INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY MISCELLANY
Of Literature, Art, and Science.

WOMEN AND LITERATURE IN FRANCE.

From a sprightly letter from Paris to the Cologne
Gazette, we translate for The International the
following account of the position of women in the French
Republic, together with the accompanying gossip concerning
sundry ladies whose names have long been quite prominently
before the public:

“It is curious that the idea of the emancipation of women
should have originated in France, for there is no country in
Europe where the sex have so little reason to complain of their
position as in this, especially at Paris. Leaving out of view a
certain paragraph of the Code Civile—and that is
nothing but a sentence in a law-book—and looking closely
into the features of women’s life, we see that they are not
only queens who reign, but also ministers who govern.

“In France women are engaged in a large proportion of civil
employments, and may without hesitation devote themselves to
art and science. It is indeed astonishing to behold the
interest with which the beautiful sex here enter upon all
branches of art and knowledge.

“The ateliers of the painters number quite as many female as
male students, and there are apparently more women than men who
copy the pictures in the Louvre. Nothing is more pleasing than
to see these gentle creatures, with their easels, sitting
before a colossal Rubens or a Madonna of Raphael. No difficulty
alarms them, and prudery is not allowed to give a voice in
their choice of subjects.

“I have never yet attended a lecture, by either of the
professors here, but I have found some seats occupied by
ladies. Even the lectures of Michel Chevalier and Blanqui do
not keep back the eagerness of the charming Parisians in
pursuit of science. That Michelet and Edgar Quinet have
numerous female disciples is accordingly not difficult to
believe.

“Go to a public session of the Academy, and you find the
‘cercle‘ filled almost exclusively by ladies, and these
laurel-crowned heads have the delight of seeing their immortal
works applauded by the clapping of tenderest hands. In truth,
the French savan is uncommonly clear in the most abstract
things; but it would be an interesting question, whether the
necessity of being not alone easily intelligible but agreeable
to the capacity of comprehension possessed by the unschooled
mind of woman, has not largely contributed to the facility and
charm which is peculiar to French scientific literature. Read
for example the discourse on Cabanis, pronounced by Mignet at
the last session. It would be impossible to write more
charmingly, more elegantly, more attractively, even upon a
subject within the range of the fine arts. The works, and
especially the historical works, of the French, are universally
diffused. Popular histories, so-called editions for the people,
are here entirely unknown; everything that is published is in a
popular edition, and if as great and various care were taken
for the education of the people as in Germany, France would in
this respect be the first country in the world.

“With the increasing influence of monarchical ideas in
certain circles, the women seem to be returning to the
traditions of monarchy, and are throwing themselves into the
business of making memoirs. Hardly have George Sand’s
Confessions been announced, and already new enterprises in the
same line are set on foot. The European dancer, who is perhaps
more famous for making others dance to her music, and who has
enjoyed a monopoly of cultivated scandal, Lola Montes, also
intends to publish her memoirs. They will of course contain an
interesting fragment of German federal politics, and form a
contribution to German revolutionary literature. Lola herself
is still too beautiful to devote her own time to the writing.
Accordingly, she has resorted to the pen of M. Balzac. If
Madame Balzac has nothing to say against the necessary intimacy
with the dangerous Spanish or Irish or whatever woman—for
Lola Montes is a second Homer—the reading world may
anticipate an interesting, chapter of life. No writer is better
fitted for such a work than so profound a man of the world, and
so keen a painter of character, as
Balzac.

“The well-known actress, Mlle. Georges, who was in her prime
during the most remarkable epoch of the century, and was in
relations with the most prominent persons of the Empire, is
also preparing a narrative of her richly varied experiences.
Perhaps these attractive examples may induce Madame Girardin
also to bestow her memoirs upon us, and so the process can be
repeated infinitely.”

Authors and Books.

Parke Godwin has just given to the public, through Mr.
Putnam, a new edition of the translation made by himself and
some literary friends, of Goethe’s “Autobiography, or Truth and
Poetry from My Life.” In his new preface Mr. Godwin exposes one
of the most scandalous pieces of literary imposition that we
have ever read of. This translation, with a few verbal
alterations which mar its beauty and lessen its fidelity, has
been reprinted in “Bohn’s Standard Library,” in London, as an
original English version, in the making of which “the American
was of occasional use,” &c. Mr. Godwin is one of our
best German scholars, and his discourse last winter on the
character and genius of Goethe, illustrated his thorough
appreciation of the Shakspeare of the Continent, and that
affectionate sympathy which is so necessary to the task of
turning an author from one language into another. There are
very few books in modern literature more attractive or more
instructive to educated men than this Autobiography of Goethe,
for which we are indebted to him.

John Randolph is the best subject for a biography, that our
political experience has yet furnished. Who that remembers the
long and slender man of iron, with his scarcely human scorn of
nearly all things beyond his “old Dominion,” and his withering
wit, never restrained by any pity, and his passion for
destroying all fabrics of policy or reputation of which he was
not himself the architect, but will read with anticipations of
keen interest the announcement of a life of the eccentric yet
great Virginian! Such a work, by the Hon. Hugh A. Garland, is
in the press of the Appletons. We know little of Mr. Garland’s
capacities in this way, but if his book prove not the most
attractive in the historical literature of the year, the fault
will not be in its subject.

The Scottish Booksellers have instituted a society for
professional objects under the title of the “Edinburgh
Booksellers’ Union.” In addition to business purposes, they
propose to collect and preserve books and pamphlets written by
or relating to booksellers, printers, engravers, or members of
collateral professions,—rare editions of other
works—and generally articles connected with parties
belonging to the above professions, whether literary,
professional, or personal.

D’Israeli abandons himself now-a-days entirely to politics.
“The forehead high, and gleaming eye, and lip awry, of Benjamin
D’Israeli,” sung once by Fraser are no longer seen
before the title-pages of “Wondrous Tales,” but only before the
Speaker. It is much referred to, that in the recent
parliamentary commemoration of Sir Robert Peel, the Hebrew
commoner kept silence; his long war of bitter sarcasm and
reproach on the defunct statesman was too freshly remembered.
Peel rarely exerted himself to more advantage than in his
replies, to D’Israeli, all noticeable for subdued disdain,
conscious patriotism, and argumentative completeness. For
injustice experienced through life, the meritorious dead are in
a measure revenged by the feelings of their accusers or
detractors, when the latter retain the sensibility which the
grave usually excites, and especially amid such a chorus of
applause from all parties, and a whole people, as we have now
in England for Sir Robert Peel—the only man in the
Empire, except Wellington, who had a strictly personal
authority.

Dr. Dickson, recently of the Medical Department of the New
York University, and whose ill-health induced the resignation
of the chair he held there, has returned to Charleston, and we
observe that his professional and other friends in that city
greeted him with a public dinner, on the 9th ult. Dr. Dickson
we believe is one of the most classically elegant writers upon
medical science in the United States. He ranks with Chapman and
Oliver Wendell Holmes in the grace of his periods as well as in
the thoroughness of his learning and the exactness and
acuteness of his logic. Like Holmes, too, he is a poet, and,
generally, a very accomplished litterateur. We regret
the loss that New York sustains in his removal, but
congratulate Charleston upon the recovery of one of the best
known and most loved attractions of her society.

Mr. John R. Bartlett’s boundary commission will soon be upon
the field of its activity. We were pleased to see that Mr.
Davis, of Massachusetts, a few days ago presented in the Senate
petitions from Edward Everett, Jared Sparks, and others, and
from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, at Boston, to
the effect that it would be of great public utility to attach
to the boundary commission to run the line between the United
States and Mexico, a small corps of persons well qualified to
make researches in the various departments of science.

William C. Richards, the very clever and accomplished editor
of the Southern Literary Gazette was the author of “Two
Country Sonnets,” contributed to a recent number of The
International, which we inadvertently credited to his
brother, T. Addison Richards the well-known and much esteemed
landscape painter.

MAJOR POUSSIN, so well-known for his long residence in this
country as an officer of engineers, and, more recently, as
Minister of the French republic,—which, intelligent men
have no need to be assured, he represented with uniform wisdom
and manliness,—is now engaged at Paris upon a new edition
of his important book, The Power and Prospects of the United
States. We perceive that he has lately published in the
Republican journal Le Credit, a translation of the
American instructions to Mr. Mann, respecting Hungary. In his
preface to this document, Major Poussin pays the warmest
compliments to the feelings, measures and policy of our
administration, with which he contrasts, at the same time,
those of the French Government. He hopes a great deal for the
Democratic cause in Europe from the moral influences of
the United States.

DR. JOHN W. FRANCIS, one of the most excellent men, as well
as one of the best physicians of New York, has received from
Trinity College, Hartford, the degree of Doctor of Laws. We
praise the authorities of Trinity for this judicious bestowal
of its honors. Francis’s career of professional usefulness and
variously successful intellectual activity, are deserving such
academical recognition. His genial love of learning, large
intelligence, ready appreciation of individual merit, and that
genuine love of country which has led him to the carefullest
and most comprehensive study of our general and particular
annals, and to the frequentest displays of the sources of its
enduring grandeur, constitute in him a character eminently
entitled to our affectionate admiration.

THE POEMS OF GRAY, in an edition of singular typographical
and pictorial beauty, are to be issued as one of the autumn
gift-books by Henry C. Baird, of Philadelphia. They are to be
edited by the tasteful and judicious critic, Professor Henry
Reed, of the University of Pennsylvania, to whom we were
indebted for the best edition of Wordsworth that appeared
during the life of that poet. We have looked over Professor
Reed’s life of Gray, and have seen proofs of the admirable
engravings with which the work will be embellished. It will be
dedicated to our American Moxon, JAMES T. FIELDS, as a
souvenir. we presume, of a visit to the grave of the bard,
which the two young booksellers made together during a recent
tour in Europe. Mr. Baird and Mr. Fields are of the small
company of publishers, who, if it please them, can write their
own books. They have both given pleasant evidence of abilities
in this way.

BURNS.—It appears from the Scotch papers that the
house in Burns-street, Dumfries, in which the bard of “Tam
o’Shanter” and his wife “bonnie Jean,” lived and died, is about
to come into the market by way of public auction.

“EUROPE, PAST AND PRESENT:” A comprehensive manual of
European Geography and History, derived from official and
authentic sources, and comprising not only an accurate
geographical and statistical description, but also a faithful
and interesting history of all European States; to which is
appended a copious and carefully arranged index, by Francis H.
Ungewitter, LL.D.,—is a volume of some six hundred pages,
just published by Mr. Putnam. It has been prepared with much
well-directed labor, and will be found a valuable and
comprehensive manual of reference upon all questions relating
to the history, geographical position, and general statistics
of the several States of Europe.

M. LIBRI, of whose conviction at Paris (par
contumace, that is, in default of appearance), of stealing
books from public libraries, we have given some account in
The International, is warmly and it appears to us
successfully defended in the Athenæum, in which it is alleged
that there was not a particle of legal evidence against him. M.
Libri is, and was at the time of the appearance of the
accusation against him, a political exile in England.

MAJOR RAWLINSON, F.R.S., has published a “Commentary on the
Cuneiform Inscriptions of Babylon and Assyria,” including
readings of the inscriptions on the Nimroud Obelisk, discovered
by Mr. Layard, and a brief notice of the ancient kings of
Nineveh and Babylon. It was read before the Royal Asiatic
Society.

REV. DR. WISEMAN, author of the admirable work on the
Connection between Science and Religion, is to proceed to Rome
toward the close of the present month to receive the hat of a
cardinal. It is many years since any English Roman Catholic,
resident in England, attained this honor.

THE OHIO HISTORICAL SOCIETY has published several
interesting volumes, of which the most important are those of
Judge Burnett. An address, by William D. Gallagher, its
President, on the History and Resources of the West and
Northwest, has just been issued: and it has nearly ready for
publication a volume of Mr. Hildreth.

THE IMPERIAL LIBRARY AT VIENNA has been enriched by a very
old Greek manuscript on the Advent of Christ, composed by a
bishop of the second century, named Clement. This manuscript
was discovered a short time since by M. Waldeck, the
philologist, at Constantinople.

MR. KEIGHTLEY’s “History of Greece” has been translated into
modern Greek and published at Athens.

GUIZOT’s book on Democracy, has been prohibited in Austria,
through General Haynau’s influence.

WORDSWORTH’S POSTHUMOUS POEM, “The Prelude,” is in the press
of the Appletons, by whose courtesy we are enabled to present
the readers of The International with the fourth canto
of it, before its publication in England. The poem is a sort of
autobiography in blank verse, marked by all the characteristics
of the poet—his original vein of thought; his majestic,
but sometimes diffuse, style of speculation; his large
sympathies with humanity, from its proudest to its humblest
forms. It will be read with great avidity by his
admirers—and there are few at this day who do not belong
to that class—as affording them a deeper insight into the
mind of Wordsworth than any of his other works. It is divided
into several books, named from the different situations or
stages of the author’s life, or the subjects which at any
period particularly engaged his attention. We believe it will
be more generally read than any poem of equal length that has
issued from the press in this age.

Miss COOPER’s “RURAL HOURS”¹
is everywhere commended as one of the most charming pictures
that have ever appeared of country life. The books of the
Howitts, delineating the same class of subjects in England
and Germany, are not to be compared to Miss Cooper’s for
delicate painting or grace and correctness of diction. The
Evening Post observes:

“This is one of the most delightful books we have lately
taken up. It is a journal of daily observations made by an
intelligent and highly educated lady, residing in a most
beautiful part of the country, commencing with the spring
of 1848, and closing with the end of the winter of 1849.
They almost wholly concern the occupations and objects of
country life, and it is almost enough to make one in love
with such a life to read its history so charmingly
narrated. Every day has its little record in this
volume,—the record of some rural employment, some
note on the climate, some observation in natural history,
or occasionally some trait of rural manners. The arrival
and departure of the birds of passage is chronicled, the
different stages of vegetation are noted, atmospheric
changes and phenomena are described, and the various living
inhabitants of the field and forest are made to furnish
matter of entertainment for the reader. All this is done
with great variety and exactness of knowledge, and without
any parade of science. Descriptions of rural holidays and
rural amusements are thrown in occasionally, to give a
living interest to a picture which would otherwise become
monotonous from its uniform quiet. The work is written in
easy and flexible English, with occasional felicities of
expression. It is ascribed, as we believe we have informed
our readers, to a daughter of J. Fenimore Cooper. Our
country is full of most interesting materials for a work of
this sort; but we confess we hardly expected, at the
present time, to see them collected and arranged by so
skillful a hand.”

THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH’s “Sketches of Modern Philosophy,”
remarks the Tribune, “consist of a course of popular lectures
on the subject, delivered in the Royal Institution of London in
the years 1804-5-6. As a contribution to the science of which
they profess to treat, their claims to respect are very
moderate. Indeed, no one would ridicule any pretensions of that
kind with more zeal than the author himself. The manuscripts
were left in an imperfect state, Sydney Smith probably
supposing that no call would ever be made for their
publication. They were written merely for popular effect, to be
spoken before a miscellaneous audience, in which any abstract
topics of moral philosophy would be the last to awaken an
interest. The title of the book is accordingly a misnomer. It
would lead no one to suspect the rich and diversified character
of its contents. They present no ambitious attempts at
metaphysical disquisition. They are free from dry
technicalities of ethical speculation. They have no specimens
of logical hair-splitting, no pedantic array of barren
definitions, no subtle distinctions proceeding from an
ingenious fancy, and without any foundation in nature. On the
contrary, we find in this volume a series of lively, off-hand,
dashing comments on men and manners, often running into broad
humor, and always marked with the pungent common sense that
never forsook the facetious divine. His remarks on the conduct
of the understanding, on literary habits, on the use and value
of books, and other themes of a similar character, are for the
most part instructive and practical as well as piquant, and on
the whole, the admirers of Sydney Smith will have no reason to
regret the publication of the volume.”

[From the London Times.]

BIOGRAPHY OF SIR ROBERT PEEL.

In the following brief narrative of the principal facts in
the life of the great statesman who has just been snatched from
among us, we must disclaim all intention of dealing with his
biography in any searching or ambitious spirit. The national
loss is so great, the bereavement is so sudden, that we cannot
sit down calmly either to eulogize or arraign the memory of the
deceased. We cannot forget that it was not a week ago we were
occupied in recording and commenting upon his last eloquent
address to that assembly which had so often listened with
breathless attention to his statesmanlike expositions of
policy. We could do little else when the mournful intelligence
reached us that Sir Robert Peel was no more, than pen a few
expressions of sorrow and respect. Even now the following
imperfect record of facts must be accepted as a poor substitute
for the biography [pg 197] of that great Englishman
whose loss will be felt almost as a private bereavement by
every family throughout the British Empire:—

Sir Robert Peel was in the 63d year of his age, having been
born near Bury, in Lancashire, on the 5th of February, 1788.
His father was a manufacturer on a grand scale, and a man of
much natural ability, and of almost unequaled opulence. Full of
a desire to render his son and probable successor worthy of the
influence and the vast wealth which he had to bestow, the first
Sir Robert Peel took the utmost pains personally with the early
training of the future prime minister. He retained his son
under his own immediate superintendence until he arrived at a
sufficient age to be sent to Harrow. Lord Byron, his
contemporary at Harrow, was a better declaimer and a more
amusing actor, but in sound learning and laborious application
to school duties young Peel had no equal. He had scarcely
completed his 16th year when he left Harrow and became a
gentleman commoner of Christ Church, Oxford, where he took the
degree of A.B., in 1808, with unprecedented distinction.

The year 1809 saw him attain his majority, and take his seat
in the House of Commons as a member for Cashel, in
Tipperary.

The first Sir Robert Peel had long been a member of the
House of Commons, and the early efforts of his son in that
assembly were regarded with considerable interest, not only on
account of his University reputation, but also because he was
the son of such a father. He did not, however, begin public
life by staking his fame on the results of one elaborate
oration; on the contrary, he rose now and then on comparatively
unimportant occasions; made a few brief modest remarks, stated
a fact or two, explained a difficulty when he happened to
understand the matter in hand better than others, and then sat
down without taxing too severely the patience or good nature of
an auditory accustomed to great performances. Still in the
second year of his parliamentary course he ventured to make a
set speech, when, at the commencement of the session of 1810,
he seconded the address in reply to the King’s speech.
Thenceforward for nineteen years a more highflying Tory than
Mr. Peel was not to be found within the walls of parliament.
Lord Eldon applauded him as a young and valiant champion of
those abuses in the state which were then fondly called “the
institutions of the country.” Lord Sidmouth regarded him as the
rightful political heir, and even the Duke of Cumberland
patronized Mr. Peel. He further became the favorite
eleve of Mr. Perceval, the first lord of the treasury,
and entered office as under-secretary for the home department.
He continued in the home department for two years, not often
speaking in parliament, but rather qualifying himself for those
prodigious labors in debate, in council, and in office, which
it has since been his lot to encounter and perform.

In May, 1812, Mr. Perceval fell by the hand of an assassin,
and the composition of the ministry necessarily underwent a
great change. The result, so far as Mr. Peel was concerned,
was, that he was appointed Chief Secretary to the
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Mr. Peel had only reached his 26th
year when, in the month of September, 1812, the duties of that
anxious and laborious position were entrusted to his hands. The
legislative union was then but lately consummated, and the
demand for Catholic emancipation had given rise to an agitation
of only very recent date. But, in proportion to its novelty, so
was its vigor. Mr. Peel was, therefore, as the representative
of the old tory Protestant school, called upon to encounter a
storm of unpopularity, such as not even an Irish secretary has
ever been exposed to. The late Mr. O’Connell in various forms
poured upon Mr. Peel a torrent of invective which went beyond
even his extraordinary performances in the science of scolding.
At length he received from Mr. Peel a hostile message.
Negotiations went on for three or four days, when Mr. O’Connell
was taken into custody and bound over to keep the peace toward
all his fellow-subjects in Ireland. Mr. Peel and his friend
immediately went to England, and subsequently proceeded to the
continent. Mr. O’Connell followed them to London, but the
police were active enough to bring him before the chief
justice, when he entered into recognizances to keep the peace
toward all his majesty’s subjects; and so ended one of the few
personal squabbles in which Mr. Peel had ever been engaged. For
six years he held the office of chief secretary to the
lord-lieutenant, at a time when the government was conducted
upon what might be called “anti-conciliation principles.” The
opposite course was commenced by Mr. Peel’s immediate
successor, Mr. Charles Grant, now Lord Glenelg.

That a chief secretary so circumstanced, struggling to
sustain extreme Orangeism in its dying agonies, should have
been called upon to encounter great toil and anxiety is a truth
too obvious to need illustration. That in these straits Mr.
Peel acquitted himself with infinite address was as readily
acknowledged at that time as it has ever been even in the
zenith of his fame. He held office in that country under three
successive viceroys, the Duke of Richmond, Earl Whitworth, and
Earl Talbot, all of whom have long since passed away from this
life, their names and their deeds long forgotten. But the
history of their chief secretary happens not to have been
composed of such perishable materials, and we now approach one
of the most memorable passages of his eventful career. He was
chairman of the great bullion committee; but before he engaged
in that stupendous task he had resigned the chief secretaryship
of Ireland. As a consequence of the report of that committee,
he took charge of and introduced the bill for authorizing a
return to [pg 198] cash payments which bears
his name, and which measure received the sanction of
parliament in the year 1819. That measure brought upon Mr.
Peel no slight or temporary odium. The first Sir Robert Peel
was then alive, and altogether differed from his son as to
the tendency of his measure. It was roundly asserted at the
time, and very faintly denied, that it rendered that
gentleman a more wealthy man, by something like half a
million sterling, than he had previously been. The deceased
statesman, however, must, in common justice, be acquitted of
any sinister purpose.

This narrative now reaches the year 1820, when we have to
relate the only domestic event in the history of Sir Robert
Peel which requires notice. On the 8th of June, being then in
the 33d year of his age, he married Julia, daughter of General
Sir John Floyd, who had then attained the age of 25.

Two years afterward there was a lull in public affairs,
which gave somewhat the appearance of tranquillity. Lord
Sidmouth was growing old, he thought that his system was
successful, and that at length he might find repose. He
considered it then consistent with his public duty to consign
to younger and stronger hands the seals of the home department.
He accepted a seat in the cabinet without office, and continued
to give his support to Lord Liverpool, his ancient political
chief. In permitting his mantle to fall upon Mr. Peel, he
thought he was assisting to invest with authority one whose
views and policy were as narrow as his own, and whose practise
in carrying them out would be not less rigid and
uncompromising. But, like many others, he lived long enough to
be grievously disappointed by the subsequent career of him whom
the liberal party have since called “the great minister of
progress,” and whom their opponents have not scrupled to
designate by appellations not to be repeated in these hours of
sorrow and bereavement. On the 17th of January, 1822, Mr. Peel
was installed at the head of the home department, where he
remained undisturbed till the political demise of Lord
Liverpool in the spring of 1827. The most distinguished man
that has filled the chair of the House of Commons in the
present century was Charles Abbott, afterward Lord Colchester.
In the summer of 1817 he had completed sixteen years of hard
service in that eminent office, and he had represented the
University for eleven years. His valuable labors having been
rewarded with a pension and a peerage, he took his seat, full
of years and honors, among the hereditary legislators of the
land, and left a vacancy in the representation of his alma
mater, which Mr. Peel above all living men was deemed the
most fitting person to occupy. At that time he was an intense
tory—or as the Irish called him, an Orange Protestant of
the deepest dye—one prepared to make any sacrifice for
the maintenance of church and state as established by the
revolution of 1688. Who, therefore, so fit as he to represent
the loyalty, learning, and orthodoxy of Oxford? To have done so
had been the object of Mr. Canning’s young ambition: but in
1817 he could not be so ungrateful to Liverpool as to reject
its representation even for the early object of his
parliamentary affections. Mr. Peel, therefore, was returned
without opposition, for that constituency which many consider
the most important in the land—with which he remained on
the best possible terms for twelve years. The question of the
repeal of the penal laws affecting the Roman Catholics, which
severed so many political connections, was, however, destined
to separate Mr. Peel from Oxford. In 1828 rumors of the coming
change were rife, and many expedients were devised to extract
his opinions on the Catholic question. But with the reserve
which ever marked his character, left all curiosity at fault.
At last, the necessities of the government rendered further
concealment impossible, and out came the truth that he was no
longer an Orangeman. The ardent friends who had frequently
supported his Oxford elections, and the hot partisans who
shouted “Peel and Protestantism,” at the Brunswick Clubs,
reviled him for his defection in no measured terms. On the 4th
of February, 1829, he addressed a letter to the vice-chancellor
of Oxford, stating, in many well-turned phrases, that the
Catholic question must forthwith be adjusted, under advice in
which he concurred; and that, therefore, he considered himself
bound to resign that trust which the University had during so
many years confided to his hands. His resignation was accepted;
but as the avowed purpose of that important step was to give
his constituents an opportunity of pronouncing an opinion upon
a change of policy, he merely accepted the Chiltern Hundreds
with the intention of immediately becoming a candidate for that
seat in parliament which he had just vacated. At this election
Mr. Peel was opposed by Sir Robert Inglis, who was elected by
755 to 609. Mr. Peel was, therefore, obliged to cast himself on
the favor of Sir Manasseh Lopez, who returned him for Westbury,
in Wiltshire, which constituency he continued to represent two
years, until at the general election in 1830 he was chosen for
Tamworth, in the representation for which he continued for
twenty years.

The main features of his official life still remain to be
noticed. With the exception of Lord Palmerston, no statesman of
modern times has spent so many years in the civil service of
the crown. If no account be taken of the short time he was
engaged upon the bullion committee in effecting the change in
the currency, and in opposing for a few months the ministries
of Mr. Canning and Lord Goderich, it may be stated that from
1810 to 1830 he formed part of the government, and presided
over it as a first minister in 1834-5, as well as from 1841 to
1846 inclusive. During the time that he held the office of
[pg 199] home secretary under Lord
Liverpool he effected many important changes in the
administration of domestic affairs, and many legislative
improvements of a practical and comprehensive character. But
his fame as member of parliament was principally sustained
at this period of his life by the extensive and admirable
alterations which he effected in the criminal law. Romilly
and Mackintosh had preceded him in the great work of
reforming and humanizing the code of England. For his hand,
however, was reserved the introduction of ameliorations
which they had long toiled and struggled for in vain. The
ministry through whose influence he was enabled to carry
these reforms lost its chief in Lord Liverpool during the
early part of the year 1827. When Mr. Canning undertook to
form a government, Mr. Peel, the late Lord Eldon, the Duke
of Wellington, and other eminent tories of that day, threw
up office, and are said to have persecuted Mr. Canning with
a degree of rancor far outstripping the legitimate bounds of
political hostility. Lord George Bentinck said “they hounded
to the death my illustrious relative”; and the ardor of his
subsequent opposition to Sir Robert Peel evidently derived
its intensity from a long cherished sense of the injuries
supposed to have been inflicted upon Mr. Canning. It is the
opinion of men not ill informed respecting the sentiments of
Canning, that he considered Peel as his true political
successor—as a statesman competent to the task of
working out that large and liberal policy which he fondly
hoped the tories might, however tardily, be induced to
sanction. At all events, he is believed not to have
entertained toward Mr. Peel any personal hostility, and to
have stated during his short-lived tenure of office that
that gentleman was the only member of his party who had not
treated him with ingratitude and unkindness.

In January, 1828, the Wellington ministry took office and
held it till November, 1830. Mr. Peel’s reputation suffered
during this period very rude shocks. He gave up, as already
stated, his anti-Catholic principles, lost the force of twenty
years’ consistency, and under unheard-of disadvantages
introduced the very measure he had spent so many years in
opposing. The debates on Catholic emancipation, which preceded
the great reform question, constitute a period in his life,
which, twenty years ago, every one would have considered its
chief and prominent feature. There can be no doubt that the
course he then adopted demanded greater moral courage than at
any previous period of his life he had been called upon to
exercise. He believed himself incontestibly in the right; he
believed, with the Duke of Wellington, that the danger of civil
war was imminent, and that such an event was immeasurably a
greater evil than surrendering the constitution of 1688. But he
was called upon to snap asunder a parliamentary connection of
twelve years with a great university, in which the most
interesting period of his youth had been passed; to encounter
the reproaches of adherents whom he had often led in
well-fought contests against the advocates of what was termed
“civil and religious liberty;” to tell the world that the
character of public men for consistency, however precious, is
not to be directly opposed to the common weal; and to
communicate to many the novel as well as unpalatable truth that
what they deemed “principle” must give way to what he called
“expediency.”

When he ceased to be a minister of the crown, that general
movement throughout Europe which succeeded the deposition of
the elder branch of the Bourbons rendered parliamentary reform
as unavoidable as two years previously Catholic emancipation
had been. He opposed this change, no doubt with increased
knowledge and matured talents, but with impaired influence and
few parliamentary followers. The history of the reform debates
will show that Sir Robert Peel made many admirable speeches,
which served to raise his reputation, but never for a moment
turned the tide of fortune against his adversaries, and in the
first session of the first reformed parliament he found himself
at the head of a party that in numbers little exceeded one
hundred. As soon as it was practicable he rallied his broken
forces; either he or some of his political friends gave them
the name of “Conservatives,” and it required but a short
interval of reflection and observation to prove to his
sagacious intellect that the period of reaction was at hand.
Every engine of party organization was put into vigorous
activity, and before the summer of 1834 reached its close he
was at the head of a compact, powerful, and well-disciplined
opposition. Such a high impression of their vigor and
efficiency had King William IV received, that when, in
November, Lord Althorp became a peer, and the whigs therefore
lost their leader to the House of Commons, his Majesty sent in
Italy to summon Sir Robert Peel to his councils, with a view to
the immediate formation of a conservative ministry. He accepted
this responsibility, though he thought the King had mistaken
the condition of the country and the chances of success which
had awaited his political friends. A new House of Commons was
instantly called, and for nearly three months Sir Robert Peel
maintained a struggle against the most formidable opposition
that for nearly a century any minister had been called to
encounter. At no time did his command of temper, his almost
exhaustless resources of information, his vigorous and
comprehensive intellect appear to create such astonishment or
draw forth such unbounded admiration as in the early part of
1835. But, after a well-fought contest he retired once more
into the opposition till the close of the second Melbourne
Administration in 1841. It was in April, 1835, that Lord
Melbourne was restored to power, but the
[pg 200] continued enjoyment of
office did not much promote the political interests of his
party, and from various causes the power of the whigs began
to decline. The commencement of a new reign gave them some
popularity, but in the new House of Commons, elected in
consequence of that event, the conservative party were
evidently gaining strength; still, after the failure of
1834-5, it was no easy task to dislodge an existing
ministry, and at the same time to be prepared with a cabinet
and a party competent to succeed them. Sir Robert Peel,
therefore, with characteristic caution, “bided his time”,
conducting the business of opposition throughout the whole
of this period with an ability and success of which history
affords few examples. He had accepted the Reform Bill as the
established law of England, and as the system upon which the
country was thenceforward to be governed. He was willing to
carry it out in its true spirit, but he would proceed no
further. He marshaled his opposition upon the principle of
resistance to any further organic changes, and he enlisted
the majority of the peers and nearly the whole of the
country gentlemen of England in support of the great
principle of protection to British industry. The little
maneuvres and small political intrigues of the period are
almost forgotten, and the remembrance of them is scarcely
worthy of revival. It may, however, be mentioned, that in
1839 ministers, being left in a minority, resigned, and Sir
Robert Peel, when sent for by the Queen, demanded that
certain ladies in the household of her majesty,—the
near relatives of eminent whig politicians,—should be
removed from the personal service of the sovereign. As this
was refused, he abandoned for the time any attempt to form a
government, and his opponents remained in office till
September, 1841. It was then Sir Robert Peel became the
first lord of the treasury, and the Duke of Wellington,
without office, accepted a seat in the cabinet, taking the
management of the House of Lords. His ministry was formed on
protectionist principles, but the close of its career was
marked by the adoption of free trade doctrines differing in
the widest and most liberal sense. Sir Robert Peel’s sense
of public duty impelled him once more to incur the odium and
obliquy which attended a fundamental change of policy, and a
repudiation of the political partizans by whose ardent
support a minister may have attained office and authority.
It was his fate to encounter more than any man ever did,
that hostility which such conduct, however necessary, never
fails to produce. This great change in our commercial
policy, however unavoidable, must be regarded as the
proximate cause of his final expulsion from office in July,
1846. His administration, however, had been signalized by
several measures of great political importance. Among the
earliest and most prominent of these were his financial
plans, the striking feature of which was an income-tax;
greatly extolled for the exemption it afforded from other
burdens pressing more severely on industry, but loudly
condemned for its irregular and unequal operation, a vice
which has since rendered its contemplated increase
impossible.

Of the ministerial life of Sir Robert Peel little more
remains to be related except that which properly belongs rather
to the history of the country than to his individual biography.
But it would be unjust to the memory of one of the most
sagacious statesman that England ever produced to deny that his
latest renunciation of political principles required but two
short years to attest the vital necessity of that unqualified
surrender. If the corn laws had been in existence at the period
when the political system of the continent was shaken to its
centre and dynasties crumbled into dust, a question would have
been left in the hands of the democratic party of England, the
force of which neither skill nor influence could then have
evaded. Instead of broken friendships, shattered reputations
for consistency, or diminished rents, the whole realm of
England might have borne a fearful share in that storm of wreck
and revolution which had its crisis in the 10th of April,
1848.

In the course of his long and eventful life many honors were
conferred upon Sir Robert Peel. Wherever he went, and almost at
all times, he attracted universal attention, and was always
received with the highest consideration. At the close of 1836
the University of Glasgow elected him Lord Rector, and the
conservatives of that city, in January, 1837, invited him to a
banquet at which three thousand gentlemen assembled to do honor
to their great political chief. But this was only one among
many occasions on which he was “the great guest.” Perhaps the
most remarkable of these banquets was that given to him in 1835
at Merchant Tailors’ Hall by three hundred members of the House
of Commons. Many other circumstances might be related to
illustrate the high position which Sir Robert Peel occupied.
Anecdotes innumerable might be recorded to show the
extraordinary influence in Parliament which made him “the great
commoner” of the age; for Sir Robert Peel was not only a
skillful and adroit debater, but by many degrees the most able
and one of the most eloquent men in either house of parliament.
Nothing could be more stately or imposing than the long array
of sounding periods in which he expounded his doctrines,
assailed his political adversaries, or vindicated his own
policy. But when the whole land laments his loss, when England
mourns the untimely fate of one of her noblest sons, the task
of critical disquisition upon literary attainments or public
oratory possesses little attraction. It may be left for calmer
moments, and a more distant time, to investigate with
unforgiving justice the sources of his errors, or to estimate
the precise value of services which the public is now disposed
to regard with no other feelings than those of unmingled
gratitude.

From the Art-Journal.

MEMORIES OF MISS JANE PORTER.

BY MRS. S.C. HALL.

The frequent observation of foreigners is, that in England
we have few “celebrated women.” Perhaps they mean that we have
few who are “notorious;” but let us admit that in either case
they are right; and may we not express our belief in its being
better for women and for the community that such is the case.
“Celebrity” rarely adds to the happiness of a woman, and almost
as rarely increases her usefulness. The time and attention
required to attain “celebrity,” must, except under very
peculiar circumstances, interfere with the faithful discharge
of those feminine duties upon which the well-doing of society
depends, and which shed so pure a halo around our English
homes. Within these “homes” our heroes, statesmen,
philosophers, men of letters, men of genius, receive their
first impressions, and the impetus to a faithful
discharge of their after callings as Christian subjects of the
State.

There are few of such men who do not trace back their
resolution, their patriotism, their wisdom, their
learning—the nourishment of all their higher
aspirations—to a wise, hopeful, loving-hearted and
faith-inspired Mother; one who believed in a son’s destiny to
be great; it may be, impelled to such belief rather by instinct
than by reason: who cherished (we can find no better word) the
“Hero-feeling” of devotion to what was right; though it might
have been unworldly; and whose deep heart welled up perpetual
love and patience toward the overboiling faults and frequent
stumblings of a hot youth, which she felt would mellow into a
fruitful manhood.

The strength and glory of England are in the keeping of the
wives and mothers of its men; and when we are questioned
touching our “celebrated women”, we may in general terms refer
to those who have watched over, moulded, and inspired our
“celebrated men”.

Happy is the country where the laws of God and Nature are
held in reverence—where each sex fulfills its peculiar
duties, and renders its sphere a sanctuary! And surely such
harmony is blessed by the Almighty—for while other
nations writhe in anarchy and poverty, our own spreads wide her
arms to receive all who seek protection or need repose.

But if we have few “celebrated” women, few who, impelled
either by circumstances or the irrepressible restlessness of
genius, go forth amid the pitfalls of publicity, and battle
with the world, either as poets, or dramatists, or moralists,
or mere tale-tellers in simple prose—or, more dangerous
still, “hold the mirror up to nature” on the stage that mimics
life—if we have but few, we have, and have had
some, of whom we are justly proud; women of such
well-balanced minds, that toil they ever so laboriously in
their public and perilous paths, their domestic and social
[pg 202] duties have been fulfilled
with as diligent and faithful love as though the world had
never been purified and enriched by the treasures of their
feminine wisdom; yet this does not shake our belief, that
despite the spotless and well-earned reputations they
enjoyed, the homage they received, (and it has its charm,)
and even the blessed consciousness of having contributed to
the healthful recreation, the improved morality, the
diffusion of the best sort of knowledge—the
woman would have been happier had she continued
enshrined in the privacy of domestic love and domestic duty.
She may not think this at the commencement of her career;
and at its termination, if she has lived sufficiently long
to have descended, even gracefully, from her pedestal, she
may often recall the homage of the past to make up
for its lack in the present. But so perfectly is
woman constituted for the cares, the affections, the
duties—the blessed duties of un-public life—that
if she give nature way it will whisper to her a text, that
“celebrity never added to the happiness of a true woman”.
She must look for her happiness to HOME. We would have young
women ponder over this, and watch carefully, ere the veil is
lifted, and the hard cruel eye of public criticism fixed
upon them. No profession is pastime; still less so now than
ever, when so many people are “clever”, though so few are
great. We would pray those especially who direct their
thoughts to literature, to think of what they have to say,
and why they wish to say it; and above all, to weigh what
they may expect from a capricious public, against the
blessed shelter and pure harmonies of private life.

But we have had some—and still have
some—”celebrated” women, of whom we have said “we may be
justly proud”. We have done pilgrimage to the shrine of Lady
Rachel Russell, who was so thoroughly “domestic”, that the
Corinthian beauty of her character would never have been matter
of history, but for the wickedness of a bad king. We have
recorded the hours spent with Hannah More; the happy days
passed with, and the years invigorated by, the advice and
influence of Maria Edgworth. We might recall the stern and
faithful puritanism of Maria Jane Jewsbury, and the Old World
devotion of the true and high-souled daughter of
Israel—Grace Aguilar. The mellow tones of Felicia Hemans’
poetry lingers still among all who appreciate the holy
sympathies of religion and virtue. We could dwell long and
profitably on the enduring patience and lifelong labor of
Barbara Hofland, and steep a diamond in tears to record the
memories of L.E.L. We could,—alas! alas! barely five and
twenty years’ acquaintance with literature and its ornaments,
and the brilliant catalogue is but a Memento Mori.
Perhaps of all this list, Maria Edgworth’s life was the
happiest: simply because she was the most retired, the least
exposed to the gaze and observation of the world, the most
occupied by loving duties toward the most united circle of old
and young we ever saw assembled in one happy home.

The very young have never, perhaps, read one of the tales of
a lady whose reputation as a novelist was in its zenith when
Walter Scott published his first novel. We desire to place a
chaplet upon the grave of a woman once “celebrated” all over
the known world, yet who drew all her happiness from the
lovingness of home and friends, while her life was as pure as
her renown was extensive.

In our own childhood romance-reading was prohibited, but
earnest entreaty procured an exception in favor of the
“Scottish Chiefs”. It was the bright summer, and we read it by
moonlight, only disturbed by the murmur of the distant ocean.
We read it, crouched in the deep recess of the nursery-window;
we read it until moonlight and morning met, and the
breakfast-bell ringing out into the soft air from the old
gable, found us at the end of the fourth volume. Dear old
times! when it would have been deemed little less than
sacrilege to crush a respectable romance into a shilling
volume, and our mammas considered only a five-volume
story curtailed of its just proportions.

Sir William Wallace has never lost his heroic ascendancy
over us, and we have steadily resisted every temptation to open
the “popular edition” of the long-loved romance, lest what
people will call “the improved state of the human mind”, might
displace the sweet memory of the mingled admiration and
indignation that chased each other, while we read and wept,
without ever questioning the truth of the absorbing
narrative.

Yet the “Scottish Chiefs” scarcely achieved the popularity
of “Thaddeus of Warsaw”—the first romance originated by
the active brain and singularly constructive power of Jane
Porter—produced at an almost girlish age.

The hero of “Thaddeus of Warsaw” was really Kosciuszko, the
beloved pupil of George Washington, the grandest and purest
patriot the modern world has known. The enthusiastic girl was
moved to its composition by the stirring times in which she
lived, and a personal observation of and acquaintance with some
of those brave men whose struggles for liberty only ceased with
their exile or their existence.

Miss Porter placed her standard of excellence on high
ground, and—all gentle-spirited as was her
nature—it was firm and unflinching toward what she
believed the right and true. We must not therefore judge her by
the depressed state of “feeling” in these times, when its
demonstration is looked upon as artificial or affected. Toward
the termination of the last, and the commencement of the
present century, the world was roused into an interest and
enthusiasm, which now we can scarcely appreciate or account
for; the sympathies of England were awakened by
[pg 203] the terrible revolutions of
France and the desolation of Poland; as a principle, we
hated Napoleon, though he had neither act nor part in the
doings of the democrats; and the sea-songs of Dibdin, which
our youth now would call uncouth and ungraceful
rhymes, were key-notes to public feeling; the English of
that time were thoroughly “awake”—the British Lion had
not slumbered through a thirty years’ peace. We were a
nation of soldiers, and sailors, and patriots; not of
mingled cotton-spinners, and railway speculators, and angry
protectionists. We do not say which state of things is best
or worst, we desire merely to account for what may be called
the taste for heroic literature at that time, and the
taste for—we really hardly know what to call
it—literature of the present, made up, as it too
generally is, of shreds and patches—bits of gold and
bits of tinsel—things written in a hurry, to be read
in a hurry, and never thought of afterward—suggestive
rather than reflective, at the best: and we must plead
guilty to a too great proneness to underrate what our
fathers probably overrated.

At all events we must bear in mind, while reading or
thinking over Miss Porter’s novels, that in her day, even the
exaggeration of enthusiasm was considered good tone and good
taste. How this enthusiasm was fostered, not subdued,
can be gathered by the author’s ingenious preface to the, we
believe, tenth edition of “Thaddeus of Warsaw.”

This story brought her abundant honors, and rendered her
society, as well as the society of her sister and brother,
sought for by all who aimed at a reputation for taste and
talent. Mrs. Porter, on her husband’s death, (he was the
younger son of a well-connected Irish family, born in Ireland,
in or near Coleraine, we believe, and a major in the
Enniskillen Dragoons,) sought a residence for her family in
Edinburgh, where education and good society are attainable to
persons of moderate fortunes, if they are “well-born;” but the
extraordinary artistic skill of her son Robert required a wider
field, and she brought her children to London sooner than she
had intended, that his promising talents might be cultivated.
We believe the greater part of “Thaddeus of Warsaw” was written
in London, either in St. Martin’s Lane, Newport Street, or
Gerard Street, Soho, (for in these three streets the family
lived after their arrival in the metropolis); though, as soon
as Robert Ker Porter’s abilities floated him on the stream, his
mother and sisters retired, in the brightness of their fame and
beauty, to the village of Thames Ditton, a residence they loved
to speak of as their “home.” The actual labor of
“Thaddeus”—her first novel—must have been
considerable: for testimony was frequently borne to the
fidelity of its localities, and Poles refused to believe the
author had not visited Poland; indeed, she had a happy power in
describing localities. It was on the publication of Miss
Porter’s two first works in the German language that their
author was honored by being made a Lady of the Chapter of St.
Joachim, and received the gold cross of the order from
Wurtemberg; but “The Scottish Chiefs” was never so popular on
the Continent as “Thaddeus of Warsaw”, although Napoleon
honored it with an interdict, to prevent its circulation in
France. If Jane Porter owed her Polish inspirations so
peculiarly to the tone of the times in which she lived, she
traces back, in her introduction to the latest
[pg 204] edition of “The Scottish
Chiefs.” her enthusiasm in the cause of Sir William Wallace
to the influence an old “Scotch wife’s” tales and ballads
produced upon her mind while in early childhood. She
wandered amid what she describes as “beautiful green banks,”
which rose in natural terraces behind her mothers house, and
where a cow and a few sheep occasionally fed. This house
stood alone, at the head of a little square, near the high
school; the distinguished Lord Elchies formerly lived in the
house, which was very ancient, and from those green banks it
commanded a fine view of the Firth of Forth. While gathering
“gowans” or other wild-flowers for her infant sister,
(whom she loved more dearly than her life, during the years
they lived in most tender and affectionate companionship),
she frequently encountered this aged woman, with her
knitting in her hand; and she would speak to the eager and
intelligent child of the blessed quiet of the land, where
the cattle were browsing without fear of an enemy; and then
she would talk of the awful times of the brave Sir William
Wallace, when he fought for Scotland, “against a cruel
tyrant; like unto them whom Abraham overcame when he
recovered Lot, with all his herds and flocks, from the proud
foray of the robber kings of the South,” who, she never
failed to add, “were all rightly punished for oppressing the
stranger in a foreign land! for the Lord careth for the
stranger.” Miss Porter says that this woman never omitted
mingling pious allusions with her narrative. “Yet she was a
person of low degree, dressed in a coarse woollen gown, and
a plain Mutch cap, clasped under the chin with a
silver brooch, which her father had worn at the battle of
Culloden.” Of course she filled with tales of Sir William
Wallace and the Bruce the listening ears of the lovely Saxon
child, who treasured them in her heart and brain, until they
fructified in after years into “The Scottish Chiefs.” To
these two were added “The Pastor’s Fireside,” and a number
of other tales and romances. She contributed to several
annuals and magazines, and always took pains to keep up the
reputation she had won, achieving a large share of the
popularity, to which, as an author, she never looked for
happiness. No one could be more alive to praise or more
grateful for attention, but the heart of a genuine, pure,
loving woman, beat within Jane Porter’s bosom, and she was
never drawn out of her domestic circle by the flattery that
has spoiled so many, men as well as women. Her mind was
admirably balanced by her home affections, which remained
unsullied and unshaken to the end of her days. She had, in
common with her three brothers and her charming sister, the
advantage of a wise and loving mother—a woman pious
without cant, and worldly-wise without being worldly. Mrs.
Porter was born at Durham, and when very young bestowed her
hand and heart on Major Porter. An old friend of the family
assures us that two or three of their children were born in
Ireland, and that certainly Jane was amongst the number.
Although she left Ireland when in early youth, perhaps
almost an infant, she certainly must be considered Irish, as
her father was so both by birth and descent, and esteemed
during his brief life as a brave and generous gentleman. He
died young, leaving his lovely widow in straitened
circumstances, having only her widow’s pension to depend on.
The eldest son—afterward Colonel Porter—was sent
to school by his grandfather.

We have glanced briefly at Sir Robert Ker Porter’s wonderful
talents, and Anna Maria, when in her twelfth year, rushed, as
Jane acknowledged, “prematurely into print.” Of Anna Maria we
knew personally but very little, enough however to recall with
a pleasant memory her readiness in conversation and her bland
and cheerful manners. No two sisters could have been more
different in bearing and appearance; Maria was a delicate
blonde, with a riant face, and an animated
manner—we had said almost peculiarly
Irish—rushing at conclusions, where her more
thoughtful and careful sister paused to consider and calculate.
The beauty of Jane was statuesque, her deportment serious yet
cheerful, a seriousness quite as natural as her younger
sister’s gaiety; they both labored diligently, but Anna Maria’s
labor was sport when compared to her eldest sister’s careful
toil; Jane’s mind was of a more lofty order, she was intense,
and felt more than she said, while Anna Maria often said more
than she felt; they were a delightful contrast, and yet the
harmony between them was complete; and one of the happiest days
we ever spent, while trembling on the threshold of literature,
was with them at their pretty road-side cottage in the village
of Esher before the death of their venerable and dearly beloved
mother, whose rectitude and prudence had both guided and
sheltered their youth, and who lived to reap with them the
harvest of their industry and exertion. We remember the drive
there, and the anxiety as to how those very “clever ladies”
would look, and what they would say; we talked over the various
letters we had received from Jane, and thought of the cordial
invitation to their cottage—their “mother’s
cottage”—as they always called it. We remember the old
white friendly spaniel who looked at us with blinking eyes, and
preceded us up stairs; we remember the formal old-fashioned
courtesy of the venerable old lady, who was then nearly
eighty—the blue ribands and good-natured frankness of
Anna Maria, and the noble courtesy of Jane, who received
visitors as if she granted an audience; this manner was natural
to her; it was only the manner of one whose thoughts have dwelt
more upon heroic deeds, and lived more with heroes than with
actual living men and women; the effect of this, however, soon
passed away, but not so the fascination which was in all she
said and [pg 205] did. Her voice was soft and
musical, and her conversation addressed to one person rather
than to the company at large, while Maria talked rapidly to
every one, or for every one who chose to listen. How
happily the hours passed!—we were shown some of those
extraordinary drawings of Sir Robert, who gained an artists
reputation before he was twenty, and attracted the attention
of West and Shee²
in his mere boyhood. We heard all the interesting
particulars of his panoramic picture of the Storming of
Seringapatam, which, the first of its class, was known half
over the world. We must not, however, be
misunderstood—there was neither personal nor family
egotism in the Porters; they invariably spoke of each other
with the tenderest affection—but unless the
conversation was forced by their friends—they
never mentioned their own, or each other’s works, while they
were most ready to praise what was excellent in the works of
others; they spoke with pleasure of their sojourns in
London; while their mother said, it was much wiser and
better for young ladies who were not rich, to live quietly
in the country, and escape the temptations of luxury and
display. At that time the “young ladies” seemed to us
certainly not young: that was about two-and-twenty
years ago, and Jane Porter was seventy-five when she died.
They talked much of their previous dwelling at Thames
Ditton, of the pleasant neighborhood they enjoyed there,
though their mother’s health and their own had much improved
since their residence on Esher hill; their little garden was
bounded at the back by the beautiful park of Claremont, and
the front of the house overlooked the leading roads, broken
as they are by the village green, and some noble elms. The
view is crowned by the high trees of Esher Place; opening
from the village on that side of the brow of the hill. Jane
pointed out the locale of the proud Cardinal Wolsey’s
domain, inhabited during the days: of his power over Henry
VIII., and in their cloudy evening, when that capricious
monarch’s favor changed to bitterest hate. It was the very
spot to foster her high romance, while she could at the same
time enjoy the sweets of that domestic converse she loved
best of all. We were prevented by the occupations and
heart-beatings of our own literary labors from repeating
this visit; and in 1831, four years after these
well-remembered hours, the venerable mother of a family so
distinguished in literature and art, rendering their names
known and honored wherever art and letters flourish, was
called HOME. The sisters, who had resided ten years at
Esher, left it, intending to sojourn for a time with their
second brother, Doctor Porter, (who commenced his career as
a surgeon in the navy) in Bristol; but within a year the
youngest, the light-spirited, bright-hearted Anna Maria
died; her sister was dreadfully shaken by her loss, and the
letters we received from her after this bereavement, though
containing the outpourings of a sorrowing spirit, were full
of the certainty of that re-union hereafter which became the
hope of her life. She soon resigned her cottage home at
Esher, and found the affectionate welcome she so well
deserved in many homes, where friends vied with each other
to fill the void in her sensitive heart. She was of too wise
a nature, and too sympathizing a habit, to shut out new
interests and affections, but her old ones never
withered, nor were they ever replaced; were the love of such
a sister-friend—the watchful tenderness and
uncompromising love of a mother—ever “replaced,” to a
lonely sister or a bereaved daughter! Miss Porters
pen had been laid aside for some time, when suddenly she
came before the world as the editor of “Sir Edward Seward’s
Narrative”, and set people hunting over old atlases to find
out the island where he resided. The whole was a clever
fiction; yet Miss Porter never confided its authorship, we
believe, beyond her family circle; perhaps the
correspondence and documents, which are in the hands of one
of her kindest friends (her executor), Mr. Shepherd, may
throw some light upon a subject which the “Quarterly”
honored by an article. We think the editor certainly used
her pen as well as her judgment in the work, and we have
imagined that it might have been written by the family
circle, more in sport than in earnest, and then produced to
serve a double purpose.

After her sister’s death Miss Jane Porter was afflicted with
so severe an illness, that we, in common with her other
friends, thought it impossible she could carry out her plan of
journeying to St. Petersburgh to visit her brother, Sir Robert
Ker Porter, who had been long united to a Russian princess, and
was then a widower; her strength was fearfully reduced; her
once round figure become almost spectral, and little beyond the
placid and dignified expression of her noble countenance
remained to tell of her former beauty; but her resolve was
taken; she wished, she said, to see once more her youngest and
most beloved brother, so distinguished in several careers,
almost deemed incompatible,—as a painter, an author, a
soldier, and a diplomatist, and nothing could turn her from her
purpose: she reached St. Petersburgh in safety, and with
apparently improved health, found her brother as much courted
and beloved there as in his own land, and his daughter married
to a Russian of high distinction. Sir Robert longed to return
to England. He did not complain of any illness, and everything
was arranged for their departure; his final visits were paid,
all but one to the Emperor, who had ever treated him as a
friend; the day before his intended journey he went to the
palace, was graciously received, and then drove home, but when
the servant opened the carriage-door at his own residence he
was dead! One sorrow after another
[pg 206] pressed heavily upon her;
yet she was still the same sweet, gentle, holy-minded woman
she had ever been, bending with Christian faith to the will
of the Almighty,—”biding her time”.

How differently would she have “watched and waited” had she
been tainted by vanity, or fixed her soul on the mere triumphs
of “literary reputation”. While firm to her own creed, she
fully enjoyed the success of those who scramble up—where
she bore the standard to the heights of Parnassus; she was
never more happy than when introducing some literary “Tyro” to
those who could aid or advise a future career. We can speak
from experience of the warm interest she took in the Hospital
for the cure of Consumption, and the Governesses’ Benevolent
Institution; during the progress of the latter, her health was
painfully feeble, yet she used her personal influence for its
success, and worked with her own hands for its bazaars. She was
ever aiding those who could not aid themselves; and all her
thoughts, words, and deeds, were evidence of her clear,
powerful mind and kindly loving heart; her appearance in the
London coteries was always hailed with interest and
pleasure; to the young she was especially affectionate; but it
was in the quiet mornings, or in the long twilight evenings of
summer, when visiting her cherished friends at Shirley Park, in
Kensington Square, or wherever she might be located for the
time—it was then that her former spirit revived, and she
poured forth anecdote and illustration, and the store of many
years’ observation, filtered by experience and purified by that
delightful faith to which she held,—that “all things work
together for good to them that love the Lord”. She held this in
practice, even more than in theory; you saw her chastened yet
hopeful spirit beaming forth from her gentle eyes, and her
sweet smile can never be forgotten. The last time we saw her,
was about two years ago—in Bristol—at her
brother’s, Dr. Porter’s, house in Portland Square: then she
could hardly stand without assistance, yet she never complained
of her own suffering or feebleness, all her anxiety was about
the brother—then dangerously ill, and now the last of
“his race.” Major Porter, it will be remembered, left five
children, and these have left only one descendant—the
daughter of Sir Robert Ker Porter and the Russian Princess whom
he married, a young Russian lady, whose present name we do not
even know.

We did not think at our last leave-taking that Miss Porter’s
fragile frame could have so long withstood the Power that takes
away all we hold most dear; but her spirit was at length
summoned, after a few days’ total insensibility, on the 24th of
May.

We were haunted by the idea that the pretty cottage at
Esher, where we spent those happy hours, had been treated even
as “Mrs. Porter’s Arcadia” at Thames Ditton—now
altogether removed; and it was with a melancholy pleasure we
found it the other morning in nothing changed; and it was
almost impossible to believe that so many years had passed
since our last visit. While Mr. Fairholt was sketching the
cottage, we knocked at the door, and were kindly permitted by
two gentle sisters, who now inhabit it, to enter the little
drawing-room and walk round the garden: except that the
drawing-room has been re-papered and painted, and that there
were no drawings and no flowers the room was not in the least
altered; yet to us it seemed like a sepulcher, and we rejoiced
to breathe the sweet air of the little garden, and listen to a
nightingale, whose melancholy cadence harmonized with our
feelings.

“Whenever you are at Esher,” said the devoted daughter, the
last time we conversed with her, “do visit my mother’s tomb.”
We did so. A cypress flourishes at the head of the grave; and
the following touching inscription is carved on the
stone:—

Here sleeps in Jesus a Christian widow, JANE PORTER.
Obiit June 18th, 1831, ætat. 86; the beloved mother of W.
Porter, M.D., of Sir Robert Ker Porter, and of Jane and
Anna Maria Porter, who mourn in hope, humbly trusting to be
born again with her unto the blessed kingdom of their Lord
and Savior. Respect her grave, for she ministered to the
poor.

Recent Deaths.

MR. KIRBY, THE ENTOMOLOGIST.

The Rev. William Kirby, Rector of Barham, Suffolk, who died
on the 4th ult. in the ninety-first year of his age, with his
faculties little impaired, ranked as the father of Entomology
in England; and to the successful results of his labors may he
chiefly attributed the advance which has been made in this over
other kindred departments of natural history. His reputation is
based not so much on the discoveries made by him in the science
as on the manner of its teaching. No man ever approached the
study of the works of nature with a purer or more earnest zeal.
His interpretation of the distinguishing characters of insects
for the purposes of classification has excited the warmest
approval of entomologists at home and abroad; while his
agreeable narrative of their wonderful transformations and
habits, teeming with analyses and anecdote, has a charm for
almost every kind of reader.

Mr. Kirby’s first work of particular note was the
“Monographia Apum Angliæ”, in two volumes published half a
century ago at Ipswich; to which town he was much endeared, and
in whose Museum, as President, under the friendly auspices of
its Secretary, Mr. George Ransome, he took a lively interest.
His admirable work on the Wild Bees of Great Britain was
composed from materials collected almost entirely by
himself,—and most of the plates were of his etching.
Entomology was at that time a comparatively new science in this
country, and it is an [pg 207] honorable proof of the
correctness of the author’s views that they are still
acknowledged to be genuine.

His further progress in entomology is abundantly marked by
various papers in the “Transactions of the Linnæan
Society”,—by the entomological portion of the Bridgewater
Treatise “On the History, Habits, and Instincts of
Animals,”—and by his descriptions, occupying a quarto
volume, of the insects of Sir John Richardson’s “Fauna
Boreali-Americana.” The name of Kirby will, however, be chiefly
remembered for the “Introduction on Entomology” written by him
in conjunction with Mr. Spence. In this work a vast amount of
material, acquired after many years’ unremitting observation of
the insect world, is mingled together by two different but
congenial minds in the pleasant form of familiar letters. The
charm, based on substantial knowledge of the subject, which
these letters impart, has caused them to be studied with an
interest never before excited by any work on natural
history,—and they have served for the model of many an
interesting and instructive volume. Whether William Kirby or
William Spence had the more meritorious share in the
composition of these Letters, has never been ascertained; for
each, in the plenitude of his esteem and love for the other,
renounced all claim, in favor of his coadjutor, to whatever
portion of the matter might be most valued.

In addition to the honor of being President of the Museum of
his county town—in which there is an admirable portrait
of him—Mr. Kirby was Honorary President of the
Entomological Society of London, Fellow of the Royal, Linnæan,
Geological, and Zoological Societies of the same city, and
corresponding member of several foreign societies.

The death of REV. DR. GRAY, Professor of Oriental Languages
in the University of Glasgow, is reported in the Scotch
papers.

The Fine Arts.

One of the favorite painters of Paris is Ingres, renowned
especially for the beauty of his designs from the human figure,
and the sweetness of his coloring. Eight years ago he was
commissioned by M. de Luynes, who then wore the title of
Duke—which, it must be said, he is still called by,
though the Republic frowns on such aristocratic
distinctions—to paint two historical pictures in fresco,
for a country-house near Paris. The subjects were left to the
choice of the artist, who was to have 100,000 francs (or
£20,000) for the two pictures, one quarter of which was paid
him in advance. During these eight years Mr. Ingres has begun
various designs, and done his best to satisfy himself in the
planning and execution of the pictures; but in vain did he blot
out one design and labor long and earnestly upon
another—success still fled from his pencil. At last,
after eight years’ fruitless exertion, he despaired, and going
to M. de Luynes, told him that he could not make the pictures.
At the same time he offered to return the £5,000; but M. de
Luynes, one of the most munificent gentlemen in France, refused
to receive it. Madame Ingres, however, arranged the difficulty.
She remembered that during these eight years her kitchen had
been regularly supplied with vegetables from M. de Luynes’
garden, and these she insisted on paying for. “Very well,” said
M. de Luynes, “if you will have it so, my gardener shall bring
you his bill.” Accordingly, not long after, the gardener
brought a bill for twenty-five francs. “My friend,” said Madame
Ingres to him, “you are mistaken in the amount: this is very
natural, considering the length of the time. I have a better
memory: your master will find in this envelope the exact sum.”
When M. de Luynes opened the envelope, he found in it bills for
twenty thousand francs.

LESTER, BRADY & DAVIGNON’s “Gallery of Illustrious
Americans,” is very favorably noticed generally by the
foreign critics. The Art Journal says of it: “This work
is, as its title imports, of a strictly national character,
consisting of portraits and biographical sketches of
twenty-four of the most eminent of the citizens of the
Republic, since the death of Washington; beautifully
lithographed from daguerreotypes. Each number is devoted to a
portrait and memoir, the first being that of General Taylor
(eleventh President of the United States), the second, of John
C. Calhoun. Certainly, we have never seen more truthful copies
of nature than these portraits; they carry in them an indelible
stamp of all that earnestness and power for which our
trans-Atlantic brethren have become famous, and are such heads
as Lavater would have delighted to look upon. They are, truly,
speaking likenesses, and impress all who see them with the
certainty of their accuracy, so self-evident is their
character. We are always rejoiced to notice a great nation
doing honor to its great men; it is a noble duty which when
properly done honors all concerned therewith. We see no reason
to doubt that America may in this instance rank with the
greatest.”

DR. WAAGEN, so well known for his writings on Art, is at
present in England for the purpose of adding to his knowledge
of the private collection of pictures there, but principally to
make himself acquainted with ancient illuminated manuscripts in
several British collections.

A MONUMENT IN HONOR OF COWPER, THE POET, is proposed to be
erected in Westminster Abbey, from a design by Marshall, the
Sculptor, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1849.

SUMMER VACATION.

THE FOURTH BOOK OF WORDSWORTH’S UNPUBLISHED
POEM.³

THE IVORY MINE:

A TALE OF THE FROZEN SEA.

VI.—THE IVORY MINE.

The end of so perilous and novel a journey, which must
necessarily, under the most favorable circumstances, have
produced more honor than profit, was attained; and yet the
success of the adventure was doubtful. The season was still too
cold for any search for fossil ivory, and the first serious
duty was the erection of a winter residence. Fortunately there
was an ample supply of logs of wood, some half-rotten, some
green, lying under the snow on the shores of the bay into which
the river poured, and which had been deposited there by the
currents and waves. A regular pile, too, was found, which had
been laid up by some of the provident natives of New Siberia,
who, like the Esquimaux, live in the snow. Under this was a
large supply of frozen fish, which was taken without ceremony,
the party being near starvation. Of course Sakalar and Ivan
intended replacing the hoard, if possible, in the short
summer.

Wood was made the groundwork of the winter hut which was to
be erected, but snow and ice formed by far the larger portion
of the building materials. So hard and compact did the whole
mass become when finished, and lined with bear-skins and other
furs, that a huge lamp sufficed for warmth during the day and
night, and the cooking was done in a small shed by the side.
The dogs were now set to shift for themselves as to cover, and
were soon buried in the snow. They were placed on short
allowance, now they had no work to do, for no one yet knew what
were the resources of this wild place.

As soon as the more immediate duties connected with a camp
had been completed, the whole party occupied themselves with
preparing traps for foxes, and in other hunting details. A hole
was broken in the ice in the bay, and this the Kolimsk men
watched with assiduity for seals. One or two rewarded their
efforts, but no fish were taken. Sakalar and Ivan, after a day
or two of repose, started with some carefully-selected dogs in
search of game, and soon found that the great white bear took
up his quarters even in that northern latitude. They succeeded
in killing several, which the dogs dragged home.

About ten days after their arrival in the great island,
Sakalar, who was always the first to be moving, roused his
comrades round him just as a party of a dozen strange men
appeared in the distance. They were short, stout fellows, with
long lances in their hands, and by their dress very much
resembled the [pg 211] Esquimaux. Their attitude
was menacing in the extreme, and by the advice of Sakalar, a
general volley was fired over their heads. The invaders
halted, looked confusedly around, and then ran away.
Firearms retained. therefore, all their pristine qualities
with these savages.

“They will return,” said Sakalar, moodily; “they did the
same when I was here before, and then came back and killed my
friend at night. Sakalar escaped.”

Counsel was now held, and it was determined, after due
deliberation, that strict watch should be kept at all hours,
while much was necessarily trusted to the dogs. All day one of
the party was on the lookout, while at night the hut had its
entrance well barred. Several days, however, were thus passed
without molestation, and then Sakalar took the Kolimsk men out
to hunt, and left Ivan and Kolina together. The young man had
learned the value of his half-savage friend: her devotion to
her father and the party generally was unbounded. She murmured
neither at privations nor at sufferings, and kept up the
courage of Ivan by painting in glowing terms all his brilliant
future. She seemed to have laid aside her personal feelings,
and to look on him only as one doing battle with fortune in the
hope of earning the hand of the rich widow of Yakoutsk. But
Ivan was much disposed to gloomy fits; he supposed himself
forgotten, and slighted, and looked on the time of his
probation as interminable. It was in this mood that one day he
was roused from his fit by a challenge from Kolina to go and
see if the seals had come up to breathe at the hole which every
morning was freshly broken in the ice. Ivan assented, and away
they went gaily down to the bay. No seals were there, and after
a short stay they returned toward the hut, recalled by the
distant howling of the dogs. But as they came near, they could
see no sign of men or animals, though the sensible brutes still
whined under the shelter of their snow-heaps. Ivan, much
surprised, raised the curtain of the door, his gun in hand,
expecting to find that some animal was inside. The lamp was
out, and the hut in total darkness. Before Ivan could recover
his upright position, four men leaped on him, and he was a
prisoner.

Kolina drew back, and cocked her gun; but the natives,
satisfied with their present prey, formed round Ivan in a
compact body, tied his hands, and bade him walk. Their looks
were sufficiently wild and menacing to make him move,
especially as he recognized them as belonging to the warlike
party of the Tchouktchas—a tribe of Siberians who wander
about the Polar Seas in search of game, who cross Behring’s
Straits in skin-boats, and who probably are the only persons
who by their temporary sojourn in New Siberia, have caused some
to suppose it inhabited. Kolina stood uncertain what to do, but
in a few minutes she roused four of the dogs, and followed.
Ivan bawled to her to go back, but the girl paid no attention
to his request, determined, as it seemed, to know his fate.

The savages hurried Ivan along as rapidly as they could; and
soon entered a deep and narrow ravine, which about the middle
parted into two. The narrowest path was selected, and the
dwelling of the natives soon reached. It was a cavern, the
narrow entrance of which they crawled through; Ivan followed
the leader, and soon found himself in a large and wonderful
cave. It was by nature divided into several compartments, and
contained a party of twenty men, as many or more women, and
numerous children. It was warmed in two ways—by
wood-fires and grease-lamps, and by a bubbling semi-sulphurous
spring, that rushed up through a narrow hole, and then fell
away into a deep well, that carried its warm waters to mingle
with the icy sea. The acrid smoke escaped by holes in the roof.
Ivan, his arms and legs bound, was thrust into a separate
compartment filled with furs, and formed by a projection of the
rock and the skin-boats which this primitive race employed to
cross the most stormy seas. He was almost stunned; he lay for a
while without thought or motion. Gradually he recovered, and
gazed around; all was night, save above, where by a narrow
orifice he saw the smoke which hung in clouds around the roof
escaping. He expected death. He knew the savage race he was
among, who hated interference with their hunting-grounds, and
whose fish he and his party had taken. What, therefore, was his
surprise, when from the summit of the roof, he heard a gentle
voice whispering in soft accents his own name. His ears must,
he thought, deceive him. The hubbub close at hand was terrible.
A dispute was going on. Men, women. and children all joined,
and yet he had heard the word “Ivan.” “Kolina,” he replied, in
equally low but clear tones. As he spoke a knife rolled near
him. But he could not touch it. Then a dark form filled the
orifice about a dozen feet above his head, and something moved
down among projecting stones, and then Kolina stood by him. In
an instant Ivan was free, and an axe in his hand. The exit was
before them. Steps were cut in the rock, to ascend to the upper
entrance, near which Ivan had been placed without fear, because
tied. But a rush was heard, and the friends had only time to
throw themselves deeper into the cave, when four men rushed in,
knife in hand, to immolate the victim. Such had been the
decision come to after the debate.

The lamps revealed the escape of the fugitive. A wild cry
drew all the men together, and then up they scampered along the
rugged projections, and the barking of the dogs as they fled
showed that they were in hot and eager chase. Ivan and Kolina
lost no time. They advanced boldly, knife and hatchet in
[pg 212] hand, sprang amid the
terrified women, darted across their horrid cavern, and
before one of them had recovered from her fright, were in
the open air. On they ran in the gloom for some distance,
when they suddenly heard muttering voices. Down they sank
behind the first large stone, concealing themselves as well
as they could in the snow. The party moved slowly on toward
them.

“I can trace their tracks still,” said Sakalar, in a low
deep tone. “On, while they are alive, or at least for
vengeance!”

“Friends!” cried Ivan.

“Father!” said Kolina, and in an instant the whole party
were united. Five words were enough to determine Sakalar. The
whole body rushed back, entered the cavern, and found
themselves masters of it without a struggle. The women and
children attempted no resistance. As soon as they were placed
in a corner, under the guard of the Kolimsk men, a council was
held. Sakalar, as the most experienced, decided what was to be
done. He knew the value of threats: one of the women was
released, and bade go tell the men what had occurred. She was
to add the offer of a treaty of peace, to which, if both
parties agreed, the women were to be given up on the one side,
and the hut and its contents on the other. But the victors
announced their intention of taking four of the best-looking
boys as hostages, to be returned whenever they were convinced
of the good faith of the Tchouktchas. The envoy soon returned,
agreeing to everything. They had not gone near the hut, fearing
an ambuscade. The four boys were at once selected, and the
belligerents separated.

Sakalar made the little fellows run before, and thus the hut
was regained. An inner cabin was erected for the prisoners, and
the dogs placed over them as spies. But as the boys understood
Sakalar to mean that the dogs were to eat them if they stirred,
they remained still enough, and made no attempt to run
away.

A hasty meal was now cooked, and after its conclusion Ivan
related the events of the day, warmly dilating on the devotion
and courage of Kolina, who, with the keenness of a Yakouta, had
found out his prison by the smoke, and had seen him on the
ground despite the gloom. Sakalar then explained how, on his
return, he had been terribly alarmed, and had followed the
trail on the snow. After mutual congratulations the whole party
went to sleep.

The next morning early, the mothers came humbly with
provisions for their children. They received some trifling
presents and were sent away in delight. About midday the whole
tribe presented themselves unarmed, within a short distance of
the hut, and offered a traffic. They brought a great quantity
of fish, which they wanted to exchange for tobacco. Sakalar,
who spoke their language freely, first gave them a roll,
letting them understand it was in payment of the fish taken
without leave. This at once dissipated all feelings of
hostility, and solid peace was insured. So satisfied was
Sakalar of their sincerity, that he at once released the
captives.

From that day the two parties were one, and all thoughts of
war were completely at an end. A vast deal of bloodshed had
been prevented by a few concessions on both sides. The same
result might indeed have been come to by killing half of each
little tribe, but it is doubtful if the peace would have been
as satisfactory to the survivors.

VII.—THE SUMMER AND AUTUMN.

Occupied with the chase, with bartering, and with conversing
with their new friends, the summer gradually came around. The
snow melted, the hills became a series of cascades, in every
direction water poured toward the sea. But the hut remained
solid and firm, a little earth only being cast over the snow.
Flocks of ducks and geese soon appeared, a slight vegetation
was visible, and the sea was in motion. But what principally
drew all eyes were the vast heaps of fossil ivory exposed to
view on the banks of the stream, laid bare more and more every
year by the torrents of spring. A few days sufficed to collect
a heap greater than they could take away on the sledges in a
dozen journeys. Ivan gazed at his treasure in mute despair.
Were all that at Yakoutsk, he was the richest merchant in
Siberia; but to take it thither seemed impossible. But in
stepped the adventurous Tchouktchas. They offered, for a
stipulated sum in tobacco and other valuables, to land a large
portion of the ivory at a certain spot on the shores of
Siberia, by means of their boats. Ivan, though again surprised
at the daring of these wild men, accepted the proposal, and
engaged to give them his whole stock. The matter was then
settled, and our adventurers and their new friends dispersed to
their summer avocations.

These consisted in fishing and hunting, and repairing boats
and sledges. Their canoes were made of skins and whalebone, and
bits of wood; but they were large, and capable of sustaining
great weight. They proposed to start as soon as the ice was
broken up, and to brave all the dangers of so fearful a
navigation. They were used to impel themselves along in every
open space, and to take shelter on icebergs from danger. When
one of these icy mountains went in the right direction, they
stuck to it; but at others they paddled away, amid dangers of
which they seemed wholly unconscious.

A month was taken up in fishing, in drying the fish, or in
putting it in holes where there was eternal frost. An immense
stock was laid in: and then one morning the Tchouktchas took
their departure, and the adventurers remained alone. Their hut
was broken up, and all made ready for their second journey. The
sledges were enlarged, to bear the heaviest possible load at
starting. [pg 213] A few days’ overloading
were not minded, as the provisions would soon decrease.
Still not half so much could be taken as they wished, and
yet Ivan had nearly a ton of ivory, and thirty tons was the
greatest produce of any one year in all Siberia.

But the sledges were ready long before the sea was so. The
interval was spent in continued hunting, to prevent any
consumption of the traveling store. All were heartily tired,
long before it was over, of a day nearly as long as two English
months. Soon the winter set in with intense rigor; the sea
ceased to toss and heave; the icebergs and fields moved more
and more slowly; at last ocean and land were blended into
one—the night of a month came, and the sun was seen no
more.

The dogs were now roused up; the sledges harnessed; and the
instant the sea was firm enough to sustain them, the party
started. Sakalar’s intention was to try forced marches in a
straight line. Fortune favored them. Not an accident occurred
for days. At first they did not move exactly in the same
direction as when they came, but they soon found traces of
their previous journey, proving that a plain of ice had been
forced away at least fifty miles during the thaw.

The road was now again rugged and difficult, firing was
getting scarce, the dogs were devouring the fish with rapidity,
and only one half the ocean-journey was over. But on they
pushed with desperate energy, each eye once more keenly on the
look-out for game. Every one drove his team in sullen silence,
for all were on short allowance, and all were hungry. They sat
on what was to them more valuable than gold, and yet they had
not what was necessary for subsistence. The dogs were urged
every day to the utmost limits of their strength. But so much
space had been taken up by the ivory, that at last there
remained neither food nor fuel. None knew at what distance they
were from the shore, and their position seemed desperate. There
were even whispers of killing some of the dogs; and Sakalar and
Ivan were upbraided for the avarice which had brought them to
such straits.

“See!” said the old hunter suddenly, with a delighted smile,
pointing toward the south.

The whole party looked eagerly. A thick column of smoke rose
in the air at no very considerable distance. This was the
signal agreed on with the Tchouktchas, who were to camp where
there was plenty of wood.

Every hand was raised to urge on the dogs to this point, and
at last, from the summit of a hill of ice they saw the shore
and the blaze of the fire. The wind was toward them, and the
atmosphere heavy. The dogs smelled the distant camp, and darted
almost recklessly forward. At last they sank near to the
Tchouktcha huts, panting and exhausted.

Their allies of the spring were true; they gave them food,
of which both man and beast ate greedily, and then sought
repose. The Tchouktchas had then formed their journey with
wonderful success and rapidity, and had found time to lay in a
pretty fair stock of fish. This they freely shared with Ivan
and his party, and were delighted when he abandoned to them all
his tobacco and rum, and part of his tea.

The Tchouktchas had been four years absent in their
wanderings, and were eager to get home once more to the land of
the reindeer, and to their friends. They were perhaps the
greatest travelers of a tribe noted for its facility of
locomotion. And so, with warm expressions of esteem and
friendship on both sides, the two parties separated—the
men of the east making their way on foot, toward the Straits of
Behring.

VIII.—THE VOYAGE HOME.

Under considerable disadvantages did Sakalar, Ivan, and
their friends prepare for the conclusion of their journey.
Their provisions were very scanty, and their only hope of
replenishing their stores was on the banks of the Vchivaya
River, which being in some places pretty rapid might not be
frozen over. Sakalar and his friends determined to strike out
in a straight line. Part of the ivory had to be concealed and
abandoned, to be fetched another time; but as their stock of
provisions was so small, they were able to take the principal
part. It had been resolved, after some debate, to make in a
direct line for the Vchivaya river, and thence to
Vijnei-Kolimsk. The road was of a most difficult, and, in part,
unknown character; but it was imperative to move in as straight
a direction as possible. Time was the great enemy they had to
contend with, because their provisions were sufficient for a
limited period only.

The country was at first level enough, and the dogs, after
their rest, made sufficiently rapid progress. At night they had
reached the commencement of a hilly region, while in the
distance could be seen pretty lofty mountains. According to a
plan decided on from the first, the human members of the party
were placed at once on short allowance, while the dogs received
as much food as could be reasonably given. At early dawn the
tent was struck, and the dogs were impelled along the banks of
a small river completely frozen. Indeed, after a short
distance, it was taken as the smoothest path. But at the end of
a dozen miles they found themselves in a narrow gorge between
two hills; at the foot of a once foaming cataract, now hard
frozen. It was necessary to retreat some miles, and gain the
land once more. The only path which was now found practicable
was along the bottom of some pretty steep rocks. But the track
got narrower and narrower, until the dogs were drawing along
the edge of a terrific precipice with not four feet of holding.
All alighted, and led the dogs, for a false step was death.
Fortunately the path became no narrower, and in one place it
widened out and made a sort of hollow. Here a bitter blast,
almost strong enough to cast them from their feet, checked
further progress, and on that naked spot, under a projecting
mass of stone, without fire, did the whole party halt.
[pg 214] Men and dogs huddled
together for warmth, and all dined on raw and frozen fish. A
few hours of sleep, however, were snatched; and then, as the
storm abated, they again advanced. The descent was soon
reached, and led into a vast plain without tree or bush. A
range of snow-clad hills lay before them, and through a
narrow gully between two mountains was the only practicable
pathway. But all hearts were gladdened by the welcome sight
of some argali, or Siberian sheep, on the slope of a
hill. These animals are the only winter game, bears, and
wolves excepted. Kolina was left with the dogs, and the rest
started after the animals, which were pawing in the snow for
some moss or half-frozen herbs. Every caution was used to
approach them against the wind, and a general volley soon
sent them scampering away to the mountain-tops, leaving
three behind.

But Ivan saw that he had wounded another, and away he went
in chase. The animal ascended a hill, and then halted. But
seeing a man coming quickly after him, it turned and fled down
the opposite side. Ivan was instantly after him. The descent
was steep, but the hunter saw only the argili, and darted down.
He slid rather than ran with fearful rapidity, and passed the
sheep by, seeking to check himself too late. A tremendous gulf
was before him, and his eyes caught an instant glance of a deep
distant valley. Then he saw no more until he found himself
lying still. He had sunk, on the very brink of the precipice,
into a deep snow bank formed by some projecting rock, and had
only thus been saved from instant death. Deeply grateful, Ivan
crept cautiously up the hill-side, though not without his
prize, and rejoined his companions.

The road now offered innumerable difficulties, it was rough
and uneven—now hard, now soft. They made but slow
progress for the next three days, while their provisions began
to draw to an end. They had at least a dozen days more before
them. All agreed that they were now in the very worst
difficulty they had been in. That evening they dined on the
last meal of mutton and fish; they were at the foot of a lofty
hill, which they determined to ascend while strength was left.
The dogs were urged up the steep ascent, and after two hours’
toil, they reached the summit. It was a table-land, bleak and
miserable, and the wind was too severe to permit camping. On
they pushed, and camped a little way down its sides.

The next morning the dogs had no food, while the men had
nothing but large draughts of warm tea. But it was impossible
to stop. Away they hurried, after deciding that, if nothing
turned up the next morning, two or three of the dogs must be
killed to save the rest. Little was the ground they got over,
with hungry beasts and starving men, and all were glad to halt
near a few dried larches. Men and dogs eyed each other
suspiciously, The animals, sixty-four in number, had they not
been educated to fear man, would have soon settled the matter.
But there they lay, panting and faint—to start up
suddenly with a fearful howl. A bear was on them. Sakalar
fired, and then in rushed the dogs, savage and fierce. It was
worse than useless, it was dangerous, for the human beings of
the party to seek to share this windfall. It was enough that
the dogs had found something to appease their hunger.

Sakalar, however, knew that his faint and weary companions
could not move the next day if tea alone were their sustenance
that night. He accordingly put in practice one of the devices
of his woodcraft. The youngest of the larches was cut down, and
the coarse outside bark was taken off. Then every atom of the
soft bark was peeled off the tree, and being broken into small
pieces, was cast into the boiling pot, already full of water.
The quantity was great, and made a thick substance. Round this
the whole party collected, eager for the moment when they could
fall to. But Sakalar was cool and methodical even in that
terrible hour. He took a spoon, and quietly skimmed the pot, to
take away the resin that rose to the surface. Then gradually
the bark melted away, and presently the pot was filled by a
thick paste, and looked not unlike glue. All gladly ate, and
found it nutritive, pleasant, and warm. They felt satisfied
when the meal was over, and were glad to observe that the dogs
returned to the camp completely satisfied also, which, under
the circumstances, was matter of great gratification.

In the morning, after another mess of larch-bark soup, and
after a little tea, the adventurers again advanced on their
journey. They were now in an arid, bleak, and terrible plain of
vast extent. Not a tree, not a shrub, not an elevation was to
be seen. Starvation was again staring them in the face, and no
man knew when this dreadful plain would end. That night the
whole party cowered in their tent without fire, content to chew
a few tea-leaves preserved from the last meal. Serious thoughts
were now entertained of abandoning their wealth in that wild
region. But as none pressed the matter very hardly, the ledges
were harnessed again next morning, and the dogs driven on. But
man and beast were at the last gasp, and not ten miles were
traversed that day, the end of which brought them to a large
river, on the borders of which were some trees. Being wide and
rapid, it was not frozen, and there was still hope, The seine
was drawn from a sledge, and taken into the water. It was
fastened from one side to another of a narrow gut, and there
left. It was of no avail examining it until morning, for the
fish only come out at night.

There was not a man of the party who had his exact sense
about him, while the dogs lay panting on the snow, their
tongues hanging out, their eyes glaring with almost savage
fury. The trees round the bank were large and dry, and not one
had an atom of soft [pg 215] bark on it. All the
resource they had was to drink huge draughts of tea, and
then seek sleep. Sakalar set the example, and the Kolimsk
men, to whom such scenes were not new, followed his advice;
but Ivan walked up and down before the tent. A huge fire had
been made, which was amply fed by the wood of the river
bank, and it blazed on high, showing in bold relief the
features of the scene. Ivan gazed vacantly at everything;
but he saw not the dark and glancing river—he saw not
the bleak plain of snow—his eyes looked not on the
romantic picture of the tent and its bivouac-fire: his
thoughts were on one thing alone. He it was who had brought
them to that pass, and on his head rested all the misery
endured by man and beast, and, worst of all, by the good and
devoted Kolina.

There she sat, too, on the ground, wrapped in her warm
clothes, her eyes, fixed on the crackling logs. Of what was she
thinking? Whatever occupied her mind, it was soon chased away
by the sudden speech of Ivan. “Kolina,” said he, in a tone
which borrowed a little of intensity from the state of mind in
which hunger had placed all of them, “canst thou ever forgive
me?”

“What?” replied the young girl softly.

“My having brought you here to die, far away from your
native hills?”

“Kolina cares little for herself,” said the Yakouta maiden,
rising and speaking perhaps a little wildly; “let her father
escape, and she is willing to lie near the tombs of the old
people on the borders of the icy sea.”

“But Ivan had hoped to see for Kolina many bright, happy
days; for Ivan would have made her father rich, and Kolina
would have been the richest unmarried girl in the plain of
Miouré!”

“And would riches make Kolina happy?” said she sadly.

“Young girl of the Yakouta, hearken to me! Let Ivan live or
die this hour; Ivan is a fool. He left home and comfort to
cross the icy seas in search of wealth, and to gain happiness;
but if he had only had eyes, he would have stopped at Miouré.
There he saw a girl, lively as the heaven-fire in the north,
good, generous, kind; and she was an old friend, and might have
loved Ivan; but the man of Yakoutsk was blind, and told her of
his passion for a selfish widow, and the Yakouta maiden never
thought of Ivan but as a brother!”

“What means Ivan?” asked Kolina, trembling with emotion.

“Ivan has long meant, when he came to the yourte of Sakalar,
to lay his wealth at his feet, and beg of his old friend to
give him his child: but Ivan now fears that he may die, and
wishes to know what would have been the answer of Kolina?”

“But Maria Vorotinska?” urged the girl, who seemed
dreaming.

“Has long been forgotten. How could I not love my old
playmate and friend! Kolina—Kolina, listen to Ivan!
Forget his love for the widow of Yakoutsk, and Ivan will stay
in the plain of Vchivaya and die.”

“Kolina is very proud,” whispered the girl, sitting down on
a log near the fire, and speaking in a low tone; “and Kolina
thinks yet that the friend of her father has forgotten himself.
But if he be not wild, if the sufferings of the journey have
not made him say that which is not, Kolina would be very
happy.”

“Be plain, girl of Miouré—maiden of the Yakouta tribe!
and play not with the heart of a man. Can Kolina take Ivan as
her husband?”

A frank and happy reply gave the Yakoutsk merchant all the
satisfaction he could wish; and then followed several hours of
those sweet and delightful explanations which never end between
young lovers when first they have acknowledged their mutual
affection. They had hitherto concealed so much, that there was
much to tell; and Ivan and Kolina, who for nearly three years
had lived together, with a bar between their deep but concealed
affection, seemed to have no end of words. Ivan had begun to
find his feelings change from the very hour Sakalar’s daughter
volunteered to accompany him, but it was only in the cave of
New Siberia that his heart had been completely won.

So short, and quiet, and sweet were the hours, that the time
of rest passed by without the thought of sleep. Suddenly,
however, they were roused to a sense of their situation, and
leaving their wearied and exhausted companions still asleep,
they moved with doubt and dread to the water’s side. Life was
now doubly dear to both, and their fancy painted the coming
forth of an empty net as the termination of all hope. But the
net came heavily and slowly to land. It was full of fish. They
were on the well-stocked Vchivaya. More than three hundred
fish, small and great, were drawn on shore; and then they
recast the net.

“Up, man and beast!” thundered Ivan, as, after selecting two
dozen of the finest, he abandoned the rest to the dogs.

The animals, faint and weary, greedily seized on the food
given them, while Sakalar and the Kolimsk men could scarcely
believe their senses. The hot coals were at once brought into
requisition, and the party were soon regaling themselves on a
splendid meal of tea and broiled fish. I should alarm my
readers did I record the quantities eaten. An hour later, every
individual was a changed being, but most of all the lovers.
Despite their want of rest, they looked fresher than any of the
party. It was determined to camp at least twenty hours more in
that spot; and the Kolimsk men declared that the river must be
the Vchivaya, they could draw the seine all day, for the river
was deep, its waters warmer than others, and its abundance of
fish such as to border on the fabulous. They went accordingly
down to the side of the stream, and then the happy Kolina gave
[pg 216] free vent to her joy. She
burst out into a song of her native land, and gave way to
some demonstrations of delight, the result of her earlier
education, that astonished Sakalar. But when he heard that
during that dreadful night he had found a son, Sakalar
himself almost lost his reason. The old man loved Ivan
almost as much as his own child, and when he saw the youth
in his yourte on his hunting trips, had formed some project
of the kind now brought about; but the confessions of Ivan
on his last visit to Miouré had driven all such thoughts
away.

“Art in earnest, Ivan?” said he, after a pause of some
duration.

“In earnest!” exclaimed Ivan, laughing; “why, I fancy the
young men of Miouré will find me so, if they seek to question
my right to Kolina!”

Kolina smiled, and looked happy; and the old hunter heartily
blessed his children, adding that the proudest, dearest hope of
his heart was now within probable realization.

The predictions of the Kolimsk men were realized. The river
gave them as much fish as they needed for their journey home;
and as now Sakalar knew his way, there was little fear for the
future. An ample stock was piled on the sledges, the dogs had
unlimited feeding for two days, and then away they sped toward
an upper part of the river, which, being broad and shallow, was
no doubt frozen on the surface. They found it as they expected,
and even discovered that the river was gradually freezing all
the way down. But little caring for this now, on they went, and
after considerable fatigue and some delay, arrived at Kolimsk,
to the utter astonishment of all the inhabitants, who had long
given them up for lost.

Great rejoicings took place. The friends of the three
Kolimsk men gave a grand festival, in which the rum, and
tobacco, and tea, which had been left at the place for payment
for their journey, played a conspicuous part. Then, as it was
necessary to remain here some time, while the ivory was brought
from a deposit near the sea, Ivan and Kolina were married.
Neither of them seemed to credit the circumstance, even when
fast tied by the Russian church. It had come so suddenly, so
unexpectedly on both, that their heads could not quite make the
affair out. But they were married in right down earnest, and
Kolina was a proud and happy woman. The enormous mass of ivory
brought to Kolimsk excited the attention of a distinguished
exile, who drew up a statement in Ivan’s name, and prepared it
for transmission to the White Czar, as the emperor is called in
these parts.

When summer came, the young couple, with Sakalar and a
caravan of merchants, started for Yakoutsk, Ivan being by far
the richest and most important member of the party. After a
single day’s halt at Miouré, on they went to the town, and made
their triumphal entry in September. Ivan found Maria Vorotinska
a wife and mother, and his vanity was not much wounded by the
falsehood. The ci-devant widow was a little astonished
at Ivan’s return, and particularly at his treasure of ivory:
but she received his wife with politeness, a little tempered by
her sense of her own superiority to a savage, as she designated
Kolina to her friends in a whisper. But Kolina was so gentle,
so pretty, so good, so cheerful, so happy, that she found her
party at once, and the two ladies became rival leaders of the
fashion.

This lasted until the next year, when a messenger from the
capital brought a letter to Ivan from the emperor himself,
thanking him for his narrative, sending him a rich present, his
warm approval, and the office of first civil magistrate in the
city of Yakoutsk. This turned the scales wholly on one side,
and Maria bowed low to Kolina. But Kolina had no feelings of
the parvenu, and she was always a general favorite. Ivan
accepted with pride his sovereign’s favor, and by dint of
assiduity, soon learned to be a useful magistrate. He always
remained a good husband, a good father, and a good son, for he
made the heart of old Sakalar glad. He never regretted his
journey: he always declared he owed to it wealth and happiness,
a high position in society, and an admirable wife. Great
rejoicings took place many years after in Yakoutsk, at the
marriage of the son of Maria, united to the daughter of Ivan,
and from the first unto the last, none of the parties concerned
ever had reason to mourn over the perilous journey in search of
the Ivory Mine.

For the information of the non-scientific, it may be
necessary to mention that the ivory alluded to in the preceding
tale, is derived from the tusks of the mammoth, or fossil
elephant of the geologist. The remains of this gigantic
quadruped are found all over the northern hemisphere, from the
40th to the 75th degree of latitude: but most abundantly in the
region which lies between the mountains of Central Asia and the
shores and islands of the Frozen Sea. So profusely do they
exist in this region, that the tusks have for more than a
century constituted an important article of
traffic—furnishing a large proportion of the ivory
required by the carver and turner. The remains lie imbedded in
the upper tertiary clays and gravels; and these, by exposure to
the river-currents, to the waves of the sea, and other erosive
agencies, are frequently swept away during the thaws of summer,
leaving tusks and bones in masses, and occasionally even entire
skeletons, in a wonderful state of preservation. The most
perfect specimen yet obtained, and from the study of which the
zoologist has been enabled to arrive at an accurate knowledge
of the structure and habits of the mammoth, is that discovered
by a Tungusian fisherman, near the mouth of the river Lena, in
the summer of 1799.

Being in the habit of collecting tusks among the debris of
the gravel-cliffs, (for it is generally at a considerable
elevation in the cliffs and river banks that the remains
occur,) he observed a strange shapeless mass projecting from an
ice-bank some fifty or sixty feet above the river; during next
summer’s thaw he saw the same object, rather more disengaged
from amongst the ice; in 1801 he could distinctly perceive the
tusk and flank of an immense animal; and in 1803, in
consequence of an earlier and more powerful thaw, the huge
carcase became entirely disengaged, and fell on the sandbank
beneath. In the spring of the following year the fisherman cut
off the tusks, which he sold for fifty rubles (£7, 10s.;) and
two years afterward, our countryman, Mr. Adams, visited the
spot, and gives the following account of the extraordinary
phenomenon:

“At this time I found the mammoth still in the same place,
but altogether mutilated. The discoverer was contented with his
profit for the tusks, and the Yakoutski of the neighborhood had
cut off the flesh, with which they fed their dogs. During the
scarcity, wild beasts, such as white bears, wolves, wolverines,
and foxes, also fed upon it, and the traces of their footsteps
were seen around. The skeleton, almost entirely cleared of its
flesh, remained whole, with the exception of a foreleg. The
head was covered with a dry skin; one of the ears, well
preserved, was furnished with a tuft of hair. All these parts
have necessarily been injured in transporting them a distance
of 7,330 miles, (to the Imperial museum of St. Petersburgh,)
but the eyes have been preserved, and the pupil of one can
still be distinguished. The mammoth was a male, with a long
mane on the neck. The tail and proboscis were not preserved.
The skin, of which I possess three-fourths, is of a dark-gray
color, covered with a reddish wool and black hairs: but the
dampness of the spot where it had lain so long had in some
degree destroyed the hair. The entire carcase, of which I
collected the bones on the spot, was nine feet four inches
high, and sixteen feet four inches long, without including the
tusks, which measured nine feet six inches along the curve. The
distance from the base or root of the tusk to the point is
three feet seven inches. The two tusks together weighed three
hundred and sixty pounds, English weight, and the head alone
four hundred and fourteen pounds. The skin was of such weight
that it required ten persons to transport it to the shore; and
after having cleared the ground, upward of thirty-six pounds of
hair were collected, which the white bears had trodden while
devouring the flesh.”

Since then, other carcases of elephants have been
discovered, in a greater or less degree of preservation; as
also the remains of rhinoceroses, mastodons, and allied
pachyderms—the mammoth more abundantly in the old world,
the mastodon in the new. In every case these animals differ
from existing species: are of more gigantic dimensions; and,
judging from their natural coverings of thick-set curly-crisped
wool and strong hair, upward of a foot in length, were fitted
to live, if not in a boreal, at least in a coldly-temperate
region. Indeed, there is proof positive of the then more milder
climate of these regions in the discovery of pine and
birch-trunks where no vegetation now flourishes; and further,
in the fact that fragments of pine-leaves, birch-twigs, and
other northern plants, have been detected between the grinders
and within the stomachs of these animals. We have thus
evidence, that at the close of the tertiary, and shortly after
the commencement of the current epoch, the northern hemisphere
enjoyed a much milder climate; that it was the abode of huge
pachyderms now extinct; that a different distribution of sea
and land prevailed; and that on a new distribution or sea and
land, accompanied also by a different relative level, these
animals died away, leaving their remains imbedded in the clays,
gravels, and other alluvial deposits, where, under the
antiseptic influence of an almost eternal frost, many of them
have been preserved as entire as at the fatal moment they sank
under the rigors of external conditions no longer fitted for
their existence. It has been attempted by some to prove the
adaptability of these animals to the present conditions of the
northern hemisphere; but so untenable in every phase is this
opinion, that it would be sheer waste of time and space to
attempt its refutation. That they may have migrated northward
and southward with the seasons is more than probable, though it
has been stated that the remains diminish in size the farther
north they are found; but that numerous herds of such huge
animals should have existed in these regions at all, and that
for thousands of years, presupposes an exuberant arboreal
vegetation, and the necessary degree of climate for its growth
and development. It has been mentioned that the mastodon and
mammoth seem to have attained their meridian toward the close
of the tertiary epoch, and that a few may have lived even in
the current era; but it is more probable that the commencement
of existing conditions was the proximate cause of their
extinction, and that not a solitary specimen ever lived to be
the contemporary of man.

[From Fraser’s Magazine.]

ENGLISH HEXAMETERS.

BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

[From Household Words.]

A MIGHTIER HUNTER THAN NIMROD.

A great deal has been said about the prowess of Nimrod, in
connection with the chase, from the days of him of Babylon to
those of the late Mr. Apperley of Shropshire; but we question
whether, among all the sporting characters mentioned in ancient
or modern story, there ever was so mighty a hunter as the
gentleman whose sporting calendar now lies before
us.⁴
The annals of the chase, so far as we are acquainted with
them, supply no such instances of familiar intimacy with
lions, elephants, hippopotami, rhinoceroses, serpents,
crocodiles, and other furious animals, with which the human
species in general is not very forward in cultivating an
acquaintance.

Mr. Cumming had exhausted the deer-forests of his native
Scotland; he had sighed for the rolling prairies and rocky
mountains of the Far West, and was tied down to military
routine as a mounted rifleman in the Cape Colony; when he
determined to resign his commission into the hands of
Government, and himself to the delights of hunting amid the
untrodden plains and forests of South Africa. Having provided
himself with wagons to travel and live in, with bullocks to
draw them, and with a host of attendants; a sufficiency of
arms, horses, dogs, and ammunition, he set out from
Graham’s-Town in October, 1843. From that period his hunting
adventures extended over five years, during which time he
penetrated from various points and in various directions from
his starting-place in lat. 33 down to lat. 20, and passed
through districts upon which no European foot ever before trod;
regions where the wildest of wild animals abound—nothing
less serving Mr. Cumming’s ardent purpose.

A lion story in the early part of his book will introduce
this fearless hunter-author to our readers better than the most
elaborate dissection of his character. He is approaching
Colesberg, the northernmost military station belonging to the
Cape Colony. He is on a trusty steed, which he calls also
“Colesberg.” Two of his attendants on horseback are with him.
“Suddenly,” says the author, “I observed a number of vultures
seated on the plain about a quarter of a mile ahead of us, and
close beside them stood a huge lioness, consuming a blesblok
which she had [pg 219] killed. She was assisted in
her repast by about a dozen jackals, which were feasting
along with her in the most friendly and confidential manner.
Directing my followers’ attention to the spot, I remarked,
‘I see the lion;’ to which they replied, ‘Whar? whar? Yah!
Almagtig! dat is he;’ and instantly reining in their steeds
and wheeling about, they pressed their heels to their
horses’ sides, and were preparing to betake themselves to
flight. I asked them what they were going to do? To which
they answered, ‘We have not yet placed caps on our rifles.’
This was true; but while this short conversation was
passing, the lioness had observed us. Raising her full round
face, she overhauled us for a few seconds, and then set off
at a smart canter toward a range of mountains some miles to
the northward; the whole troop of jackals also started off
in another direction; there was therefore no time to think
of caps. The first move was to bring her to bay, and not a
second was to be lost. Spurring my good and lively steed,
and shouting to my men to follow, I flew across the plain,
and, being fortunately mounted on Colesberg, the flower of
my stud, I gained upon her at every stride. This was to me a
joyful moment, and I at once made up my mind that she or I
must die. The lioness soon after suddenly pulled up, and sat
on her haunches like a dog, with her back toward me, not
even deigning to look round. She then appeared to say to
herself, ‘Does this fellow know who he is after?’ Having
thus sat for half a minute, as if involved in thought, she
sprang to her feet, and facing about, stood looking at me
for a few seconds, moving her tail slowly from side to side,
showing her teeth and growling fiercely. She next made a
short run forward, making a loud, rumbling noise like
thunder. This she did to intimidate me; but finding that I
did not flinch an inch, nor seem to heed her hostile
demonstrations, she quietly stretched out her massive arms,
and lay down on the grass. My Hottentots now coming up, we
all three dismounted, and drawing our rifles from their
holsters, we looked to see if the powder was up in the
nipples, and put on our caps. While this was doing, the
lioness sat up, and showed evident symptoms of uneasiness.
She looked first at us, and then behind her, as if to see if
the coast were clear; after which she made a short run
toward us, uttering her deep-drawn murderous growls. Having
secured the three horses to one another by their rheims, we
led them on as if we intended to pass her, in the hope of
obtaining a broadside; but this she carefully avoided to
expose, presenting only her full front. I had given Stofolus
my Moore rifle, with orders to shoot her if she should
spring upon me, but on no account to fire before me.
Kleinboy was to stand ready to hand me my Purdey rifle, in
case the two-grooved Dixon should not prove sufficient. My
men as yet had been steady, but they were in a precious
stew, their faces having assumed a ghastly paleness; and I
had a painful feeling that I could place no reliance on
them. Now, then, for it, neck or nothing! She is within
sixty yards of us, and she keeps advancing. We turned the
horses’ tails to her. I knelt on one side, and taking a
steady aim at her breast, let fly. The ball cracked loudly
on her tawny hide, and crippled her in the shoulder; upon
which she charged with an appalling roar, and in the
twinkling of an eye she was in the midst of us. At this
moment Stofolus’a rifle exploded in his hand, and Kleinboy,
whom I had ordered to stand ready by me, danced about like a
duck in a gale of wind. The lioness sprang upon Colesberg,
and fearfully lacerated his ribs and haunches with her
horrid teeth and claws. The worst wound was on his haunch,
which exhibited a sickening, yawning gash, more than twelve
inches long, almost laying bare the very bone. I was very
cool and steady, and did not feel in the least degree
nervous, having fortunately great confidence in my own
shooting; but I must confess, when the whole affair was
over, I felt that it was a very awful situation, and
attended with extreme peril, as I had no friend with me on
whom I could rely. When the lioness sprang on Colesberg, I
stood out from the horses, ready with my second barrel for
the first chance she should give me of a clear shot. This
she quickly did; for, seemingly satisfied with the revenge
she had now taken, she quitted Colesberg, and slewing her
tail to one side, trotted sulkily past within a few paces of
me, taking one step to the left. I pitched my rifle to my
shoulder, and in another second the lioness was stretched on
the plain a lifeless corpse.”

This is, however, but a harmless adventure compared with a
subsequent escapade—not with one, but with six lions. It
was the hunter’s habit to lay wait near the drinking-places of
these animals, concealed in a hole dug for the purpose. In such
a place on the occasion in question, Mr. Cumming—having
left one of three rhinoceroses he had previously killed as a
bait—ensconsed himself. Such a savage festival as that
which introduced the adventure, has never before, we believe,
been introduced through the medium of the softest English and
the finest hot-pressed paper to the notice of the civilized
public. “Soon after twilight,” the author relates, “I went down
to my hole with Kleinboy and two natives, who lay concealed in
another hole, with Wolf and Boxer ready to slip, in the event
of wounding a lion. On reaching the water I looked toward the
carcase of the rhinoceros, and, to my astonishment, I beheld
the ground alive with large creatures, as though a troop of
zebras were approaching the fountain to drink. Kleinboy
remarked to me that a troop of zebras were standing on the
height. I answered, ‘Yes,’ but I knew very well that zebras
would not be capering around the carcase of a rhinoceros. I
quickly [pg 220] arranged my blankets,
pillow, and guns in the hole, and then lay down to feast my
eyes on the interesting sight before me. It was bright
moonlight, as clear as I need wish, and within one night of
being full moon. There were six large lions, about twelve or
fifteen hyenas, and from twenty to thirty jackals, feasting
on and around the carcases of the three rhinoceroses. The
lions feasted peacefully, but the hyenas and jackals fought
over every mouthful, and chased one another round and round
the carcases, growling, laughing, screeching, chattering,
and howling without any intermission. The hyenas did not
seem afraid of the lions, although they always gave way
before them; for I observed that they followed them in the
most disrespectful manner, and stood laughing, one or two on
either side, when any lions came after their comrades to
examine pieces of skin or bones which they were dragging
away. I had lain watching this banquet for about three
hours, in the strong hope that, when the lions had feasted,
they would come and drink. Two black and two white
rhinoceroses had made their appearance, but, scared by the
smell of the blood, they had made off. At length the lions
seemed satisfied. They all walked about with their heads up,
and seemed to be thinking about the water; and in two
minutes one of them turned his face toward me, and came on;
he was immediately followed by a second lion, and in half a
minute by the remaining four. It was a decided and general
move, they were all coming to drink right bang in my face,
within fifteen yards of me.”

The hunters were presently discovered. “An old lioness, who
seemed to take the lead, had detected me, and, with her head
high and her eyes fixed full upon me she was coming slowly
round the corner of the little vley to cultivate further my
acquaintance! This unfortunate coincidence put a stop at once
to all further contemplation. I thought; in my haste, that it
was perhaps most prudent to shoot this lioness, especially as
none of the others had noticed me. I accordingly moved my arm
and covered her; she saw me move and halted, exposing a full
broadside. I fired; the ball entered one shoulder, and passed
out behind the other. She bounded forward with repeated growls,
and was followed by her five comrades all enveloped in a cloud
of dust; nor did they atop until they had reached the cover
behind me, except one old gentleman, who halted and looked back
for a few seconds, when I fired, but the ball went high. I
listened anxiously for some sound to denote the approaching end
of the lioness; nor listened in vain. I heard her growling and
stationary, as if dying. In one minute her comrades crossed the
vley a little below me, and made toward the rhinoceros. I then
slipped Wolf and Boxer on her scent, and, following them into
the cover, I found her lying dead.”

Mr. Cumming’s adventures with elephants are no less
thrilling. He had selected for the aim of his murderous rifle
two huge female elephants from a herd. “Two of the troop had
walked slowly past at about sixty yards, and the one which I
had selected was feeding with two others on a thorny tree
before me. My hand was now as steady as the rock on which it
rested, so, taking a deliberate aim, I let fly at her head, a
little behind the eye. She got it hard and sharp, just where I
aimed, but it did not seem to affect her much. Uttering a loud
cry, she wheeled about, when I gave her the second ball, close
behind the shoulder. All the elephants uttered a strange
rumbling noise, and made off in a line to the northward at a
brisk ambling pace, their huge fanlike ears flapping in the
ratio of their speed. I did not wait to load, but ran back to
the hillock to obtain a view. On gaining its summit, the guides
pointed out the elephants; they were standing in a grove of
shady trees, but the wounded one was some distance behind with
another elephant, doubtless its particular friend, who was
endeavoring to assist it. These elephants had probably never
before heard the report of a gun; and having neither seen nor
smelt me, they were unaware of the presence of man, and did not
seem inclined to go any further. Presently my men hove in
sight, bringing the dogs; and when these came up, I waited some
time before commencing the attack, that the dogs and horses
might recover their wind. We then rode slowly toward the
elephants, and had advanced within two hundred yards of them,
when, the ground being open, they observed us, and made off in
an easterly direction; but the wounded one immediately dropped
astern, and next moment she was surrounded by the dogs, which,
barking angrily, seemed to engross her attention. Having placed
myself between her and the retreating troop, I dismounted to
fire, within forty yards of her, in open ground. Colesberg was
extremely afraid of the elephants, and gave me much trouble,
jerking my arm when I tried to fire. At length I let fly; but,
on endeavoring to regain my saddle. Colesberg declined to allow
me to mount; and when I tried to lead him, and run for it, he
only backed toward the wounded elephant. At this moment I heard
another elephant close behind: and on looking about I beheld
the ‘friend,’ with uplifted trunk, charging down upon me at top
speed, shrilly trumpeting, and following an old black pointer
named Schwart, that was perfectly deaf, and trotted along
before the enraged elephant quite unaware of what was behind
him. I felt certain that she would have either me or my horse.
I, however, determined not to relinquish my steed, but to hold
on by the bridle. My men, who of course kept at a safe
distance, stood aghast with their mouths open, and for a few
seconds my position was certainly not an enviable one.
Fortunately, however, the dogs took off the attention of the
elephants; and, just us they
[pg 221] were upon me I managed to
spring into the saddle, where I was safe. As I turned my
back to mount, the elephants were so very near, that I
really expected to feel one of their trunks lay hold of me.
I rode up to Kleinboy for my double-barrelled two-grooved
rifle; he and Isaac were pale and almost speechless with
fright. Returning to the charge, I was soon once more
alongside, and, firing from the saddle, I sent another brace
of bullets into the wounded elephant. Colesberg was
extremely unsteady, and destroyed the correctness of my aim.
The ‘friend’ now seemed resolved to do some mischief, and
charged me furiously, pursuing me to a distance of several
hundred yards. I therefore deemed it proper to give her a
gentle hint to act less officiously, and so, having loaded,
I approached within thirty yards, and gave it her sharp,
right and left, behind the shoulder; upon which she at once
made off with drooping trunk, evidently with a mortal wound.
Two more shots finished her; on receiving them she tossed
her trunk up and down two or three times, and falling on her
broadside against a thorny tree, which yielded like grass
before her enormous weight, she uttered a deep hoarse cry
and expired.”

Mr. Cumming’s exploits in the water are no less exciting
than his land adventures. Here is an account of his victory
over a hippopotamus, on the banks of the Limpopo river, near
the northernmost extremity of his journeyings.

“There were four of them, three cows and an old bull; they
stood in the middle of the river, and though alarmed, did not
appear aware of the extent of the impending danger. I took the
sea-cow next me, and with my first ball I gave her a mortal
wound, knocking loose a great plate on the top of her skull.
She at once commenced plunging round and round, and then
occasionally remained still, sitting for a few minutes on the
same spot. On hearing the report of my rifle two of the others
took up stream, and the fourth dashed down the river; they
trotted along, like oxen, at a smart pace as long as the water
was shallow. I was now in a state of very great anxiety about
my wounded sea-cow, for I feared that she would get down into
deep water, and be lost like the last one; her struggles were
still carrying her down stream, and the water was becoming
deeper. To settle the matter I accordingly fired a second shot
from the bank, which, entering the roof of her skull, passed
out through her eye; she then, kept continually splashing round
and round in a circle in the middle of the river. I had great
fears of the crocodiles, and I did not know that the sea-cow
might not attack me. My anxiety to secure her, however,
overcame all hesitation; so, divesting myself of my leathers,
and armed with a sharp knife. I dashed into the water, which at
first took me up to my arm-pits, but in the middle was
shallower. As I approached Behemoth her eye looked very wicked.
I halted for a moment, ready to dive under the water if she
attacked me, but she was stunned, and did not know what she was
doing; so, running in upon her, and seizing her short tail, I
attempted to incline her course to land. It was extraordinary
what enormous strength she still had in the water. I could not
guide her in the slightest, and she continued to splash, and
plunge, and blow, and make her circular course, carrying me
along with her as if I was a fly on her tail. Finding her tail
gave me but a poor hold, as the only means of securing my prey,
I took out my knife, and cutting two deep parallel incisions
through the skin on her rump, and lifting this skin from the
flesh, so that I could get in my two hands, I made use of this
as a handle; and after some desperate hard work, sometimes
pushing and sometimes pulling, the sea-cow continuing her
circular course all the time and I holding on at her rump like
grim Death, eventually I succeeded in bringing this gigantic
and most powerful animal to the bank. Here the Bushman, quickly
brought me a stout buffalo-rheim from my horse’s neck, which I
passed through the opening in the thick skin, and moored
Behemoth to a tree. I then took my rifle, and sent a ball
through the center of her head, and she was numbered with the
dead.” There is nothing in “Waterton’s Wanderings,” or in the
“Adventures of Baron Munchausen” more startling than this
“Waltz with a Hippopotamus!”

In the all-wise disposition of events, it is perhaps
ordained that wild animals should be subdued by man to his use
at the expense of such tortures as those described in the work
before us. Mere amusement, therefore, is too light a motive for
dealing such wounds and death Mr. Cumming owns to; but he had
other motives,—besides a considerable profit he has
reaped in trophies, ivory, fur, &c., he has made in his
book some valuable contributions to the natural history of the
animals he wounded and slew.

From Graham’s Magazine for August

MANUELA.

A BALLAD OF CALIFORNIA.

BY BAYARD TAYLOR.

From Fraser’s Magazine for July.

LEDRU ROLLIN.

Ledru Rollin is now in his forty-fourth or forty-fifth year,
having been born in 1806 or 1807. He is the grandson of the
famous Prestidigateur, or Conjurer Comus, who, about
four or five-and-forty years ago, was in the acme of his fame.
During the Consulate, and a considerable portion of the Empire,
Comus traveled from one department of France to the other, and
is even known to have extended his journeys beyond the Rhine
and the Moselle on one side, and beyond the Rhône and Garonne
on the other. Of all the conjurers of his day he was the most
famous and the most successful, always, of course, excepting
that Corsican conjurer who ruled for so many years the
destinies of France. From those who have seen that famous
trickster, we have learned that the Charleses, the Alexanders,
even the Robert Houdins, were children compared with the
magical wonder-worker of the past generation. The fame of Comus
was enormous, and his gains proportionate; and when he had
shuffled off this mortal coil it was found he had left to his
descendants a very ample—indeed, for France, a very large
fortune. Of the descendants in a right line, his grandson,
Ledru Rollin, was his favorite, and to him the old man left the
bulk of his fortune, which, during the minority of Ledru
Rollin, grew to a sum amounting to nearly, if not fully, £4,000
per annum.

The scholastic education of the young man who was to inherit
this considerable fortune, was nearly completed during the
reign of Louis XVIII., and shortly after Charles X. ascended
the throne il commençait à faire sur droit, as they
phrase it in the pays Latin. Neither during the reign of
Louis XVIII., nor indeed now, unless in the exact and physical
sciences, does Paris afford a very solid and substantial
education. Though the Roman poets and historians are tolerably
well studied and taught, yet little attention is paid to Greek
literature. The physical and exact sciences are unquestionably
admirably taught at the Polytechnique and other schools; but
neither at the College of St. Barbe, nor of Henry IV., can a
pupil be so well grounded in the rudiments and humanities as in
our grammar and public schools. A studious, pains-taking, and
docile youth, will, no doubt, learn a great deal, no matter
where he has been placed in pupilage; but we have heard from a
contemporary of M. Rollin, that he was not particularly
distinguished either for his industry or his docility in early
life. The earliest days of the reign of Charles X. saw M. Ledru
Rollin an étudiant en droit in Paris. Though the schools
of law had been re-established during the Consulate pretty much
after the fashion in which they existed in the time of Louis
the XIV., yet the application of the alumni was fitful
and desultory, and perhaps there were no two
[pg 223] classes in France, at the
commencement of 1825. who were more imbued with the
Voltarian philosophy and the doctrines and principles of
Rousseau, than the élèves of the schools of law and
medicine.

Under a king so sceptical and voluptuous, so much of a
philosophie and phyrronéste, as Louis XVIII.,
such tendencies were likely to spread themselves through all
ranks of society—to permeate from the very highest to the
very lowest classes: and not all the lately acquired asceticism
of the monarch, his successor, nor all the efforts of the
Jesuits could restrain or control the tendencies of the
étudiants en droit. What the law-students were
antecedently and subsequent to 1825, we know from the
Physiologie de l’Homme de Loi; and it is not to be
supposed that M. Ledru Rollin, with more ample pecuniary means
at command, very much differed from his fellows. After
undergoing a three years’ course of study, M. Rollin obtained a
diploma as a licencié en droit, and commenced his career
as stagiare somewhere about the end of 1826 or the
beginning of 1827. Toward the close of 1829, or in the first
months of 1830, he was, we believe, placed on the roll of
advocates; so that he was called to the bar, or, as they say in
France, received an advocate, in his twenty-second or
twenty-third year.

The first years of an advocate, even in France, are
generally passed in as enforced an idleness as in England.
Clients come not to consult the greenhorn of the last term; nor
does any avoué among our neighbors, any more than any
attorney among ourselves, fancy that an old head is to be found
on young shoulders. The years 1830 and 1831 were not marked by
any oratorical effort of the author of the Decline of
England; nor was it till 1832 that, being then one of the
youngest of the bar of Paris, he prepared and signed an opinion
against the placing of Paris in a state of siege consequent on
the insurrections of June. Two years after he prepared a
memoir; or factum, on the affair of the Rue Transonain,
and defended Dupoty, accused of complicité morale, a
monstrous doctrine invented by the Attorney-General Hebert.
From 1834 to 1841 he appeared as counsel in nearly all the
cases of émeute or conspiracy where the individuals
prosecuted were Republicans, or quasi-Republicans.
Meanwhile, he had become the proprietor and rédacteur en
chef of the Reforme newspaper, a political journal
of an ultra-Liberal—indeed of a
Republican—complexion, which was then called of extreme
opinions, as he had previously been editor of a legal newspaper
called Journal du Palais. La Reforme had been
originally conducted by Godefroy Cavaignac, the brother of the
general, who continued editor till the period of the fatal
illness which preceded his death. The defense of Dupoty, tried
and sentenced under the ministry of Thiers to five years’
imprisonment, as a regicide, because a letter was found open in
the letter-box of the paper of which he was editor, addressed
to him by a man said to be implicated in the conspiracy of
Quenisset, naturally brought M. Rollin into contact with many
of the writers in La Reforme; and these persons, among
others Guinard Arago, Etienne Arago, and Flocon, induced him to
embark some portion of his fortune in the paper. From one step
he was led on to another, and ultimately became one of the
chief—indeed, if not the chief proprietor. The
speculation was far from successful in a pecuniary sense, but
M. Rollin, in furtherance of his opinions, continued for some
years to disburse considerable sums in the support of the
journal. By this he no doubt increased his popularity and his
credit with the Republican party, but it cannot be denied that
he very materially injured his private fortune. In the earlier
portion of his career, M. Rollin was, it is known, not
indisposed to seek a seat in the Chamber, under the auspices of
M. Barrot, but subsequently to his connection with the
Reforme, he had himself become thoroughly known to the
extreme party in the departments, and on the death of Gamier
Pagès the elder, was elected in 1841 for Le Mans, in La
Sarthe.

In addressing the electors, after his return, M. Rollin
delivered a speech much more Republican than Monarchical. For
this he was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment, but the
sentence was appealed against and annulled on a technical
ground, and the honorable member was ultimately acquitted by
the Cour d’Assizes of Angers.

The parliamentary début of M. Rollin took place in
1842. His first speech was delivered on the subject of the
secret-service money. The elocution was easy and flowing, the
manner oratorical, the style somewhat turgid and bombastic. But
in the course of the session M. Rollin improved, and his
discourse on the modification of the criminal law, on other
legal subjects, and on railways, were more sober specimens of
style. In 1843 and 1844 M. Rollin frequently spoke; but though
his speeches were a good deal talked of outside the walls of
the Chamber, they produced little effect within it.
Nevertheless, it was plain to every candid observer that he
possessed many of the requisites of the orator—a good
voice, a copious flow of words, considerable energy and
enthusiasm, a sanguine temperament and jovial and generous
disposition. In the sessions of 1845-46, M. Rollin took a still
more prominent part. His purse, his house in the Rue Tournon,
his counsels and advice, were all placed at the service of the
men of the movement; and by the beginning of 1847 he seemed to
be acknowledged by the extreme party as its most conspicuous
and popular member. Such indeed was his position when the
electoral reform banquets, on a large scale, began to take
place in the autumn of 1847. These banquets, promoted and
forwarded by the principal members of the opposition to serve
the [pg 224] cause of electoral reform,
were looked on by M. Rollin and his friends in another
light. While Odillon Barrot, Duvergier d’Haurunne, and
others, sought by means of them to produce an enlarged
constituency, the member for Sarthe looked not merely to
functional, but to organic reform—not merely to an
enlargement of the constituency, but to a change in the form
of the government. The desire of Barrot was à la vérité à
la sincerité des institutions conquises en Juillet 1830;
whereas the desire of Rollin was, à l’amélioration des
classes laborieuses; the one was willing to go on with
the dynasty of Louis Philippe and the Constitution of July
improved by diffusion and extension of the franchise, the
other looked to a democratic and social republic. The result
is now known. It is not here our purpose to go over the
events of the Revolution of February 1848, but we may be
permitted to observe, that the combinations by which that
event was effected were ramified and extensive, and were
long silently and secretly in motion.

The personal history of M. Rollin, since February 1848, is
well-known and patent to all the world. He was the ame
damnée of the Provisional Government—the man whose
extreme opinions, intemperate circulars, and vehement patronage
of persons professing the political creed of
Robespierre—indisposed all moderate men to rally around
the new system. It was in covering Ledru Rollin with the shield
of his popularity that Lamartine lost his own, and that he
ceased to be the political idol of a people of whom he must
ever be regarded as one of the literary glories and
illustrations. On the dissolution of the Provisional
Government, Ledru Rollin constituted himself one of the leaders
of the movement party. In ready powers of speech and in
popularity no man stood higher; but he did not possess the
power of restraining his followers or of holding them in hand,
and the result was, that instead of being their leader he
became their instrument. Fond of applause, ambitious of
distinction, timid by nature, destitute of pluck, and of that
rarer virtue moral courage, Ledru Rollin, to avoid the
imputation of faint-heartedness, put himself in the foreground,
but the measures of his followers being ill-taken, the plot in
which he was mixed up egregiously failed, and he is now in
consequence an exile in England.

GENERAL GARIBALDI.

MR. FILIPANTE gives the following notice of this Italian
revolutionary leader in a communication to the Evening
Post. “His exertions in behalf of the liberal movement in
Italy have been indefatigable. As active as he was courageous,
he was among the first to take up arms against Austrian
tyranny, and the last to lay them down. Even when the
triumvirate at Rome had been overthrown, and the most ardent
spirits despaired of the republic, Garibaldi and his noble band
of soldiers refused to yield; they maintained a vigorous
resistance to the last, and only quitted the ground when the
cause was so far gone that their own success would have been of
no general advantage.

“The General is about forty years of age. He was in early
life an officer in the Sardinian service, but, engaging in an
unsuccessful revolt against the government of Charles Albert,
he was compelled to leave his native land. He fled to
Montevideo, where he fought with distinction in the wars
against Rosas. At the breaking out of the late revolution he
returned. His military capacities being well known, he was
entrusted with a command; and throughout the war his services
were most efficient. He defeated the allied troops of Austria,
France, and Naples, in several battles; his name, in fact,
became a terror, and when the republic fell, and he was
compelled to retire to the Appenines, the invaders felt that
his return would be more formidable than any other event.

“From Italy he went to Morocco, where he has since lived.
But his friends, desiring that his great energies should be
actively employed, have offered him the command of a merchant
ship, which he has accepted. He will, therefore, hereafter be
engaged in the peaceful pursuits of commerce, unless his
country should again require his exertions.”

CRIME, IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE.

In recent discussions of the effects of education upon
morals, the relative conditions of Great Britain and France in
this respect have often been referred to. The following
paragraph shows that the statistics in the case have not been
well understood:

“In a recent sitting of the Academy of Moral and Political
Sciences, M. Leon Faucher, the representative, read a paper on
the state of crime in England; and some of the journals have
taken advantage of this to institute a comparison with returns
of the criminality of France, recently published by the
Government—the result being anything but flattering to
England. But M. Faucher, the Academy, the newspapers, and
almost everybody else in France, seems to be entirely ignorant
that it is impossible to institute a comparison between the
amount of crime in England and the amount of crime in France,
inasmuch as crimes are not the same in both countries. Thus,
for example, it is a felony in England to steal a pair of
shoes, the offender is sent before the Court of Assize, and his
offense counts in the official returns as a “crime;” in France,
on the contrary, a petty theft is considered a délit, or
simple offense, is punished by a police magistrate, and figures
in the returns as an “offense.” With respect to murders, too,
the English have only two general names for
killing—murder or manslaughter—but the French have
nearly a dozen categories of killing, of which what the English
call murder forms only one. It is the same, in short, with
almost every species of crime.”

Footnote 1:
(return)

RURAL HOURS: by a Lady, George P. Putnam, 155 Broadway.
1850.

Footnote 2:
(return)

In his early days the President of the Royal Academy
painted a very striking portrait of Jane Porter, as
“Miranda,” and Harlowe painted her in the canoness dress of
the order of St. Joachim.

Footnote 3:
(return)

In the press of Appleton & Co.

Footnote 4:
(return)

A Hunter’s Life in South Africa. By R. Gordon Cumming,
Esq., of Altyre.

Footnote 5:
(return)

In California horses are named according to their color.
An alazan is a sorrel—a color generally
preferred, as denoting speed and mettle.

Footnote 6:
(return)

The sarape is a knit blanket of many gay colors, worn
over the shoulders by an opening in the center, through
which the head is thrust.

Footnote 7:
(return)

Calzoneros are trowsers, generally made of blue cloth or
velvet, richly embroidered, and worn over an under pair of
white linen. They are slashed up the outside of each leg,
for greater convenience in riding, and studded with rows of
silver buttons.

Footnote 8:
(return)

The lariat, or riata, as it is indifferently called in
California and Mexico, is precisely the same as the lasso
of South America.