forgotten? The sail though an artifice of man is almost always in harmony with nature. Nature has adopted it--has lent it some of her own wild privileges--her own bold and varied contrasts of light and shade. The surface of the water is perhaps dark and overclouded; the little upright sail is the only thing that has caught the light and it glitters there like a moving star. Or the water is all one dazzling sheet of silver tremulous with the vivid sunbeam and now the little sail is black as night and steals with bewitching contrast over that sparkling surface. * * * * * But we fly again to the mountain. Tourists are too apt to speak of the waterfall as something independent something to be visited as a separate curiosity. There may be some such. But in general the waterfall should be understood as part of the mountain--as the great fountain which adorns the architecture of its rocks and the gardens of its pine forests. It belongs to the mountain. Pass through the valley and look up; you see here and there thin stripes of glittering white noiseless motionless. They are waterfalls which if you approach them will din you with their roar and which are dashing headlong down covered with tossing spray. Or ascend the face of the mountain and again look around and above you. From all sides the waterfalls are rushing. They bear you down. You are giddy with their reckless speed. How they make the rock live! What a stormy vitality have they diffused around them! You might as well separate a river from its banks as a waterfall from its mountain. And yet there is one which I could look at for hours together merely watching its own graceful movements. Let me sit again in imagination in the valley of Lauterbrunnen under the fall of the Staubbach. Most graceful and ladylike of descents! It does not fall; but over the rock and along the face of the precipice developes some lovely form that nature had at heart;--diffuses itself in down-pointing pinnacles of liquid vapour fretted with the finest spray. The laws of gravity have nothing to do with its movements. It is not hurled down; it does not leap plunging madly into the abyss; it thinks only of beauty as it sinks. No noise no shock no rude concussion. Where it should dash against the projecting rock lo! its series of out-shooting pinnacles is complete and the vanishing point just kisses the granite. It disappoints the harsh obstruction by its exquisite grace and most beautiful levity and springs a second time from the rock without trace of ever having encountered it. The whole side of the mountain is here barren granite. It glides like a spirit down the adverse and severe declivity. It is like Christ in this world. The famous fall of the Griesbach near the lake of Brienz thunders through the most luxuriant foliage; the Staubbach meets the bare rock with touches of love and a movement all grace and a voice full of reconcilement. * * * * * Mont Blanc! Mont Blanc! I have not scaled thy heights so boldly or so far as others have but I will yield to none in worship of thee and thy neighbour mountains. Some complain that the valley of Chamouni is barren; they are barren souls that so complain. True it has not the rich pastures that lie bordering on the snow in the Oberland. But neither does it need them. Look _down_ the valley from the pass of the Col de Balme and see summit beyond summit; or ascend the lateral heights of La Flegère and see the Alps stretched out in a line before you and say if any thing be wanting. Here is the sculpture of landscape. Stretched yourself upon the bare open rock you see the great hills built up before you from their green base to their snowy summits with rock and glacier and pine forests. You see how the Great Architect has wrought. And for softer beauty has not the eye been feasted even to excess--till you cried ""hold--enough!"" till you craved repose from excitement--along the whole route from Lausanne to this spot? What perfect combinations of beauty and sublimity--of grandeur of outline with richness of colouring--have you not been travelling through! It seems a fanciful illustration and yet it has more than once occurred to me when comparing the scenery of the Oberland with that of the valley of Chamouni and its neighbourhood; the one resembles the first work--be it picture or poem--of a great genius; the other the second. On his first performance the artist lavishes beauties of every description; he crowds it with charms; all the stores of his imagination are at once unfolded and he must find a place for all. In the second which is more calm and mature the style is broader the disposition of materials more skilful: the artist master of his inspiration no longer suffers one beauty to crowd upon another finds for all not only place but place sufficient; and above all no longer fears being simple or even austere. I dare not say that the Oberland has a fault in its composition--so charming so magnificent have I found it; but let me mark the broad masterly style of this Alpine region. As you journey from Villeneuve with what a gentle bland magnificence does the valley expand before you! The hills and rocks as they increase in altitude still fall back and reveal in the centre the towering _Dent du Midi_ glittering with its eternal snows. The whole way to Martigny you see sublimity without admixture of terror; it is beauty elevated into grandeur without losing its amenity. And then if you cross by the Col de Balme leaving the valley of the Rhone as you ascend and descending upon the valley of Chamouni where the Alps curve before you in most perfect grouping--tell me if it is possible for the heart of man to desire more. Nay is not the heart utterly exhausted by this series of scenic raptures? For ever be remembered that magnificent pass of the Col de Balme! If I have a white day in my calendar it is the day I spent in thy defiles. Deliberately I assert that life has nothing comparable to the delight of traversing alone borne leisurely on the back of one's mule a mountain-pass such as this. Those who have stouter limbs may prefer to use them; give me for my instrument of progression the legs of the patient and sure-footed mule. They are better legs at all events than mine. I am seated on his back the bridle lies knotted upon his neck--the cares of the way are all his--the toil and the anxiety of it; the scene is all mine and I am all in it. I am seated there all eye all thought gazing musing; yet not without just sufficient occupation to keep it still a luxury--this leisure to contemplate. The mule takes care of himself and in so doing of you too; yet not so entirely but that you must look a little after yourself. That he by no means has your safety for his primary object is evident from this that in turning sharp corners or traversing narrow paths he never calculates whether there is sufficient room for any other legs than his own--takes no thought of yours. To keep your knees in such places from collision with huge boulders or shattered stumps of trees must be your own care; to say nothing of the occasional application of whip or stick and a _very_ strong pull at his mouth to raise his head from the grass which he has leisurely begun to crop. Seated thus upon your mule given up to the scene with something still of active life going on about you with full liberty to pause and gaze and dismount when you will and at no time proceeding at a railroad speed I do say--unless you are seated by your own incomparable Juliet who has for the first time breathed that she loves you--I do say that you are in the most enviable position that the wide world affords. As for me I have spent some days some weeks in this fashion amongst the mountains; they are the only days of my life I would wish to live over again. But mind if you would really enjoy all this go alone--a silent guide before or behind you. No friends no companion no gossip. You will find gossip enough in your inn if you want it. If your guide thinks it is his duty to talk to explain to tell you the foolish names of things that need no name--make belief that you understand him not--that his language be it French or German is to you utterly incomprehensible. I would not paint it all _couleur de rose_. The sun is not always shining. There is tempest and foul weather fatigue and cold and abundant moisture to be occasionally encountered. There is something to endure. But if you prayed to Heaven for perpetual fair weather and your prayer were granted it would be the most unfortunate petition you could put up. Why there are some of the sublimest aspects the noblest moods and tempers of the great scene which you would utterly forfeit by this miserable immunity. He who loves the mountain will love it in the tempest as well as in the sunshine. To be enveloped in driving mist or cloud that obscures every thing from view--to be made aware of the neighbouring precipice only by the sound of the torrent that rushes unseen beneath you--how low down you can only guess--this too has its excitement. Besides while you are in this total blank the wind will suddenly drive the whole mass of cloud and thick vapour from the scene around you and leave the most glorious spectacle for some moments exposed to view. Nothing can exceed these moments of sudden and partial revelation. The glittering summits of the mountains appear as by enchantment where there had long been nothing but dense dark vapour. And how beautiful the wild disorder of the clouds whose array has been broken up and who are seen flying huddled together in tumultuous retreat! But the veering wind rallies them again and again they sweep back over the vast expanse and hill and valley earth and sky are obliterated in a second. * * * * * He who would ponder what _man_ is should journey amongst the mountains. What _men_ are is best learnt in the city. How to a museful spirit the heart and soul of man is reflected in the shows of nature! I cannot see this torrent battling for ever along its rocky path and not animate it with human passions and torture it with a human fate. Can it have so much turmoil and restlessness and not be allied to humanity? But all are not images of violence or lessons of despondency. Mark the Yungfrau how she lifts her slight and virgin snows fearlessly to the blazing sun! She is so high she feels no _reflected heat_. * * * * * How well the simple architecture of the low-roofed buildings of Switzerland accords with its magnificent scenery! What were lofty steeples beside Mont Blanc or turreted castles beside her pinnacles of granite? Elsewhere in the level plain I love the cathedral. I had lately stood enraptured in the choir of that of Cologne gazing up at those tall windows which spring where other loftiest buildings terminate--windows so high that God only can look in upon the worshipper. But here--what need of the stately edifice when there is a church whose buttresses are mountains whose roof and towers are above the clouds verily in the heavens? What need of artificial reminiscences of the Great King here where he has built for himself? The plain it is _man's_ nature--given to man's wants; there stands his corn there flow his milk and honey. But the mountain it is God's nature--his stationary tabernacle--reserved for the eye only of man and the communing of his spirit. If meant to subserve the wants of his earthly nature meant still more expressly to kindle other wants. Do they not indeed lead to Heaven these mountains? At least I know they lead beyond this earth. There is a little church stands in the valley of Chamouni. It was open as is customary in Catholic countries to receive the visits and the prayers of the faithful; but there was no service no priest nor indeed a single person in the building. It was evening--and a solitary lamp hung suspended from the ceiling just before the altar. Allured by the mysterious appearance of this lamp burning in solitude I entered and remained in it some time making out in the dim light the wondrous figures of virgins and saints generally found in such edifices. When I emerged from the church there stood Mont Blanc before me reflecting the last tints of the setting sun. I am habitually tolerant of Catholic devices and ceremonies; but at this moment how inexpressibly strange how very little how poor contemptible and like an infant's toy seemed all the implements of worship I had just left! And yet the tall simple wooden cross that stands in the open air on the platform before the church this was well. This was a symbol that might well stand even in the presence of Mont Blanc. Symbol of suffering and of love where is it out of place? On no spot on earth on no spot where a human heart is beating. Mont Blanc and this wooden cross are they not the two greatest symbols that the world can show? They are wisely placed opposite each other. I have alluded to the sunset seen in this valley. All travellers love to talk a little of their own experience their good or their ill fortune. The first evening I entered Chamouni the clouds had gathered on the summits of the mountains and a view of Mont Blanc was thought hopeless. Nevertheless I sallied forth and planted myself in the valley with a singular confidence in the goodness of nature towards one who was the humblest but one of the sincerest of her votaries. My confidence was rewarded. The clouds dispersed and the roseate sunset on the mountain was seen to perfection. I had not yet learned to distinguish that summit which in an especial manner bears the name of Mont Blanc. There is a modesty in its greatness. It makes no ostentatious claim to be the highest in the range and is content if for a time you give the glory of pre-eminence to others. But it reserves a convincing proof of its own superiority. I had been looking elsewhere and in a wrong direction for Mont Blanc when I found that all the summits had sunk like the clouds when day deserts them into a cold dead white--all but one point that still glowed with the radiance of the sun when all beside had lost it. There was the royal mountain. What a cold corpse-like hue it is which the snow-mountain assumes just after the sun has quitted it. There is a short interval then when it seems the very image of death. But the moon rises or the stars take up their place and the mountain resumes its beauty and its life. Beauty is always life. Under the star-light how ethereal does it look! * * * * * In the landscapes of other countries the house--the habitation of man--be it farm-house or cottage--gathers so to speak some of the country about itself--makes itself the centre of some circle however small. Not so in Switzerland. The hooded chalet which even in summer speaks so plainly of winter and stands ever prepared with its low drooping roof to shelter its eyes and ears from the snow and the wind--these dot the landscape most charmingly but yet are lost in it; they form no group no central point in the scene. I am thinking more particularly of the chalets in the Oberland. There is no path apparently between one and the other; the beautiful green verdure lies untrodden around them. One would say the inhabitants found their way to them like birds to their nests. And like enough to nests they are both in the elevation at which they are sometimes perched and in the manner of their distribution over the scene. However they got there people at all events are living in them and the farm and the dairy are carried up into I know not what altitudes. Those beautiful little tame cattle with their short horns and long ears and mouse-coloured skin with all the agility of a goat and all the gentleness of domesticity--you meet them feeding in places where your mule looks thoughtfully to his footing. And then follows perhaps a peasant girl in her picturesque cloak made of the undressed fur of the goat and her round hat of thickly plaited straw calling after them in that high sing-song note which forms the basis of what is called Swiss music. This cry heard in the mountains is delightful the voice is sustained and yet varied--being varied it can be sustained the longer--and the high note pierces far into the distance. As a real cry of the peasant it is delightful to hear; it is appropriate to the purpose and the place. But defend my ears against that imitation of it introduced by young ladies into the Swiss songs. Swiss music in an English drawing-room--may I escape the infliction! but the Swiss peasant chanting across the mountain defiles--may I often again halt to listen to it! * * * * * But from the mountain and the cloud we must now depart. We must wend towards the plain. One very simple and consolatory thought strikes me--though we must leave the glory of the mountain we at least take the sun with us. And the cloud too you will add. Alas! something too much of that. But no murmurs. We islanders who can see the sun set on the broad ocean--had we nothing else to boast of--can never feel deserted of nature. We have our portion of her excellent gifts. I know not yet how an Italian sky so famed for its deep and constant azure may affect me but I know that we have our gorgeous melancholy sunsets to which our island tempers become singularly attuned. The cathedral splendours--the dim religious light of our vesper skies--I doubt if I would exchange them for the unmitigated glories of a southern clime. THE SECOND PANDORA. Methought Prometheus from his rock unbound Had with the Gods again acceptance found. Once more he seem'd his wond'rous task to ply While all Olympus stood admiring by. To high designs his heart and hands aspire To quicken earthly dust with heavenly fire Won by no fraud but lent by liberal love To raise weak mortals to the realms above; For the bright flame remembers even on earth And pants to reach the region of its birth. A female form was now the artist's care; Faultless in shape and exquisitely fair. Of more than Parian purity the clay Had all been leaven'd with the ethereal ray. Deep in the heart the kindling spark began And far diffused through every fibre ran; The eyes reveal'd it and the blooming skin Glow'd with the lovely light that shone within. The applauding Gods confess'd the matchless sight; The first Pandora was not half so bright; That beauteous mischief formed at Jove's command A curse to men by Mulciber's own hand; Whose eager haste the fatal jar to know Fill'd the wide world with all but hopeless woe. But dawn of better days arose when He The patient Hero set Prometheus free Alcides to whose toils the joy was given To conquer Hell and climb the heights of Heaven. In the fair work that now the master wrought The first-fruits of his liberty were brought; The Gods receive her as a pledge of peace And heap their gifts and happiest auspices. Minerva to the virgin first imparts Her skill in woman's works and household arts; The needle's use the robe's embroider'd bloom And all the varied labours of the loom. Calm fortitude she gave and courage strong To cope with ill and triumph over wrong; Ingenuous prudence with prophetic sight And clear instinctive wisdom ever right. Diana brought the maid her modest mien Her love of fountains and the sylvan scene; The Hours and Seasons lent each varying ray That gilds the rolling year or changing day. The cunning skill of Hermes nicely hung With subtle blandishments her sliding tongue And train'd her eyes to stolen glances sweet And all the wiles of innocent deceit. Phoebus attuned her ear to love the lyre And warm'd her fancy with poetic fire. Nor this alone; but shared his healing art And robb'd his son of all the gentler part; Taught her with soothing touch and silent tread To hover lightly round the sick one's bed And promised oft to show when medicines fail A woman's watchful tenderness prevail. Next Venus and the Graces largely shed A shower of fascinations on her head. Each line each look was brighten'd and refined Each outward act each movement of the mind Till all her charms confess the soft control And blend at once in one harmonious whole. But still the Eternal Sire apart remain'd And Juno's bounty was not yet obtained. The voice of Heaven's High Queen then fill'd the ear ""A wife and mother let the Nymph appear."" The mystic change like quick enchantment shows-- The slender lily blooms a blushing rose. Three gentle children now by just degrees Are ranged in budding beauty round her knees: Still to her lips their looks attentive turn And drink instruction from its purest urn While o'er their eyes soft memories seem to play That paint a friend or father far away. A richer charm her ripen'd form displays A halo round her shines with holier rays; And if at times a shade of pensive grace Pass like a cloud across her earnest face Yet faithful tokens the glad truth impart That deeper happiness pervades her heart. Jove latest spoke: ""One boon remains "" he said And bent serenely his ambrosial head; ""The last best boon which I alone bestow;"" Then bade the waters of Affliction flow. The golden dream was dimm'd; a darken'd room Scarce show'd where dire disease had shed its gloom. A little child in death extended lay Still round her linger'd the departing ray. Another pallid face appear'd where Life With its fell foe maintain'd a doubtful strife. Long was the contest; changeful hopes and fears Now sunk the Mother's soul now dried her tears. At last a steady line of dawning light Show'd that her son was saved and banish'd night. Though sad her heart of one fair pledge bereft She sees and owns the bounties Heaven hath left. In natural drops her anguish finds relief And leaves the Matron beautified by grief; While consolation beaming from above Fills her with new-felt gratitude and love. O happy He! before whose waking eyes So bright a vision may resplendent rise-- The New PANDORA by the Gods designed Not now the bane but blessing of Mankind! THE REIGN OF GEORGE THE THIRD.[33] It is scarcely theoretical to say that every century has a character of its own. The human mind is essentially progressive in Europe. The accumulations of past knowledge experience and impulse are perpetually preparing changes on the face of society; and we may fairly regard every hundred years as the period maturing those changes into visible form. Thus the fifteenth century was the age of discovery in the arts in the powers of nature and in the great provinces of the globe: the sixteenth exhibited the general mind under the impressions of religion--the Reformation the German wars for liberty and faith and the struggles of Protestantism in France. The seventeenth was the brilliant period of scientific advance of continental literature and of courtly pomp and power. The eighteenth was the period of politics; every court of Europe was engaged in the game of political rivalry; the European balance became the test the labour and the triumph of statesmanship. The negotiator was then the great instrument of public action. Diplomacy assumed a shape and Europe was governed by despatches. The genius of Frederick the Second restored war to its early rank among the elements of national life; but brilliant as his wars were they were subservient to the leading feature of the age. They were fought not like the battles of the old conquerors for fame but for influence--not to leave the king without an enemy but to leave his ambassadors without an opponent--less to gain triumphs than to ensure treaties: they all began and ended in diplomacy! It is remarkable that this process was exhibited in Europe alone. In the East comprehending two-thirds of human kind no change was made since the conquests of Mahomet. That vast convulsion in which the nervousness of frenzy had given the effeminate spirit of the Oriental the strength of the soldier and the ambition of universal conqueror had no sooner wrought its purpose than it passed away leaving the general mind still more exhausted than before. The Saracen warrior sank into the peasant and the Arab was again lost in his sands; the Turk alone survived exhibiting splendour without wealth and pride without power--a decaying image of Despotism which nothing but the jealousy of the European saved from falling under the first assault. Such is the repressive strength of evil government; progress the most salient principle of our nature dies before it. And man of all beings the most eager for acquirement and the most restless under all monotony of time place and position becomes like the dog or the mule and generation after generation lives and dies with no more consciousness of the capacities of his existence than the root which the animal devours or the tree under which it was born. In England the eighteenth century was wholly political. It was a continual struggle through all the difficulties belonging to a free constitution exposed to the full discussion of an intellectual people. Without adopting the offensive prejudice which places the individual ability of the Englishmen in the first rank; or without doubting that nature has distributed nearly an equal share of personal ability among all European nations; we may not unjustly place the national mind of England in the very highest rank of general capacity--if that is the most intellectual nation by which the public intellect is most constantly employed in which all the great questions of society are most habitually referred to the decision of the intellect and in which that decision is the most irresistible in its effects no nation of Europe can stand upon equal ground with the English. For in what other nation is the public i

tellect in such unwearied exercise in such continual demand and in such unanswerable power? In what other nation of the world (excepting within those few years France; and that most imperfectly) has public opinion ever been appealed to? But in England to what else is there any appeal? Or does not the foreign mind bear some resemblance to the foreign landscape--exhibiting barren though noble elevations spots of singular though obscure beauty among its recesses and even in its wildest scenes a capacity of culture?--while in the mind of England like its landscape that culture has already laid its hand upon the soil; has crowned the hill with verdure and clothed the vale with fertility; has run its ploughshare along the mountain side and led the stream from its brow; has sought out every finer secret of the scene and given the last richness of cultivation to the whole. From the beginning of the reign of Anne all was a contest of leading statesmen at the head of parties. Those contests exhibit great mental power singular system and extraordinary knowledge of the art of making vast bodies of men minister to the personal objects of avarice and ambition. But they do no honour to the moral dignity of England. All revolutions are hazardous to principle. A succession of revolutions have always extinguished even the pretence to principle. The French Revolution is not the only one which made a race of _girouettes_. The political life of England from the death of Anne to the reign of George the Third was a perpetual turning of the weathercock. Whig and Tory were the names of distinction. But their subordinates were of as many varieties of feature as the cargo of a slave-ship; the hue might be the same but the jargon was that of Babel. It was perhaps fortunate for the imperial power of England that while she was thus humiliating the national morality which is the life-blood of nations; her reckless and perpetual enemy beyond the Channel had lost all means of being her antagonist. The French sceptre had fallen into the hands of a prince who had come to the throne a debauchee; and to whom the throne seemed only a scene for the larger display of his vices. The profligacy of Louis-Quatorze had been palliated by his passion for splendour among a dissolute people who loved splendour much and hated profligacy little. But the vices of Louis the Fifteenth were marked by a grossness which degraded them in the eye even of popular indulgence and prepared the nation for the overthrow of the monarchy. In this period religion the great purifier of national council maintained but a struggling existence. The Puritanism of the preceding century had crushed the Church of England; and the restoration of the monarchy had given the people a saturnalia. Religion had been confounded with hypocrisy until the people had equally confounded freedom with infidelity. The heads of the church chosen by freethinking administrations were chosen more for the suppleness than for the strength of their principles; and while the people were thus taught to regard churchmen as tools and the ministers to use them as dependents the cause of truth sank between both. The Scriptures are the life of religion. It can no more subsist in health without them than the human frame can subsist without food; it may have the dreams of the enthusiast or the frenzy of the monk; but for all the substantial and safe purposes of the human heart its life is gone for ever. It has been justly remarked that the theological works of that day including the sermons might in general have been written if Christianity had never existed. The sermons were chiefly essays of the dreariest kind on the most commonplace topics of morals. The habit of reading these discourses from the pulpit a habit so fatal to all impression speedily rendered the preachers as indifferent as their auditory; and if we were to name the period when religion had most fallen into decay in the public mind we should pronounce it the half century which preceded the reign of George the Third. On the subject of pulpit eloquence there are some remarks in one of the reviews of the late Sydney Smith expressed with all the shrewdness divested of the levity of that writer who had keenly observed the popular sources of failure. ""The great object of modern sermons is to hazard nothing. Their characteristic is decent debility; which alike guards their authors from ludicrous errors and precludes them from striking beauties. Yet it is curious to consider how a body of men so well educated as the English clergy can distinguish themselves so little in a species of composition to which it is their peculiar duty as well as their ordinary habit to attend. To solve this difficulty it should be remembered that the eloquence of the bar and of the senate force themselves into notice power and wealth."" He then slightly guards against the conception that eloquence should be the sole source of preferment; or even ""a common cause of preferment."" But he strongly and with great appearance of truth attributes the want of public effect to the want of those means by which that effect is secured in every other instance. ""Pulpit discourses have insensibly dwindled from speaking into reading; a practice of itself sufficient to stifle every germ of eloquence. It is only by the fresh feelings of the heart that mankind can be very powerfully affected. What can be more unfortunate than an orator delivering stale indignation and fervour of a week old; turning over whole pages of violent passions written out in German text; reading the tropes and metaphors into which he is hurried by the ardour of his mind; and so affected at a preconcerted line and page that he is unable to proceed any further?"" This criticism was perfectly true of sermons forty years ago when it was written. Times are changed since and changed for the better. The pulpit is no longer ashamed of the doctrines of Christianity as too harsh for the ears of a classic audience or too familiar for the ears of the people. Still there are no rewards in the Church for that great faculty or rather that great combination of faculties which commands all the honours of the senate and the bar. A clerical Demosthenes might find his triumph in the shillings of a charity sermon but he must never hope for a Stall. We now revert to the curious inquisitive and gossiping historian of the time. Walpole fond of French manners delighting in the easy sarcasm and almost saucy levity of French ""Memoirs "" and adopting in all its extent the confession (then so fashionable on the Continent ) that the perfection of writing was to be formed in their lively _persiflage_ evidently modelled his ""History"" on the style of the Sevignés and St Simons. But he was altogether their superior. If he had been a chamberlain in the court of Louis XV. he might have been as frivolously witty and as laughingly sarcastic as any Frenchman who ever sat at the feet of a court mistress or whoever looked for fame among the sallies of a _petit souper_. But England was an atmosphere which compelled him to a manlier course. The storms of party were not to be stemmed by a wing of gossamer. The writer had bold facts strong principles and the struggles of powerful minds to deal with and their study gave him a strength not his own. Walpole was fond of having a hero. In private life George Selwyn was his Admirable Crichton; in public Charles Townshend. Charles was unquestionably a man of wit. Yet his wit rather consisted in dexterity of language than in brilliancy of conception. He was also eloquent in Parliament; though his charm evidently consisted more in happiness of phrase than in richness variety or vigour of thought. On the whole he seems to have been made to amuse rather than to impress and to give a high conception of his general faculties than to produce either conviction by his argument or respect by the solid qualities of his genius. Still he must have been an extraordinary man. Walpole describes his conduct and powers as exhibited on one of those days of sharp debate which preceded the tremendous discussions of the American war. The subject was a bill for regulating the dividends of the East India Company--the topic was extremely trite and apparently trifling. But any perch will answer for the flight of such bird. ""It was on that day "" says Walpole ""and on that occasion that Charles Townshend displayed in a latitude beyond belief the amazing powers of his capacity and the no less amazing incongruities of his character."" Early in the day he had opened the business by taking on himself the examination of the Company's conduct had made a calm speech on the subject and even went so far as to say ""that he hoped he had atoned for the inconsiderateness of his past life by the care which he had taken of that business."" He then went home to dinner. In his absence a motion was made which Conway the secretary of state not choosing to support alone it being virtually Townshend's own measure besides sent to hurry him back to the House. ""He returned about eight in the evening half drunk with champagne "" as Walpole says (which however was subsequently denied ) and more intoxicated with spirits. He then instantly rose to speak without giving himself time to learn any thing except that the motion had given alarm. He began by vowing that he had not been consulted on the motion--a declaration which astonished every body there being twelve persons round him at the moment who had been in consultation with him that very morning and with his assistance had drawn up the motion on his own table and who were petrified at his unparalleled effrontery. But before he sat down he had poured forth as Walpole says ""a torrent of wit humour knowledge absurdity vanity and fiction heightened by all the graces of comedy the happiness of quotation and the buffoonery of farce. To the purpose of the question he said not a syllable. It was a descant on the times a picture of parties of their leaders their hopes and effects. It was an encomium and a satire on himself; and when he painted the pretensions of birth riches connexions favours titles while he effected to praise Lord Rockingham and that faction he yet insinuated that nothing but parts like his own were qualified to preside. And while he less covertly arraigned the wild incapacity of Lord Chatham he excited such murmurs of wonder admiration applause laughter pity and scorn that nothing was so true as the sentence with which he concluded--when speaking of government he said that it had become what he himself had often been called--the weathercock."" Walpole exceeds even his usual measure of admiration in speaking of this masterly piece of extravagance. ""Such was the wit abundance and impropriety of this speech "" says he ""that for some days men could talk or enquire of nothing else. 'Did you hear Charles Townshend's champagne speech ' was the universal question. The bacchanalian enthusiasm of Pindar flowed in torrents less rapid and less eloquent and inspired less delight than Townshend's imagery which conveyed meaning in every sentence. It was Garrick acting extempore scenes of Congreve."" He went to supper with Walpole at Conway's afterwards where the flood of his gaiety not being exhausted he kept the table in a roar till two in the morning. A part of this entertainment however must have found his auditory in a condition as unfit for criticism as himself. Claret till ""two in the morning "" might easily disqualify a convivial circle from the exercise of too delicate a perception. And a part of Townshend's facetiousness on that occasion consisted in mimicking his own wife and a woman of rank with whom he fancied himself in love. He at last gave up from mere bodily lassitude. Walpole happily enough illustrates those talents and their abuse by an allusion to those eastern tales in which a benevolent genius endows a being with supernatural excellence on some points while a malignant genius counteracts the gift by some qualification which perpetually baffles and perverts it. The story however of Charles Townshend's tipsiness is thus contradicted by a graver authority Sir George Colebrook in his Memoirs. ""Mr Townshend loved good living but had not a strong stomach. He committed therefore frequent excesses considering his constitution; which would not have been intemperance in another. He was supposed for instance to have made a speech in the heat of wine when that was really not the case. It was a speech in which he treated with great levity but with wonderful art the characters of the Duke of Grafton and Lord Shelburne whom though his colleagues in office he entertained a sovereign contempt for and heartily wished to get rid of. He had a black riband over one of his eyes that day having tumbled out of bed probably in a fit of epilepsy; and this added to the impression made on his auditors that he was tipsy. Whereas it was a speech he had meditated a great while upon and it was only by accident that it found utterance that day. I write with certainty because Sir George Yonge and I were the only persons who dined with him and we had but one bottle of champagne after dinner; General Conway having repeatedly sent messengers to press his return to the House."" This brings the miracle down to the human standard yet that standard was high and the man who could excite this admiration in a House which contained so great a number of eminent speakers and which could charm the caustic spirit of Walpole into the acknowledgment that his speech ""was the most singular pleasure of the kind he had ever tasted "" must have been an extraordinary performance even if his instrument was not of the highest tone of oratory. A note from the Duke of Grafton's manuscript memoirs also contradicts on Townshend's own authority his opinion of the ""wild incapacity of Lord Chatham."" The note says:-- ""On the night preceding Lord Chatham's first journey to Bath Mr Charles Townshend was for the first time summoned to the Cabinet. The business was on a general view and statement of the actual situation and interests of the various powers in Europe. Lord Chatham had taken the lead in this consideration in so masterly a manner as to raise the admiration and desire of us all to co-operate with him in forwarding his views. Mr Townshend was particularly astonished and owned to me as I was carrying him in my carriage home that Lord Chatham had just shown to us what inferior animals we were and that as much as he had seen of him before he did not conceive till that night his superiority to be so transcendant."" Walpole writes with habitual bitterness of the great Lord Chatham. The recollection of his early opposition to Sir Robert Walpole seems to have made him an unfaithful historian wherever this extraordinary man's name comes within his page; but at the period of those discussions it seems not improbable that the vigour of Chatham's understanding had in some degree given way to the tortures of his disease. He had suffered from gout at an early period of life; and as this is a disease remarkably affected by the mind the perpetual disturbances of a public life seem to have given it a mastery over the whole frame of the great minister. Walpole talks in unjustifiable language of his ""haughty sterility of talents."" But there seems to be more truth in his account of the caprices of this powerful understanding in his retirement. Walpole calls it the ""reality of Lord Chatham's madness."" Still we cannot see much in those instances beyond the temper naturally resulting from an agonizing disease. When the Pynsent estate fell to him he removed to it and sold his house and grounds at Hayes--""a place on which he had wasted prodigious sums and which yet retained small traces of expense great part having been consumed in purchasing contiguous tenements to free himself from all neighbourhood. Much had gone in doing and undoing and not a little in planting by torchlight as his peremptory and impatient habits could brook no delay. Nor were those the sole circumstances which marked his caprice. His children he could not bear under the same roof nor communications from room to room nor whatever he thought promoted noise. A winding passage between his house and children was built with the same view. When at the beginning of his second administration he fixed at North End by Hampstead he took four or five houses successively as fast as Mr Dingley his landlord went into them still as he said to ward off the houses of the neighbourhood."" Walpole relates another anecdote equally inconclusive. At Pynsent a bleak hill bounded his view. He ordered his gardener to have it planted with evergreens. The man asked ""with what sorts."" He replied ""With cedars and cypresses."" ""Bless me my lord "" replied the gardener ""all the nurseries in this county would not furnish a hundredth part."" ""No matter send for them from London: and they were brought by land carriage."" Certainly there was not much in this beyond the natural desire of every improver to shut out a disagreeable object by putting an agreeable one in its place. His general object was the natural one of preventing all noise--a point of importance with every sufferer under a wakeful and miserable disease. His appetite was delicate and fanciful and a succession of chickens were kept boiling and roasting at every hour to be ready whenever he should call. He at length grew weary of his residence and after selling Hayes took a longing to return there. After considerable negotiation with Mr Thomas Walpole the purchaser he obtained it again and we hear no more of his madness. The session was one of continual intrigues constant exhibitions of subtlety amongst the leaders of the party which at this distance of time are only ridiculous and intricate discussions which are now among the lumber of debate. Townshend if he gained nothing else gained the freedom of the city for his conduct on the East India and Dividend bills for which as Walpole says ""he deserved nothing but censure."" A contemptuous epigram appeared on the occasion by ""somebody a little more sagacious""--that ""somebody"" probably being Walpole himself: ""The joke of Townshend's box is little known Great judgment in the thing the cits have shown; The compliment was an expedient clever To rid them of the like expense for ever. Of so burlesque a choice the example sure For city boxes must all longing cure The honor'd Ostracism at Athens fell Soon as Hyperbolus had got the shell."" It is scarcely possible to think that an epigram of this heavy order could have been praised by Walpole if his criticism had not been tempered by the tenderness of paternity. We then have a character of a man embalmed in the contempt poured upon him by Junius--the Duke of Grafton. Though less bitter it is equally scornful. ""Hitherto "" says Walpole ""he had passed for a man of much obstinacy and firmness of strict honour devoid of ambition and though reserved more diffident than designing. He retained so much of this character as to justify those who had mistaken the rest. If he precipitated himself into the most sudden and inextricable contradictions at least he pursued the object of the moment with inflexible ardour. If he abandoned himself to total negligence of business in pursuit of his sports and pleasures the love of power never quitted him; and when his will was disputed no man was more imperiously arbitrary. If his designs were not deeply laid at least they were conducted in profound silence. He rarely pardoned those who did not guess his inclination. It was necessary to guess so rare was any instance of his unbosoming himself to either friends or confidants. Why his honour had been so highly rated I can less account except that he had advertised it and that obstinate young men are apt to have high notions before they have practised the world and essayed their own virtue."" At length after a vast variety of intrigues which threw the public life of those days into the most contemptible point of view the King being made virtually a cipher while the families of the Hertfords Buckinghams and Rockinghams trafficked the high offices of state as children would barter toys; an administration was tardily formed. Walpole who seemed to take a sort of _dilettante_ pleasure in constructing those intrigues and making himself wretched at their failure while nobody suffered him to take advantage of their success; now gave himself a holiday and went to relax in Paris for six weeks--his relaxation consisting of gossip amongst the literary ladies of the capital. During his absence an event happened which though it did not break up the ministry yet must have had considerable effect in its influence on the House of Commons. This was the death of the celebrated Charles Townshend on the 4th of September 1767 in the forty-second year of his age. The cause of his death was a neglected fever; if even this did not arise from his carelessness of health and those habits which if not amounting to intemperance were certainly trespasses on his constitution. Walpole speaks of him with continual admiration of his genius and continual contempt of his principles. He also thinks that he had arrived at his highest fame or in his peculiar phrase ""that his genius could have received no accession of brightness while his faults only promised multiplication."" Walpole with no pretence to rival probably envied this singular personage; for whenever he begins by panegyric he uniformly ends with a sting. One of the Notes gives an extract on Sir George Colebrook's Memoirs which perhaps places his faculties in a more favourable point of view than the high-coloured eulogium of Burke or the polished insinuations of Walpole. Sir George tells us that Townshend's object was to be prime minister and that he would doubtless have attained that object had he lived to see the Duke of Grafton's resignation. Lord North succeeded him as chancellor of the exchequer and Townshend would evidently have preceded _him_ as prime minister. ""As a private man his friends were used to say that they should not see his like again. Though they were often the butts of his wit they always returned to his company with fresh delight which they would not have done had there been either malice or rancour in what he said. He loved society and in his choice of friends preferred those over whom he had a decided superiority of talent. He was satisfied when he had put the table in a roar and he did not like to see it done by another. When Garrick and Foote were present he took the lead and hardly allowed them an opportunity of showing their talents for mimicry because he could excel them in their own art. He shone particularly in taking off the principal members of the House of Commons. Among the few whom he feared was Mr Selwyn and at a dinner at Lord Gower's they had a trial of skill in which Mr Selwyn prevailed. When the company broke up Mr Townshend to show that he had no animosity carried him in his carriage to White's; and as they parted Selwyn could not help saying--'Remember this is the first set-down you have given me to-day.'"" As Townshend lived at a considerable expense and had little paternal fortune he speculated occasionally in both the French and English funds. One of the incidents related by Sir George and without a syllable of censure too throws on him an imputation of trickery which in our later day would utterly destroy any public man. ""When he was chancellor of the exchequer he came in his nightgown to a dinner given by the Duke of Grafton to several of the principal men of the city to settle the loan. After dinner when the terms were settled and every body present wished to introduce some friend on the list of subscribers he pretended to cast up the sums already admitted said the loan was full huddled up his papers got into a chair and returned home reserving to himself by this manoeuvre a large share of the loan."" An act of this kind exhibits the honesty of the last age in a very equivocal point of view. If proud of nothing else we may be proud of the public sense of responsibility; in our day it may be presumed that such an act would be impossible for it would inevitably involve the ruin of the perpetrator followed by the ruin of any ministry which would dare to defend him. At this period died a brother of the king Edward Duke of York a man devoted to pleasure headstrong in his temper and ignorant in his conceptions. ""Immoderate travelling followed by immoderate balls and entertainments "" had long kept his blood in a peculiar state of accessibility to disease. He died of a putrid fever. Walpole makes a panegyric on the Duke of Gloucester his brother; of which a part may be supposed due to the Duke's marriage with Lady Waldegrave a marriage which provoked the indignation of the King and which once threatened political evils of a formidable nature. Henry the Duke of Cumberland was also an unfortunate specimen of the blood royal. He is described as having the babbling loquacity of the Duke of York without his talents; as at once arrogant and low; presuming on his rank as a prince and degrading himself by an association with low company. Still we are to remember Walpole's propensity to sarcasm the enjoyment which he seems to have felt in shooting his brilliant missiles at all ranks superior to his own; and his especial hostility to George the Third one of the honestest monarchs that ever sat upon a throne. In those days the composition of ministries depended altogether upon the high families.--The peerage settled every thing amongst themselves. A few of their dependents were occasionally taken into office; but all the great places were distributed among a little clique who thus constituted themselves the real masters of the empire. Walpole's work has its value in letting us into the secrets of a conclave which at once shows us the singular emptiness of its constituent parts and the equally singular authority with which they seem to have disposed of both the king and the people. We give a scene from the _Historian_ which would make an admirable fragment of the _Rehearsal_ and which wanted only the genius of Sheridan to be an admirable pendant to Mr Puff's play in the _Critic_. ""On the 20th a meeting was held at the Duke of Newcastle's of Lord Rockingham the Duke of Richmond and of Dowdeswell with Newcastle himself on one part and of the Duke of Bedford Lord Weymouth and Rigby on the other. The Duke of Bedford had powers from Grenville to act for him; but did not seem to like Lord Buckingham's taking on himself to name to places. On the latter's asking what friends they wished to prefer Rigby said with his cavalier bluntness--Take the _Court Calendar_ and give them one two three thousand pounds a-year! Bedford observed--They had said nothing on measures. Mr Grenville would insist on the sovereignty of this country over America being asserted. Lord Rockingham replied--He would never allow it to be a question whether he had given up this country--he never had. The Duke insisted on a declaration. The Duke of Richmond said--We may as well demand one from you that you will never disturb that country again. Neither would yield. However though they could not agree on measures; as the distribution of place was more the object of their thoughts and of their meeting they reverted to that topic. Lord Rockingham named Mr Conway. Bedford started; said he had no notion of Conway; had thought he was to return to the military line. The Duke of Richmond said it was true Mr Conway did not desire a civil place; did not know whether he would be persuaded to accept one; but they were so bound to him for his resignation and thought him so able they must insist. The Duke of Bedford said--Conway was an officer _sans tache_ but not a minister _sans tache_. Rigby said--Not one of the present cabinet should be saved. Dowdeswell asked--'What! not one?' 'No.' 'What! not Charles Townshend.' 'Oh!' said Rigby 'that is different. Besides he has been in opposition.' 'So has Conway ' said Dowdeswell. 'He has voted twice against the court Townshend but once.' 'But ' said Rigby 'Conway is Bute's man.' 'Pray ' said Dowdeswell 'is not Charles Townshend Bute's?' 'Ah! but Conway is governed by his brother Hertford who is Bute's.' 'But Lady Ailesbury is a Scotchwoman.' 'So is Lady Dalkeith.' Those ladies had been widows and were now married (the former to Conway the latter to Townshend.) From this dialogue the assembly fell to wrangling and broke up quarrelling. So high did the heats go that the Conways ran about the town publishing the issue of the conference and taxing the Bedfords with treachery."" Notwithstanding this collision at once so significant and so trifling--at once a burlesque on the gravity of public affairs and a satire on the selfishness of public men--on the same evening the Duke of Bedford sent to desire another interview to which Lord Rockingham yielded but the Duke of Bedford refused to be present. So much however were the minds on both sides ulcerated by former and recent disputes and so incompatible were their views that the second meeting broke up in a final quarrel and Lord Rockingham released the other party from all their engagements. The Duke of Bedford desired they might still continue friends or at least to agree to oppose together. Lord Rockingham said no ""they were broken for ever."" It was at this meeting that the Duke of Newcastle appeared for the last time in a political light. Age and feebleness had at length worn out that busy passion for intrigue which power had not been able to satiate nor disgrace correct. He languished above a year longer but was heard of no more on the scene of affairs. (He died in November 1768.) A remarkable circumstance in all those arrangements is that we hear nothing of either the king or the people. The king is of course applied to to sign and seal but simply as a head clerk. The people are occasionally mentioned at the end of every seven years; but in the interim all was settled in the parlours of the peerage! The scene which we have just given was absolutely puerile if it were not scandalous; and without laying ourselves open to the charge of superstition on such subjects we might almost regard the preservation of the empire as directly miraculous while power was in the hands of such men as the Butes and Newcastles the Bedfords and Rockinghams of the last century. It is not even difficult to trace to this intolerable system alike the foreign calamities and the internal convulsions during this period. Whether America could by any possibility of arrangement have continued a British colony up to the present time may be rationally doubted. A vast country rapidly increasing in wealth and population would have been an incumbrance rather than an addition to the power of England. If the patronage of her offices continued in the hands of ministers it must have supplied them with the means of buying up every man who was to be bought in England. It would have been the largest fund of corruption ever known in the world. Or if the connexion continued with the population of America doubling in every five-and-twenty years the question must in time have arisen whether England or America ought to be the true seat of government. The probable consequence however would have been separation; and as this could scarcely be effected by amicable means the result might have been a war of a much more extensive wasteful and formidable nature than that which divided the two countries sixty-five years ago. But all the blunders of the American war nay the war itself may be still almost directly traceable to the arrogance of the oligarchy. Too much accustomed to regard government as a natural appendage to their birth they utterly forgot the true element of national power--the force of public opinion. Inflated with a sense of their personal superiority they looked with easy indifference or studied contempt on every thing that was said or done by men whose genealogy was not registered in the red book. Of America--a nation of Englishmen--and of its proceedings they talked as a Russian lord might talk of his serfs. Some of them thought that a Stamp act would frighten the sturdy free-holders of the Western World into submission! others talked of reducing them to obedience by laying a tax on their tea! others prescribed a regimen of writs and constables! evidently regarding the American farmers as they regarded the poachers and paupers on their own demesnes. All this arose from stupendous ignorance; but it was ignorance engendered by pride by exclusiveness of r

nk and by the arrogance of _caste_. So excessive was this exclusiveness that Burke though the most extraordinary man of his time and one of the most memorable of any time could never obtain a seat in the cabinet; where such triflers as Newcastle such figures of patrician pedantry as Buckingham such shallow intriguers as the Bedfords and such notorious characters as the Sandwiches played with power like children with the cups and balls of their nursery. Lord North with all his wit his industry and his eloquence owed his admission into the cabinet to his being the son of the Earl of Guilford. Charles Fox though marked by nature from his first entrance into public life for the highest eminence of the senate would never have been received into the government _class_ but for his casual connexion with the House of Richmond. Thus they knew nothing of the real powers of that infinite multitude which however below the peerage forms the country. They thought that a few frowns from Downing Street could extinguish the resistance of millions three thousand miles off with muskets in their hands inflamed by a sense of wrong whether fancied or true and insensible to the gatherings of a brow however coroneted and antique. This haughty exclusiveness equally accounts for the contests with Wilkes. They felt themselves affronted much more than resisted; they were much more stung by the defiance of a private individual to themselves than they were urged to the collision by any conceivable sense of hazard to the Monarchy. No man out of bedlam could conceive that Wilkes had either the power or the intention to subvert the state. But Mr Wilkes an obscure man whose name was not known to the calendar of the government fabricators had actually dared to call their privilege of power into question; had defied them in the courts of law; had rebuked them in the senate; had shaken their influence in the elections; and had in fact compelled them to know what they were so reluctant to learn that they were but human beings after all! The acquisition of this knowledge cost them half a dozen years of convulsions the most ruinous to themselves and the most hazardous to the constitution. Wilkes' profligacy alone perhaps saved the constitution from a shock which might have changed the whole system of the empire. If he had not been sunk by his personal character at the first moment when the populace grew cool he might have availed himself of the temper of the times to commit mischiefs the most irreparable. If his personal character had been as free from public offence as his spirit was daring he might have led the people much further than the government ever had the foresight to contemplate. The conduct of the successive cabinets had covered the King with unpopularity not the less fierce that it was wholly undeserved. Junius the ablest political writer that England has ever seen or probably ever will see in the art of assailing a ministry had pilloried every leading man of his time except Chatham in the imperishable virulence of his page. The popular mind was furious with indignation at the conduct of all cabinets; in despair of all improvement in the system; irritated by the rash severity which alternated with the equally rash pusillanimity of ministers; and beginning to regard government less as a protection than as an encroachment on the natural privileges of a nation of freemen. They soon had a growing temptation before them in the successful revolt of America. We do not now enter into that question; it is too long past. But we shall never allude to it without paying that homage to truth which pronounces that the American revolt was a rebellion wholly unjustifiable by the provocation; utterly rejecting all explanation or atonement for casual injuries; and made in the spirit of a determination to throw off the allegiance to the mother country. But if Wilkes could have sustained his opposition but a few years longer and with any character but one so shattered as his own he might have carried it on through life and even bequeathed it as a legacy to his party; until the French Revolution had joined flame to flame across the Channel and England had rivalled even the frenzy of France in the rapidity and ruin of her Reform. Fortunately the empire was rescued from this most fatal of all catastrophes. A great English minister appeared on whom were to devolve the defence of England and the restoration of Europe. The sagacity of Pitt saw where the evil lay; his intrepidity instantly struck at its source and his unrivalled ability completed the saving operation. He broke down the cabinet monopoly. No man less humiliated himself to the populace but no man better understood the people. No man paid more practical respect to the peerage but no man more thoroughly extinguished their exclusive possession of power. He formed his cabinet from men of all ranks in the peerage and out of the peerage. The great peers chiefly went over to the opposition. He resisted them there with as much daring and with as successful a result as he had expelled them from the stronghold of government. He made new peers. He left his haughty antagonists to graze on the barren field of opposition for successive years; and finally saw almost the whole herd come over for shelter to the ministerial fold. At this period a remarkable man was brought into public life--the celebrated Dunning appointed solicitor-general. Walpole calls this ""an extraordinary promotion "" as Dunning was connected with Lord Shelburne. It was like every thing else obviously an intrigue; and Dunning would have lost the appointment but for his remarkable reputation in the courts; Wedderburne being the man of the Bedfords. Walpole's opinion of Dunning in the House shows how much even the highest abilities may be influenced by circumstances. He says ""that Dunning immediately and utterly lost character as a speaker although he had acquired the very highest distinctions as a pleader;"" so different says he is the oratory of the bar and of parliament. Mansfield and Camden retained an equal rank in both. Wedderburne was most successful in the House. Norton had at first disappointed the expectations that were conceived of him when he came into parliament; yet his strong sense that glowed through all the coarseness of his language and brutality of his manner recovered his weight and he was much distinguished. While Sir Dudley Ryder attorney-general in the preceding reign the soundest lawyer and Charles Yorke one of the most distinguished pleaders soon talked themselves out of all consideration in parliament; the former by laying too great a stress on every part of his diffusive knowledge and the latter by the sterility of his intelligence. An intelligent Note however vindicates the reputation of Dunning. It is observed that Dunning's having been counsel for Wilkes and the intimate of Lord Shelburne it could not be expected that he should take a prominent part in any of the debates which were so largely occupied with Wilkes' misdemeanours. Lord North too was hostile to Dunning. Under such conditions it was impossible that any man should exhibit his powers to advantage; but at a later period when he had got rid of those trammels his singular abilities vindicated themselves. He became one of the leaders of the opposition even when that honour was to be shared with Burke. We have heard that such was the pungency of Dunning's expressions and the happy dexterity of his conceptions that when he spoke (his voice being feeble and unable to make itself heard at any great distance ) the members used to throng around the bench on which he spoke. Wraxall panegyrizes him and yet with a tautology of terms which must have been the very reverse of Dunning's style. Thus he tells us that when Dunning spoke ""every murmur was hushed and every ear attentive "" two sentences which amount to the same thing. Hannah More is also introduced as one of the panegyrists; for poor Hannah seems to have been one of the most bustling persons possible; to have run every where and to have given _her_ opinion of every body however much above her comprehension. She was one of the spectators on the Duchess of Kingston's trial (a most extraordinary scene for the choice of such a purist;) but Hannah was not at that time quite so sublime as she became afterwards. Hannah describes Dunning's manner as ""insufferably bad coughing and spitting at every word; but his sense and expression pointed to the last degree."" But the character which the annotator gives as a model of panegyric pleases us least of all. It is by Sir William Jones and consists of one long antithesis. It is a studied toil of language expressing ideas a commonplace succession substituting words for thoughts and at once leaving the ear palled and the understanding dissatisfied. What for instance could be made of such a passage as this? Sir William is speaking of Dunning's wit. ""This "" says he ""relieved the weary calmed the resentful and animated the drowsy. This drew smiles even from such as were _the object of it and scattered flowers over a desert_ and like _sunbeams sparkling on a lake_ gave spirit and vivacity to the dullest and least interesting cause."" And this mangling of metaphor is to teach us the qualities of a profound and practical mind. What follows is the perfection of see-saw. ""He was endued with an intellect sedate yet penetrating clear yet profound subtle yet strong. His knowledge too was equal to his imagination and his memory to his knowledge."" He might have equally added that the capacity of his boots was equal to the size of his legs and the length of his purse to the extent of his generosity. This reminds us of one of Sydney Smith's burlesques on the balancing of epithets by that most pedantic of pedants the late Dr Parr--""profundity without obscurity perspicuity without prolixity ornament without glare terseness without barrenness penetration without subtlety comprehensiveness without digression and a great number of other things without a great number of other things."" Little tricks or rather large ones now and then diversify the narrative. On the same day that Conway resigned the seals Lord Weymouth was declared secretary of state. At the same time Lord Hilsborough kissed hands for the American department but nominally retaining the post-office the salary of which he paid to Lord Sandwich _till the elections should be over_; there being so strict a disqualifying clause in the bill for prohibiting the postmasters for interfering in elections which Sandwich _was determined to do_ to the utmost that he did not dare to accept the office in his own name _till he had incurred the guilt_. Another trick of a very dishonourable nature though ultimately defeated may supply a moral for our share-trafficking days in high quarters. Lord Bottetort one of the bedchamber and a kind of second-hand favourite had engaged in an adventure with a company of copper-workers at Warmley. They broke and his lordship in order to cover his estate from the creditors begged a privy seal to incorporate the company by which means private estates would not be answerable. The king ignorantly granted the request; but Lord Chatham aware of the deception refused to affix the seal to the patent pleading that he was not able. Lord Bottetort outrageous at the disappointment threatened to petition the lords to remove Lord Chatham on the ground of inability. The annotator justly observes that the proposal was absolutely monstrous being nothing but a gross fraud on his lordship's creditors. It however does not seem to have attracted the attention of the attorney-general or the home-office; but for some cause or other the patent did not pass the result being that Lord Bottetort unable to retrieve his losses obtained the government of Virginia in the following summer where he subsequently died. A curious instance of parliamentary corruption next attracted the notice of the public. It came out that the city of Oxford had offered their representation to two gentlemen if they would pay £7500 towards the debts of the corporation. They refused the bargain and Oxford sold itself to the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Abingdon. The matter was brought before the House and the mayor of Oxford and ten of the corporation appeared at the bar confessing their crime and asking pardon. It ended with committing them to prison for five days. A note describes the whole affair as being treated with great ridicule (there being probably not a few who looked upon things of this nature as a matter of course;) and the story being that the aldermen completed their bargain with the Duke of Marlborough during their imprisonment in Newgate. On the 11th of March 1768 the parliament was dissolved. Walpole says ""that its only characteristic was servility to the government; while our ancestors we presume from the shamelessness of its servility might have called it the Impudent Parliament."" After wearying himself in the dusty field of politics Walpole retired like Homer's gods from Troy to rest in the more flowery region of literature. His habits led him to the enjoyment of bitter political poetry which in fact is not poetry at all; while they evidently disqualified him from feeling the power and beauty of the imaginative the only poetry that deserves the name. Thus he describes Goldsmith as the ""correct author of _The Traveller_ "" one of the most beautiful poems in the language; while he panegyrizes with a whole catalogue of plaudits Anstey's _Bath Guide_--a very scandalous though undoubtedly a lively and ingenious caricature of the habits of the time. An ultra-heavy poem by Bentley the son of the critic enjoys a similar panegyric. We give as an evidence of its dulness a fragment of its praise of Lord Bute:-- ""Oh if we seize with skill the coming hour And reinvest us with the robe of power; Rule while we live let future days transmute To every merit all we've charged on Bute. Let late posterity receive his name And swell its sails with every breath of fame-- Downwards as far as Time shall roll his tide With ev'ry pendant flying let it glide."" The rest is equally intolerable. But Bentley was lucky in his patrons if not in his poetry; as in addition to a Commissionership of Lotteries he received a pension for the lives of himself and his wife of £500 a-year! Though thus undeservedly successful in attracting the notice of the government his more honest efforts failed with the public. He wrote two plays both of which failed. Walpole next describes Robertson the historian in these high-coloured terms ""as sagacious and penetrating as Tacitus with a perspicuity of Livy:"" qualities which every one else knows to be directly the reverse of those which characterize Robertson. That very impudent woman Catharine Macaulay seems also to have been one of the objects of his literary admiration. He describes her as being as partial in the cause of liberty as bigots to the church and royalists to tyranny and as exerting manly strength with the gravity of a philosopher. But Walpole is aways amusing when he gives anecdotes of passing things. The famous Brentford election finds in him its most graphic historian. The most singular carelessness was exhibited by the government on this most perilous occasion--a carelessness obviously arising from that contempt which the higher ranks of the nobility in those days were weak enough to feel for the opinion of those below them. On the very verge of an election within five miles of London and which must bring to a point all the exasperation of years; Camden the chancellor went down to Bath and the Duke of Grafton the prime minister who was a great horse-racer drove off to Newmarket. Mansfield whom Walpole seems to have hated and whom he represents as at ""once resentful timorous and subtle "" the three worst qualities of the heart the nerves and the understanding pretended that it was the office of the chancellor to bring the outlaw (Wilkes) to justice and did nothing. The consequence was that the multitude were left masters of the field. On the morning of the election; while the irresolution of the court and the negligence of the prime minister caused a neglect of all precautions; the populace took possession of all the turnpikes and avenues leading to the hustings by break of day and would suffer no man to pass who did not wear in his hat a blue cockade with ""Wilkes and Number 45 "" on a written paper. Riots took place in the streets and the carriage of Sir William Proctor the opposing candidate was demolished. The first day's poll for Wilkes was 1200 for Proctor 700 for Cooke 300. It must be remembered that in these times the elections were capable of being prolonged from week to week and that the first day was regarded as scarcely more than a formality. At night the West-end was in an uproar. It was not safe to pass through Piccadilly. Every house was compelled to illuminate; the windows of all which did not exhibit lights were broken; the coach-glasses of such as did not huzza for ""Wilkes and liberty"" were broken; and the panels of the carriages were scratched with 45! Lord Weymouth the secretary of state wrote to Justice Fielding for constables. Fielding answered that they were all gone to Brentford. On this the guards were drawn out. The mob then attacked Lord Bute's house and Lord Egmont's but without being able to force an entrance. They compelled the Duke of Northumberland to give them liquor to drink Wilkes's health. Ladies of rank were taken out of their sedan-chairs and ordered to join the popular cry. The lord-mayor was an anti-Wilkite--the mob attacked the Mansion-house and broke the windows. He ordered out the trained bands; they had no effect. Six thousand weavers had risen under the Wilkite banner and defied all resistance. Even some of the regimental drummers beat their drums for Wilkes! His force at the election was evidently to be resisted no longer. The ministerial candidate was beaten Wilkes threw in his remaining votes for Cooke and they came in together. The election was thus over on the second day but the mob paraded the metropolis at night insisting on a general illumination. The handsome Duchess of Hamilton one of the Gunnings who had now become quite a Butite was determined not to illuminate. The result was that the mob grew outrageous broke down the outward gates with iron-crows tore up the pavement of the street and battered the doors and shutters for three hours; fortunately without being able to get in. The Count de Sollein the Austrian ambassador the most stately and ceremonious of men was taken out of his coach by the mob who chalked 45 on the sole of his shoe! He complained in form of the insult. Walpole says fairly enough ""it was as difficult for the ministers to help laughing as to give him redress."" Walpole frequently alludes to the two Gunnings as the two handsomest sisters of their time. They were Irish-women fresh-coloured lively and well formed but obviously more indebted to nature than to education. Lady Coventry died young and had the misfortune even in her grave of being made the subject of an epitaph by Mason one of the most listless and languid poems of an unpoetic time. The Duchess of Hamilton survived to a considerable age and was loaded with matrimonial honours. She first married the Duke of Hamilton. On his death she married the Marquis of Lorn eldest son of the Duke of Argyll whom he succeeded in the title--thus becoming mother of the heirs of the two great rival houses of Hamilton and Argyll. While in her widowhood she had been proposed for by the Duke of Bridgewater. Lady Coventry seems to have realized Pope's verses of a dying belle-- ""And Betty give this cheek a little red One would not sure look ugly when one's dead."" ""Till within a few days of her death she lay on a couch with a looking-glass in her hand. When she found her beauty which she idolized was quite gone she took to her bed and would be seen by nobody not even by her nurse suffering only the light of a lamp in her room."" Walpole's description of the ministry adds strikingly to the contemptuous feeling naturally generated by their singular ill success. We must also observe as much to the discredit of the past age as to the honour of the present; that the leading men of the day exhibited or affected a depravity of morals which would be the ruin of any public character at the present time. Many of the scenes in high life would have been fitter for the court of Charles II. and many of the actors in those scenes ought to have been cashiered from public employment. Personal profligacy seems actually to have been regarded as a species of ornamental appendage to public character; and except where its exposure sharpened the sting of an epigram or gave an additional flourish to the periods of a political writer no one seems to have conceived that the grossest offences against morality were of the nature of crime. Another scandal seems to have been frequent--intemperance in wine. Hard drinking was common in England at that period and was even regarded as the sign of a generous spirit; but nearly all the leading politicians who died early are described as owing their deaths to excess. Those are fortunate distinctions for the days which have followed; and the country may justly congratulate itself on the abandonment of habits which deeply tending to corrupt private character render political baseness the almost inevitable result among public men. Walpole promptly declares that half the success of Wilkes was owing to the supineness of the ministers. He might have gone further and fixed his charge on higher grounds. He ought to have said that the whole was owing to the mingled treachery and profligacy which made the nation loathe the characters of public parties and public men. Walpole says in support of his assertion--""that Lord Chatham would take no part in business; that the Duke of Grafton neglected every thing and whenever pressed to be active threatened to resign; that the Chancellor Camden placed between two such intractable friends with whom he was equally discontented avoided dipping himself further; that Conway no longer in the Duke's confidence and more hurt with neglect than pleased with power stood in the same predicament; that Lord Gower thought of nothing but ingratiating himself at St James's; and though what little business was done was executed by Lord Weymouth it required all Wood's the secretary's animosity to Wilkes to stir him up to any activity. Wood even said ""that if the King should pardon Wilkes Lord Weymouth would not sign the pardon."" The chief magistrate of the city consulting the chancellor on what he should do if Wilkes should stand for the city and being answered that he ""must consult the recorder "" Harley sharply replied ""I consulted your lordship as a minister I don't want to be told my duty."" Some of the most interesting portions of these volumes are the notes giving brief biographical sketches of the leading men. The politics have comparatively passed away but the characters remain; and no slight instruction is still to be derived from the progressive steps by which the individuals rose from private life to public distinction. The editor Sir Denis la Marchant deserves no slight credit for his efforts to give authenticity to those notices. He seems to have collected his authorities from every available source; and what he has compiled with the diligence of an editor he has expressed with the good taste of a gentleman. The commencement of a parliament is always looked to with curiosity as the debut of new members. All the expectations which have been formed by favouritism family or faction are then brought to the test. Parliament is an unerring tribunal and no charlatanry can cheat its searching eye. College reputations are extinguished in a moment the common-places of the hustings can avail no more and the pamperings of party only hurry its favourites to more rapid decay. Mr Phipps the son of Lord Mulgrave now commenced his career. By an extraordinary taste though bred a seaman he was so fond of quoting law that he got the sobriquet of the ""marine lawyer."" His knowledge of the science (as the annotator observes) could not have been very deep for he was then but twenty-two. But he was an evidence of the effect of indefatigable exertion. Though a dull debater he took a share in every debate and he appears to have taken the pains of revising his speeches for the press. Yet even under his nursing they exhibit no traces of eloquence. His manner was inanimate and his large and heavy figure gained him the luckless appellation of Ursa Major (to distinguish him from his brother who was also a member.) As if to complete the amount of his deficiencies his voice was particularly inharmonious or rather it was two distinct voices the one strong and hoarse the other weak and querulous; both of which he frequently used. On this was constructed the waggish story--that one night having fallen into a ditch and calling out in his shrill voice a countryman was coming up to assist him; when Phipps calling out again in his hoarse tone the man exclaimed--""If there are two of you in the ditch you may help each other out!"" One of his qualities seems to have been a total insensibility to his own defects; which therefore suffered him to encounter any man and every man whatever might be their superiority. Thus in his early day his dulness constantly encountered Lord North the most dexterous wit of his time. Thus too in his maturer age he constantly thrust himself forward to meet the indignant eloquence of Fox; and seems to have been equally unconscious that he was ridiculed by the sarcastic pleasantry of the one or blasted by the lofty contempt of the other. Yet such is the value of perseverance that this man was gradually regarded as important in the debates that he wrought out for himself an influence in the House and obtained finally the office of joint paymaster one of the most lucrative under government and a British peerage. And all this toil was undertaken by a man who had no children. At his death he was succeeded in his Irish title by his brother Henry who became first lord of the admiralty and also obtained an English peerage. The present Marquis of Normandy is his eldest son. Parliamentary history sometimes gives valuable lessons in exhibiting the infinite folly of parliamentary prediction. It will scarcely be believed in a day like ours which has seen and survived the French Revolution that the chief theme of the period and especial terror of the opposition was the conquest of Corsica by the French! Ministers seem to have been deterred from a war with the French monarchy solely by the dislocated state of the cabinet; while the opposition declared that the possession of Corsica by the French would be ""the death-blow to our influence in the Mediterranean."" With Corsica in French hands it was boldly pronounced that ""France would receive an accession of power which nothing could shake; and they scarcely hesitated to say that upon the independence of Corsica rested not merely the supremacy but the safety of England."" Yet the French conquered Corsica (at a waste of money ten times worth its value to their nation and at a criminal waste of life both French and Corsican) without producing the slightest addition to the power of the monarchy and with no slight disgrace to the honour of its arms. For the Corsicans the most savage race of the Italian blood and accustomed to the use of weapons from their childhood fought with the boldness of all men fighting for their property and routed the troops of France in many a successive and desperate encounter. Still the combat was too unequal; the whole force of a great monarchy was obviously too strong for the hope of successful resistance and Corsica after many a severe struggle became a French territory. But beyond this barren honour the war produced no fruit except a deeper consciousness of the unsparing ambition of the monarchy and of the recklessness with which it sacrificed all considerations of humanity and justice to the tinsel of a military name. One fatal gift however Corsica made in return to France. From it came within a few years the man who sealed the banishment of the Bourbons! and tempting France by the ambition of military success inflicted upon her the heaviest mortality and the deepest shame known in any kingdom since the fall of the Roman empire. Whether this were that direct retribution for innocent blood which Providence has so often inflicted upon guilty nations; or whether it were merely one of those extraordinary casualties which circumstances make so impressive; there can be no question that the man came from Corsica who inflicted on France the heaviest calamities that she had ever known; who after leading her armies over Europe to conquests which only aroused the hatred of all nations and after wasting the blood of hundreds of thousands of her people in victories totally unproductive but of havoc; saw France twice invaded and brought the nation under the ban of the civilized world! France is at this moment pursuing the same course in Algiers which was the pride of her politicians in Corsica. She is pouring out her gigantic force to overwhelm the resistance of peasants who have no defence but their naked bravery. She will probably subdue the resistance; for what can be done by a peasantry against the disciplined force and vast resources of a great European power applied to this single object of success? But barbarian as the Moor and the Arab are and comparatively helpless in the struggle the avenger may yet come to teach the throne of France that there is a power higher than all thrones; a tribunal to which the blood cries out of the ground. The death of Secker Archbishop of Canterbury excites a few touches of Walpole's sarcastic pen. He says ""that his early life had shown his versatility his latter his ambition. But hypocrisy not being parts he rose in the church without ever making a figure in the state."" So much for antithesis. There is no reason why a clergyman should make a figure in the state under any circumstances; and the less figure he made in the state as it was then constituted the more likely he was to be fitted for the church. But the true censure on Secker would have been that he rose without making a figure in any thing; that he had never produced any work worthy of notice as a divine; that he had neither eloquence in the pulpit nor vigour with the pen; that he seems to have been at all times a man of extreme mediocrity; that his qualifications with the ministry were his being a neutral on all the great questions of the day; and his merits with posterity were that he possessed power without giving offence. A hundred such men might have held the highest positions of the church without producing the slightest effect on the public mind; or might have been left in the lowest without being entitled to accuse the injustice of fortune. His successor was Cornwallis Bishop of Lichfield raised to the primacy by the Duke of Grafton who as Walpole says ""had a friendship for the bishop's nephew Earl Cornwallis."" This seems not altogether the most sufficient reason for placing a man at the head of the Church of England but we must take the reason such as we find it. Walpole adds that the nomination had however the merit of disappointing a more unsuitable candidate Ternet of London whom he describes as ""the most time-serving of the clergy and sorely chagrined at missing the archiepiscopal mitre."" It was rather unlucky for the public estimate of royalty that at this moment of popular irritation the young King of Denmark should have arrived in England. He had married the King's youngest sister and making a sort of tour of Europe he determined to visit the family of his wife. His proposal was waived by the King who excused himself by the national confusions. But the young Dane scarcely more than a giddy boy and singularly self-willed was not to be repelled; and he came. Nothing could be colder than his reception; not a royal carriage not an officer of the court was sent to meet him. He arrived at St James's even in a hired carriage. Neither King nor Queen was there. The only mark of attention paid to him was giving him an apartment and supplying him and his suite with a table. Walpole observes that this sullen treatment was as impolitic as it was inhospitable; that the Dane was then actually a pensioner of France and of course it would have been wise to win him out of its hands. But the Danish king seems to have been little better

than a fool; and between his frolics and his follies he finally produced a species of revolution in his own country. All power fell into the hands of his queen who though of a bolder nature seems to have been scarcely less frantic than himself. On the visit of her mother the Princess of Wales to Denmark the Queen met her at the head of a regiment dressed in full uniform and wearing buckskin breeches. She must have been an extraordinary figure altogether for she had grown immensely corpulent. Court favouritism was the fashion in Denmark and the King and Queen were equally ruled by favourites. But in a short period a young physician of the household managed both obtaining peculiarly the confidence of the Queen. Scandal was not idle on this occasion and Germany and England rang with stories of the court of Denmark. The physician was soon created a noble and figured for a while as the prime minister or rather sovereign of the kingdom by the well-known title of Count Struensee. A party was formed against him by the Queen-mother at the head of some of the nobility. The Queen was made prisoner and died in prison. Struensee was tried as traitor and beheaded. The King was finally incapacitated from reigning and his son was raised to the regency. This melancholy transaction formed one of the tragedies of Europe; but it had the additional misfortune of occurring at a time when royalty had begun to sink under the incessant attacks of the revolutionists and France the leader of public opinion on the Continent was filled with opinions contemptuous of all thrones. The year 1768 exhibited France in her most humiliating position before Europe. The Duc de Choiseul was the minister--a man of wit elegance and accomplishment; but too frivolous to follow if he had not been too ignorant to discover the true sources of national greatness. His foreign policy was intrigue and his domestic policy the favouritism of the court by administering to its vices. He raised a war between the Russians and Turks and had the mortification of seeing his _protégé_ the Turk trampled by the armies of his rival the Czarina. Even the Corsicans had degraded the military name of France. But he had a new peril at home. Old Marshal Richelieu--who as Walpole sarcastically observes ""had retained none of his faculties but that last talent of a decayed Frenchman a spirit of back-stairs intrigue""--had provided old Louis XV. with a new mistress. Of all the persons of this character who had made French royal life scandalous in the eyes of Europe this connexion was the most scandalous. It scandalized even France. This mistress was the famous Countess du Barri--a wretched creature originally of the very lowest condition; whose vices would have stained the very highest; and who in the convulsions of the reign that followed was butchered by the guillotine. In November of this year died the Duke of Newcastle at the age of seventy-five. He had been struck with palsy some months before and then for the first time withdrew from public life. Walpole observes that his life had been a proof that ""even in a free country great abilities are not necessary to govern it."" Industry perseverance and intrigue gave him that duration of power ""which shining talents and the favour of the crown could not secure to Lord Granville nor the first rank in eloquence or the most brilliant services to Lord Chatham. Rashness overset Lord Granville's parts and presumptuous impracticability Lord Chatham; while adventitious cunning repaired Newcastle's folly."" Such is the explanation of one of the most curious phenomena of the time by one of its most ingenious lookers-on. But the explanation is not sufficient. It is impossible to conceive how mere cunning could have sustained any man for a quarter of a century in the highest ministerial rank; while that rank was contested from day to day by men of every order of ability. Since the days of Bolingbroke there have been no examples of ministerial talent equal to those exhibited in both Houses in the day of the Duke of Newcastle. Chatham was as ambitious as any man that ever lived and full of the faculties that make ambition successful. The Butes the Bedfords the Hollands the Shelburnes exhibited every shape and shade of cabinet dexterity of court cabal of popular influence and of political knowledge and reckless intrigue. Yet the Duke of Newcastle with remarkable personal disadvantages--a ridiculous manner an ungainly address speech without the slightest pretension to eloquence and the character of extreme ignorance on general subjects--preserved his power almost to the extreme verge of life; and to the last was regarded as playing a most important part in the counsels of the country. Unless we believe in magic we must believe that this man with all his oddity of manner possessed some remarkable faculty by which he saw his way clearly through difficulties impervious to more showy minds. He must have deeply discovered the means of attaching the monarch of acting upon the legislature and of controlling the captiousness of the people. He must have had practical qualities of a remarkable kind; and his is not the first instance in which such qualities in the struggles of government bear away the prize. Thus in later times we have seen Lord Liverpool minister for eleven years and holding power with a firm yet quiet grasp to the last; with the whole strength of Lord Grey and the Whigs struggling for it in front and George Canning a still more dangerous enemy watching for it in the rear. In one of the Notes referring to the appointment of Earl Cornwallis to the vice-treasuryship of Ireland the editor makes a remark which ought not to pass without strong reprehension. Earl Cornwallis towards the close of the Irish rebellion in 1798 had been made chief governor of Ireland at the head of a large army for the purpose of extinguishing the remnants of the rebellion and restoring the country to the habits of peace. The task was no longer difficult but he performed his part with dignity and moderation. He had been sent expressly for the purpose of pacifying the country an object which would have been altogether inconsistent with measures of violence; but the editor in telling us that his conduct exhibited sagacity and benevolence hazards the extraordinary assertion that ""he was one of the few statesmen who inculcated the necessity of forbearance and concession in the misgoverned country!"" Nothing can be more erroneous than this statement in point of principle or more ignorant in point of fact. For the last hundred years and upwards dating from the cessation of the war with James II. Ireland had been the object of perpetual concessions and if misgoverned at all it has been such by the excess of those concessions. It is to be remembered that in the reign of William I. the Roman Catholics were in actual alliance with France and in actual arms against England. They were next beaten in the field and it was the business of the conquerors to prevent their taking arms again. From this arose the penal laws. To those laws we are not friendly; because we are not friendly to any attempt at the suppression even of religious error by the force of the state. It was a political blunder and an offence to Christian principle at the same time; but the Papist is the last man in the world who has a right to object to penal laws; for he is the very man who would have enacted them himself against the Protestant--who always enacts them where he has the power--and from the spirit of whose laws the British legislature were in fact only borrowing at the moment. Yet from the time when James II. and his family began to sink into insignificance the legislature began to relax the penal laws. Within the course of half a century they had wholly disappeared; and thus the editor's flippant assertion that Earl Cornwallis was one of the few statesmen who inculcated the necessity of forbearance and concession exhibits nothing but his Whiggish ignorance on the subject. The misgovernment of Ireland if such existed was to be laid to the charge of neither the English minister nor the English people. The editor probably forgets that during that whole period she was governed by her own parliament; while her progress during the second half of the 18th century was memorably rapid and prosperous in the highest degree through the bounties privileges and encouragements of every kind which were constantly held out to her by the _British_ government. And that so early as the year 1780 she was rich enough to raise equip and support a volunteer army of nearly a hundred thousand men--a measure unexampled in Europe and which would probably task the strength of some of the most powerful kingdoms even at this day. And all this was previous to the existence of what is called the ""patriot constitution."" Walpole has the art of painting historic characters to the life; but he sadly extinguishes the romance with which our fancy so often enrobes them. We have been in the habit of hearing Pascal Paoli the chief of the Corsicans described as the model of a republican hero; and there can be no question that the early resistance of the Corsicans cost the French a serious expenditure of men and money. But Walpole charges Paoli with want of military skill and even with want of that personal intrepidity so essential to a national leader. At length Corsican resistance being overpowered by the constant accumulation of French force Paoli gave way and as Walpole classically observes ""not having fallen like Leonidas did not despair like Cato."" Paoli had been so panegyrized by Boswell's work that he was received with almost romantic applause. The Opposition adopted him for the sake of popularity but ministers took him out of their hands by a pension of £1000 a-year. ""I saw him "" says Walpole ""soon after his arrival dangling at court. He was a man of decent deportment and so void of any thing remarkable in his aspect that being asked if I knew who he was I judged him a Scotch officer--for he was sandy complexioned and in regimentals--who was cautiously awaiting the moment of promotion."" All this is in Walpole's style of fashionable impertinence; but there can be no doubt that Paoli was a brave man and an able commander. He gave the French several severe defeats but the contest was soon too unequal and Paoli withdrew to this country; which was so soon after to be a shelter to the aristocracy of the country which had stained his mountains with blood. By a singular fate on his return to France in an early period of the Revolution he was received with a sort of national triumph and actually appointed lieutenant-general of Corsica by the nation which had driven him into exile. In the war which followed Paoli disgusted by the tyranny of French republicanism and alarmed by the violence of the native factions proposed to put his country under the protection of the English government. A naval and military force was sent to Corsica and the island was annexed to the British crown. But the possession was not maintained with rational vigour. The feeble armament was found unequal to resist the popular passion for republicanism. And from this expenditure of troops and probably still more from the discovery that the island would be wholly useless the force was altogether withdrawn. Paoli returned to England where he died having attained the advanced age of eighty. His red hair and sandy complexion are probably fatal to his character as an Italian chieftain. But if his locks were not black his heart was bold; and if his lip wanted mustaches his mind wanted neither sagacity nor determination. Walpole was born for a cynic philosopher. He treats men of all ranks with equal scorn. From Wilkes to George III. he brands them all. Ministers meet no mercy at his hands. He ranges them as the Sultan used to range heads on the spikes of the seraglio for marks for his arrows. His history is a species of moveable panorama; the scene constantly shifting and every scene a burlesque of the one that went before; or perhaps the more faithful similitude would be found in a volume of HB.'s ingenious caricatures where all the likenesses are preserved though perverted and all the dexterity of an accomplished pencil is employed only in making its subjects ridiculous. He thus tells us:--""The Duke of Grafton was the fourth prime minister in seven years who fell by his own fault. Lord Bute was seized with a panic and ran away from his own victory. Grenville was undone by his insolence by joining in the insult on the princess and by his persecution of Lord Bute and Mackenzie. Lord Rockingham's incapacity overturned _him_; and now the Duke of Grafton destroyed a power which it had depended on himself to make as permanent as he could desire."" But rash and rapid as those changes were what were the grave intrigues of the English cabinet to the _boudoir_ ministries of France? Walpole is never so much in his element as when he is sporting in the fussy frivolities of the Faubourg St Germain. He was much more a Frenchman than an Englishman; his love of gossip his passion for haunting the society of talkative old women and his delight at finding himself revelling in a region of _petite soupers_ court gallantries and the faded indiscretions of court beauties in the wane would have made him a rival to the courtiers of Louis XIV. Perhaps the world never saw since the days of Sardanapalus a court so corrupt wealth so profligate and a state of society so utterly contemptuous of even the decent affectation of virtue as the closing years of the reign of Louis XV. A succession of profligate women ruled the king a similar succession ruled the cabinet; lower life was a sink of corruption; the whole a romance of the most scandalous order. Madame de Pompadour a woman whose vice had long survived her beauty and who ruled the decrepit heart of a debauched king had made Choiseul minister. Choiseul was the beau-ideal of a French noble of the old _régime_. His ambition was boundless his insolence ungoverned his caprice unrestrained and his love of pleasure predominant even over his love of power. ""He was an open enemy but a generous one; and had more pleasure in attaching an enemy than in punishing him. Whether from gaiety or presumption he was never dismayed; his vanity made him always depend on the success of his plans and his spirits made him soon forget the miscarriage of them."" At length appeared on the tapis the memorable Madame du Barri! For three months all the faculties of the court were absorbed in the question of her public presentation. Indulgent as the courtiers were to the habits of royal life the notoriety of Madame du Barri's early career startled even their flexible sense of etiquette. The ladies of the court most of whom would have been proud to have taken her place determined ""that they would not appear at court if she should be received there."" The King's daughters (who had borne the ascendant of Madame du Pompadour in their mother's life) grew outrageous at the new favourite; and the relatives of Choiseul insisted upon it that he should resign rather than consent to the presentation. Choiseul resisted yielded was insulted for his resistance and was scoffed at for his submission. He finally retired and was ridiculed for his retirement. Du Barri triumphed. Epigrams and _calembours_ blazed through Paris. Every one was a wit for the time and every wit was a rebel. The infidel faction looked on at the general dissolution of morals with delight as the omen of general overthrow. The Jesuits rejoiced in the hope of getting the old King into their hands and terrifying him if not into a proselyte at least into a tool. Even Du Barri herself was probably not beyond their hopes; for the established career of a King's mistress was to turn _dévote_ on the decay of her personal attractions. Among Choiseul's intentions was that of making war on England. There was not the slightest ground for a war. But it is a part of the etiquette of a Frenchman's life that he must be a warrior or must promote a war or must dream of a war. M. Guizot is the solitary exception in our age as M. Fleury was the solitary exception in the last; but Fleury was an ecclesiastic and was eighty years old besides--two strong disqualifications for a conqueror. But the King was then growing old too; his belligerent propensities were absorbed in quarrels with his provincial parliaments; his administrative faculties found sufficient employment in managing the morals of his mistresses; his private hours were occupied in pelting Du Barri with sugar-plums; and thus his days wore away without that supreme glory of the old _régime_--a general war in Europe. The calamities of the French noblesse at the period of the Revolution excited universal regret; and the sight of so many persons of graceful manners and high birth flung into the very depths of destitution in foreign lands or destroyed by the guillotine at home justified the sympathy of mankind. But the secret history of that noblesse was a fearful stigma not only on France but on human nature. Vice may have existed to a high degree of criminality in other lands; but in no other country of Europe or the earth ever was vice so public so ostentatiously forced upon the eyes of man so completely formed into an established and essential portion of fashionable and courtly life. It was even the _etiquette_ that the King of France should have a _mistress_. She was as much a part of the royal establishment as a prime minister was of the royal councils; and as if for the purpose of offering a still more contemptuous defiance to the common decencies of life the etiquette was that this mistress should be a _married woman_! Yet in that country the whole ritual of Popery was performed with scrupulous exactness. A vast and powerful clergy filled France; and the ceremonials of the national religion were performed continually before the court with the most rigid formality. The King had his confessor and so far as we can discover the mistress had her confessor too; the nobles attended the royal chapel and also had their confessors. The confessional was never without royal and noble solicitors of monthly or at the furthest quarterly absolution. Still from the whole body of ecclesiastics France heard no remonstrance against those public abominations. Their sermons few and feeble sometimes declaimed on the vices of the beggars of Paris or the riots among the peasantry; but no sense of scriptural responsibility and no natural feeling of duty ever ventured to deprecate the vices of the nobles and the scandals of the throne. We must give but a fragment from Walpole's _catalogue raisonné_ of this Court of Paphos. It had been the King's object to make some women of rank introduce Madame du Barri at court; and he had found considerable difficulty in this matter not from her being a woman of no character but on her being a woman of no birth and whose earlier life had been spent in the lowest condition of vice. The King at last succeeded--and these are the _chaperons_. ""There was Madame de l'Hôpital an ancient mistress of the Prince de Soubize! The Comtesse Valentinois of the highest birth very rich but very foolish; and as far from a Lucretia as Madame du Barri herself! Madame de Flavacourt was another a suitable companion to both in virtue and understanding. She was sister to _three_ of _the King's earliest mistresses_ and had aimed at succeeding them! The Maréchale Duchesse de Mirpoix was the last and a very important acquisition."" Of her Walpole simply mentions that all her talents were ""drowned in such an overwhelming passion for play that though she had long and singular credit with the King she reduced her favour to an endless solicitation for money to pay her debts."" He adds in his keen and amusing style--""That to obtain the post of _dame d'honneur_ to the Queen she had left off _red_ (wearing rouge ) and acted _dévotion_; and the very next day was seen riding with Madame de Pompadour (the King's mistress) in the latter's coach!"" The editor settles the question of _her_ morality too.--""She was a woman of extraordinary wit and cleverness but totally _without character_."" She had her morals by inheritance; for she was the daughter of the _mistress_ of the Duke of Lorraine who married her to Monsieur de Beauvan a poor noble and whom the duke got made a prince of the empire by the title of De Craon. Now all those were females of the highest rank in France ladies of fashion the stars of court life and the models of national manners. Can we wonder at the retribution which cast them out into the highways of Europe? Can we wonder at the ruin of the corrupted nobility? Can we wonder at the massacre of the worldly church which stood looking on at those vilenesses and yet never uttered a syllable against them if it did not even share in their excesses? The true cause for astonishment is not in the depth of their fall but in its delay; not in the severity of the national judgment but in that long-suffering which held back the thunderbolt for a hundred years and even then did not extinguish the generation at a blow! [Footnote 33: _Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third by Horace Walpole. From the MSS. Edited with Notes by_ SIR D. LA MARCHANT BART. London: Bentley.] A FEW PASSAGES CONCERNING OMENS DREAMS APPEARANCES &c. IN A LETTER TO EUSEBIUS. No. II. It is somewhat late my dear Eusebius to refer me to my letter of August 1840 and to enquire in your bantering way if I have shaken hands with a ghost recently or dreamed a dream worth telling. You have evidently been thinking upon this subject ever since I wrote to you; and I suspect you are more of a convert than you will admit. You only wish to provoke me to further evidence; but I see--through the flimsy veil of your seeming denials and through your put-on audacity--the nervous workings of your countenance when your imagination is kindled by the mysterious subject. Your wit and your banter are but the whistle of the clown in the dark to keep down his rising fears. However good your story[34] may be there have been dreams even of the numbers of lottery-tickets that have been verified. We call things coincidences and chances because we have no name to give them whereas they are phenomena that want a better settlement. You speak too of the ""doctrine of chances."" If chance have a doctrine it is subject to a rule is under calculation arithmetic and loses all trace at once of our idea of absolute chance. If there be chance there is also a power over chance. The very hairs of our head which seem to be but a chance-confusion are yet we are assured all numbered--and is it less credible that their every movement is noted also? One age is the type of another; and every age from the beginning of the world hath had its own symbols; and not poetically only but literally true is it that ""coming events cast their shadows before."" If the ""vox populi"" be the ""vox Dei "" it has pronounced continually in a space of above five thousand years that there is communication between the material and immaterial worlds. So rare are the exceptions that speaking of mankind we may assert that there is a universal belief amongst them of that connexion by signs omens dreams visions or ghostly presences. Many professed sceptics who have been sceptics only in the pride of understanding have in secret bowed down to one form or other of the superstition. Take not the word in a bad sense. It is at least the germ the natural germ of religion in the human mind. It is the consciousness of a superiority not his own of some power so immeasurably above man that his mind cannot take it in but accepts as inconsiderable glimpses of it the phenomena of nature and the fears and misgivings of his own mind spreading out from himself into the infinite and invisible. I am not certain Eusebius if it be not the spiritual part of conscience and is to it what life is to organized matter--the mystery which gives it all its motion and beauty. It is not my intention to repeat the substance of my former letter--I therefore pass on. You ask me if the mesmeric phenomena--which you ridicule yet of which I believe you covet a closer investigation--are not part and parcel of the same incomprehensible farrago? I cannot answer you. It would be easy to do so were I a disciple. If the mesmerists _can_ establish _clairvoyance_ it will certainly be upon a par with the ancient oracles. But what the philosopher La Place says in his _Essay on Probabilities_ may be worth your consideration--that ""any case however apparently incredible if it is a recurrent case is as much entitled to a fair valuation under the laws of induction as if it had been more probable beforehand."" If the mesmerized can project and that apparently without effort their minds into the minds of others--read their thoughts; if they can see and tell what is going on hundreds of miles off on the sea and on distant lands alike; if they can at remote distances _influence_ others with a sense of their presence--they possess a power so very similar to that ascribed in some extraordinary cases to persons who in a dying state have declared that they have been absent and conversed with individuals dear to them in distant countries and whose presence has been recognised at those very times by the persons so said to be visited that I do not see how they can be referable to different original phenomena. Yet with this fact before them supposing the facts of mesmerism of the mind's separation from and independence of its organic frame is it not extraordinary that so many of this new school are or profess themselves by their writings materialists? I would however use the argument of mesmerism thus:--Mesmerism if true confirms the ghost and vision power though I cannot admit that dreams ghosts and visions are any confirmation of mesmerism; for if mesmerism be a delusion and cheat it may have arisen from speculating upon the other known power--as true miracles have been known to give rise to false. In cases of mesmerism however this shock is felt--the facts as facts in the ordinary sense are incredible; but then I see persons who have examined the matter very nicely whom I have known some intimately for many years of whose good sense judgement and _veracity_ I will not allow myself to doubt--indeed to doubt whose veracity would be more incredible to me than the mesmeric facts themselves. Here is a conflict--a shock. Two contradictory impossibilities come together. I do not weigh in the scale at all the discovery of some cheats and pretenders; this was from the first to have been expected. In truth the discoveries of trick and collusion are after all few. Not only has mesmerism been examined into by persons I respect but practised likewise; and by one a physician whom I have known intimately many years who to his own detriment has pursued it and whom I have ever considered one of the most truthful persons living and incapable of collusion or knowingly in any way deceiving. Now Eusebius we cannot go into society and pronounce persons whom we have ever respected all at once to be cheats and liars. Yet there may be some among them who will tell you that they themselves were entirely sceptical until they tried mesmerism and found they had the power in themselves. We must then in fairness either acknowledge mesmerism as a power or believe that these persons whom we respect and esteem are practised upon and deluded by others. And such would I confess be the solution of the difficulty were it not that there are cases where this is next to an impossibility. But I do not mean now Eusebius to discuss mesmerism [35] further than as it does seem ""a part and parcel"" of that mysterious power which has been manifested in omens dreams and appearances. I say _seem_--for if it be proved altogether false the other mystery stands untouched by the failure--for in fact it was thousands of years before either the discovery or practice--at least as far as we know; for some will not quite admit this but in their mesmeric dreaming attribute to it the ancient oracles and other wonders. And there are who somewhat inconsistently do this having ridiculed and contemned as utterly false those phenomena until they have found them hitch on to and give a credit to their new Mesmeric science. But to return to the immediate subject. It has been objected against dreams omens and visions that they often occur without an object; that there is either no consequence or a very trifling one; the knot is not ""dignus vindice."" Now I am not at all staggered by this; on the contrary it rather tends to show that there is some _natural_ link by which the material and immaterial within and without ourselves may be connected; and very probably many more intimations of that connexion are given than noted. Those of thought mental suggestions may most commonly escape us. It is thus what we would not do of ourselves we may do in spite of ourselves. Nor do we always observe closely objects and ends. We might were we to scrutinize often find the completion of a dream or omen which we had considered a failure because we looked too immediately for its fulfilment. But even where there is evidently no purpose attained there is the less reason to suspect fabrication which would surely commence with an object. Some very curious cases are well attested where the persons under the impression act upon the impulse blindly not knowing why; and suddenly in conclusion the whole purpose bursts upon their understandings. But I think the objection as to purpose is answered by one undoubted fact the dream of Pilate's wife--""Have thou nothing to do with that just man; for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him."" There is here no apparent purpose--the warning was unheeded. Yet the dream recorded as it is and where it is was unquestionably a dream upon the event to happen; and is not to be considered as a mere coincidence which would have been unworthy the sacred historian who wrote the account of it under inspiration. And this is a strong--the strongest confirmation of the inspiration of dreams or rather perhaps of their significance natural or otherwise and with or without a purpose. So the dream of Cæsar's wife did not save Cæsar's life. And what are we to think of the whole narrative beginning with the warning of the Ides of March? Now Joseph's dream and Pharaoh's dream were dreams of purpose; they were prophetic and disclosed to the understanding of Joseph. So that with this authority of Scripture I do not see how dreams can be set aside as of no significance. And we have the like authority for omens and symbols and visions--so that we must conclude the things themselves to be possible; and this many do yet say that with other miracles they have long ceased to be. Then again in things that by their agreement falling in with other facts and events move our wonder we escape from the difficulty as we imagine by calling them coincidences; as if we knew what coincidences are. I do not believe they are without a purpose any more than that seeming fatality by which little circumstances produce great events and in ordinary life occur frequently to an apparent detriment yet turn out to be the very hinge upon which the fortune and happiness of life depend and are established. I remember a remarkable instance of this--though it may not strictly belong to omens or coincidences; but it shows the purpose of an accident. Many years ago a lady sent her servant--a young man about twenty years of age and a native of that part of the country where his mistress resided--to the neighbouring town with a ring which required some alteration to be delivered into the hands of a jeweller. The young man went the shortest way across the fields; and coming to a little wooden bridge that crossed a small stream he leaned against the rail and took the ring out of its case to look at it. While doing so it slipped out of his hand and fell into the water. In vain he searched for it even till it grew dark. He thought it fell into the hollow of a stump of a tree under water; but he could not find it. The time taken in the search was so long that he feared to return and tell his story--thinking it incredible and that he should even be suspected of having gone into evil company and gamed it away or sold it. In this fear he determined never to return--left wages and clothes and fairly ran away. This seemingly great misfortune was the making of him. His intermediate history I know not; but this--that after many years' absence either in the

ast or West Indies he returned with a very considerable fortune. He now wished to clear himself with his old mistress; ascertained that she was living purchased a diamond ring of considerable value which he determined to present in person and clear his character by telling his tale which the credit of his present condition might testify. He took the coach to the town of ---- and from thence set out to walk the distance of a few miles. He found I should tell you on alighting a gentleman who resided in the neighbourhood who was bound for the adjacent village. They walked together; and in conversation this former servant now a gentleman with graceful manners and agreeable address communicated the circumstance that made him leave the country abruptly many years before. As he was telling this they came to the very wooden bridge. ""There "" said he--""it was just here that I dropped the ring; and there is the very bit of old tree into a hole of which it fell--just there."" At the same time he put down the point of his umbrella into the hole of a knot in the tree--and drawing it up to the astonishment of both found _the_ very ring on the ferrule of the umbrella. I need not tell the rest. But make this reflection--why was it that he did not as easily find it immediately after it had fallen in? It was an incident like one of those in Parnell's ""Hermit "" which though a seeming chance was of purpose and most important. Now here is an extraordinary coincidence between a fact and a dream or a vision whatever it may be which yet was of no result--I know it to be true. And you know Eusebius my excellent truth-telling worthy Mrs H---- who formerly kept a large school at ----. One morning early the whole house was awakened by the screams of one of the pupils. She was in hysterics; and from time to time fainting away in an agony of distress. She said she had seen her grandfather--that he was dead and they would bury him alive. In due time the post brought a letter--the grandfather _was dead_. Letters were written to the friends to announce the dream or vision and the burial was delayed in consequence. Nothing could be more natural than the fear of burying him alive in the mind of the young girl unacquainted with death and averse to persuade herself that the person she had seen could be really dead. Now my dear Eusebius you know Mrs H---- and cannot doubt the fact. Cases of this kind are so many and well authenticated that one knows not where to choose. ----""Tam multa loquacem Delassare valent Fabium."" I think you knew the worthy and amiable Mr ---- who had the charge of the valuable museum at ----. I well remember hearing this narrated of him long _before_ his death. He stated that one day opening a case he heard a voice issue from it which said--""In three days you shall die."" He became ill and sent for Dr P---- the very celebrated physician. It was in vain to reason with him. The third day arrived. The kind physician sat with him till the hour was past. He did not then die! Did he however mistake or miscalculate the meaning of the voice? He died _that very day three years_!! Nothing can be more authentic than this. When I was in town in the summer Eusebius I spent an agreeable day with my friends the C----s. Now I do not know a human being more incapable of letting an idea a falsehood of imagination run away with his sober judgment. He has a habit I should say more than most men of tying himself down to matters of fact. I copy for you an extract from a diary; it was taken down that night. ""Mr C---- has just told me the following very curious circumstance:--Some years ago Mrs C---- being not in good health they determined to spend some weeks in the country. His father was then in his house. They separated--the father to his own home in the neighbourhood of London and Mr and Mrs C---- to visit the brother of Mrs C---- a clergyman and resident upon his living in Suffolk. Soon after their arrival there was a large assembly of friends in consequence of some church business. There was church service--in the midst of which Mr C---- suddenly felt an irresistible desire to return to his house in town. He knew not why. It was in vain he reasoned with himself--go he must forced by an impulse for which he could in no way account. It would distress his friends--particularly on such an occasion. He could not help it. He communicated his intention to Mrs C----; begged her to tell no one lest he should give trouble by having the carriage;--his resolution was instantly taken to quit the church at once to walk about six miles to meet the coach if possible; if not determining to walk all night a distance of thirty-two miles. He did quit the church walked the six miles was in time to take the coach reached London and his own home. The intelligence he found there was that his father was dangerously ill. He went to him--found him dying--and learned that he had told those about him that he knew he should see his son. That wish was gratified which could not have been but for this sudden impulse and resolution. His father expired in his arms."" It is curious that his father had told him a dream which he had had some years before--that he was in the midst of some convulsion of nature where death was inevitable and that then the only one of his children who came to him was my friend Mr C---- which was thus in manner accomplished on the day of his death. I know not if some persons are naturally more under these and suchlike mysterious influences. There was another occurrence which much affected Mr C----. He went into Gloucestershire to visit a brother. I do not think the brother was ill. All the way that he went in the coach he had to use his own words a death-smell which very much annoyed him. Leaving the coach he walked towards his brother's house greatly depressed; so much so that for a considerable time he sat on a stone by the way deeply agitated and could not account for the feeling. He arrived in time only to see his brother expire. I do not know Eusebius how you can wish for better evidence of facts so extraordinary. Mr C----'s character is sufficient voucher. Here is another of these extraordinary coincidences which I have been told by my friend Mrs S---- niece to the Rev. W. Carr whom she has very frequently heard narrate the following:--A farmer's wife at Bolton Abbey came to him the Rev. W. Carr in great agitation and told him she had passed a dreadful night having dreamed that she saw Mr Richard (brother to Rev. W. Carr;) that she saw him in great distress struggling in the water with his portmanteau on his shoulders escaping from a burning ship; and she begged the family to write to know if Mr Richard was safe. It was exactly according to the dream; he had at the very time so escaped from the burning of (I believe) the Boyne. How like is this to some of the mesmeric visions! I am assured of the truth of the following by one who knew the circumstance. One morning as Mrs F---- was sitting in her room a person came in and told her he had had a very singular dream; that he had been sitting with her sister Mrs B----k when some one came into the room with distressing intelligence about her husband. Though it could not have been there known at the time Mr B----k had been thrown from his horse and killed. A party of gentlemen had met at Newcastle; the nature of the meeting is stated to have been of a profane character. One of them suddenly started and cried ""What's that?""--and saw a coffin. The others saw it; and one said--""It is mine: I see myself in it!"" In twenty-four hours he was a corpse. I think I mentioned to you Eusebius that when I dined with Miss A---- in town she told me a curious story about a black boy. I have been since favoured with the particulars and copy part of the letter; weigh it well and tell me what you think of such coincidences--if you are satisfied that there is nothing but chance in the matter. ""Now for the little black boy. In the year 1813 I was at the house of Sir J. W. S----th of D---- House near Bl----d who then resided in Portman Square and a Mr L----r of Norfolk a great friend of Sir John's was of the party. On coming into the room he said--'I have just been calling on our old Cambridge friend H----n who returned the other day from India; and he has been telling me a very curious thing which happened in his family. He had to go up the country to a very remote part on some law business and he left Mrs H----n at home under the protection of her sister and that lady's husband. The night after Mr H----n went away the brother-in-law was awakened by the screams of his own wife in her sleep; she had dreamed that a little black boy Mr H----n's servant who had attended him was murdering him. He woke her and while he was endeavouring to quiet her and convince her that her fears were the effects of a bad dream produced probably by indigestion he was roused by the alarming shrieks of Mrs H----n who slept in an adjoining room. On going to her he found her too just awakening after a horrid dream--the little Indian boy was murdering her husband. He used the same arguments with her that he had already found answer in quieting his own wife; but in his own mind he felt very anxious for tidings from Mr H----n. To their great surprise that gentleman made his appearance the next evening though he had expected to be absent above a week. He looked ill and dejected. They anxiously asked him what was the matter. Nothing but that he was angry with himself for acting in a weak foolish manner. He had dreamed that his attendant the little black boy intended to murder him; and the dream made such an impression on his nerves that he could not bear the sight of the boy but dismissed him at once without any explanation. Finding he could not go on without an attendant he had returned home to procure one; but as he had no reason whatever to suspect the boy of any ill intention he felt very angry with himself for minding a dream. Dear Mrs H----n was much struck with this story; but she used to say--unless it were proved that the boy really had the intention of murdering his master the dreams were for nothing.'"" In this instance a murder may have been prevented by these dreams; for if merely coincidences and without an object the wonder of coincidences is great indeed; for it is not one dream but three and of three persons. Things apparently of little consequence are yet curious for observation. Our friend K----n and two or three other friends some months ago went on an excursion together. Their first point was Bath where they meant to remain some time. K----n dreamed on Friday they were to start on Saturday; that there was a great confusion at the railway station; and that there would be no reaching Bath for them. They went however on Saturday morning and he told his dream when in the carriage. One of the party immediately repeated the old saying-- ""A Friday's dream on Saturday told Will be sure to come true ere the day is old."" There was no accident to the train; but instead of finding themselves at Bath they found themselves at Bristol--having in their conversation neglected to notice that they had passed Bath. They were put to great inconvenience and confusion and difficulty in getting their luggage. I know you too well Eusebius not to hear by anticipation your laughter at this trifling affair and the wit with which for a few moments you will throw off your ridicule. You may ask if the shooting of your corns are not as sure and as serious prognostications? Be it so; and why not Eusebius? You can tell by them what weather to expect; and after all you know little more of the material world less of the immaterial and nothing of their mystical union. Nothing now past present and future may be but terms for we know not what and cannot comprehend how they can be lost in an eternity. There they become submerged. So take the thing represented not the paltry perhaps ridiculous one through which it is represented. It is the picture the attitude the position the undignified familiarity of yourself with the defects of your own person that make the ridiculous; but there is grave philosophy nevertheless to be drawn from every atom of your own person if you view it aright. I have heard you eloquent against the ""hypocrite Cicero "" as you called him for his saying that one Augur meeting another could scarcely help laughing. If mankind chose augury as a sign it might have been permitted them to find a sign in it. But this is plunging into deeper matter and one which you will think a quagmire wherein wiser thoughts may flounder and be lost. When the officers of Hannibal's army were heard to laugh by the soldiery on the morning of the battle of Cannæ they took it as a good omen. It was generally received and the day was fatal to the Romans. ""Possunt quia posse videntur "" you will say; but whence comes the ""videntur?"" There Eusebius you beg the whole question. The wonders and omens gravely related by Livy at least portray a general feeling--an impression before events. In the absence of a better religion I would not have quarrelled with the superstition and very much join you in your condemnation of the passage in Cicero. The fatal necessity of event upon event of omen dream and vision is the great characteristic of the wondrous Greek drama. So awfully portrayed is the _OEdipus_--and with more grand and prophetic mystery pervading the _Agamemnon_. Had it not been congenial with popular belief it could never have been so received; nor indeed could somewhat similar (though degraded from their high authority as standing less alone by their amalgamation with a purer creed) characteristics in some of the plays of our own Shakspeare have touched the mind to wonderment had there been no innate feeling to which they might and without effort unite. The progress however of the omen and vision clearer and clearer pointing to the very deed and even while its enactment has commenced and that fatality by which (prophetic too) the plainest prophecy is unheeded contemned and the Prophetess herself doomed and knowing herself doomed may be considered as an epitome of the Grecian creeds upon the subject. It was no vulgar punning spirit that designated the very _name_ of Helen as a cursing omen. [Greek: ""Tis pot' hônomazen hôd Es to pan etêtumôs-- Mê tis ontôn ouch orô-- Men pronoaisi tou peprômeuou Glôssan en tucha nemôn.""] Helen the destroyer--yes that was her significant name. The present King of the French was not allowed to assume the title of Valois which was strictly speaking his and instead assumed that of Duc de Chartres on account of an evil omen attached to the former name; and that evil omen originating in a curious fact the seeing of a spectre by that German princess who succeeded the poisoned sister of our second Charles. But there is nothing in modern history more analogous to the fatalities of the Grecian drama than those singular passages relating to the death of Henry the Fourth of France. We have the gravest authority of the gravest historians that prophecies warnings and omens so prepared Henry for his death that he waited for it with a calm resignation as to an irresistible fatality. ""In fact "" (says an eloquent writer in Maga of April 1840 ) ""it is to this attitude of listening expectation in the king and breathless waiting for the blow that Schiller alludes in that fine speech of Wallenstein to his sister where he notices the funeral knells that sounded continually in Henry's ears; and above all his prophetic instinct that caught the sound from a far distance of his murderer's motions that could distinguish amidst all the tumult of a mighty Capital those stealthy steps."" And does it seem so strange to you Eusebius if the ear and the eye those outposts as it were of the ever watchful spiritual and intellectual sentinels within man convey the secret intelligences that most concern him? What is there Eusebius so marvellous to your conception if there be sympathy more than electric between those two worlds outer Nature and Man himself? If earth that with him and for him partook of one curse with all its accompanying chain and interchange of elements be still one with him in utterance and signification whether of his weal or woe. The sunshine and the gloom enter into him and are his; they reflect his feelings or rather they are his feelings almost become his flesh--they are his bodily sensations. The winds and the waters in their gentler breathings and their sullen roar are but the music of his mind echo his joys his passions or funereally rehearse the dirge of his fate. Reject not my Eusebius any fact because it seems little and trifling; a mite is a wonder in creation from which deep hidden truths present themselves. It was a heathen thought an imperfect conception of the wide sympathy of all nature and of that meaning which every particle of it can convey and more significantly as we calculate our knowledge;--it was a heathen thought that the poet should lament the unlikeliness of the flowers of the field to man in their fall and reappearance. It was not the blessing given to his times to see the perfectness of the truth--the ""non omnis moriar"" indicated even in his own lament.[36] I had written thus far when our friend H---l---r looked in upon me and enquired what I was about; I told him I was writing to you and the subject of my letter. He is this moment gone and has left with me these two incidents. They came within his own experience. He remembers that when he was a boy he was in a room with several of his brothers some of whom were unwell yet not seriously ill. On a sudden there was a great noise so great that it could be compared to nothing but the firing of a pistol--a pane in the window was broken; not he said to _pieces_ but literally to a _powder_ of glass. All in the house heard it with the exception of one of his brothers which struck them as very strange. The servants from below and their mother from above rushed into the room fearing one of them might have been shot. The mother when she saw how it was told H---l---r that his brother who did not hear the noise she knew it well would die. At that same hour next day that brother did die. The other story is more singular. His family were very intimate with another consisting of father mother and an only daughter--a child. Of her the father was so fond that he was never happy but when she was with him. It happened that he lost his health and during his long illness continually prayed that when he was gone his child too should be shortly taken from this world and that he might be with her in a better. He died--when a short time after his death the child who was in perfect health came rushing into the presence of her mother from a little room which looked out upon a court but from which there was no entrance to the room--she came rushing to her mother calling out--""Oh papa papa! I have seen papa in the court and he called me to him. I must go--open the door for me--do mamma! I must go for he called me."" Within twenty-four hours that child was dead. Now said H--l--r I knew this to be a fact as well as I ever knew any act for our families were like one family. Sweet image of infant and of parental love!--let us excuse the prayer by that of the ancient mother who when her sons dragged her chariot to the temple prayed that they might receive from the gods what was best for them--and they were found dead in the temple. How beautiful is the smile of the sleeping infant! ""Holds it not converse with angels?"" the thought is natural--ministering spirits may be unseen around us and in all space and love the whispering speech in the ear of sleeping innocence; there is visible joy in the face yet how little can it know of pleasurable sensations communicable through this world's objects? How know we but the sense must be deteriorated to make it serviceable for the lower purposes for which in part the child is born?--as the air we breathe must have something of poison or it would be too pure for mortal beings. Look down some lengthening valley from a height Eusebius at the hour of twilight when all lands their marks and boundaries grow dim and only here and there the scant light indicates lowly dwellings shelters of humanity in earth's sombre bosom and mark the vast space of vapour that fills all between and touches all broods over all--can you think this little world of life that you know by having walked its path and now see so indistinguishable to be the all of existence before you? Lone indeed would be the world were there nothing better than ourselves in it. No beings to watch for us to warn us to defend us from ""the Power of the Air:"" ministering spirits--and why not of the departed?--may be there. If there be those that in darkness persuade to evil--and in winter nights the winds that shake the casement seem to denote to the guilty conscience the presence of avenging fiends--take we not peace and wholesome suggestion from milder influences of air and sunshine? Brighter may be perhaps the child's vision than ours; as it grows for the toil and work for which it is destined there comes another picture of a stern and new reality and that which brought the smile of joy upon the face is but as a dissolving view; and then he becomes fully fitted for humanity of which he was before but the embryo. And even in his progress if he keep charge of his mind in purity and in love seem there not ministering spirits that spread before him in the mirage of the mind scenes that look like a new creation? and pedants in their kind call this the poet's fancy his imagination. Lately I have spent a month by the sea: the silent rocks seemed significant in their overhanging look and silence as listening to the incessant sea. It would be painful to think every thing insensible about us but ourselves. I wonder not that the rocks the woods and wilds were peopled by ancient Mythologists; and with beings too with whom humanity could sympathize. I would not think that the greater part of the earth's islands and continents were given up to hearts insensate; that there were nothing better than wildernesses of chattering apes--no sounds more rational than ""The wolf's wild howl on Ulalaski's shore."" I would rather think that there are myriads of beings of higher nature than ourselves whose passage is [Greek: hôste noêma] and whose home is ubiquity; and such as these may have their missions to us and may sometimes take the dying breath of father or of brother in far-off seas and instinct with and maintaining in themselves made visible that poor remnant of life stand at a moment at the bedside of beloved relatives even in most distant lands and give to each a blessed interchange and intelligence. In every sense indeed we ""see but in part."" In the dulness of the day we see not a tenth part of the living things that people the ground; a gleam of sunshine instantly discovers to us in leaf and flower a little world; and could we but remove this outward fog this impure atmosphere of our mortal senses that which may be occasionally granted at dying hour we might behold all space peopled with the glory of created beings. There is a beautiful truth of best feeling hidden in the superstition that at one particular moment on Christmas Eve all the beasts of the field go down on their knees amidst the darkness seen alone by their Creator's eye and by that angelic host that sing again the first divine hymn of Palestine. I do not wonder that sailors are what we choose to call more superstitious than landsmen; with but a plank between them and death--unfathomable seas around them whose depths are continual wonder from whose unseen treasure-house the ----""billows roll ashore The beryl and the golden ore."" Seas and skies with the great attribute of life motion--their very ship a personification as it were a living creature--cut off separated as they are for the most part from cities and the mind-lowering ways of cities which they see recede from them and melt into utter insignificance leaving for companionship but the winds and the waters. Can it be a matter of wonder if with warm wishes and affections in their breasts their imaginations shape the clouds and mists into being messengers between them and the world they have all but lost? The stars those ""watches of the night "" to them are not the same changing yet ever significant. Even the waters about them which by day are apparently without a living thing beyond the life of their own motion in the darkness glittering with animated fire; can we wonder then if their thoughts rise from these myriad invisible lucent worms of the sea to a faith in the more magnificent beings who ""clothe themselves with light;"" and if they believe that such are present unseen commissioned to guard and guide them in ways perilous and obscure? Seamen accustomed to observe signs in their great solitude unattracted by the innumerable sights and businesses of other life are ever open and ready to receive signs and significations even of omen and vision; whereas he that is engaged in crowded street and market heeds no sign though it were offered but that which his little and engrossing interests make for him; he indeed may receive ""angels' visits unaware."" Omens dreams and visions are to seamen more real more frequent as more congenial with their wants; and some extraordinary cases have even been registered in ships' logs not resting on the credibility of one but of a crew and such logs if I mistake not have been admitted evidence in courts of judicature. Am I led away by the subject Eusebius? You will say I am; yet I could go on--the wonder increases--the common earth is not their sure grave-- ""Nothing of them that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange."" But I must not pursue this lest in your wit you find reason to compare me to that great philosopher who gravely asserted that he had discovered how to make a mermaid but abstained from using the receipt; and I am quite sure you are not likely to resemble the learned Dr Farmer who folded down the page for future experiment.[37] It is not very long ago that I was discussing subjects of this kind with our acute friend S---- V----. I send you a letter received from him written I presume more for you than myself; for I told him I was on the point of answering yours which he read. His attempt to account for any of his stories by common coincidences is rather indicative of his naturally inquisitive mind than of his real belief; and I suspect he has been led into that train of argument by his hostility to mesmerism which he pronounces to be a cheat from beginning to end; and he cannot but see that granting mesmerism the step in belief beyond is easy. He would therefore have no such stepping stone; and lest confidence in dreams omens &c. should make mesmerism more credible he has been a little disposed to trim his own opinions on the subject. You will judge for yourself--here is his letter:-- ""My dear -------- --You desire me to give you a written account of the dreams which I related to you when we lately met and amused ourselves with speculations on these mysterious phenomena. ""_Dream I._--Mrs X---- when a child was attached to Captain T---- R.N. She had been brought up from infancy by her uncle and aunt with whom she resided and with whom Captain T---- had long been on terms of the most intimate friendship and regard. At the time to which I now refer Captain T---- commanded a frigate in the West Indies where he had been stationed for some months; letters had been occasionally received from him; his health had not suffered from the climate nor had any of his friends in England the least reason to apprehend that a man of his age good constitution and temperate habits by whom also the service in which he was engaged had been eagerly desired would be likely to suffer from the diseases of these latitudes. One morning Mrs X---- (then Miss X---- ) appeared at the breakfast table with an expression of grief on her countenance that at once induced her uncle and aunt to ask the cause. She said that she had dreamed that Captain T---- had died of fever in the West Indies and that the intelligence had been sent in a large letter to her uncle. The young lady's uncle and aunt both represented to her the weakness of yielding to the impression of a dream and she appeared to acquiesce in the good sense of their remonstrances--when shortly after the servant brought in the letter-case from the Post-office and when her uncle had unlocked it and was taking out the letters (there were several ) Miss X---- instantly exclaimed pointing to one of them--'That's the letter! I saw it in my dream!' It was the letter--a large letter of an official size addressed to her uncle and conveying precisely the event which Miss X---- had announced. ""_Dream II._--General D---- R.M. was one morning conversing with me on the subject of dreams and gave me the following relation:--'I had the command of the marines on board a frigate and in company with another frigate (giving names and date ) was proceeding to America when on joining the breakfast table I told my brother officers that I had had a very vivid and singular dream. That I had dreamed that the day was calm as it now was and bright but with some haziness in the distance; and that whilst we were at breakfast as we now are the master-at-arms came in and announced two sail in the distance. I thought we all immediately ran on deck--saw the two ships--made them out to be French frigates and immediately gave chase to them. The wind being light it was long before we could approach the enemy near enough to engage them; and when in the evening a distant fire was commenced a shot from the frigate which we attacked carried away our foretopmast and consequently we were unable to continue the chase. Our companion also had kept up a distant fire with the other French frigate but in consequence of our damage shortened sail to keep company with us during the night. On the following morning the French frigates had made their escape--no person had been killed or wounded on board our own ship; but in the morning we were hailed by our companion and told that she had lost two men. Shortly after whilst my brother officers were making comments on my dream--and before the breakfast table was cleared the master-at-arms made his appearance announcing to the great surprise of all present two sail in the distance; (and General D---- assured me that on reaching the deck they appeared to him precisely the same in place and distance as in his dream)--'the chase--the distant action--the loss of the topmast--the escape of the enemy during the night--and the announcement from the companion frigate that she had lost two men--all took place precisely as represented in my dream.' The General had but just concluded his narration when a coincidence took place little less extraordinary than that of the dream and its attendant circumstances.--The door opened and a gentleman rushed into the room with all that eagerness which characterizes the unexpected meeting of warm friends after a long absence--and immediately after the first cordial greetings General D---- said--'My dear F---- it is most singular that although we have not met during the last fifteen years and I had not the most distant expectation of seeing or hearing from you yet you were in my thoughts not five minutes ago--I was relating to my friend my extraordinary dream when on board the ----; you were present and cannot have forgotten it.' Major F---- replied that he remembered it most accurately and at his friend's request related it to me in every particular correspondent with the General's account. ""What I now relate to you cannot be called a dream but it bears a close affinity to 'those shadowy tribes of mind' which constitute our sleeping phantasmagoria. Calling one morning on my friend Mrs D----m who had for some time resided in my neighbourhood I found her greatly distressed at the contents of a letter which she had just received. The letter was from her sister Mrs B---- who was on her return to England on board the ---- East Indiaman accompanied by her two youngest children and their nurse; Mr B---- her husband remaining in India. One morning shortly after breakfast Mrs B---- was sitting in the cabin with many other passengers present but not herself at that moment engaged in conversation with them; when she suddenly turned her head and exclaimed aloud and with extreme surprise 'Good God! B---- is that you?' At the same moment the children who were with their nurse at a dist

nt part of the ship too far off it is stated to have heard their mother's exclamation both cried out 'Papa! papa!' Mrs B---- declared that the moment she spoke she saw her husband most distinctly but the vision instantly vanished. All the persons present noted the precise time of this singular occurrence lat. and long. &c. and Mrs B----'s letter to her sister was written immediately after it; it was forwarded to England by a vessel that was expected to reach home before the East Indiaman and which did precede her by some weeks. No reasonings that I could offer were sufficient to relieve my friend's mind from the conviction that her sister had lost her husband and that his decease had been thus mysteriously announced to her until letters arrived from Mr B---- attesting his perfect health which he enjoyed for some years after--and I believe he is still living. ""To arrive at any reasonable conclusion respecting the phenomena of dreams we require data most difficult to be obtained; we should compare authentic dreams faithfully related with their equally well-attested attendant and _precedent_ circumstances. But who can feel certain that he correctly relates even his own dream? I have many times made the attempt but cannot be perfectly sure that in the act of recording a dream I have not given more of order to the succession of the events than the dream itself presented. In the case of the first dream the mere delivery of a letter there is no succession of events and therefore no ground to suppose that any invention could have been added to give it form and consistency. The young lady knew that her friend was in the West Indies; she knew too the danger of that climate and had often seen the Admiral her uncle receive official letters. Some transient thoughts on these subjects although too transient to be remembered unquestionably formed her dream. That the letter really arrived and confirmed the event predicted can only be referable to those coincidences which are not of very uncommon occurrence in daily life. To similar causes I attribute the second dream; and even its external fulfilment in so many particulars can hardly be deemed more extraordinary than the coincidence of the sudden and wholly unexpected arrival of Major F---- just at the very moment after General D---- had related to me his dream. The third narrative admits of an easy solution. Mrs B---- was not in good health. Thinking of her husband in a state of reverie a morbid spectrum might be the result--distinct enough to cause her sudden alarm and exclamation which if the children heard (and children distinguish their mother's voice at a considerable distance--the cabin door too might have been open and the children much nearer than they were supposed to have been ) would account at once for their calling out 'Papa! papa!' During our waking hours we are never conscious of any complete suspension of thought even for a moment; if fatigued by any long and laborious mental exertion such as the solution of a complicated mathematical problem how is the weariness relieved? Not by listless rest like the tired body but by a change of subject--a change of action--a new train of thoughts and expressions. Are we then always dreaming when asleep? We certainly are not conscious that we are; but it may be that in our sleep we do not remember our dreams and that it is only in imperfect sleep or in the act of waking that the memory records them. That dreams occupy an exceedingly short period of time I know from my own experience; for I once had when a boy a very long dream about a bird which was placed in an insecure place in my bedroom being attacked by a cat. The fall of the cage on the floor awoke me and I sprang out of bed in time to save the bird. The dream must I think have been suggested by the fall of the cage; and if so my seemingly long dream could only have occupied a mere point of time. I have also experienced other instances nearly similar. It seems reasonable too to suppose that this is generally the case; for our dreams present themselves to us as pictures with the subjects of which we are intimately acquainted. I now glance my eye at the fine landscape hanging in my room. You may say of it as Falstaff said of Prince Henry 'By the Lord I know you as well as he that made you.' Well it is full of subject full of varied beauty and grand conception--a 'paulo majora' eclogue. When I first saw it I could barely read it through in an hour. For pictures that are what pictures ought to be Poems to the eye demand and repay this investigating attention--those that do not demand and suggest thoughts are not worth a thought; but this picture now its every part tint and sentiment have long been intimately known to me. I see at a glance its entire subject--ay at a glance too see the effect which a casual gleam of light has just thrown over it. Is it not probable then that our dreams may be equally suggestive in as short a space of time? Dreams that have not some connexion something of a continuity of events however wild are not retained by the memory. Most persons would find it much more difficult to learn to repeat the words in a dictionary than a page of poetry of equal length; and many dreams are probably framed of very unconnected materials. In falling asleep I have often been conscious of the dissevering of my thoughts--like a regiment dismissed from parade they seemed to straggle away ""in most admired disorder;"" but these scattered bands muster together again in our sleep; and as these have all been levied from the impressions cogitations hopes fears and affections of our waking hours however strangely they may re-combine if they do combine with sufficient continuity to be remembered the form presented however wild will always be found on a fair analysis to be characteristic of the dreamer. They are his own thoughts oddly joined like freshwater Polyps which may be divided and then stuck again together so as to form chains or any other strange forms across the globe of water in which they may be exhibited. In Devonshire the peasantry have a good term to express that wandering of thought and imperfect dreaming which is common in some states of disease.--""Oh sir he has been lying pretty still; but he has been _roading_ all night."" By this they mean that the patient in imperfect sleep has been muttering half-connected sentences; and the word _roading_ is taken from the mode in which they catch woodcocks. At the last gleam of evening the woodcocks rise from their shelter in the woods and wind their way to the open vistas which lead to the adjacent meadows where they go to feed during the night; and they return to their covert through the same vistas with the first beam of morning. At the end of these vistas which they call 'cock-roads ' the woodcock catchers suspend nets to intercept the birds in their evening and morning flights and great numbers are taken in this manner; the time when they suspend the nets is called roading-time; and thus by applying the term roading to disturbed and muttered sleep they compare the dim loose thoughts of the half-dreaming patient to the flight of the woodcocks wheeling their way through the gloomy and darkling woods. It has been asserted that we never feel _surprise_ in our dreams; and that we do not _reason_ on the subjects which they present to us. This from my own experience I know to be a mistake. I once dreamed whilst residing with a friend in London that on entering his breakfast-room the morning was uncommonly dark; but not very much more so than sometimes occurs in a November fog when as some one has said the thick yellow air makes you think you are walking through pease-soup and the sun when seen at all looks like the yolk of a poached egg floating on it. My friend was seated alone by the table resting his head thoughtfully on his hand when looking towards me with a very serious countenance he said--'Can you account for this darkness? There is no eclipse stated in the almanack. Some change is taking place in our system. Go to N---- (a philosophical neighbour who lived within three doors of our house ) and ask if he can explain it.' I certainly felt much surprised at my friend's observations. I went to N---- 's house--or rather I found myself in his room. He was walking up and down the room in evident perplexity; and turning to me said 'This is very extraordinary! A change is taking place in our system!--look at the barometer.'--I looked at the barometer which appeared to be hanging in its usual place in the room and saw with great surprise that the tube was without quicksilver; it had fallen almost entirely down to the bulb. Certainly in this dream I felt great _surprise_ and that the faculty of reason was not suspended is apparent nay perhaps it was quickened in this instance for I doubt if I had really seen the præternatural darkness whether I should so readily have thought of consulting an almanack or referring to a barometer; I should certainly have gone to my friend N---- for I was in the frequent habit of appealing to him on any subject of natural philosophy on which I might be desirous to be fully instructed. It is clear that the fabricator of the Ephesian Diana could not pay real adoration to his own work; and as we must be the artificers of our own dreams and furnish all the materials it seems difficult to discover by what process the mind can present subjects of surprise to itself; but surprise is that state of mind which occurs when an object or idea is presented to it which our previous train of thought would not lead us to expect or account for. In dreams the catenation of our ideas is very imperfect and perplexed; and the mind by forgetting its own faint and confused links of association may generate subjects of surprise to itself. There are some dreams which we dream over again many times in our lives but these dreams are generally mere scenes with little or no action or dialogue. I formerly often dreamed that I was standing on a broad road by the side of a piece of water (in which geese were swimming ) surrounding the base of a green hill on the summit of which were the ruins of a castle: the sun shining brightly and the blue sky throwing out the yellow stone-work of the ruin in strong relief. This dream always gave me an indefinite sense of pleasure. I fancied I had formed it from some picture that I might at some time have casually seen and forgotten; but a few years ago I visited the village in which I was born and from which I had been removed when about three and a half years old. I found that I well remembered many things which might have engaged the attention of a child. The house in which my parents resided was little changed; and I remembered every room and the pictures on the Dutch tiles surrounding the fireplace of that which had been our nursery. I pointed out the house where sugar-candy had formerly been sold and went to the very spot in the churchyard where I had been led when a child to call out my name and hear the echo from the tower. I then went by a pathway through some fields which led to a neighbouring town. In these fields I recognised a remarkable stone stile and a bank on which I had gathered daisies; then extending my route that I might return to the village by a different course suddenly the prototype of my often dreamed dream stood before me. The day was bright. There was the blue sky--the green hill--the geese in the surrounding water. 'In every form of the thing _my dream_ made true and good.' The distance of this spot from the house of my birth was rather a long walk for a child so young; and therefore I suppose I might only once or twice have seen it and then only in the summer or in bright weather. I have said that that dream whenever it recurred always impressed me with an indefinite sense of pleasure; was not this feeling an echo a redolence of the happy lively sensations with which as a child I had first witnessed the scene? It is singular that remembering so many objects much less likely to have fixed themselves on the memory I should have so utterly forgotten in my waking hours the real existence of that of which my dream had so faithfully Daguerreotyped; and it is not less remarkable that I have never had the dream since I recognised its original. I think I can account for this but will not now attempt it as the length of my epistle may probably have put you in a fair way of having dreams of your own.--Ever faithfully yours. ""C. S."" This last dream of our friend exhibits one of the phenomena of memory which may not be unconnected with another curious and I suppose common. Did you never feel a sense of a reduplication of any passing occurrence act or scene--something which you were saying or doing or in which you were actor or spectator? Did you never while the occurrence was taking place suddenly feel a consciousness of its pre-existence and pre-acting; that the whole had passed before just as it was then passing even to the details of place persons words and circumstances and this not in events of importance but mostly in those of no importance whatever; as if life and all its phenomena were a duplicate in itself and that that which is acting here were at the same time acting also elsewhere and the fact were suddenly revealed to you? I call this one of the phenomena of memory because it may possibly be accounted for by the repercussion of a nerve an organ which like the string of an instrument unequally struck will double the sound. Vibrations of memory--vibrations of imagination are curious things upon which to speculate; but not now Eusebius--you must work this out yourself. What a curious story is that of Pan.[38] ""Pan is dead ""--great Pan is dead--as told by Plutarch. Was not one commissioned by dream or vision to go to a particular place to proclaim it there; and is it not added that the cry ""great Pan is dead "" was re-echoed from shore to shore and that this happened at the time of the ceasing of oracles? It little matters whether you look to public events or private histories--you will see signs and omens and wondrous visitations prefiguring and accomplishing their purposes; and if occasionally when too they are indisputable they seem to accomplish no end it may be only a seeming non-accomplishment--but suppose it real it would then the more follow that they arise necessarily from the nature of things though a nature with which we are not acquainted. There is an unaccountable sympathy and connexion between all animated nature--perhaps the invisible as well as the visible. Did you never remark that in a crowded room if you fix your eyes upon any one person he will be sure soon to look at you? Whence is this more than electric power! Wonderful is that of yawning that it is communicable;--it is so common that the why escapes our observation. This attractive power the fascination of the eye is still more wonderful. Hence perhaps the superstition of the ""Evil Eye "" and the vulgarly believed mischief of ""being overlooked."" Of private histories--I should like to see the result of a commission to collect and enquire into the authenticity of anecdotes bearing upon this subject. I will tell you one which is traditionary in our family--of whom one was of the _dramatis personæ_. You know the old popular ballad of ""Margaret's Ghost""-- ""In glided Margaret's grimly ghost And stood at William's feet."" You do not know perhaps that it is founded on truth. William was Lord S---- who had jilted Margaret; she died; and after death appeared to him--and it is said gave him the choice of two things--to die within a week or to vow constancy never to marry. He gave the solemn promise to the ghost. We must transfer the scene to the living world of pleasure. Lord S---- is at Bath. He is in the rooms; suddenly he starts--is so overcome as to attract general attention--his eyes are riveted upon one person the beautiful Mary T---- whose father resided in great style and fashion at Bathford. It was her resemblance to Margaret her astonishing resemblance that overcame him. He thought the ghost had again appeared. He was introduced--and our family tradition says was for a length of time a daily visitor at Bathford where his habit was to say little but to sit opposite to and fix his eyes upon the lovely face of Mary T----. The family not liking this for there was no declaration on his part removed Mary T---- to the house of some relative in London. There Lord S---- followed her and pursued his daily habit of profound admiration. At length the lady spoke and asked him his intentions with regard to her guest. Lord S---- was in the greatest agitation rose burst into tears and left the house. Time passed; and here nothing more is said of Mary T----; Lord S---- saw her no more. But of him it is added that being persuaded by his family and friends he consented to marry--that the bride and her relatives were at the appointed hour at the church--that no bridegroom was there--that messengers sent to enquire for him brought back the frightful intelligence that he was no more. He had suddenly expired. My dear Eusebius with this story I terminate my long letter. Ruminate upon the contents. Revolved in your mind they will yield a rich harvest of thought. I hope to be at the reaping. Ever yours &c. [Footnote 34: The story given by Eusebius is very probably of his own manufacture. It is this. Some years ago when all the world were mad upon lotteries the cook of a middle-aged gentleman drew from his hands the savings of some years. Her master curious to know the cause learned that she had repeatedly dreamed that a certain number was a great prize and she had bought it. He called her a fool for her pains and never omitted an occasion to tease her upon the subject. One day however the master saw in the newspaper or at his bookseller's in the country town that _the_ number was actually the L.20 000 prize. Cook is called up a palaver ensues--had known each other many years loth to part &c.--in short he proposes and is accepted but insists on marriage being celebrated next morning. Married they were; and as the carriage took them from the church they enjoy the following dialogue. ""Well Molly--two happy events in one day. You have married I trust a good husband. You have something else--but first let me ask you where you have locked up your lottery-ticket."" Molly who thought her master was only bantering her again on the old point cried--""Don't ye say no more about it. I thought how it would be and that I never should hear the end on't so I sold it to the baker of our village for a guinea profit. So you need never be angry with me again about that.""] [Footnote 35: Supposing mesmerism true in its facts one knows not to what power to ascribe it--a good or an evil. It is difficult to imagine it possible that a good power would allow one human being such immense influence over others. All are passive in the hands of the mesmeriser. Let us take the case related by Miss Martineau. She willed and the water drunk by the young girl _was_ wine at another time it _was_ porter. These were the effects. Now supposing Miss M. had willed it to be a poison if her statement is strictly true the girl would have been poisoned. We need no hemlock if this be so--and the agent must be quite beyond the reach of justice. A coroner's inquest here would be of little avail. It is said that most mischievous consequences have resulted from the doings of some practitioners--and it must be so if the means be granted; and it is admitted not to be a very rare gift. The last mesmeric exhibition I witnessed was at Dr Elliotson's. It appeared to be of so public a nature that I presume there is no breach of confidence in describing what took place. There were three persons mesmerised all from the lower rank of life. The first was put into the sleep by I think but two passes of the hand (Lord Morpeth the performer.) She was in an easy-chair: all her limbs were rendered rigid--and as I was quite close to her I can testify that she remained above two hours in one position without moving hand or foot and breathing deeply as in a profound sleep. Her eyes were closed and she was finally wakened by Dr Elliotson waving his hand at some distance from her. As he motioned his hand I saw her eyelids quiver and at last she awoke but could not move until the rigidity of her limbs was removed by having the hand slightly passed over them. She then arose and walked away as if unconscious of the state she had been in. The two others were as easily transferred to a mesmeric state. They conversed answered questions showed the usual phrenological phenomena singing imitating &c. But there was one very curious phrenological experiment which deserves particular notice. They sat close together. Dr W. E---- touched the organ of Acquisitiveness of the one (we will call her A.) She immediately put out her hand as if to grasp something and at length caught hold of the finger of Dr W. E----; she took off his ring and put it in her pocket. Dr W. E---- then touched the organ of Justice of the second girl (B ) and told her that A had stolen his ring. B or Justice began to lecture upon the wickedness of stealing. A denied she had done any such thing upon which Dr W. E---- remarked that thieving and lying always went together. Then still keeping his hand on Acquisitiveness he touched also that of Pride; then as Justice continued her lecture the thief haughtily justified the act that she should steal if she pleased. The mesmeriser then touched also the organ of Combativeness so that three organs were in play. Justice still continued her lecture; upon which A the thief told her to hold her tongue and not lecture her and gave her several pretty hard slaps with her hand. Dr W. E---- then removed his hands and transferred the operation making Justice the thief and the thief Justice; when a similar scene took place. Another curious experiment was differently affecting the opposite organs--so that endearment was shown on one side and aversion on the other of the same person. One scene was beautiful for the very graceful motion exhibited. One of these young women was attracted to Dr Elliotson by his beckoning her to him while by word he told her not to come. Her movements were slow very graceful as if moved by irresistible power.] [Footnote 36: You remember the melancholy music of the lines of Moschus:-- [Greek: ""Ai Ai tai malachai men epan kata katon olôntai Ê tachlôra selina to t' euthales oulon anêdon Ysteron hauzôonti kai eis etos allo phyonti. Ammes d' hoi megaloi kai karteroi hê sophoi andres Oppote prôta thanômes anakosi en chthoni koila Eudames eu mala makron atermona nêgreton hypnon.""] Accept of this attempt:-- Alas! alas! the mallows though they wither where they lie And all the fresh and pleasant herbs within the garden die Another year they shall appear and still fresh bloom supply. But we Great men the strong the wise the noble and the brave When once we fall into the earth our nourriture that gave Long silence keep of endless sleep within the hollow grave.] [Footnote 37: _Vide_ an amusing little _jeu-d'esprit--A Descant upon Weather-Wisdom--both Witty and Wise._--ANON. Longmans. 1845.] [Footnote 38: There is an exquisite little poem taken from this passage of Plutarch at once imaginative and true for hidden truths are embodied in the tangible workings of the poet's imagination by Miss Barrett.] A MOTHER TO HER FORSAKEN CHILD. My child--my first-born! Oh I weep To think of thee--thy bitter lot! The fair fond babe that strives to creep Unto the breast where _thou art not_ Awakes a piercing pang within And calls to mind thy heavy wrong. Alas! I weep not for my sin-- To thy dark lot these tears belong. Thy little arms stretch forth in vain To meet a mother's fond embrace; Alas! in weariness or pain Thou gazest on a hireling's face. I left thee in thy rosy sleep-- I dared not then kneel down to bless; Now--now albeit thou may'st weep Thou canst not to my bosom press. My child! though beauty tint thy cheek A deeper dye its bloom will claim When lips all pitiless shall speak Thy mournful legacy of shame. Perchance when love shall gently steal To thy young breast all pure as snow This cruel thought shall wreck thy weal _The mother's guilt doth lurk below_. J. D. SUMMER NOONTIDE. Unruffled the pure ether shines O'er the blue flood no vapour sails Bloom-laden are the clinging vines All odour-fraught the vales. There's not a ripple on the main There's not a breath to stir the leaves The sunlight falls upon the plain Beside the silent sheaves. The drowsy herd forget to crop The bee is cradled in the balm: If but one little leaf should drop 'Twould break the sacred calm. From the wide sea leaps up no voice Mute is the forest mute the rill; Whilst the glad earth sang forth _Rejoice_ God's whisper said--_Be still_. Her pulses in a lull of rest In hush submissive Nature lies With folded palms upon her breast Dreaming of yon fair skies. J. D. TO CLARA. I would not we should meet again-- We twain who loved so fond Although through years and years afar I wish'd for nought beyond. Yet do I love thee none the less; And aye to me it seems There's not on earth so fair a thing As thou art in my dreams. All all hath darkly changed beside Grown old or stern or chill-- All save one hoarded spring-tide gleam _Thy smile that haunts me still_! My brow is but the register Of youth's and joy's decline; I would not trace such record too Deep graven upon thine. I would not _see_ how rudely Time Hath dealt with all thy store Of bloom and promise--'tis enough To know the harvest's o'er. I would not that one glance to-day One glance through clouds and tears Should mar the image in my soul That love hath shrined for years. J. D. SECLUSION. The heart in sacred peace may dwell Apart from convent gloom-- To matins and to vespers rise 'Mid nature's song and bloom: Or in the busy haunts of life In gay or restless scene In sanctuary calm abide As vestal saint serene. It is the pure and holy thought The spotless veil within That screens pollution from the breast And hides a world of sin. J. D. THE LAST HOURS OF A REIGN. A TALE IN TWO PARTS.--PART I. CHAPTER I. ""Let's see the devil's writ. What have we here?"" * * * * * ""First of the King. What shall of him become?"" SHAKSPEARE. ""A pretty plot well chosen to build upon."" IDEM. It was in the month of May 1574 and in the city of Paris that at an hour of the night which in these days might be considered somewhat early but which at that period was already late two personages were seated in a gloomy room belonging to a small and ancient hotel at no great distance from the old palace of the Louvre with which it was supposed to communicate by courts and passages little known and seldom used. One of these personages was a woman of middle age whose form although full was peculiarly well made and whose delicate but well fleshed hands were of striking beauty. The fair face was full and fat but very pale; the eyes were fine and dark and the whole expression of her physiognomy was in general calm almost to mildness. But yet there lurked a haughty air on that pale brow; and at times a look of searching inquisitiveness amounting almost to cunning shot from those dark eyes. Her ample dress was entirely black and unrelieved by any of the embroidery or ornament so much lavished upon the dress of the higher classes at that time; a pair of long white ruffles turned back upon the sleeve and a large standing collar of spotless purity alone gave light to the dark picture of her form. Upon her head she wore a sort of skull-cap of black velvet descending with a sharp peak upon her forehead--the cowl-like air of which might almost have given her the appearance of the superior of some monastic community had not the cold imperious physiognomy of the abbess been modified by a frequent bland smile which showed her power of assuming the arts of seduction at will and her practice of courts. She leaned her arms upon the table whilst she studied with evident curiosity every movement of her companion who was engaged in poring by the light of a lamp over a variety of strange manuscripts all covered with the figures cyphers and hieroglyphics used in cabalistic calculations. This other personage was a man whose appearance of age seemed to be more studied than real. His grey hair contrary to the custom of the times fell in thick locks upon his shoulders; and a white beard swept his dark velvet robe which was fashioned to bestow upon him an air of priestly dignity; but his face was florid and full of vigour and the few wrinkles were furrowed only upon his brow. Around the room the dark old panels of which unrelieved by pictures and hangings rendered it gloomy and severe were scattered books and instruments such as were used by the astronomers or rather astrologers of the day and a variety of other objects of a bizarre and mysterious form which as the light of the lamp flickered feebly upon them might have been taken in their dark nooks for the crouching forms of familiar imps attendant upon a sorcerer. After some study of his manuscripts the old man shook his head and rising walked to the window which stood open upon a heavy stone balcony. The night was bright and calm; not a cloud not a vapour dimmed the glitter of the countless myriads of stars in the firmament; and the moon poured down a flood of light upon the roofs of the surrounding houses and on the dark towers of the not far distant Louvre which seemed quietly sleeping in the mild night-air whilst within were fermenting passions many and dark like the troubled dreams of the apparently tranquil sleeper. As the old man stepped upon the balcony he turned up his head with an assumed air of inspiration to the sky and considered the stars long and in silence. The female had also risen and followed him to the window; but she remained cautiously in the shadow of the interior of the room whence she watched with increasing interest the face of the astrologer. Again after this study of the stars the old man returned to his table and began to trace new figures in various corners of the patterned horoscopes and make new calculations. The female stood before him resting her hands upon the table awaiting with patience the result of these mysteries of the cabala. ""Each new experience verifies the former "" said the astrologer raising up his head at last. ""The truth cannot be concealed from your majesty. His hours are numbered--he cannot live long."" ""And it is of a surety _he_ of whom the stars thus speak?"" enquired the female thus addressed without emotion. ""The horoscopes all clash and cross each other in many lines "" answered the astrologer: ""but they are not confounded with his. The horoscope of near and inevitable death is that of your son Charles the King."" ""I know that he must die "" said the Queen-mother coldly sitting down. The astrologer raised for an instant his deep-set but piercing grey eyes to the pale passionless face of the Queen as if he could have read the thoughts passing within. There was almost a sneer upon his lip as though he would have said that perhaps none knew it better; but that expression flickered only like a passing flash of faint summer lightning and he quickly resumed-- ""But about this point of death are centred many confused and jarring lines in an inextricable web; and bright as they look to vulgar eyes yon stars in the heavens shine with a lurid light to those who know to look upon them with the eyes of science; and upon their path is a dim trail of blood--troubled and harassed shall be _the last hours of this reign_."" ""But what shall be the issue Ruggieri?"" said the Queen eagerly. ""Since Charles must die I must resign myself to the will of destiny "" she added with an air of pious humility; and then as if throwing aside a mask which she thought needless before the astrologer she continued with a bitterness which amounted almost to passion in one externally so cold--""Since Charles must die he can be spared. He has thrown off my maternal authority; and with the obstinacy of suspicion he has thwarted all my efforts to resume that power which he has wrested from me and which his weak hands wield so ill. He has been taught to look upon me with mistrust; in vain I have combated this influence and if it grow upon him mistrust will ripen into hate. He regrets that great master-stroke of policy which by destroying all those cursed Huguenots delivered us at one blow from our most deadly enemies. He has spoken of it with horror. He has dared to blame me. He has taken Henry of Navarre the recusant Huguenot the f

lse wavering Catholic to his counsels lately. He is my son no longer since he no longer acknowledges his mother's will: and he can be spared! But when he is gone what shall be the issue Ruggieri? how stand the other horoscopes?"" ""The stars of the two Henrys rise together in the heavens"" replied the Queen's astrologer and confidant. ""Before them stands a house of double glory which promises a double crown; but the order of the heavens is not such that I can read as yet which of the two shall first enter it or enter it alone."" ""A double crown!"" said the Queen musingly. ""Henry of Anjou my son is king of Poland and on his brother's death is rightful king of France. Yes and he _shall_ be king of France and wear its crown. Henry never thwarted his mother's will he was ever pliant as a reed to do her bidding; and when he is king Catherine of Medicis may again resume the reins of power. You had predicted that he would soon return to France; and I promised him he should return when unwillingly he accepted that barbarian crown which Charles' selfish policy forced upon him in order to rid himself of a brother whom he hated as a rival--hated because I loved him. Yes he shall return to resume his rightful crown--a double crown! But Henry of Navarre also wears a crown although it be a barren one--although the kingdom of Navarre bestow upon him a mere empty title. Shall it be his--the double crown? Oh! no! no! The stars cannot surely say it. Should all my sons die childless it is his by right. But they shall not die to leave _him_ their heir. No! sooner shall the last means be applied and the detested son perish as did his hated mother by one of those incomprehensible diseases for which medicine has no cure. A double crown! Shall his be the crown of France also? Never! Ah! little did I think Ruggieri when I bestowed upon him my daughter Margaret's hand and thus lured him and his abhorred party to the court to finish them with one blow that Margaret of Valois would become a traitress to her own mother and protect a husband whom she accepted so unwillingly! But Margaret is ambitious for her husband although she loves him not although she loves another: the two would wish to thwart her brothers of their birthright that she might wear their crown on her own brow. Through her intervention Henry of Navarre has escaped me. He has outlived the massacre of that night of triumph when all his party perished; and now Charles loves him and calls him 'upright honest Henry ' and if I contend not with all the last remnants of my broken power my foolish son upon his death-bed may place the regency in his hands and deprive his scorned and ill-used mother of her rights. The regency! Ah! lies there the double crown? Ah! Ruggieri Ruggieri why can you only tell me thus far and no further?"" ""Madam "" replied the wary astrologer ""the stars run in their slow unerring course. We cannot compel their path; we can only read their dictates."" Catherine de Medicis rose and approached the window through which she contemplated the face of the bright heavens. ""Mysterious orbs of light "" she said stretching forth her arms--""ye who rule our destinies roll on roll on and tarry not. Accomplish your great task of fate; but be it quickly that I may know what awaits me in that secret scroll spread out above on which ye write the future. Let me learn the good that I may be prepared to greet it--the ill that I may know how to parry it."" Strange was the compound of that credulous mind which whilst it sought in the stars the announcement of an inevitable fate hoped to find in its own resources the means of avoiding it--which whilst it listened to their supposed dictates as a slave strove to command them as a mistress. ""And the fourth horoscope that I have bid you draw?"" said the Queen returning to the astrologer. ""How stands it?"" ""The star of your youngest son the Duke of Alençon is towering also to its culminating point "" replied the old man looking over the papers before him. ""But it is nebulous and dim and shines only by a borrowed light--that of another star which rises with it to the zenith. They both pursue the same path; and if the star of Alençon reach that house of glory to which it tends that other star will shine with such a lustre as shall dim all other lights however bright and glorious they now may be."" ""Ha! is it so?"" said Catherine thoughtfully. ""Alençon conspires also to catch the tottering crown which falls from the dying head of Charles. But he is too weak and wavering to pursue a steady purpose. He is led Ruggieri--he is led. He is taught to believe that since his elder brother has chosen the crown of Poland it is his to claim the throne which death will soon leave vacant. But he wants firmness of will--it is another that guides his feeble hand. That star which aspires to follow in the track of Alençon--I know it well Ruggieri. It is that of the ambitious favourite of my youngest son of Philip de la Mole. It is he who pushes him on. It is he who would see his master on the throne in order to throne it in his place. He has that influence over Alençon which the mother possesses no longer; and were Alençon king it would be Philip de la Mole who would rule the destinies of France not Catherine de Medicis. Beneath that exterior of thoughtless levity lie a bold spirit and an ardent ambition. He is an enemy not to be despised; and he shall be provided for. Alençon protects him--my foolish Margaret loves him--but there are still means to be employed which may curdle love to hate and poison the secret cup of sympathy. They shall be employed. Ha! Alençon would be king and Philip de la Mole would lord it over the spirits of the house of Medicis. But they must be bold indeed who would contend with Catherine. Pursue Ruggieri pursue. This star which way does it tend?"" ""It aspires to the zenith madam "" replied the astrologer. ""But as I have said upon the track there is a trail of blood."" Catherine smiled. ""My youngest son has already been here to consult you; I think you told me?"" she said with an enquiring look to the astrologer. ""Among others who have come disguised and masked to seek to read their destinies in the skies I have thought to recognise Monseigneur the Duke of Alençon "" replied Ruggieri. ""He was accompanied by a tall young man of gay exterior and proud bearing."" ""It is the very man!"" exclaimed the Queen. ""And do they come again?"" ""I left their horoscope undetermined "" replied the astrologer ""and they must come to seek an answer to my researches in the stars."" ""Let the stars lie Ruggieri--do you hear?"" pursued Catherine. ""Whatever the stars may say you must promise them every success in whatever enterprise they may undertake. You must excite their highest hopes. Push them on in their mad career that their plans may be developed. Catherine will know how to crush them."" ""It shall be as your majesty desires "" said the astrologer. As the Queen and the astrologer still conferred a loud knocking at the outer gate caused them to pause. Steps were heard ascending the hollow-sounding staircase. ""I will dismiss these importunate visitors "" said Ruggieri. ""No "" said Catherine ""admit them; and if it be really they you expect leave them alone after a time and come by the outer passage to the secret cabinet: there will I be. I may have directions to give; and at all events the cabinet may prove useful as it has already done."" Impatient knockings now resounded upon the panels of the door and the Queen-mother hastily snatching up a black velvet mask and a thick black veil which hung upon the back of her high carved chair flung the latter over her head so as to conceal her features almost as entirely as if she had worn the mask. Ruggieri in the meantime had pushed back a part of the panel of the oak walls and when Catherine had passed through it into a little room beyond again closed this species of secret door so effectually that it would have been impossible to discover any trace of the aperture. The astrologer then went to open the outer door. The persons who entered were two men whose faces were concealed with black velvet masks commonly worn at the period both by men and women as well for the purpose of disguise as for that of preserving the complexion; their bearing as well as their style of dress proclaimed them to be young and of courtly habits. The first who entered was of small stature and utterly wanting in dignity of movement; and although precedence into the room seemed to have been given him by a sort of deference he turned back again to look at his companion with an evident hesitation of purpose before he advanced fully into the apartment. The young man who followed him was of tall stature and of manly but graceful bearing. His step was firm and his head was carried high; whilst the small velvet cap placed jauntily on one side upon his head the light brown curling hair of which was boldly pushed back from the broad forehead and temples according to the fashion of the times seemed disposed as if purposely to give evidence of a certain gaiety almost recklessness of character. The astrologer after giving them admittance returned to his table and sitting down demanded what might be their bidding at that hour of the night! At his words the smaller but apparently the more important of the two personages made a sign to his companion to speak; and the latter advancing boldly to the table demanded of the old man whether he did not know him. ""Whether I know you or know you not matters but little "" replied the astrologer; ""although few things can be concealed before the eye of science."" At these words the smaller young man shuffled uneasily with his feet and plucked at the cloak of his companion. Ruggieri continued--""But I will not seek to pierce the mystery of a disguise which can have no control over the ways of destiny. Whether I know you or not I recognise you well. Already have you been here to enquire into the dark secrets of the future. I told you then that we must wait to judge the movements of the stars. Would you know further now?"" ""That is the purpose of our coming "" said the latter of the two young men to whom the office of spokesman had been given. ""We have come although at this late hour of the night because the matter presses on which we would know our fate."" ""Yes the matter presses "" replied the astrologer; ""for I have read the stars and I have calculated the chances of your destinies."" The smaller personage pressed forward at these words as if full of eager curiosity. The other maintained the same easy bearing that seemed his usual habit. The astrologer turned over a variety of mysterious papers as if searching among them for the ciphers that he needed; then consulting the pages of a book he again traced several figures upon a parchment; and at length after the seeming calculation of some minutes he raised his head and addressing himself to the smaller man said-- ""You have an enterprise in hand young man upon which not only your own destinies and those of your companion but of many thousands of your fellow creatures depend! Your enterprise is grand your destiny is noble."" The young men turned to look at each other; and he who had as yet not broken silence said with an eager palpitating curiosity although the tones of his voice were ill assured-- ""And what say the stars? Will it succeed?"" ""Go on and prosper!"" replied the astrologer. ""A noble course lies before you. Go on and success the most brilliant and the most prompt attends you."" ""Ha! there is after all some truth in your astrology I am inclined to think!"" said the first speaker gaily. ""Why have you doubted young man?"" pursued the astrologer severely. ""The stars err not--cannot err."" ""Pardon me father "" said the young man with his usual careless air. ""I will doubt no further. And we shall succeed?"" ""Beyond your utmost hopes. Upon your brow young man "" continued the astrologer addressing again the smaller person ""descends a circlet of glory the brilliancy of which shall dazzle every eye. But stay all is not yet done. The stars thus declare the will of destiny; but yet in these inscrutable mysteries of fate it is man's own will that must direct the course of events--it is his own hand must strike the blow. Fatality and human will are bound together as incomprehensibly as soul and body. You must still lend your hand to secure the accomplishment of your own destiny. But our mighty science shall procure for you so powerful a charm that no earthly power can resist its influence. Stay I will return shortly."" So saying Ruggieri rose and left the room by the door through which the young men had entered. ""What does he mean?"" said the shorter of the young men. ""What matter Monseigneur!"" replied the other. ""Does he not promise us unbounded success? I little thought myself when I accompanied you hither that my belief in this astrology would grow up so rapidly. Long live the dark science and the black old gentleman who professes it when they lighten our path so brilliantly!"" ""Let us breathe a little at our ease until he returns "" said he who appeared the more important personage of the two; and throwing himself into a chair and removing his mask he discovered the pale face of a young man who might have been said to possess some beauty in spite of the irregularity of his features had not the expression of that face been marred by a pinched and peevish look of weakness and indecision. His companion followed his example in removing his mask and the face thus revealed formed a striking contrast to that of the other young man. His complexion was of a clear pale brown relieved by a flush of animated colour; his brow was fair and noble; his features were finely but not too strongly chiselled. A small dark mustache curled boldly upwards above a beautifully traced and smiling mouth the character of which was at once resolute and gay and strangely at variance with the expression of the dark grey eyes which was more that of tenderness and melancholy. He remained standing before the other personage with one hand on his hip in an attitude at once full of ease and deference. ""Did I not right then to counsel you as I have done in this matter my lord duke "" he said to the other young man ""since the astrologer in whom you have all confidence promises us so unbounded a success: and you give full credence to the announcement of the stars?"" ""Yes--yes Philip "" answered the Duke reclining back in his chair and rubbing his hands with a sort of internal satisfaction. ""Then let us act at once "" continued the young man called Philip. ""The King cannot live many days--perhaps not many hours. There is no time to be lost. Henry of Anjou your elder brother is far away; the crown of Poland weighs upon his brow. You are present. The troops have been taught to love you. The Huguenot party have confidence in you. The pretensions of Henry of Navarre to the regency must give way before yours. All parties will combine to look upon you as the heir of Charles; and now the very heavens the very stars above seem to conspire to make you that which I would you should be. Your fortune then is in your own hands."" ""Yes. So it is!"" replied the Duke. ""Assemble then all those attached to your service or your person!"" ""I will."" ""Let your intention be known among the guards."" ""It shall."" ""As soon as the King shall have ceased to breathe seize upon all the gates of the Louvre."" ""Yes "" continued the Duke although his voice so eager the moment before seemed to tremble at the thought of so much decision of action. ""Declare yourself the Master of the kingdom in full parliament."" ""Yes "" again replied the young Duke more weakly. ""But""---- ""But what--Monseigneur!"" exclaimed his companion. ""But "" continued the Duke again with hesitation ""if Henry my brother should return--if he should come to claim his crown. You may be sure that our mother who cares for him alone will have already sent off messengers to advertise him of Charles's danger and bid him come!"" ""I know she has "" replied Philip coolly. ""But I have already taken upon myself without Monseigneur's instructions for which I could not wait to send off a sure agent to intercept her courier to detain him at any price to destroy his despatches."" ""Philip! what have you done?"" exclaimed the young Duke in evident alarm. ""Intercept my mother's courier! Dare to disobey my mother! My Mother! You do not know her then."" ""Not know her?"" answered his companion. ""Who in this troubled land of France does not know Catherine of Medicis her artful wiles her deadly traits of vengeance? Shake not your head Monseigneur! You know her too. But Charles no more you will have the crown upon your brow--it will be yours to give orders: those who will dare to disobey you will be your rebel subjects. Act then as king. If she resist give orders for her arrest!"" ""Arrest my Mother! Who would dare to do it?"" said the Duke with agitation. ""I."" ""Oh no--no--La Mole! Never would I take upon myself""---- ""Take upon yourself to be a King if you would be one "" said the Duke's confidant with energy. ""We will speak more of this "" hastily interposed the wavering Duke. ""Hush! some one comes. It is this Ruggieri!"" In truth the astrologer re-entered the room. In his hand he bore a small object wrapped in a white cloth which he laid down upon the table; and then turning to the young men who had hastily reassumed their masks before he appeared and who now stood before him he said-- ""The sole great charm that can complete the will of destiny and assure the success of your great enterprise lies there before you. Have you no enemy whose death you most earnestly desire to forward that intent?"" The young men looked at each other; but they both answered after the hesitation of a moment-- ""None!"" ""None upon whose death depends that turn in the wheel of fate that should place you on its summit?"" Both the young men were silent. ""At all events "" continued the cunning astrologer ""your destiny depends upon the action of your own hands. This action we must symbol forth in mystery in order that your destiny be accomplished. Here--take this instrument "" he pursued producing a long gold pin of curious workmanship which at need might have done the task of a dagger ""and pierce the white cloth that lies before you on the table."" The Duke drew back and refused the instrument thus offered to him. ""Do I not tell you that the accomplishment of your brilliant destiny depends upon this act?"" resumed Ruggieri. ""I know not what this incantation may be "" said the timid Duke. ""Take it Philip."" But La Mole little as he was inclined to the superstitious credulity of the times seemed not more disposed than his master to lend his hand to an act which had the appearance of being connected with the rites of sorcery and he also refused. On the reiterated assurances of the astrologer however that upon that harmless blow hung the accomplishment of their enterprise and at the command of the Duke he took the instrument into his hand and approached it over the cloth. Again however he would have hesitated and would have withdrawn; but the astrologer seized his hand before he was aware and giving it a sharp direction downwards caused him to plunge the instrument into the object beneath the cloth. La Mole shuddered as he felt it penetrate into a soft substance that small as it was gave him the idea of a human body; and that shudder ran through his whole frame as a presentiment of evil. ""It is done "" said the astrologer. ""Go! and let the work of fate be accomplished."" The pale foreheads of both the young men visible above their masks showed that they felt they had been led further in the work of witchcraft than was their intention; but they did not expostulate. It was the Duke who now first rallied and throwing down a heavy purse of coin on the table before the astrologer he called to his companion to follow him. Scarcely had the young men left the apartment when the pannel by which Catherine of Medicis had disappeared again opened and she entered the room. Her face was pale cold and calm as usual. ""You heard them Ruggieri!"" she said with her customary bland smile. ""Alençon would be king and that ambitious fool drives him to snatch his brother's crown. The Queen-mother is to be arrested and imprisoned as a rebel to her usurping son. A notable scheme forsooth! Her courier to recall Henry of Anjou from Poland has been intercepted also! But that mischance must be remedied immediately. Ay! and avenged. Biragne shall have instant orders. With this proof in my possession the life of that La Mole is mine "" continued she tearing in twain the white linen cloth and displaying beneath it a small wax figure bearing the semblance of a king with a crown upon its head in which the gold pin was still left sticking by the manner in which this operation was performed. ""Little treasure of vengeance thou art mine! Ruggieri man that plot was acted to the life. Verily verily you were right. Charles dies; and troubled and harassed will be the _last hours of his reign_."" CHAPTER II. ""There is so hot a summer in my bosom That all my bowels crumble up to dust; I am a scribbled form drawn with a pen Upon a parchment; and against this fire Do I shrink up."" SHAKSPEARE. ""Ambition is a great man's madness That is not kept in chains and close-pent rooms But in fair lightsome lodgings and is girt With the wild noise of prattling visitants Which makes it lunatic beyond all cure."" WEBSTER. In a room belonging to the lower apartments of the old palace of the Louvre reclined in one of the large but incommodious chairs of the time a young man whose pale haggard face and prematurely furrowed brow betrayed deep suffering both from moral and physical causes. The thick lids of his heavy dark eyes closed over them with languor as if he no longer possessed the force to open them; whilst his pale thin lips were distorted as if with pain. His whole air bore the stamp of exhaustion of mind and body. The dress of this personage was dark and of an extreme plainness and simplicity in times when the fashion of attire demanded so much display--it bore somewhat the appearance of a hunting costume. The room on the contrary betrayed a strange mixture of great richness and luxury with much confusion and disorder. The hangings of the doors were of the finest stuffs and embroidered with gold and jewellery; tapestry of price covered the walls. A raised curtain of heavy and costly tissue discovered a small oratory in which were visible a crucifix and other religious ornaments of great value. But in the midst of this display of wealth and greatness were to be seen the most incongruous objects. Beneath a bench in a corner of the room was littered straw on which lay several young puppies; in other choice nooks slept two or three great hounds. Hunting horns were hung against the tapestry or lay scattered on the floor; an arquebuss rested against the oratory door-stall--the instrument of death beside the retreat of religious aspiration. Upon a standing desk in the middle of the room lay a book the coloured designs of which showed that it treated of the ""noble science of venerye "" whilst around its pages hung the beads of a chaplet. Against the wall of the room opposite the reclining young man stood one of the heavy chests used at that period for seats as much as depositories of clothes and other objects; but the occupant of this seat was a strange one. It was a large ape the light brown colour of whose hair bordered so much upon the green as to give the animal in certain lights a perfectly verdant aspect. It sat ""moping and mowing"" in sulky loneliness as if its grimaces were intended to caricature the expression of pain which crossed the young man's face--a strange distorted mirror of that suffering form. After a time the young man moved uneasily as if he had in vain sought in sleep some repose from the torment of mind and body and snapped his fingers. His hounds came obedient to his call; but after patting them for a moment on the head he again drove them from him with all the pettish ill-temper of ennui and rose feebly and with difficulty from his chair. He moved languidly to the open book looked at it for a moment then shook his head and turned away. Again he took up one of the hunting horns and applied it to his lips; but the breath which he could fetch from his chest produced no sound but a sort of low melancholy whine from the instrument; and he flung it down. Then dealing a blow at the head of the grinning ape who first dived to avoid it and then snapped at its master's fingers he returned wearily to his chair and sunk into it with a deep groan which told of many things--regret--bitter ennui--physical pain and mental anguish. The tears rose for a moment to his heavy languid eyes but he checked their influence with a sneer of his thin upper-lip; then calling ""Congo "" to his ape he made the animal approach and took it on his knees; and the two--the man and the beast--grinned at each other in bitter mockery. In this occupation of the most grotesque despair the young man was disturbed by another personage who raising the tapestry over a concealed door entered silently and unannounced. ""My Mother!"" murmured the sufferer in a tone of impatience as he became aware of the presence of this person; and turning away his head he began to occupy himself in caressing his ape. ""How goes it with you Charles? Do you feel stronger now?"" said the mother in a soft voice of the fondest cajolery as she advanced with noiseless gliding steps. The son gave no reply and continued to play with the animal upon his knee whilst a dark frown knitted his brow. ""What say the doctors to your state to-day my son?"" resumed the female soothingly. As she approached still nearer the ape with a movement of that instinctive hate often observable in animals towards persons who do not like them sprang at her with a savage grin that displayed its sharp teeth and would have bitten her hand had she not started back in haste. Her cold physiognomy expressed however neither anger nor alarm as she quietly remarked to her son-- ""Remove that horrid animal Charles: see how savage he is?"" ""And why should I remove Congo mother?"" rejoined Charles with a sneer upon his lip; ""he is the only friend you have left me."" ""Sickness makes you forgetful and unjust my son "" replied the Mother. ""Yes the only friend you have left me "" pursued the son bitterly ""except my poor dogs. Have you not so acted in my name that you have left me not one kindred soul to love me; that in the whole wide kingdom of France there remains not a voice much less a heart to bless its miserable king?"" ""If you say that you have no friends "" responded the Queen-mother ""you may speak more truly than you would. For they are but false friends; and real enemies who have instilled into your mind the evil thoughts of a mother who has worked only for your glory and your good."" ""No not one "" continued the young King unheeding her but dismissing at the same time the ape from his knee with a blow that sent him screaming and mouthing to his accustomed seat upon the chest. ""Not one! Where is Perotte my poor old nurse? She loved me--she was a real mother to me. She! And where is she now? Did not that deed of horror to which you counselled me to which you urged me almost by force--that order which on the fatal night of St Bartholomew gave signal for the massacre of all her co-religionists drive her from my side? Did she not curse me--me who at your instigation caused the blood of her friends and kindred to be shed--and leave me her nursling her boy her Charlot whom she loved till then with that curse upon her lips? And do they not say that her horror of him who has sucked her milk and lain upon her bosom and of his damning deed has frenzied her brain and rendered her witless? Poor woman!"" And the miserable King buried his haggard face between his hands. ""She was a wretched Huguenot and no fitting companion and confidant for a Catholic and a king "" said the Queen in a tone of mildness which contrasted strangely with the harshness of her words. ""You should return thanks to all the blessed Saints that she has willingly renounced that influence about your person which could tend only to endanger the salvation of your soul."" ""My soul! Ay! who has destroyed it?"" muttered Charles in a hollow tone. The Queen-mother remained silent but an unusual fire in which trouble was mixed with scorn and anger shot from her eyes. ""And have you not contrived to keep Henry of Navarre my honest Henry from my presence?"" pursued the young King after a pause lifting up his heavy head from between his hands. ""He was the only being you had left me still to love me; for my brothers hate me both Anjou and Alençon--both wish me dead and would wear my crown. And who was it and for her own purposes curdled the blood of the Valois in their veins until it rankled into a poison that might have befitted the Atrides of the tragedies of old? Henry of Navarre was the only creature that loved me still and your policy and intrigues madam keep him from me and so watch and harass his very steps in my own palace of the Louvre where he is my guest that never can I see him alone or speak to him in confidence. He too deserts and neglects me now; and I am alone--alone madam with courtiers and creatures who hate me too it may be--alone as a wretched orphan beggar by the way-side."" ""My policy as well as what you choose to call my intrigues my son "" rejoined the Queen ""have ever been directed to your interests and welfare. You are aware that Henry of Navarre has conspired against the peace of our realm against your crown may-be against your life. Would you condemn that care which would prevent the renewal of such misdeeds when your own sister--when his wife--leagues herself in secret with your enemies!"" ""Ay! Margaret too!"" muttered Charles with bitterness. ""Was the list of the Atrides not yet complete?"" ""The dictates of my love and affection of my solicitude for my son and for his weal--such have been the main-springs of my intrigues "" pursued the mother in a cajoling tone. ""The intrigues of the house of Medicis!"" murmured the King with a mocking laugh. ""What would you have me to do more my son?"" continued the Queen-mother. ""Nothing "" replied Charles ""nothing but leave me--leave me as others have done to die alone!"" ""My son I will leave you shortly and if it so please our Blessed Virgin to a little repose and a better frame of mind "" said Catherine of Medicis. ""But I came to speak to you of matters of weight and of such deep importance that they brook no delay."" ""I am unfitted for all matters of state--my head is weary my limbs ache my heart burns with a torturing fire--I cannot listen to you now madam "" pursued the King languidly; and then seeing that his mother still stood motionless by his side he added with more energy--""Am I then no more a king madam that at my own command I cannot even be left to _die_ in peace?"" ""It is of your health your safety your life that I would speak "" continued Catherine of Medicis unmoved. ""The physicians have sought in vain to discover the real sources of the cruel malady that devours you; but there is no reason to doubt of your recovery when the cause shall be known and removed."" ""And you madam should know it would appear better than my physicians the hidden origin of my sufferings!"" said Charles in a tone in which might be remarked traces of the bitterest irony. ""Is it not so?"" and he looked upon his mother with a deadly look of suspicion and mistrust. The Queen-mother started slightly at these words; but after a moment she answered in her usual bland tone of voice-- ""It is my solicitude upon this subject that now brings me hither."" ""I thank you for your solicitude "" replied the King with the same marked manner; ""and so doubtless does my brother Anjou: you love him well madam and he is the successor of his childish brother."" In spite of the command over herself habitually exercised by Catherine of Medicis her pale brow grew paler still and she slightly compressed her lips to prevent their quivering upon hearing the horrible insinuation conveyed in these words. The suspicions prevalent at the time that the Queen-mother had employed the aid of a slow poison to rid herself of a son who resisted her authority in order to make room upon the throne for another whom she loved had reached her ears and guilty or guiltless s

e could not but perceive that her own son himself was not devoid of these suspicions. After the struggle of a moment with herself however during which the drops of perspiration stood upon her pale temples she resumed---- ""I love my children all; and I would save your life Charles. My ever-watchful affection for you my son has discovered the existence of a hellish plot against your life."" ""More plots more blood!--what next madam?"" interrupted with a groan the unhappy King. ""What the art of the physician could not discover "" pursued his mother ""I have discovered. The strange nature of this unknown malady--these pains this sleeplessness this agony of mind and body without a cause excited my suspicions; and now I have the proofs in my own hands. My son my poor son! you have been the victim of the foulest witchcraft and sorcery of your enemies."" ""Enemies abroad! enemies at home!"" cried Charles turning himself uneasily in his chair. ""Did I not say so madam?"" ""But the vile sorcerer has been discovered by the blessed intervention of the saints "" continued Catherine; ""and let him be once seized tried and executed for his abominable crime your torments my son will cease for ever. You will live to be well strong happy."" ""Happy!"" echoed the young King with bitterness; ""happy! no there the sorcery has gone too far for remedy."" He then added after a pause ""And what is this plot? who is this sorcerer of whom you speak?"" ""Trouble not yourself with these details my son; they are but of minor import "" replied Catherine. ""You are weak and exhausted. The horrid tale would too much move your mind. Leave every thing in my hands and I will rid you of your enemies."" ""No no. There has been enough of ill "" resumed her son. ""That he should be left in peace is all the miserable King now needs."" ""But your life my son. The safety of the realm depends upon the extermination of the works of the powers of darkness. Would you a Catholic Prince allow the evil-doer of the works of Satan to roam about at will and injure others as he would have destroyed his king?"" pursued the Queen-mother. ""Well we will speak more of this at another opportunity. Leave me now madam for I am very weak both in mind and body; and I thank you for your zeal and care."" ""My son I cannot leave you "" persisted Catherine ""until you shall have signed this paper."" She produced from the species of reticule suspended at her side a parchment already covered with writing. ""It confers upon me full power to treat in this affair and bring the offender to condign punishment. You shall have no trouble in this matter; and through your mother's care your enemies shall be purged from the earth and you yourself once more free and strong and able shortly to resume the helm of state to mount your horse to cheer on your hounds. Come my son sign this paper."" ""Leave me--leave me in peace "" again answered Charles. ""I am sick at heart and I would do no ill even to my bitterest enemy be he only an obscure sorcerer who has combined with the prince of darkness himself to work my death."" ""My son--it cannot be "" said Catherine perseveringly--for she was aware that by persisting alone could she weary her son to do at last her will. ""Sign this order for prosecuting immediately the trial of the sorcerer. It is a duty you owe to your country for which you should live as much as to yourself. Come!"" and taking him by the arm she attempted to raise him from his chair. ""Must I ever be thus tormented even in my hours of suffering?"" said the King with impatience. ""Well be it so madam. Work your will and leave me to my repose."" He rose wearily from his chair and going to a table on which were placed materials for writing hastily signed the paper laid before him by his mother; and then fetching a deep respiration of relief like a school-boy after the performance of some painful task he flung himself on to the chest beside the ape and turning his back to his mother began to make his peace with the sulky animal. Catherine of Medicis permitted a cold smile of satisfaction to wander over her face; and after greeting again her son who paid her no more heed than might be expressed by an impatient shrug of the shoulders indicative of his desire to be left in peace again lifted the hangings and passed through the concealed door. The suffering King whose days of life were already numbered and fast approaching their utmost span although his years were still so few remained again alone with his agony and his ennui. Behind the door by which the Queen-mother had left her son's apartment was a narrow stone corridor communicating with a small winding staircase by which she mounted to her own suite of rooms upon the first floor; but when she had gained the summit avoiding the secret entrance opening into her own chamber she proceeded along one of the many hidden passages by which she was accustomed to gain not only those wings of the palace inhabited by her different children but almost every other part of the building unseen and unannounced. Stopping at last before a narrow door forming a part of the stone-work of the corridor she pulled it towards her and again lifting up a tapestry hanging entered silently and stealthily a small room which appeared a sort of inner cabinet to a larger apartment. She was about to pass through it when some papers scattered upon a table caught her eye and moving towards them with her usual cat-like step she began turning them over with the noiseless adroitness of one accustomed to such an employment. Presently however she threw them down as if she had not found in them at once what she sought or was fearful of betraying her presence to the persons whose voices might be heard murmuring in the adjoining room; and advancing with inaudible tread she paused to listen for a minute. The persons however spoke low; and finding that her _espionage_ profited nothing to her the royal spy passed on and entered the apartment. In a chair turning his back to her sat a young man at a table upon which papers and maps were mixed with jewellery articles of dress feathers and laces. A pair of newly-fashioned large gilt spurs lay upon a manuscript which appeared to contain a list of names; a naked rapier the hilt of which was of curious device and workmanship was carelessly thrust through a paper covered with notes of music. The whole formed a strange mixture indicative at once of pre-occupation and listless _insouciance_ of grave employment and utter frivolity. Before this seated personage stood another who appeared to be speaking to him earnestly and in low tones. At the sight of Catherine as she advanced however the latter person exclaimed quickly ""My lord duke her majesty the Queen-mother!"" The other person rose hastily and in some alarm from his chair; whilst his companion took this opportunity to increase the confusion upon the table by pushing one or two other papers beneath some of the articles of amusement or dress. Without any appearance of remarking the embarrassment that was pictured upon the young man's face Catherine advanced to accept his troubled greeting with a mild smile of tenderness and said-- ""Alençon my son I have a few matters of private business upon which I would confer with you--and alone."" The increasing embarrassment upon the face of the young Duke must have been visible to any eye but that which did not choose to see it. After a moment's hesitation however in which the habit of obeying implicitly his mother's authority seemed to subdue his desire to avoid a conference with her he turned and said unwillingly to his companion ""Leave us La Mole."" The Duke's favourite cast a glance of encouragement and caution upon his master; and bowing to the Queen-mother who returned his homage with her kindest and most re-assuring smile of courtesy and benevolence and an affable wave of the hand he left the apartment. Catherine took the seat from which her son had risen; and leaving him standing before her in an attitude which ill-repressed trouble combined with natural awkwardness of manner to render peculiarly ungainly she seemed to study for a time and with satisfaction his confusion and constraint. But then begging him to be seated near her she commenced speaking to him of various matters of his own pleasures and amusements of the newest dress of the fêtes interrupted by the King's illness of the effect which this illness and the supposed danger of Charles had produced upon the jarring parties in the state; of the audacity of the Huguenots who now first began since the massacre of St Bartholomew's day again to raise their heads and cause fresh disquietude to the government. And thus proceeding step by step to the point at which she desired to arrive the wily Queen-mother resembled the cat which creeps slowly onwards until it springs at last with one bound upon its victim. ""Alas!"" she said with an air of profound sorrow ""so quickly do treachery and ingratitude grow up around us that we no longer can discern who are our friends and who our enemies. We bestow favours; but it is as if we gave food to the dog who bites our fingers as he takes it. We cherish a friend; and it is an adder we nurse in our bosoms. That young man who left us but just now the Count La Mole--he cannot hear us surely;""--the Duke of Alençon assured her with ill-concealed agitation that his favourite was out of ear-shot--""that young man--La Mole!--you love him well I know my son; and you know not that it is a traitor you have taken to your heart."" ""La Mole--a traitor! how? impossible!"" stammered the young Duke. ""Your generous and candid heart comprehends not treachery in those it loves "" pursued his mother; ""but I have unhappily the proofs in my own power. Philip de la Mole conspires against your brother's crown."" The Duke of Alençon grew deadly pale; and he seemed to support himself with difficulty; but he stammered with faltering tongue ""Conspires? how? for whom? Surely madam you are most grossly misinformed?"" ""Unhappily my son "" pursued Catherine--""and my heart bleeds to say it--I have it no longer in my power to doubt."" ""Madam it is false "" stammered again the young Duke rising hastily from his chair with an air of assurance which he did not feel. ""This is some calumny."" ""Sit down my son and listen to me for a while "" said the Queen-mother with a bland quiet smile. ""I speak not unadvisedly. Be not so moved."" Alençon again sat down unwillingly subdued by the calm superiority of his mother's manner. ""You think this Philip de la Mole "" she continued ""attached solely to your interests for you have showered upon him many and great favours; and your unsuspecting nature has been deceived. Listen to me I pray you. Should our poor Henry never return from Poland it would be yours to mount the throne of France upon the death of Charles. Nay look not so uneasy. Such a thought if it had crossed your mind is an honest and a just one. How should I blame it? And now how acts this Philip de la Mole--this man whom you have advanced protected loved almost as a brother? Regardless of all truth or honour regardless of his master's fortunes he conspires with friends and enemies with Catholic and Huguenot to place Henry of Navarre upon the throne!"" ""La Mole conspires for Henry of Navarre! Impossible!"" cried the Duke. ""Alas! my son it is too truly as I say "" pursued the Queen-mother; ""the discoveries that have been made reveal most clearly the whole base scheme. Know you not that this upstart courtier has dared to love your sister Margaret and that the foolish woman returns his presumptuous passion? It is she who has connived with her ambitious lover to see a real crown encircle her own brow. She has encouraged Philip de la Mole to conspire with her husband of Navarre to grasp the throne of France upon the death of Charles. You are ignorant of this my son; your honourable mind can entertain no such baseness. I am well aware that had you been capable of harbouring a thought of treachery towards your elder brother--and I well know that you are not--believe me the wily Philip de la Mole had rendered you his dupe and blinded you to the true end of his artful and black designs."" ""Philip a traitor!"" exclaimed the young Duke aghast. ""A traitor to his king his country and to you my son--to you who have loved him but too well "" repeated the Queen-mother. ""And it was for this purpose that he""--commenced the weak Duke of Alençon. But then checking the words he was about to utter he added clenching his hands together--""Oh! double double traitor!"" ""I knew that you would receive the revelation of this truth with horror "" pursued Catherine. ""It is the attribute of your generous nature so to do; and I would have spared you the bitter pang of knowing that you have lavished so much affection upon a villain. But as orders will be immediately given for his arrest it was necessary you should know his crime and make no opposition to the seizure of one dependent so closely upon your person."" More much more did the artful Queen-mother say to turn her weak and credulous son to her will and when she had convinced him of the certain treachery of his favourite she rose to leave him with the words-- ""The guards will be here anon. Avoid him until then. Leave your apartment; speak to him not; or if he cross your path smile on him kindly thus--and let him never read upon your face the thought that lurks within 'Thou art a traitor.'"" Alençon promised obedience to his mother's injunctions. ""I have cut off thy right hand my foolish son "" muttered Catherine to herself as she departed by the secret door. ""Thou art too powerless to act alone and I fear thee now no longer. Margaret must still be dealt with; and thou Henry of Navarre if thou aspirest to the regency the struggle is between thee and Catherine. Then will be seen whose star shines with the brightest lustre!"" When Philip de la Mole returned to his master's presence he found the Duke pacing up and down the chamber in evident agitation; and the only reply given to his words was a smile of so false and constrained a nature that it almost resembled a grin of mockery. The Duke of Alençon was as incapable of continued dissimulation as he was incapable of firmness of purpose; and when La Mole again approached him he frowned sulkily and turning his back upon his favourite was about to quit the room. ""Shall I accompany my lord duke?"" said La Mole with his usual careless demeanour although he saw the storm gathering and guessed immediately from what quarter the wind had blown but not the awful violence of the hurricane. ""No--I want no traitors to dog my footsteps "" replied Alençon unable any longer to restrain himself in spite of his mother's instructions. ""There are no traitors here "" replied his favourite proudly. ""I could have judged my lord that the Queen-mother had been with you had I not seen her enter your apartment. Yes--there has been treachery on foot it seems but not where you would say. Speak boldly my lord and truly. Of what does she accuse me?"" ""Traitor! double traitor!"" exclaimed the Duke bursting into a fit of childish wrath ""who hast led me on with false pretences of a Crown--who hast made _me_--thy master and thy prince--the dupe of thy base stratagems; who hast blinded me and gulled me whilst thy real design was the interest of another!"" ""Proceed my lord duke "" said La Mole calmly. ""Of what other does my lord duke speak?"" ""Of Henry of Navarre for whom you have conspired at Margaret's instigation "" replied Alençon walking uneasily up and down the room and not venturing to look upon his accused favourite as if he himself had been the criminal and not the accuser. ""Ah! thither flies the bolt does it?"" said La Mole with score. ""But it strikes not my lord. If I may claim your lordship's attention to these papers for a short space of time I should need no other answer to this strange accusation so strangely thrown out against me."" And he produced from his person several documents concealed about it and laid them before the Duke who had now again thrown himself into his chair. ""This letter from Condé--this from La Brèche--these from others of the Protestant party. Cast your eyes over them? Of whom do they speak? Is it of Henry of Navarre? Or is it of the Duke of Alençon? Whom do they look to as their chief and future King?"" ""Philip forgive me--I have wronged you "" said the vacillating Duke as he turned over these documents from members of the conspiracy that had been formed in his own favour. ""But gracious Virgin!--I now remember my mother knows all--she is fearfully incensed against you. She spoke of your arrest."" ""Already!"" exclaimed La Mole. ""Then it is time to act! I would not that it had been so soon. But Charles is suffering--he can no longer wield the sceptre. Call out the guard at once. Summon your fiends. Seize on the Louvre."" ""No--no--it is too late "" replied the Duke; ""my mother knows all I tell you. No matter whether for me or for another but you have dared to attack the rights of my brother of Anjou--and that is a crime she never will forgive."" ""Then act at once "" continued his favourite with energy. ""We have bold hearts and ready arms. Before to-night the Regency shall be yours; at Charles's death the Crown."" ""No no--La Mole--impossible--I cannot--will not "" said Alençon in despair. ""Monseigneur!"" cried La Mole with a scorn he could not suppress. ""You must fly Philip--you must fly!"" resumed his master. ""No--since you will not act I will remain and meet my fate!"" ""Fly fly I tell you! You would compromise me were you to remain "" repeated the Duke. ""Every moment endangers our safety."" ""If such be your command "" replied La Mole coldly ""rather than sacrifice a little of your honour I will fly."" ""They will be here shortly "" continued Alençon hurriedly. ""Here take this cloak--this jewelled hat. They are well known to be mine. Wrap the cloak about you. Disguise your height--your gait. They will take you for me. The corridors are obscure--you may cross the outer court undiscovered--and once in safety you will join our friends. Away--away!"" La Mole obeyed his master's bidding but without the least appearance of haste or fear. ""And I would have made that man a king!"" he murmured to himself as dressed in the Duke's cloak and hat he plunged into the tortuous and gloomy corridors of the Louvre. ""That man a king! Ambition made me mad. Ay! worse than mad--a fool!"" The Duke of Alençon watched anxiously from his window which dominated the outer court of the Louvre for the appearance of that form enveloped in his cloak; and when he saw La Mole pass unchallenged the gate leading without he turned away from the window with an exclamation of satisfaction. A minute afterwards the agents of the Queen-mother entered his apartment. THE SCOTTISH HARVEST. The approach of winter is always a serious time. When the fields are cleared and the produce of our harvest has been gathered into the yard and the barn we begin to hold a general count and reckoning with the earth and to calculate what amount of augmented riches we have drawn from the bosom of the soil. When the investigation proves satisfactory the result is but slightly recorded. Our ancestors with just piety and gratitude were accustomed to set apart whole days for thanksgiving to the Almighty Being who had blessed the labours of the year; we--to our shame be it said--have departed from the reverent usage. We take a good season as if it were no more than our appointed due--a bad one comes upon us with all the terrors of a panic. But there are seasons frequently occurring which vary between the one and the other extreme; and these are they which give rise to the most discussion. It is unfortunately the tactics if not the interest of one great party in the nation to magnify every season of scarcity into a famine for the purpose of promoting their own cherished theories. A bad August and an indifferent September are subjects of intense interest to your thorough-paced corn-law repealer; not that we believe the man has an absolute abstract joy in the prospect of coming scarcity--we acquit him of that--but he sees or thinks he sees a combination of events which erelong must realize his darling theory and his sagacity as a speculative politician is at stake. Therefore he is always ready upon the slightest apprehension of failure to demand with most turbulent threat the immediate opening of the ports in the hope that once opened they may never be closed again. Our original intention was not to discuss the corn-law question in the present article. We took up the pen for the simple purpose of showing that so far as Scotland is concerned a most unnecessary alarm has been raised with regard to the produce of the harvest; and we have not the slightest doubt that the same exaggeration has been extended to the sister country. Of course if we can prove this it will follow as a matter of deduction that no especial necessity exists for opening the ports at present; and we shall further strengthen our position by reference to the prices of bonded grain. We shall not however conclude without a word or two regarding the mischievous theories which if put into execution would place this country at the mercy of a foreign power; and we entreat the attention of our readers the more because already our prospective position has become the subject of intense interest on the Continent. It is a question of such immense importance that we have thought it our duty to consult with one of the best-informed persons on the subject of practical agriculture in Scotland or indeed in the United Kingdom. Our authority for the following facts as to the results of the harvest in the North is Mr Stephens the author of _The Book of the Farm_. His opinions and the results of his observation have kindly been communicated to us in letters written during the first fortnight in November; and we do not think that we can confer upon the public a greater service than by laying extracts from these before them. They may tend if duly weighed and considered to relieve the apprehensions of those who have taken alarm at the very commencement of the cry. Our conviction is that the alarm is not only premature but unreasonable and that the grain-produce of this year is rather above than below the ordinary average. We shall consider the potato question separately: in the meantime let us hear Mr Stephens on the subject of the quantity of the harvest. QUANTITY OF GRAIN-CROP. ""I am quite satisfied in my own mind from observation and information that a greater quantity of grain convertible into bread has been derived from this harvest than from the last. Both oats and barley are a heavy crop; indeed oats are the bulkiest crop I ever remember to have seen in the higher districts of this country. The straw is not only long but is strong in the reed and thick in the ground; and notwithstanding all the rain both barley and oats were much less laid than might have been expected. In regard to wheat all the good soils have yielded well--the inferior but indifferently. There is a much greater diversity in the wheat than in barley and oats. The straw of wheat is long and it is also strong; but still it was more laid than either oats or barley and wherever it was laid the crop will be very deficient. As to the colour of all sorts of grain it is much brighter than the farmers had anticipated and there is no sprouted grain this year. Let me relate a few instances of be yield of the crop. I must premise that the results I am about to give are derived from the best cultivated districts and that no returns of yield have yet been had from the upper and later districts. At the same time I have no reason to suppose that these when received will prove in any way contradictory. In East Lothian two fields of wheat have been tried in not the best soil; and the one has yielded 4-1/2 and the other very nearly 5 quarters per Scotch acre. Before being cut the first one was estimated at 2-1/2 and the second at 4-1/2 quarters. The grain in both cases is good. In Mid-Lothian one farmer assures himself from trials that he will reap 8 quarters of wheat per Scotch acre of good quality. And another says that altogether he never had so great a crop since he was a farmer. In West Lothian two farmers have thrashed some wheat and the yield is 8 quarters per Scotch acre of good quality. In the best district of Roxburghshire the wheat will yield well; while a large field of wheat in Berwickshire that was early laid on account of the weakness of the straw which was too much forced by the high condition of the soil will scarcely pay the cost of reaping. This however is but a single isolated instance for a farmer in the same county has put in 73 ordinary-sized stacks whereas his usual number is about 60. In the east of Forfarshire the harvest is represented to me as being glorious; while in the west there has not been a better crop of every thing for many years. The accounts from Northumberland from two or three of my friends who farm there extensively confirm the preceding statements in regard to the bulk and general yield of the corn crop. I may also mention that the samples of wheat and oats and barley presented at the Highland and Agricultural Society's Show at Dumfries along with the grain in the straw were really admirable. With all these attestations from so many parts of the country that are known to be good corn districts I cannot doubt that the crop is a good one on good soils."" * * * * * So much for the quantity which after all is the main consideration. The above account certainly gives no indications of famine or even scarcity. It contains the general character of the weight of the harvest in the principal corn-growing districts of Scotland and we have no reason whatever to suppose that worse fortune has attended the results of the husbandry in England. The next consideration is the QUALITY OF THE CROP ""Not the entire crop but most of it is inferior in quality to that of last year. The barley and oats are both plump and heavy but there is a slight roughness about them; and yet the weights in some cases of both are extraordinary. Potato oats were shown at Dumfries 48lb per bushel--3lb above the ordinary weight. Barley has been presented in the Edinburgh market every week as heavy as 56lb per quarter--about 3lb more than the ordinary weight. All the samples of wheat I have seen in Leith in the hands of an eminent corn-merchant weighed from 60lb to 63lb per bushel and it has been as high as 66lb in the Edinburgh market. I also saw samples of Essex wheat above 60lb as well as good wheat from Lincolnshire. Now such weights could not be indicated by grain at the end of a wet harvest unless it were of good quality. The quality is much diversified especially in wheat; some of it not weighing above 48lb per bushel. The winnowings from all the grains will be proportionally large; although in the case of barley and oats had every pickle attained maturity the crop would probably have exceeded the extraordinary one of 1815. But though heavy winnowings entail decided loss to the farmer yet human beings will not be the greatest sufferers by them; the loss will chiefly fall on the poor work-horses as they will be made to eat the light instead of the good corn which latter will be reserved for human food. The light oats will no doubt be given to horses in larger quantities than good corn and the light barley will be boiled for them in mashes probably every night. The beans are a heavy crop in _straw_ every where; and bean-straw when well won is as good for horses in winter as hay; while in certain districts such as on the Border the beans will also be good. With all these facts before me I cannot make myself believe that we are to experience any thing approaching to the privation of famine so far as the grain crop is concerned."" * * * * * Our practical experience in these matters is so limited that we feel diffident in adding any thing to these remarks of Mr Stephens. We may however be permitted to express a doubt whether the average quality of the crop has yet been satisfactorily ascertained. It is well known that the farmer rarely brings his best wheat into the earliest market because it is his interest to thrash out that part of the crop which may have sustained a partial damage as soon as possible; and in these circumstances it usually follows that the worst wheat is first exposed for sale. In like manner he wishes to dispose of his inferior barley first. In regard to oats the inferior portions find consumption at home by the horses. In ordinary seasons any wheat or barley that may have shown symptoms of heating in the stacks are first presented at market; but in this season when there is no heated grain--thanks to the low temperature and the precautions used in stacking--the high prices have tempted the farmers to thrash both wheat and barley earlier than usual in order to meet the demands for rent and wages at Martinmas--a term which owing to the lateness of the season followed close on the termination of the harvest. This peculiarity of the season may perhaps account for the large supplies of wheat presented for some weeks past at Mark Lane--to the extent we understand of from 30 000 to 40 000 quarters more than last year at the same period. It is more than probable that the largest proportion of the land in fallow has been sown with old wheat as it was early ascertained that the harvest would be unusually late. There is always more bare fallow in England than in Scotland and the old wheat having been thus disposed of the earlier portion of the new grain was brought to market and not appropriated for its usual purpose. We must however conclude that the crop--at all events the wheat--is inferior to that of former years. This has generally been attributed to the wetness of the season in which view our correspondent does not altogether concur; and we are glad to observe that on one important matter--namely the fitness of this year's grain for seed--his opinions are decidedly favourable. CAUSE OF INFERIOR QUALITY OF WHEAT. ""I am of opinion that the inferiority of the wheat in poor lands both as regards quantity and quality has not arisen from the wetness of the season but from the _very low degree of temperature_ which prevailed at the blooming season in the end of June and which prevented the pollen coming to maturity and therefore interfered with the proper fecundation of the plant. I observed that during all that time the rain did not fall in so large quantities as afterwards but the thermometer averaged so low as from 48° to 52° even during the day and there was a sad want of sunshine. And it is an ascertained fact that wheat will _not fecundate at all_ in a temperature which does not exceed 45° accompanied with a gloomy atmosphere. This theory of the influence of a low temperature also accounts for the quantity of _light_ wheat this year; for the side of the ear that was exposed to the cold breeze which blew constantly from the north-east during the period of blooming would experience a more chilly atmosphere than the other side which was comparatively sheltered and therefore its fecundation would be most interfered with. I may mention a peculiar characteristic of this year if we take into consideration the wetness of the season; which is that scarcely a sprouted ear of corn is to be found any where notwithstanding that the crop was laid in many instances. This immunity from an evil which never fails to render grain so affected useless for human food has no doubt been secured by the _low temperature of the season_. It was an observed fact that immediately after the falls of rain whether great or moderate a firm drying cool breeze always sprang up which quickly dried the standing and won the cut corn at the same time; and the consequence has been that the entire crop has been secured in the stack-yard in a safe state. All the kinds of grain therefore may be regarded as being in a _sound_ state; and on that account even the lighter grains will be quite fit for seed next year."" * * * * * The point on which the nation at large is principally interested is of course the price of bread. It is quite evident that the cost of manufactured flour ought in all cases to remain in just proportion with the value of the raw material. Unfortunately that proportion is not always maintained. The baker is a middleman between the farmer and the public between the producing and the consuming classes. Amongst those who follow th

t very necessary trade there exists a combination which is not regulated by law; and the consequence is that whenever a scarcity is threatened the bakers raise the price of the loaf at pleasure and on no fixed principle corresponding with the price of corn. Few persons are aware at what rate the quartern loaf _ought to be sold_ when wheat is respectively at 50s. 60s. or 70s. per quarter: they are however painfully sensitive when they are subjected to an arbitrary rise of bread and their natural conclusion is that they are taxed on account of the dearness of the grain. The number of those who buy grain or who study its fluctuations is very small; but every one uses bread and the monthly account of the baker is a sure memento of its price. Let us see how the middle functionary has behaved. WHY IS BREAD SO DEAR? ""The price of bread is very high already and is not likely to fall; and the reason a baker would assign for this is the high price of wheat--a very plausible reason and to which most people would too good-naturedly assent; but examine the particulars of the case and the reason adduced will be found based on a fallacy. During all the last year the aggregate average price of wheat never exceeded 56s. a quarter and in that time the price of the 4lb loaf was 5-1/2d.; at least I paid no more for it with ready money. The highest mark that wheat has yet attained in this market is 88s. per quarter and it is notorious that this market has for the present year been the dearest throughout the kingdom. As 10s. a quarter makes a difference of 1d. in the 4lb loaf the loaf according to this scale--which be it remarked is of the bakers' own selection--should be at 8-1/2d. when the wheat is at 88s. Can you nevertheless believe that _whilst the present price of bread_ is 8-1/2d. _the loaf_ is made wholly of wheat which cost the bakers 88s. the quarter? The bakers tell you they always buy the best wheat and yet though they are the largest buyers in the wheat market the aggregate average of the kingdom did not exceed 58s. 6d. on the 8th November. The truth is the bakers are trying to make the most they can; and they are not to blame provided their gains were not imputed to the farmers. But we all know that when bread gets inordinately high in price clamour is raised against _dear wheat_--that is against the farmer--and this again is made the pretext for _a free trade in corn_; whilst the _high price secured to the baker by the privilege of his trade_ is left unblamed and unscathed."" * * * * * Had the Court of Session thought proper to retain in observance the powers to which it succeeded after the abolition of the Privy Council and which for some time it executed we certainly should have applied to their Lordships for an Act of Sederunt to regulate the proceedings of Master Bakers. But as centralisation has not even spared us an humble Secretary we must leave our complaint for consideration in a higher quarter. Our correspondent however is rather too charitable in assuming that the bakers are not to blame. We cannot for the life of us understand why they are permitted to augment the price of bread the great commodity of life at this enormous ratio in consequence of the rise of corn. Surely some enactment should be framed by which the price of the loaf should be kept in strict correspondence with the average price of grain and some salutary check put upon a monopoly which we are convinced has often afforded a false argument against the agricultural interests of the country. Such we believe to be the true state of the grain crop throughout the kingdom generally. How from such a state of things any valid argument can be raised for opening the ports at this time we are totally at a loss to conceive. The only serious feature connected with the present harvest is the partial failure of the potato crop to which we shall presently refer. But so far as regards corn we maintain that there is no real ground for alarm; and further there is this important consideration connected with the late harvest which should not be ungratefully disregarded that two months of the grain season have already passed and the new crop remains comparatively untouched so that it will have to supply only ten months' consumption instead of twelve: and should the next harvest be an early one which we have reason to expect after this late one the time bearing on the present crop will be still more shortened. Nor should the fact be overlooked that two months' consumption is equal to 2 000 000 quarters of wheat--an amount which would form a very considerable item in a crop which had proved to be actually deficient. But as there has been a movement already in some parts of Scotland though solely from professed repealers towards memorialising government for open ports on the ground of special necessity we shall consider that question for a little; and in doing so shall blend the observations of our able correspondent with our own. Such a step we think at the present moment would be attended with mischief in more ways than one. There can be no pretext of a famine at present immediately after harvest; and the natural course of events in operation is this that the dear prices are inducing a stream of corn from every producing quarter towards Britain. In such circumstances if you raise a cry of famine and suspend the corn-laws that stream of supply will at once be stopped. The importers will naturally suspend their trade because they will then speculate not on the rate of the import duty which will be absolutely abolished by the suspension but on the rise of price in the market of this country. They will therefore as a matter of course--gain being their only object--withhold their supplies until the prices shall have through panic attained a famine price here; and then they will realize their profit when they conceive they can gain no more. In the course of things at present the price of fine wheat is so high that a handsome surplus would remain to foreigners though they paid the import duty. Remove that duty and the foreigner will immediately add its amount to the price of his own wheat. The price of wheat would then be as high to the consumer as when the duty remained to be paid; while the amount of duty would go into the pockets of the foreigner instead of into our own exchequer. At present the finest foreign wheat is 62s. in bond--remove the present duty of 14s. and that wheat will freely give _in the market_ 80s. the quarter. It is therefore clear that such an expedient as that of suspending the corn-laws merely to include the bonded wheat to be entered for home consumption would in no degree benefit the consumer. The quantity of wheat at present in bond does not exceed half-a-million of quarters--the greatest part of which did not cost the importer 30s. per quarter. At least we can vouch for this that early last summer when the crop looked luxuriant 5000 quarters of wheat in bond were actually offered in the Edinburgh market for 26s. and were sold for that sum and allowed to remain in bond. It still remains in bond and could now realise 62s. Here then is a realisable profit of 36s. per quarter and yet the holder will not take it in the expectation of a higher. We cannot think that Sir Robert Peel would sanction a measure so clearly and palpably unwise for the sake of liberating only half a million quarters of wheat which is the calculated consumption of a fortnight. But the late frequent meetings of the Privy Council have afforded an admirable opportunity for the alarmists to declaim upon coming famine. Matters they say must be looking serious indeed when both Cabinet and Council are repeatedly called together; and they jump at the conclusion that suspension of the corn-law is the active subject of debate. We pretend to no special knowledge of what is passing behind the political curtain; but a far more rational conjecture as to the nature of those deliberations may be found in the state of the potato crop and the question whether any succedaneum can be found for it. Perhaps it would be advisable to allow Indian corn or maize to come in duty-free; if not as food for people it would feed horses pigs or poultry and would make a diversion in favour of the consumption of corn to a certain extent; and such a relaxation could be made without interfering with the _corn_-laws for maize is not regarded as corn but stands in the same position as rice and millet. We might try this experiment with the maize as the Dutch have already forestalled the rice market. If the state of the harvest is such as we conscientiously believe it to be there can be no special reason--but rather as we have shown the reverse--for suspending the action of the corn-laws at this particular juncture. If the enactment of that measure was founded on the principle of affording protection to the farmer why interfere with these laws at a time when any apprehension of a famine is entirely visionary? And since there is a large quantity of food in the country the present prices are certainly not attributable to a deficiency in the crop and are after all little more than remunerative to the farmers who are raisers of corn alone. The present rents could not possibly be paid from the profits of the growth of corn. It is the high price of live stock which keeps up the value of the land. The aggregate average price of wheat throughout the kingdom is only 58s. 6d. upon which no rational argument can be founded for the suspension of the laws of the country. Besides the working of the corn-laws will in its natural course effect all that is desirable; at any rate it does not prevent the introduction of foreign grain into the market. The present state of the grain-market presents an apparent anomaly--that is it affords a high and a low price for the same commodity namely wheat; but this difference is no more than might have been anticipated from the peculiar condition of the wheat crop which yields good and inferior samples at the same time. It can be no matter of surprise that fine wheat should realise good prices or that inferior wheat should only draw low prices. The high price will remunerate those who have the good fortune to reap a crop of wheat of good quality and the low prices of the inferior wheat will have the effect of keeping the aggregate average price at a medium figure and by maintaining a high duty will prevent the influx of inferior grain to compete with our own inferior grain in the home market. The law thus really affords protection to those who are in need of it--namely to such farmers as have reaped an inferior crop of wheat; while those foreigners who have fine wheat in bond or a surplus which they may send to this country can afford to pay a high duty on receiving a high price for their superior article. Taking such a state of things into consideration we cannot conceive a measure more wise in its operation inasmuch as it accommodates itself to the peculiar circumstances of the times than the present form of the corn-law. Were that law allowed to operate as the legislature intended it would bring grain into this country whenever a supply was actually necessary; but we cannot shut our eyes to the mischievous effects which unfounded rumours of its suspension have already produced in the foreign market. Owing to these reports propagated by the newspapers the holders of wheat abroad have raised the price to 56s. a quarter free on board; and as the same rumours have advanced the freight to 6s. a quarter wheat cannot _now_ be landed here in bond under 66s. The suspension of the corn-law would tend to confirm the panic abroad and would therefore increase the difficulties of our corn-merchants in making purchases of wheat for this market. It seems to us very strange that sensible men of business should be so credulous as to believe every idle rumour that is broached in the newspapers so evidently for party purposes; for the current report of the immediate suspension of the corn-law originated in the papers avowedly inimical to the Ministry. The character of the League is well known. That body has never permitted truth to be an obstacle in the way of its attempts. So much for corn and the corn-laws. But there is a more serious question beyond this and that is the state of the potatoes. If we are to believe the journals more especially those which are attached to the cause of the League the affection has spread and is spreading to a most disastrous extent. Supposing these accounts to be true we say advisedly that it will be impossible to find a substitute for the potato among the vegetable productions of the world; for neither wheat nor maize can be used like it with the simplest culinary preparation. There can be no doubt that in some places this affection is very prevalent and that a considerable part of the crop in certain soils has been rendered unfit for ordinary domestic use. It is understood that the Lord-Advocate of Scotland has issued a circular to the parish clergymen throughout the kingdom requesting answers to certain queries on this important subject. The information thus obtained will no doubt be classified so that the government will immediately arrive at a true estimate of the extent of damage incurred. In the mean time we have caused enquiry to be made for ourselves and the result in so far as regards Scotland is much more favourable than we had expected considering the extent of the first alarm. We have seen accounts _from every quarter of the kingdom_ and the following report may therefore be relied on as strictly consistent with fact. It appears on investigation that no traces whatever of the complaint have yet been found in the northern half of Scotland. The crop in the upper parts of Forfarshire and Perthshire is quite untainted and so across the island. When we consider what a vast stretch of country extends to the north of Montrose the point beyond which as our informants say this singular affection has not penetrated we shall have great reason to be thankful for such a providential immunity. Our chief anxiety when we first heard of the probable failure was for the Highlands where potato plant furnishes so common and so necessary an article of food. We know by former experience what bitter privation is felt during a bad season in the far glens and lonely western islands; and most rejoiced are we to find that for this winter there is little likelihood of a repetition of the same calamity. Argyleshire however except in its northern parishes has not escaped so well. We have reason to believe that the potatoes in that district have suffered very materially but to what extent is not yet accurately ascertained. In the Lowlands the accounts are more conflicting; but it is remarkable that almost every farmer confesses now that his first apprehensions were greatly worse than the reality. On examination it turns out that many fields which were considered so tainted as to be useless are very slightly affected: it is thus apparent that undue precipitation has been used in pronouncing upon the general character of the crop from a few isolated samples. Some districts appear to have escaped altogether; and from a considerable number we have seen reports of a decided abatement in the disease. In short keeping in view all the information we have been able to collect the following seems to be the true state of the case:--The crop throughout Scotland has been a very large one but one-half of it is affected to a greater or less degree. About a fourth or a fifth of this half crop is so slightly damaged that the unusual amount of produce will more than compensate the injury. The remainder is certainly worse. Of this however a considerable proportion has been converted into starch--an expedient which was early recommended in many quarters wisely adopted by the prudent and may yet be extensively increased. An affected potato unless its juices were thoroughly fermented and decomposition commenced will yield quite as good starch as the healthy root and all this may be considered as saved. Potato starch or farina when mixed with flour makes a wholesome and palatable bread. In some districts the doubtful potatoes are given to the cattle in quantities and are considered excellent feeding. This also is a material saving. The spread of the complaint or rather the appearance of its worst symptoms seems to depend very much on the mode of management adopted after the potatoes are raised. A friend of ours in Mid-Lothian who has paid much attention to agriculture has saved nearly the whole of his crop by careful attention to the dryness of the roots when heaped by keeping these heaps small and frequently turned and above all by judicious ventilation _through them_. A neighbouring farmer who had an immense crop but who did not avail him of any of these precautions has suffered most severely. One letter which we have received is of great importance as it details the means by which an affected crop has been preserved. We think it our duty to make the following extract premising that the writer is an eminent practical farmer in the south of Scotland:--""I had this year a large crop of potatoes but my fields like those of my neighbours did not escape the epidemic. On its first appearance I directed my serious attention to the means of preserving the crop. Though inclined to impute the complaint to a deeper cause than the wetness of the season I conceived that damp would as a matter of course increase any tendency to decay and I took my measures accordingly. Having raised my potatoes I caused all the sound ones which seemed free from spot and blemish to be carefully picked by the hand; and having selected a dry situation in an adjoining field I desired them to be heaped there in quantities none of which exceeded a couple of bolls. The method of pitting them was this:--On a dry foundation we placed a layer of potatoes which we covered with sandy mould though I don't doubt straw would do as well; above that another layer also covered; and so on keeping the potatoes as separate from each other as possible. We then thatched and covered them over as usual with straw leaving ventilators on the top. I have had them opened since and there is no trace whatever of any decay which I attribute to the above precautions as others in the neighbourhood whose potatoes grew in exactly similar soil have lost great part of their crop by heaping them in huge masses. Ventilation you may depend upon it is a great preservative. I have I think arrested the complaint even in affected potatoes by laying them out (not heaping them) on a dry floor in a covered place where there is a strong current of air. They are not spoiling _now_; and when the unsound parts are cut out we find them quite wholesome and fit for use. I am of opinion therefore that by using due caution the progress of the complaint so far as it has gone may in most cases be effectually checked."" We are therefore almost certain that when the damaged portion is deducted from the whole amount of the crop there still remains an ample store of good potatoes for the consumption of the whole population--that is if the potatoes were distributed equally through the markets. This however cannot be done and therefore there are some places where this vegetable will be dear and scarce. The farmer who has a large crop of sound potatoes and who does not reside in an exporting part of the country will naturally enough use his superfluity for his cattle; and this cannot be prevented. We hope however that the habitual thrift of our countrymen will cause them to abstain as much as possible from wasting their extra stock in this manner more especially as there is abundance of other kinds of fodder. They will command a high price as an esculent and perhaps a higher if they are preserved for the purposes of seed. Exportation also should be carried on cautiously; but we repeat that the general tenor of our information is so far satisfactory that it exhibits nothing more than a partial affection of the crop in the southern districts and the majority of those are compensated by a good provision of corn. In addition to these statistics obtained from many and various sources we have been favoured with the opinion of Mr Stephens which we now subjoin:-- THE POTATO ROT. ""This affection I do not regard as a disease--but simply as a rottenness in the tuber superinduced by the combination of a low temperature with excessive moisture during the growing season of that sort of root when it is most liable to be affected on account of its succulent texture.[39] A friend informs me that he remembers the same kind of rottenness seizing the potato crop of the country in the late and wet season of 1799; and as a consequence the seed potato for the following crop fetched as high a price as 26s. the boll of 5 cwt.[40] I am inclined to believe however that the effects of this rot are much exaggerated. It is in the first place said to be poisonous; and yet pigs to my certain knowledge have been fed on spoiled potatoes alone on purpose with impunity. There is little outcry made against rot in the dry soils of Perthshire and Forfarshire and these are the two most extensive districts from which potatoes are shipped for London. There are farmers in various parts of the country who warrant the soundness of the potatoes they supply their customers. The accounts of the potato crop from the Highland districts are most favourable. I believe the fact will turn out to be this that like corn the potatoes will not only be a good but a great crop in all the _true potato soils_--that is in deep dry soils on a dry subsoil whether naturally so or made so by draining--and that in all the heavy soils whether rich or poor they are rotting. A short time will put an end to all conjecture on the state of the potato crop and afford us facts upon which we shall be able to reason and judge aright."" * * * * * As the question of seed is always a most important one whenever a new disease or partial affection of so staple a product is discovered it may not be useless to note down Mr Stephens' ideas in regard to the supposed destruction of the vegetative principle in part of the affected crop-- SEED POTATOES. ""I would feel no apprehension in employing such affected potatoes for seed next spring as shall be preserved till that time; because I believe it to be the case that the low temperature enfeebled the vegetative powers of the plant so much as to disable it from throwing off the large quantity of moisture that was presented to it; and I therefore conclude that any rot superinduced by such causes cannot possess a character which is hereditary. There seems no reason therefore why the complaint should be propagated in future in circumstances favourable to vegetation; and this opinion is the more likely to be true that it is not inconsistent with the idea of the disease of former years having arisen from a degenerate state of the potato plant since low temperature and excessive moisture were more likely to affect a plant in a state of degeneracy than when its vitality remains unimpaired. There is no doubt that this affection of the potato is general and it is quite possible that it may yet spread. This however is a question which cannot yet be solved and certainly so far as we know the Highlands and the Orkney and Shetland Isles have hitherto escaped. The portion of the crop as yet actually rendered unfit for human food does not perhaps exceed one-fourth in parts of the country whence potatoes are exported; and could the affection be stopped from spreading further than this there would still be a sufficiency of potatoes for the consumption of _human beings_ as the crop is acknowledged to be a large one in the best districts. Much however depends upon our ability to arrest the affection or its cessation from other causes. It is known that rotten potatoes like rotten turnips when left in heaps in contact with sound ones will cause the latter to rot. Aware of this fact farmers have this last year caused the potatoes in the heaps as soon as the lifting of the crop was over to be individually examined and placed the sound ones in narrow low pits mixed with some desiccating substance and covered with straw and earth. When the pits were opened for examination the rot was found to have spread very much in consequence of the dampness and heat which was so diffused throughout the pits. This is an effect that might have been anticipated. Had the precaution been used of taking up the crop in small quantities at a time or of spreading the potatoes on the ground when the weather was fair or in sheds when wet--and of allowing them to be exposed to the air until they had became tolerably firm and dry; and had the sound potatoes been then selected by hand piled together and afterwards put into smaller pits it is probable that a much less proportion of any crop that was taken up would have been lost. Such a plan no doubt would have caused a protracted potato harvest but the loss of time at that period in performing the necessary work of selection is a small consideration compared with an extensive injury to the crop. It is no doubt desirable to have the potato land ploughed for wheat as soon as possible after the potatoes have been removed; but there is no more urgency in ploughing potato than in ploughing turnip land for wheat; and at any rate it is better to delay the ploughing of the potato land for a few days than run the risk of losing a whole crop of so excellent an esculent. I may here mention an experiment in regard to the potato which shows that a larger crop has been received by planting the sets in autumn than in spring. Those who have tried this system on a large scale say that the increase is in the ratio of 111 to 80 bolls per acre. If this is near the truth it would indicate that the sets may safely be entrusted to lie in the ground all winter upon the dung; and could we be assured of their safety there in all cases the potatoes of this year selected in the manner above described might be used as seed this winter and preserved as such in the ground in a safer state than even in the small pits. Such an experiment may be tried this winter in dry weather without much risk of losing the future crop; for if on examination in spring it should be found that all the sets have rotted in the drills there would be plenty of time to replant the crop in its proper season with the sets that had survived till that time by the means of preservation used. I have heard of farmers in this neighbourhood who are planting their potato crop in this favourable weather; and it does seem very probable that as each set is placed at a considerable distance from the other and in circumstances to resist frost--namely amongst plenty of dung and earth--the entire number may escape putrefaction."" * * * * * No doubt if the potato crop shall prove to be very generally affected the price of corn will rise yet farther and may be for a long time maintained. But this is a very different thing from a scarcity of that article which we believe is merely visionary. We must be fed with corn if we cannot get the potato in its usual plenty; and it is the certainty or rather the expectation of this which has raised the price of the former. In the course of last month (October) we met with an admirable article on this subject in the columns of _Bell's Weekly Messenger_ which we do not hesitate to adopt as clear in its views hopeful in its tone and strictly rational in its argument. THE RISING PRICE OF WHEAT AND FLOUR. ""What we predicted in one of our recent papers is daily becoming realised to an extent which is now exciting general attention and with some classes of the people has already produced great alarm and anxiety for the future. We stated at that time that though the return of fine weather about the middle of last month had saved the harvest and given us a crop much more than had been anticipated still there were causes in operation which would keep up the prices of wheat and flour; and that at least for many weeks to come wheat would not fall in the British Market. ""It should be borne in mind that the getting in of the harvest is very closely followed by the wheat seed-time and that two causes are then always operative to maintain and raise the price of wheat. There is first a large call on the stock in hand for seed wheat; and secondly the farmers are too busy to carry their corn into market and accordingly the market is ill supplied. A third cause is also in operation to produce the same effect--that of an unreasonable alarm always resulting from an ill-supplied market. ""It would seem astonishing and even incredible to men who argue only theoretically that though year after year the same uniform causes operate and produce exactly the same effects yet that this aspect of the market should continue to delude and mislead the public mind but so it is in the corn-market and with the British public in general; for though they see through a long succession of years that wheat and flour invariably rise in the market immediately after harvest and during seed-time and though they ought to understand that this rise is produced by the quantity required for seed and by the busy occupation of the farmers they still perversely attribute it to another cause existing only in their own apprehensions namely that the recent harvest has been deficient and that the market is ill supplied because there is an insufficient stock with which to supply it. ""As it is the inflexible rule of our paper to apply itself on the instant to correct all popular errors and to dissipate all unreasonable panics we feel ourselves called upon to say that the present rise in the price of corn results only from the very serious failure of the potato crop in many of our own counties and still more materially in Belgium and other foreign kingdoms. From the mere circumstance of their numbers only to say nothing of their habits and necessities an immense quantity of this food is required for the sustenance of many millions of the community; and when the crop fails to such an extensive degree as it has done in the present case this vast numerical proportion of every state must necessarily be chiefly maintained from the stock of corn. If the potato crop fail at home the poor are directly thrown upon the corn-market and the price of corn must necessarily rise in proportion to the increased demand. Where the potato crop has failed abroad the supply of foreign corn must necessarily be directed to that quarter and therefore less corn will be imported into the British market. ""Now it is the expectation of this result which together with the wheat seed-time and the full occupation of the farmers is producing the present rise in the British corn-market and these causes will probably continue to operate for some time longer. ""In some parts of the country such as our northern and eastern counties we understand the current judgment to be that though the harvest has produced more bushels than in an average year the weight per bushel is less than last year and that the deficiency of the quality brings the produce down in such districts to less than an average crop. But if we set against this the happier result of the wheat harvest in our southern and western counties we must still retain our former opinion that there is at least no present ground for any thing like a panic either amongst the public in general or amongst the farmers themselves. The public as yet have no cause to dread any thing like that very serious scarcity which some of our papers have announced and the farmers themselves have no cause to apprehend such a sudden and extraordinary state of the market as would involve them in the general suffering of the community."" We shall now close our remarks on the subject of the Scottish Harvest. In thus limiting our remarks to the harvest in Scotland we have been actuated by no narrow spirit of nationality but have judged it right in treating a subject of such importance to confine ourselves to that portion of the United Kingdom in which we possessed means of obtaining information which positively could be relied upon. Indeed were it not for the paramount importance of the question which will soon be founded on as a topic for political discussion we should hardly have addressed ourselves to the task. But we have noticed with great disgust the efforts of the League to influence at this particular crisis the public mind by gross misrepresentations of our position and prospects; and being convinced that a more dangerous and designing faction never yet th

ust themselves into public notice we have thought it right in the first instance to collect and to classify our facts. This done we have yet a word or two in store for the members of the mountebank coalition. No evil is unmixed with good. The murmurs of the alarmists at home unfounded as we believe them to be have brought out more clearly than we could have hoped for the state of foreign feeling with regard to British enterprise and the prospects of future supply upon which this country must depend should the sliding-scale be abrogated and all import duties abolished. The most infatuated Leaguer will hardly deny that if the corn-law had ceased to exist three years ago and a great part of our poorer soils had in consequence been removed from tillage our present position with regard to food must have been infinitely worse. In fact we should then have presented the unhappy spectacle of a great industrial community incapable of rearing food for its population at home and solely dependent for a supply on foreign states; and that too in a year when the harvests throughout Europe and even in America have suffered. And here by the way before going further let us remark that the advocates of the League never seem to have contemplated at all events they have never grappled with the notorious fact that the effects of most unpropitious seasons are felt far beyond the confines of the British isles. This year indeed we were the last to suffer; and the memory of the youngest of us who has attained the age of reason will furnish him with examples of far severer seasons than that which has just gone by. What then is to be done should the proportion of the land in tillage be reduced below the mark which in an average year could supply our population with food--if at the same time a famine were to occur abroad and deprive the continental agriculturists of their surplus store of corn? The answer is a short one--_Our people must necessarily_ STARVE. The manufacturers would be the first to feel the appalling misery of their situation and the men whom they would have to thank for the severest and most lingering death are the chosen apostles of the League! Is this an overdrawn picture? Let us see. France at this moment is convinced that we are on the verge of a state of famine. Almost all the French journalists believing what they probably wish for and misled by the repealing howl and faint-hearted predictions of the coward assume that our home stock of provision is not sufficient to last us for the ensuing winter. That is just the situation to which we should be reduced _every_ year if Messrs Cobden Bright and Company had their will. What then says our neighbour and now most magnanimous ally? Is he willing--for they allege they have a superfluity--to supply us in this time of hypothetical distress--to act the part of the good Samaritan and pour not wine and oil but corn into our wounds? Is he about to take the noblest revenge upon a former adversary by showing himself in the moment of need a benefactor instead of a foe? Oh my Lord Ashley! you and others whose spirit is more timid than becomes your blood had better look ere you give up the mainstay of your country's prosperity--ere you surrender the cause of the agriculturist--to the _animus_ that is now manifested abroad. We have reason to bless Heaven that it has been thus early shown before by mean and miserable concession to the clamours of a selfish interest we have placed Britain for the first time absolutely at the mercy of a foreign power. Scarce a journal in France that does not tell you--loudly--boldly--exultingly--what treatment we may expect from their hands. ""At last "" they say ""we have got this perfidious Albion in our power. Nature has done for us in her cycle what for centuries the force of our arms and concentrated rancour could not achieve. The English newspapers in every column teem with the tidings of failure. The crop of corn is bad beyond any former experience. It cannot suffice to feed one half of the population. The potato crop also which is the sole subsistence of Ireland is thoroughly ruined. Scarce a minute fraction of it can be used for the purposes of human food. The British Cabinet are earnestly deliberating on the propriety of opening the ports. The public almost to a man are demanding the adoption of that measure--and doubtless erelong they will be opened. ""What then are we to do? Are we to be guilty of the egregious folly of supplying our huge and overgrown rival at the moment when we have the opportunity to strike a blow at the very centre of her system and that without having recourse to the slightest belligerent measures? Are we at the commencement of her impending misery to reciprocate with England--that England which arrested us in the midst of our career of conquest swept our navies from the seas baffled our bravest armies and led away our Emperor captive? The man who can entertain such an idea--be he who he may--is a traitor to the honour of his country. Let England open her ports if she will and as she must but let us at the self-same moment be prepared to CLOSE our own. Let not one grain of corn if possible be exported from France. We have plenty and to spare. Our hardy peasantry can pass the winter in comfort; whilst on the opposite side of the Channel we shall have the satisfaction of beholding our haughty enemy convulsed and wallowing like a stranded Leviathan on the shore! We pity the brave Irish but we shall not help them. To do so would be in fact to exonerate Britain of her greatest and primary burden."" This is the language which the French journalists are using at the present moment. Let no Englishman delude himself into the belief that it does not express the true sentiments of the nation. We know something of the men whose vocation it is to compound these patriotic articles. They are fostered under the pernicious system which converts the penny-a-liner into that anomalous hybrid a Peer of France--which make it almost a necessary qualification to become a statesman that the aspirant has been a successful scribbler in the public journals. And this forsooth they call the genuine aristocracy of talent! Their whole aim is to be popular even at the expense of truth. They are pandars to the weakness of a nation for their own individual advancement. They have no stake in the country save the grey goose-quill they dishonour; and yet they affect to lead the opinions of the people and--to the discredit of the French intellect be it recorded--they do in a great measure lead them. In short it is a ruffian press and we know well by what means France has been ruffianized. The war party--as it calls itself--is strong and has been reared up by the unremitting exertions of these felons of society who for the sake of a cheer to tickle their own despicable vanity would not hesitate for a moment if they had the power to wrap Europe again in the flames of universal war. Such will doubtless one day be the result of this unbridled license. The demon is not yet exorcised from France and the horrors of the Revolution may be acted over again with such additional refinements of brutality as foregone experience shall suggest. Meantime we say to our own domestic shrinkers--Is this a season when such a spirit is abroad to make ourselves dependent for subsistence--which is life--upon the chance of a foreign supply? Yes gentlemen journalists of France--whether you be peers or not--you have spoken out a little too early. The blindest of us now can see you in your genuine character and colours. But rest satisfied; the day of retribution as you impiously dare to term it has not yet arrived. Britain does not want your corn and not for it will she abandon an iota of her system. There can be no doubt that the news of a famine here would be received in France with more joy than the tidings of a second Marengo. The mere expectation of it has already intoxicated the press; and accordingly they have begun to speculate upon the probable conduct of other foreign powers in the event of our ports being opened. Belgium they are delighted to find is in so bad a situation in so far as regards its crop that the august King Leopold has thought proper to issue a public declaration that his own royal mouth shall for the next year remain innocent of the flavour of a single potato. This looks well. Belgium it is hoped is not overabundant in wheat; but even if she were Belgium owes much to France and--a meaning asterisk covers and conveys the remaining part of the inuendo. Swampy Holland they say can do Britain no good--nay have not the cautious Dutch been beforehand with Britain and forestalled by previous purchase the calculated supply of rice? Well done Batavian merchant! In this instance at least you are playing the game for France. Then they have high hopes from the ZOLLVEREIN. That combination has evidently to dread the rivalry of British manufacture and its managers are too shrewd to lose this glorious opportunity of barricado. There are therefore hopes that Germany utterly forgetting the days of subsidies will shut her ports for export and also prevent the descent of Polish corn. If not winter is near at hand and the mouths of the rivers may be frozen before a supply can be sent to the starving British. Another delightful prospect for young and regenerated France! Also mysterious rumours are afloat with regard to the policy of the Autocrat. It is said he too is going to shut up--whether from hatred to Britain or paternal anxiety for the welfare of his subjects does not appear. Yet there is not a Parisian scribe of them all but derives his information direct from the secret cabinet of Nicholas. Then there is America--have we not rumours of war there? How much depends upon the result of the speech which President Polk shall deliver! _He_ knows well by this time that England is threatened with famine--and will he be fool enough to submit to a compromise when by simple embargo he might enforce his country's claims? So that altogether in the opinion of the French we are like to have the worst of it and may be sheerly starved into any kind of submission. No thanks to Cobden and Co. that this is not our case at present. The abolition of the corn-duty would be immediately followed by the abandonment of a large part of the soil now under tillage. Every year we should learn to depend more and more upon foreign supply and give up a further portion of our own agricultural toil. Place us in that position and let a bad season which shall affect not only us but the Continent come round and the dreams of France will be realized. Gentlemen of England--you that are wavering from your former faith--will you refuse the lesson afforded you by this premature exultation on the part of our dangerous neighbour? Do you not see what weight France evidently attaches to the repeal of our protection duties--how anxiously she is watching--how earnestly she is praying for it? If you will not believe your friends will you not take warning from an enemy? Would you hold it chivalry if you saw an antagonist before you armed at all points and confident of further assistance to throw away your defensive armour and leave yourselves exposed to his attacks? And yet is not this precisely what will be done if you abandon the principles of protection? Are you afraid of that word PROTECTION? Shame upon you if you are! No doubt it has been most scandalously misrepresented by the cotton-mongering orators but it is a great word and a wise word if truly and thoroughly understood. It does not mean that corn shall be grown in this country for _your_ benefit or that of any exclusive class--were it so protection would be a wrong--but it means that at all times there shall be maintained in the country an amount of food reared within itself sufficient for the sustenance of the nation in case that war or some other external cause should shut up all other sources. And this which is in fact protection for the nation--a just and wise security against famine in which the poor and the rich are equally interested--is perverted by the chimney-stalk proprietors into a positive national grievance. Why the question lies in a nutshell. Corn will not be grown in this country unless you give it an adequate market. Admit foreign corn and you not only put a stop to agricultural improvement in reclaiming waste land by means of which production may be carried to an indefinite degree but you also throw a vast quantity of the land at present productive out of bearing. Suppose then that next year all protection being abolished the quantity of grain raised in the country is but equal to half the demand of the population; foreign corn of course must come in to supply the deficiency. We shall not enlarge upon the first argument which must occur to every thinking person--the argument being that in such a state of things the foreigner whoever he may be with whom we are dealing has it in his power to demand and exact any price he pleases for his corn. What say the Cobdenites in answer to this? ""Oh then we shall charge the foreigner a corresponding price for our cottons and our calicoes!"" No gentlemen--that will not do. We have no doubt this idea _has_ entered into your calculations and that you hope through a scarcity of home-grown corn to realize an augmented profit on your produce--in short to be the only gainers in a time of general distress. But there is a flaw in your reasoning too palpable to be overlooked. The foreigner _can do without calico_ but the British nation CANNOT _do without bread_. The wants of the stomach are paramount--nothing can enter into competition with them. The German Pole or Frenchman may for a season wear a ragged coat or an inferior shirt or even dispense with the latter garment if it so pleases him; and yet suffer comparatively nothing. But what are our population to do if bread is not procurable except at the enormous prices which when you abolish protection you entitle the foreigner to charge? Have you the heart to respond in the only imaginable answer--it is a mere monosyllable--STARVE? But suppose that for the first two years or so we went on swimmingly--that there were good and plentiful seasons abroad and that corn flowed into our market abundantly from all quarters of the world. Suppose that bread became cheaper than we ever knew it before that our manufactures were readily and greedily taken and that we had realised the manufacturing Eden which the disciples of Devil's-dust have predicted as the immediate consequence of our abandoning all manner of restrictions. How will this state of unbounded prosperity affect the land? For every five shillings of fall in the price of the quarter of wheat fresh districts will be abandoned by the plough. The farmer will be unable to work them at a profit and so he will cease to grow grain. He may put steers upon them; or they may be covered with little fancy villas or Owenite parallelograms to suit the taste of the modern philosopher and accomodate the additional population who are to assist in the prospective crops of calico. The cheaper corn then is the smaller will become our home-producing surface. The chaw-bacon will be driven to the railroads where there is already a tolerable demand for him. The flail will be silent in the barn and the song of the reaper in the fields. Let us suppose this to last for a few years during which Lord John Russell--the Whigs having in the meantime got rid of all graduating scruples and come back to power--has taken an opportunity of enriching the peerage by elevating the redoubted Cobden to its ranks. But a change suddenly passes across the spirit of our dream. At once and like a thunderbolt--without warning or presage--comes a famine or a war. We care not which of them is taken as an illustration. Both are calamities unfortunately well known in this country; and we hardly can expect that many years shall pass over our heads without the occurrence of one or other of them. Let us take the evil of man's creating--war. The Channel is filled with French shipping and all along the coast from Cape Ushant to Elsinore the ports are rigidly shut. Mean time American cruisers are scouring the Atlantic chasing our merchantmen and embarassing communication with the colonies. Also there is war in the Mediterranean. We have fifty nay a hundred points to watch with our vessels--a hundred isolated interests to maintain and these demand an immense and yet a divided force. Convoys cannot be spared without loss of territory and then--what becomes of us at home? Most miserable is the prospect; and yet it does appear if we are mad enough to abandon protection perfectly inevitable. With but a portion of our land in tillage--an augmented population--no stored corn--no means of recalling for two years at the soonest even if we could spare seed and that is questionable the dormant energies of the earth!--Can you fancy my Lord Ashley or you converted Mr Escott what Britain would be then? We will tell you. Not perhaps a prey--for we will not even imagine such degradation--but a bargainer and compounder with an inferior power or powers whom she might have bearded for centuries with impunity had not some selfish traitors been wicked enough to demand and some infatuated statesmen foolish enough to grant the abrogation of that protection which is her sole security for pre-eminence. What are all the cotton bales of Manchester in comparison with such considerations as these? O Devil's-dust--Devil's-dust! Have we really declined so far that _you_ are to be the Sinon to bring us to this sorry pass? Is the poisoned breath of the casuist to destroy the prosperity of those-- ""Quos neque Tydides nec Larissæus Achilles Non anni domuere decem non mille carinæ!"" It may be so--for a small shard-beetle can upset a massive candle-stick; and it will be so assuredly if the protective principle is abandoned. The first duty of a nation is to rear food for its inhabitants from the bosom of its own soil and woe must follow if it relies for daily sustenance upon another. We can now form a fair estimate of the probable continuance of the supply from the premature exultation exhibited in the foreign journals and we shall be worse than fools if we do not avail ourselves of the lesson. [Footnote 39: ""Not that I think there was more rain in the _earlier part of summer_ than the potato crop could absorb for it is known to require a large supply of moisture in its growing state in order to acquire a full development of all its parts. It was observable however that the rain increased as the season advanced and after the potato plant had reached its full development. It is therefore probable that the increased moisture which was not then wanted by the plant would become excessive; and this moisture along with the low temperature may have produced such chemical change in the sap as to facilitate the putrefaction of the entire plant. As to the theories with respect to the presence of a fungus or of insects in the plant I consider these as a mere exponent of the tendency to a state of putrefaction; such being the usual accompaniments of all vegetable and animal decay.""] [Footnote 40: ""I remember the wet seasons of 1816 and 1817. There was then no rot in the potato; but during the whole of those rainy seasons we had not the _continued cold_ weather which we have this year experienced.""] INDEX TO VOL. LVIII. Account of a Visit to the Volcano of Kirauea in the Island of Owhyhee 591. Agriculture round Lucca 619. Alas for her! from the Russian of Púshkin 141. Alpine scenery sketches of 704. American war causes which fostered the 721. Andes description of the 555. André Chenier from the Russian of Púshkin 154. Anti-corn-law League strictures on the 780. Apparitions &c. letter to Eusebius on 735. Armfelt Count 59. Arndt notices of 332 333. Art causes of the absence of taste for 414. Avernus lake 489. Bacon political essays of 389. Baiæ 488. Barclay de Tolly from the Russian of Púshkin 40. Baron von Stein 328. Barri Madame du 730 733. Bazars of Constantinople the 688. Beaumont Sir George 258 262. Bell's Messenger extract from on the prices of grain 779. Betterton's version of Chaucer remarks on 114. Bettina sketch of the life &c. of 357. Biographical sketch of Frank Abney Hastings 496. Black Shawl the from Púshkin 37. Blanc Mont on the scenery of 707. Blenheim battle of 18. Boas Edward sketches of Sweden &c. by 56. Bossuet's Universal History characteristics of 390. Bottetort Lord anecdote of 724. Bowles W. L. on the Dunciad 251. Boyhood a reminiscence of by Delta 408. Brabant conquest of by Marlborough 665. Bread causes of the present dearness of 772. Bremer Miss the Swedish novelist 62. Brentford election the 725. Brienz scenery of the lake of 705. British critics North's specimens of the --No. VI.--Supplement to Dryden on Chaucer 114. --No. VI.--MacFlecnoe and the Dunciad 229. --No. VIII.--Supplement to the same 366. Bulwer's Last of the Barons remarks on 350 353. Burtin on Pictures review of 413. Capital punishment on 131. Carlist war sketches of the 210. Caserta palace of 491. --silk manufactory 492. Caucasus the from the Russian of Púshkin 34. Celibacy of the clergy effects of the in France 187. Chamouni valley of 707. Chatham Lord 717. Chaucer Dryden on 114. Chimborazo ascent of by Humboldt 547. Choiseul the Duc de 730 732. Churchill critique on 372. Churchill see Marlborough. Clairvoyance remarks on 736. Clarke Dr extracts from 555. Clarke's Life of James II. notice of 4. Cloud the and the Mountain a reminiscence of Switzerland 704. Clytha house &c. 477. Col de Balme pass of the 707. Colebrook Sir George extracts from the memoirs of 716 719. Colour in painting remarks on 419. Confessions of an English opium-eater sequel to the Part II. 43. Constable the painter sketch of the life &c. of 257. Constantinople Three Years in 688. Convicts at Norfolk Island management &c. of 138. Cooper characteristics of as a novelist 355. Copenhagen description of 68. Corali by J. D. 495. Corn-laws proposed suspension of the 773. --effects of the abolition of 780. Cornwallis Earl administration of Ireland by 731. Corporations of Constantinople the 696. Corsica conquest of by the French 728. Coventry Lady 726. Coxe's Life of Marlborough notice of 3. Dalarna or Dalecarlia sketches of 64. D'Alembert character of Montesquieu by 395. Dalin Olof von 62. Danes national character of the 69. David the Telynwr; or the Daughter's trial--a tale of Wales by Joseph Downs 96. Days of the Fronde the 596. Dearness of bread causes of the present 772. De Burtin on pictures 413. Delta a reminiscence of boyhood by 408. Dendermonde capture of by Marlborough 668. Despatches of the Duke of Marlborough review of --No. I. 1. --No. II. 649. Domestic manners of the Turks the 688. Downes Joseph--David the Telynwr a tale of Wales by 96. Drama state of the 178. Dreams &c. letter to Eusebius on 735. Drinking prevalence of in the 19th century 726. Dryden on Chaucer 114. --his MacFlecnoe 232 366. Dumas' Margaret of Valois extracts from 312. --extracts from his Days of the Fronde 596. Dunciad the critique on 234 366. Dunning the solicitor-general character of 722. Dutch school of painting the 426. Dutem's life of Marlborough notice of 3. Echo from the Russian of Púshkin 145. Education state of in Turkey 692. --remarks on the system of at the English Universities 542. Edward Duke of York character of 719. Egyptian market at Constantinople the 700. English landscape painting on 257. English Opium-eater a sequel to the confessions of the Part II. 43. Epitaphs in Wales 484. Esprit des Lois of Montesquieu the 392. --its characteristics 397. Eugene Prince 14 669. Eusebius letter to on omens dreams appearances &c. 735. Failure of the potato crop extent &c. of the 775. Feast of Peter the First the from Púshkin 142. Fersen Count murder of 61. Few passages concerning omens dreams appearances &c. in a letter to Eusebius 735. Few words for Bettina a 357. Fisher Archdeacon 260. Flemish school of painting the 426. Flour on the rising price of 779. Flygare Emily the Swedish novelist 62. France under Louis XIV. 12. --prevalent feeling in towards England 781. French school of painting the 427. --Noblesse character of the 733. Garden of the Villa Reale the 486. General the from the Russian of Púshkin 41. German school of painting the 427. Gleig's life of Marlborough notice of 4. Glenmutchkin railway the --How we got it up and how we got out of it 453. Gloucester the Duke of character of 719. Goethe and Bettina the correspondence of 358. Goethe's Torquato Tasso translations from 87. Gotha canal the 68. Grafton the Duke of Walpole's character of 718. Grain crop quantity &c. of the in Scotland 769. --and its quality 770. Grandeur et décadence des Romains Montesquieu's characteristics &c. of 391 401. Grand general junction and indefinite extension railway rhapsody 614. Greek Revolution sketches of the 496. Griesbach fall of the 707. Guamos of South America the 554. Guilds of Constantinople the 696. Gunning the Misses 726. Gustavus Vasa notices of 66. Hahn-Hahn the Countess 71. Hakem the slave a tale extracted from the history of Poland. --Chapter I. 560. --Chap. II. 561. --Chap. III. 563. --Chap. IV. 565. --Chap. V. 567. Hamilton the Duchess of 726. Handel character of the music of 573. Harvest the Scottish 769. --quantity of the grain crop ib. --and its quality 770. --cause of the inferiority of the wheat 771. --and of the dearness of bread 772. --state of the potato crop 775. --potatoes for seed 778. --rising price of wheat and flour 780. --affords no argument for abolition of the corn-laws 781. Hastings Frank Abney biographical sketch of 496. Haydn character of 573. Heber Bishop description of the Himalayas by 557. Hemp culture of in Italy 620. Hints for doctors 630. Historical romance the 341. Hogarth Churchill's epistle to criticised 377. Holme's Life of Mozart review of 572. Horace Leicester a sketch 197. Hornes' Chaucer Modernized remarks on 115. House-hunting in Wales 74. --a sequel to 474. How we got up the Glenmutchkin railway and how we got out of it 453. Humboldt 541. --character of his mind 545. --his early life 546. --sketch of his travels 547. --list of his works 548. --extracts from these 549. I have outlived the hopes that charmed me from Púshkin 149. Ida Countess Hahn-Hahn 71. Imprisonment as a punishment 131. Improvisatore the 626. Inferior quality of wheat cause of the 771. Insects common at Lucca 623. Italian school of painting the 425. Italy sketches of Lucca 617. --agriculture round Lucca 619. --sagena 620. --lupins ib. --hemp ib. --trees 622. --oaks ib. --insects 623. --ants 624. --shooting fish 625. --owls 626. --the improvisatore ib. --tables-d'hôtes Mr Snapley 628. --hints for doctors 630. --private music-party 631. J. D. a meditation by 494. --on the old year 495. --Corali ib. --a mother to her deserted child 752. --summer noontide ib. --to Clara 753. --seclusion ib. James II. notices of 7. James's Philip Augustus remarks on 353. Jesuitism in France 185. --sources of its power 186. Jones Sir William character of Dunning by 723. Johnson on the Dunciad 236. Kames Lord on the Dunciad 253. Kavanagh's Science of Languages review of 467. Kirauca account of a visit to the volcano of 591. Knorring the Baroness 62. Land tenure of in Turkey 693. Landscape painting in England 257. Languages Kavanagh's Science of reviewed 467. Last hours of a reign a tale in two parts. --Part I. Chapter 1 754. --Chapter 2 761. Law administration of in Turkey 699. Law studies Warren's Introduction to reviewed 300. Lay of Starkàther the 571. Lay of the wise Olég the from the Russian of Púshkin 146. Ledyard's Life of Marlborough notice of 3. Leman lake scenery of 706. Leslie's Life of John Constable review of 257. Letter from London by a railway witness 173. Letter to Eusebius on omens dreams appearances &c. 735. Lettres Persanes of Montesquieu the 391. Libraries at Constantinople the 690. Lipscomb's version of Chaucer remarks on 114. Llanos of South America the 551. Llansaintfraed lodge and church 476. Llantony abbey 485. Llanvair Kilgiden church &c. 483. London letter from by a railway witness 173. Louis XIV. notices of 6 12. Louis XV. character &c. of 714 730 733. Lowell J. Russell remarks on his strictures on Pope 368. Lucca sketches of; 617. --agriculture round 619. Lucrine lake the 489. Lupins culture of in Italy 620. MacFlecnoe and the Dunciad 229. --a supplement to 366. Machiavel as a historian 389. Maconochie Captain on the management of transported criminals review of 129. Madonna the from Púshkin 152. Maeler lake 58. Mahmood the Ghaznavide by B. Simmons 266. Mahon's England remarks on 2. Manner and Matter a tale Chapter I. 431. --Chapter II. 435. Manzoni's Promessi Sposi remarks on 356. Margaret of Valois from the French of Dumas 312. Marlborough No. I 1. --Various lives of him 3. --His parentage and early career 5. --Is created Lord Churchill 7. --His conduct at the Revolution 8. --Further honours conferred on him 9. --His disgrace in 1691 and mystery attending it ib. --Is restored to favour 10. --Appointed commander in the Netherlands 11. --His first successes 14. --Defeats the French at Blenheim 19. --His subsequent campaign and causes which thwarted his success 27. No. II. 649. --Plans for the campaign of 1705 650. --Marches into Flanders 652. --Defeats Villeroi 653. --Thwarted by the inactivity of the Dutch 654. --Victory of Ramilies 661. --Subsequent operations 664. Marston; or Memoirs of a Statesman.--Part XVIII. 157. --Part XIX. 272. --Part XX. and last 439. Meditation a by J. D. 494. Memoirs of a Statesman. _See_ Marston. Menin siege and capture of by Marlborough 667. Mesmerism remarks on 736. Metternich Stein's opinion of 337. Michelet's Priests Women and Families review of 185. Mob the from the Russian of Púshkin 36. Modern novels characteristics of 342. Monmouthshire scrambles in 474. Mont Blanc scenery of 707. Montesquieu 389. --Compared with Tacitus Machiavel and Bacon ib. --Sketch of his early life 390. --Publication and character of his Lettres Persanes 391. --Of the Grandeur et Decadence des Romains ib. --And of the Esprit des Loix and the defence of it 392 393. --His private life and character and anecdotes of him 394. --His death 395. --Unpublished papers left by him 396. --Characteristics of his works and extracts from them 397. --Causes which led to their comparative neglect 398. More Hannah anecdotes of 723. Mother a to her deserted child by J. D. 752. Motion from the Russian of Púshkin 149. Mountain and the Cloud the; a Reminiscence of Switzerland 704. Mozart 573. --Sketches of his life 575. --Extracts from his letters &c. 578. --Characteristics of his music 590. Murillo as a painter 420. Murray Sir George the Marlborough Despatches edited by reviewed --No. I. 1. --No. II. 649. My college friends No. II.--Horace Leicester 197. Nantiglo ironworks 485. Naples see Neapolitan. Napoleon from the Russian of Púshkin 39. National gallery want of a in Great Britain 413. Natural history Waterton's essays on second series reviewed 289. Neapolitan sketches.--garden of the Villa Reale 486. --Servi de Pena ib. --San Carlo 487. --Pozzuoli 488. --Baiæ ib. --Lucrine and Avernus lakes 489. --Procida 490. --palace of Caserta 491. --silk manufactory 492. --The snake-tamer 490. Newcastle Duke of character of 730. Norfolk Island management of convicts at 138. North's specimens of the British critics. --No. VI. Supplement to Dryden on Chaucer 114. --No. VII. MacFlecnoe and the Dunciad 229. --No. VIII. Supplement to the same 366. Northern lights 56. Nyberg Fru a Swedish poetess 57. Oaks in Italy 622. Oberland scenery of the 707 710. Olég lay of from Púshkin 146. Omens &c. letter to Eusebius on 735. On the Old Year by J. D. 495. Opening the ports on the 773. Opium-eater sequel to the Confessions of an part II. 43. Orinoco description of the rapids of the 550. Oscar crown-prince of Sweden 59. Ostend capture of by Marlborough 666. Overkirk General notices of 653 654 656 662 664. Owls in Italy 626. Painting and pictures remarks on 413. --characteristics of the various schools of 424. Palace of Caserta the 491. Pampas of South America the 550. Paoli the Corsican patriot 731. Phipps Mr character &c. of 727. Pictures De Burtin on 413. --choice of subjects for 417. --colouring &c. ib. Poetry --Specimens of the lyrics of Púshkin translated by T. B. Shaw. --No. I. 28. --No. II. 140. --Mahmood the Ghaznavide by B. Simmons 266. --A reminiscence of boyhood by Delta 408. --A meditation by J. D. 494. --On the old year by the same 495. --Corali by the same ib. --The lay of St

rkàther 571. --The Grand General Junction and Indefinite Extension Railway rhapsody 614. --The second Pandora 711. --A mother to her deserted child by J. D. 752. --Summer noontide ib. --to Clara 753. --seclusion ib. Pompadour Madame de 732. Pope's version of Chaucer remarks on 119. --Dunciad remarks on 234. --Strictures on Lowell's criticism of him 368. Potato crop state of the throughout Scotland 776. --saving of them for seed 780. Pozzuoli 488. Presentiment from the Russian of Púshkin 152. Priests Women and Families review of Michelet's work on 185. Printing establishments in Constantinople 691. Private music-party a 631. Prophecy of Famine Churchill's remarks on 380. Procida 490. Punishment remarks on 129. --its objects ib. --various modes of 131. --on capital and a proposed substitute for it ib. Púshkin the Russian poet. No. II. Specimen of his lyrics translated by T. B. Shaw. Introductory remarks 28. --October 19th 1825 31. --The Caucasus 34. --To * * * 35. --The mob 36. --The black shawl 37. --The rose 38. --Napoleon 39. --The storm 40. --The general 41. --No. III. Introduction 140. --Alas for her! 141. --The feast of Peter the First 142. --Town of starving town of splendour 143. --To the sea 144. --Echo 145. --The lay of the wise Olég 146. --Remembrance 149. --I have outlived the hopes that charmed me ib. --Motion ib. --To the slanderers of Russia 150. --Presentiment 152. --The Madonna ib. --André Chenier 154. Quietists effects of the doctrines of the in France 190. Raffaele's Transfiguration remarks on 418. --his St Cecilia 422. Ragland Castle description of 476. Railway rhapsody the grand general junction and indefinite extension 614. Railway witness in London letter from a 173. Railways and railway speculation on 633. Ramilies battle of 661. Reformation by punishment on 129. Reign of George III. Walpole's memoirs of the 713. Religion state of during the eighteenth century 714. Remembrance from the Russian of Púshkin 149. Reminiscence of boyhood a by Delta 409. Reminiscence of Switzerland a 704. Reviews. --Despatches of the Duke of Marlborough. No. I. 1. --No. II. 649. --Maconochie and Zschokke on punishment and reformation of criminals 129. --Michelet's priests women and families 185. --Leslie's life of Constable the painter 257. --Waterton's essays on natural history second series 289. --Warren's introduction to law studies 300. --Kavanagh's science of languages 467. --Holmes' life of Mozart 572. --White's three years in Constantinople 688. --Walpole's memoirs of the reign of George III. 713. Richelieu Marshal 730. Ritterhaus at Stockholm the 59. Romance the historical 341. Rose the from the Russian of Púshkin 38. Russia to the slanderers of from Púshkin 150. Sagena culture of at Lucca 620. Saltza Count 68. San Carlo 487. Sandwich Lord anecdote of 724. Schools of painting characteristics of the 424. Science of languages Kavanagh's review of 467. Scott's historical romances remarks on 345. Scottish harvest the 769. --quantity and quality of the grain crop ib. 770. --cause of the inferior quality of the wheat 771. --and of the high price of bread 772. --state of the potato crop 775. Scrambles in Monmouthshire a sequel to house-hunting in Wales 474. Sea to the from Púshkin 144. Secker Archbishop character of 728. Seclusion by J. D. 752. Second Pandora the 711. Seed potatoes saving of 778. Servi de Pena 486. Shaw T. B. specimens of the lyrics of Púshkin by 28 140. Shooting fish in Italy 625. Silk manufactory of Caserta the 492. Simmons B. Mahmood the Ghaznavide by 266. Sketches of Italy. Lucca 617. --agriculture round Lucca 619. --sagena 620. --lupines ib. --hemp ib. --trees and oaks 622. --insects 623. --ants 624. --shooting fish 625. --owls 626. --the improvisatore ib. --tables-d'hôtes--Mr Snapley 628. --hints for doctors 630. --private music-party 631. Smith Sydney on modern sermons 714. Smollet's England remarks on 2. Snake-tamer the 493. Snapley Mr 628. Solitary imprisonment effects of 139. Stampe the Countess 69. Starkàther the lay of 571. Staubbach fall of the 706. Stein the Baron von career of 328. Stephens Mr letters from on the results of the harvest 769. Stockholm description of 59. Storm the from Púshkin 40. Stralsund sketch of 56. Struensee Count 729. Student of Salamanca the. Part I. 521. Part II. 673. Summer noontide by J. D. 752. Suspiria de profundis; being a sequel to the confessions of an English opium-eater. Part II. 43. Swedes character of the 69. Swift's apology for Queen Anne &c. notice of 4. Switzerland a reminiscence of 704. Tables-d'hôtes in Italy 628. Tacitus as a historian 389. Tenure of land &c. in Turkey 693. Thorwaldsen the sculptor 69. Three years in Constantinople; review of 688. Titian remarks on the style &c. of 420. To * * * from the Russian of Púshkin 35. To Clara by J. D. 753. To the sea from Púshkin 144. To the slanderers of Russia from Púshkin 150. Torquato Tasso Goethe's translations from 87. Townsend Charles character of 715. --his death 719. Transfiguration of Raffaele remarks on the 418. Trees in Italy 622. Turks domestic manners of the 688. Usk river scenery of the 475. Varnhagen von Ense sketch of Stein by 331. Villa Reale garden of the 486. Villars Marshal 650 651. Villeroi Marshal 651 652. --his defeat at Ramilies 661. Volcano of Kirauea account of a visit to the 591. Voltaire's Age of Louis XIV. remarks on 3. Von Stein sketch of the career and character of 328. Wales sketches of 74. Walpole's memoirs of the reign of George III. review of 713. Warburton on the Dunciad 253. Warren's introduction to law-studies review of 300. Warton Dr on the Dunciad 251. Waterton's second series of essays in natural history review of 289. Waxholm fortress of 58. Weymouth Lord 727. Wheat crop quantity and quality of the throughout Scotland 769 770. --cause of its inferior quality 771. --the supply abundant 773. --on the rising price of 779. Wild animals of South America the 553. Wilkes John notice of 722 725. William III. notices of 9. --his death 11. White's three years in Constantinople review of 688. Wordsworth's modernization of Chaucer remarks on 125. Wye scenery of the 481. Zschokke's Aehrenlese review of 129. Zumalacarregui career of 210. _Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne & Hughes Paul's Work._ "