BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCXXXVI. OCTOBER, 1843. Vol. LIV.

CONTENTS.

• MILL’S LOGIC.
  415
• MY COUNTRY NEIGHBOURS.
  431
• TRAVELS OF KERIM KHAN.
  453
• THE THIRTEENTH; A TALE OF DOOM.
  465
• REMINISCENCES OF SYRIA.
  476
• THE FATE OF POLYCRATES.
  483
• MODERN PAINTERS.
  485
• A ROYAL SALUTE.
  504
• PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN ENGLAND.
  514
• CHRONICLES OF PARIS. THE RUE ST DENIS.
  525
• THE LAST SESSION OF PARLIAMENT.
  538
• [FOOTNOTES]

[Pg 415]

MILL’S LOGIC.[1]

These are not degenerate days.
We have still strong thinkers amongst
us; men of untiring perseverance, who
flinch before no difficulties, who never
hide the knot which their readers are
only too willing that they should let
alone; men who dare write what the
ninety-nine out of every hundred will
pronounce a dry book; who pledge
themselves, not to the public, but to
their subject, and will not desert it
till their task is completed. One of
this order is Mr John Stuart Mill.
The work he has now presented to
the public, we deem to be, after its
kind, of the very highest character,
every where displaying powers of
clear, patient, indefatigable thinking.
Abstract enough it must be allowed
to be, calling for an unremitted attention,
and yielding but little, even
in the shape of illustration, of lighter
and more amusing matter; he has
taken no pains to bestow upon it any
other interest than what searching
thought and lucid views, aptly expressed,
ought of themselves to create.
His subject, indeed—the laws by
which human belief and the inquisition
of truth are to be governed and
directed—is both of that extensive
and fundamental character, that it
would be treated with success only
by one who knew how to resist the
temptations to digress, as well as how
to apply himself with vigour to the
solution of the various questions that
must rise before him.

[Pg 416]
Such is the manly and modest estimate
which the author makes of his
own labours, and the work fully bears
out the character here given of it.
No one capable of receiving pleasure
from the disentanglement of intricacies,
or the clear exposition of an abstruse
subject; no one seeking assistance
in the acquisition of distinct and
accurate views on the various and
difficult topics which these volumes
embrace—can fail to read them with
satisfaction and with benefit.

To give a full account—to give any
account—of a work which traverses so
wide a field of subject, would be here
a futile attempt; we should, after all
our efforts, merely produce a laboured
and imperfect synopsis, which would
in vain solicit the perusal of our readers.
What we purpose doing, is to
take up, in the order in which they
occur, some of the topics on which
Mr Mill has thrown a new light, or
which he has at least invested with a
novel interest by the view he has given
of them. And as, in this selection of
topics, we are not bound to choose
those which are most austere and
repulsive, we hope that such of our
readers as are not deterred by the
very name of logic, will follow us with
some interest through the several
points of view, and the various extracts
we shall present to them.

The Syllogism.—The logic of Induction,
as that to which attention
has been least devoted, which has
been least reduced to systematic form,
and which lies at the basis of all other
modes of reasoning, constitutes the
prominent subject of these volumes.
Nevertheless, the old topic of logic
proper, or deductive reasoning, is not
omitted, and the first passage to which
we feel bound, on many accounts, to
give our attention, is the disquisition
on the syllogism.

Fortunately for us it is not necessary,
in order to convey the point of
our author’s observations upon this
head, to afflict our readers with any
dissertation upon mode or figure, or
other logical technicalities. The first
form or figure of the syllogism (to
which those who have not utterly
forgotten their scholastic discipline will
remember that all others may be reduced)
is familiar to every one, and to this
alone we shall have occasion to refer.

Who has not met—what young lady
even, though but in her teens, has not
encountered some such charming triplet
as this, which looks so like verse
at a distance, but, like some other
compositions, approximates nothing
the more on this account to poetry?
Who has not learnt from such examples
what is a major, what a middle
term, and what the minor or conclusion?

As no one, in the present day, advises
the adoption, in our controversies,
of the syllogistic forms of reasoning,
it is evident that the value of the
syllogism must consist, not in its
practical use, but in the accurate type
which it affords of the process of reasoning,
and in the analysis of that process
which a full understanding of it
renders necessary. Such an analysis
supplies, it is said, an excellent discipline
to the mind, whilst an occasional
reference to the form of the syllogism,
as a type or model of reasoning,
insures a steadiness and pertinency of
argument. But is the syllogism, it
has been asked, this veritable type of
our reasoning? Has the analysis which
would explain it to be such, been accurately
conducted?

Several of our northern metaphysicians,
it is well known—as, for example,
Dr Campbell and Dugald Stewart—have
laid rude hands upon the
syllogism. They have pronounced it
to be a vain invention. They have
argued that no addition of knowledge,
no advancement in the acquisition of
truth, no new conviction, can possibly
be obtained through its means, inasmuch
as no syllogism can contain any
thing in the conclusion which was not
admitted, at the outset, in the first or
major proposition. The syllogism
always, say they, involves a petitio
principii. Admit the major, and the
business is palpably at an end; the rest
is a mere circle, in which one cannot
advance, but may get giddy by the
revolution. According to the exposition
of logicians themselves, we simply
obtain by our syllogism, the privilege
of saying that, in the minor, of
some individual of a class, which we
had said, in the major, already of the
whole class.

Archbishop Whately, our most distinguished
expositor and defender of
the Aristotelian logic, meets these antagonists
with the resolute assertion,
that their objection to the syllogism is
equally valid against all reasoning
[Pg 417]
whatever. He does not deny, but, on
the contrary, in common with every
logician, distinctly states, that whatever
is concluded in the minor, must
have been previously admitted in the
major, for in this lies the very force
and compulsion of the argument; but
he maintains that the syllogism is the
true type of all our reasoning, and
that therefore to all our reasoning,
the very same vice, the very same
petitio principii, may be imputed. The
syllogism, he contends, (and apparently
with complete success,) is but a statement
in full of what takes place mentally
even in the most rapid acts of
reasoning. We often suppress the
major for the sake of brevity, but it
is understood though not expressed;
just as in the same manner as we
sometimes content ourselves with
merely implying the conclusion itself,
because it is sufficiently evident without
further words. If any one should
so far depart from common sense as to
question the mortality of some great
king, we should think it sufficient to
say for all argument—the king is a
man!—virtually implying the whole
triplet above mentioned:—

“In pursuing the supposed investigation,
(into the operation of reasoning,)”
says Archbishop Whately,
“it will be found that every conclusion
is deduced, in reality, from two
other propositions, (thence called
Premisses😉 for though one of these
may be and commonly is suppressed,
it must nevertheless be understood as
admitted, as may easily be made evident
by supposing the denial of the
suppressed premiss, which will at
once invalidate the argument; e.g.
if any one, from perceiving that ‘the
world exhibits marks of design,’ infers
that ‘it must have had an intelligent
author,’ though he may not be
aware in his own mind of the existence
of any other premiss, he will
readily understand, if it be denied that
‘whatever exhibits marks of design
must have had an intelligent author,’
that the affirmative of that proposition
is necessary to the solidity of the argument.
An argument thus stated
regularly and at full length, is called
a syllogism; which, therefore, is evidently
not a peculiar kind of argument,
but only a peculiar form of expression,
in which every argument may be
stated.”—Whately’s Logic, p. 27.

“It will be found,” he continues,
“that all valid arguments whatever
may be easily reduced to such a form
as that of the foregoing syllogisms;
and that consequently the principle on
which they are constructed is the
Universal Principle of reasoning.
So elliptical, indeed, is the ordinary
mode of expression, even of those who
are considered as prolix writers,—i.e.
so much is implied and left to be understood
in the course of argument,
in comparison of what is actually stated,
(most men being impatient, even to
excess, of any appearance of unnecessary
and tedious formality of statement,)
that a single sentence will often
be found, though perhaps considered
as a single argument, to contain, compressed
into a short compass, a chain
of several distinct arguments. But if
each of these be fully developed, and
the whole of what the author intended
to imply be stated expressly, it will
be found that all the steps, even of the
longest and most complex train of
reasoning, may be reduced into the
above form.”—P. 32.

That it is not the office of the syllogism
to discover new truths, our logician
fully admits, and takes some pains
to establish. This is the office of
“other operations of mind,” not unaccompanied,
however, with acts of
reasoning. Reasoning, argument, inference,
(words which he uses as synonymous,)
have not for their object
our advancement in knowledge, or the
acquisition of new truths.

“Much has been said,” says Archbishop
Whately, in another portion
of his work, “by some writers, of the
superiority of the inductive to the syllogistic
methods of seeking truth, as
if the two stood opposed to each other;
and of the advantage of substituting
the Organon of Bacon for that of Aristotle,
&c. &c., which indicates a total
misconception of the nature of both.
There is, however, the more excuse
for the confusion of thought which
prevails on this subject, because eminent
logical writers have treated, or
at least have appeared to treat, of induction
as a kind of argument distinct
from the syllogism; which, if it were,
it certainly might be contrasted with
the syllogism: or rather the whole
syllogistic theory would fall to the
ground, since one of the very first
[Pg 418]
principles it establishes, is that all
reasoning, on whatever subject, is one
and the same process, which may be
clearly exhibited in the form of syllogisms.

“This inaccuracy seems chiefly to
have arisen from a vagueness in the
use of the word induction; which is
sometimes employed to designate the
process of investigation and of collecting
facts, sometimes the deducing an
inference from those facts. The former
of these processes (viz. that of
observation and experiment) is undoubtedly
distinct from that which
takes place in the syllogism; but then
it is not a process of argumentation:
the latter again is an argumentative
process; but then it is, like all other
arguments, capable of being syllogistically
expressed.”—P. 263.

“To prove, then, this point demonstratively,
(namely, that it is not by a
process of reasoning that new truths
are brought to light,) becomes on these
data perfectly easy; for since all reasoning
(in the sense above defined) may
be resolved into syllogisms; and since
even the objectors to logic make it a
subject of complaint, that in a syllogism
the premises do virtually assert
the conclusion, it follows at once that
no new truth (as above defined) can
be elicited by any process of reasoning.

“It is on this ground, indeed, that
the justly celebrated author of the
Philosophy of Rhetoric objects to the
syllogism altogether, as necessarily involving
a petitio principii; an objection
which, of course, he would not
have been disposed to bring forward,
had he perceived that, whether well or
ill founded, it lies against all arguments
whatever. Had he been aware that
the syllogism is no distinct kind of
argument otherwise than in form, but
is, in fact, any argument whatever
stated regularly and at full length, he
would have obtained a more correct
view of the object of all reasoning;
which is merely to expand and unfold the
assertions wrapt up, as it were, and implied
in those with which we set out, and
to bring a person to perceive and acknowledge
the full force of that which
he has admitted; to contemplate it
in various points of view; to admit in
one shape what he has already admitted
in another, and to give up and disallow
whatever is inconsistent with it.”—P.
273.

Now, what the Archbishop here advances
appears convincing; his position
looks impregnable. The syllogism
is not a peculiar mode of reasoning,
(how could it be?)—if any thing
at all, it must be a general formula
for expressing the ordinary act of
reasoning—and he shows that the objections
made by those who would
impugn it, may be levelled with equal
justice against all ratiocination whatever.
But then this method of defending
the syllogism, (to those of us
who have stood beside, in the character
of modest enquirers, watching the
encounter of keen wits,) does but aggravate
the difficulty. Is it true, then,
that in every act of reasoning, we do
but conclude in one form, what, the
moment before, we had stated in another?
Are we to understand that such
is the final result of the debate? If so,
this act of reasoning appears very little
deserving of that estimation in
which it has been generally held. The
great prerogative of intelligent beings
(as it has been deemed,) grants them
this only—to “admit in one shape
what they had already admitted in
another.”

From the dilemma in which we are
here placed, the Archbishop by no
means releases, or attempts to release
us: he seems (something too much
after the manner and disposition generally
attributed to masters in logic-fence,)
to have rested satisfied with
foiling his opponents in their attack
upon the exact position he had bound
himself to defend. He saves the syllogism;
what becomes, in the controversy,
of poor human reason itself, is
not his especial concern—it is as much
their business as his. You do not,
more than I, he virtually says to his
opponents, intend to resign all reasoning
whatever as a mere inanity; I
prove, for my part, that all reasoning
is capable of being put into a syllogistic
form, and that your objection, if
valid against the syllogism, is equally
valid against all ratiocination. You
must therefore either withdraw your
objection altogether, or advance it at
your peril; the difficulty is of your
making, you must solve it as you can.
Gentlemen, you must muzzle your
own dog.

In this posture of affairs the author
of the present work comes to the rescue.
He shall speak in his own words.
But we must premise, that although
we do not intend to stint him in our
[Pg 419]
quotation—though we wish to give
him all the sea-room possible; yet, for
a full development of his views, we
must refer the reader to his volumes
themselves. There are some disquisitions
which precede the part we are
about to quote from, which, in order to
do complete justice to the subject, ought
to find a place here, as well as in the
author’s work—but it is impossible.

By this explanation we are released
from the dilemma into which the syllogistic
and non-syllogistic party had
together thrown us. We can acknowledge
that the process of reason can
be always exhibited in the form of a
syllogism, and yet not be driven to
the strange and perplexing conclusion
that our reasoning can never conduct
us to a new truth, never lead us further
than to admit in one shape what
we had already admitted in another.
We have, or may have, it is true, a
major in all our ratiocination, implied,
if not expressed, and are so far syllogistic;
but then the real premiss from
which we reason is the amount of experience
on which that major was
founded, to which amount of experience
we, in fact, made an addition
in our minor, or conclusion.

[Pg 422]
But while we accept this explanation,
and are grateful for the deliverance
it works for us, we must also
admit, (and we are not aware that Mr
Mill would controvert this admission,)
that there is a large class of cases in
which our reasoning betrays no reference
to this anterior experience, and
where the usual explanation given by
teachers of logic is perfectly applicable;
cases where our object is, not
the discovery of truth for ourselves,
but to convince another of his error,
by showing him that the proposition,
which in his blindness or prejudice he
has chosen to contradict, is part and
parcel of some other proposition to
which he has given, and is at all times
ready to give, his acquiescence. In
such cases, we frequently content ourselves
with throwing before him this
alternative—refuse your major, to
which you have again and again assented,
or accept, as involved in it,
our minor proposition, which you have
persisted in controverting.

It will have been gathered from the
foregoing train of observation, that,
in direct contradistinction to Archbishop
Whately, who had represented
induction (so far as it consisted of an
act of ratiocination) as resolvable into
deductive and syllogistic reasoning, our
author has resolved the syllogism, and
indeed all deductive reasoning whatever,
ultimately into examples of induction.
In doing this, he is encountered
by a metaphysical notion very
prevalent in the present day, which
lies across his path, and which he has
to remove. We allude to the distinction
between contingent and necessary
truths; it being held by many philosophical
writers that all necessary and
universal truths owe their origin, not
to experience (except as occasion of
their development,) and not, consequently,
to the ordinary process of induction,
but flow from higher sources—flow
immediately from some supreme
faculty to which the name of reason
has by some been exclusively appropriated,
in order to distinguish it from
the understanding, the faculty judging
according to sense. We will pause a
while upon this topic.

Contingent and Necessary Truths.—Those
who have read Mr Whewell’s
treatise on the Philosophy of the Inductive
Sciences, will remember that there
is no topic which that author labours
more sedulously to inculcate than this
same distinction between contingent
and necessary truths; and it is against
his statement of the doctrine in question,
that Mr Mill directs his observations.
Perhaps the controverted tenets would
have sustained a more equal combat
under the auspices of a more practised
and more complete metaphysician
than Mr Whewell; but a difficulty
was probably experienced in finding
a statement in any other well-known
English author full and explicit. Referring
ourselves to Mr Whewell’s
volumes for an extract, in order to
give the distinction here contended
against the advantage of an exposition
in the words of one who upholds it,
we are embarrassed by the number
which offer themselves. From many
we select the following statement:—

“Experience,” says Mr Whewell,
“must always consist of a limited
number of observations. And, however
numerous these may be, they
can show nothing with regard to the
infinite number of cases in which the
experiment has not been made. Experience,
being thus unable to prove
a fact to be universal, is, as will readily
be seen, still more incapable of
proving a fact to be necessary. Experience
cannot, indeed, offer the
smallest ground for the necessity of
a proposition. She can observe and
record what has happened; but she
cannot find, in any case, or in any
accumulation of cases, any reason for
what must happen. She may see objects
side by side, but she cannot see
a reason why they must be ever side
by side. She finds certain events to
occur in succession; but the succession
supplies, in its occurrence, no
reason for its recurrence. She contemplates
external objects; but she
cannot detect any internal bond which
indissolubly connects the future with
the past, the possible with the real.
To learn a proposition by experience,
and to see it to be necessarily true,
are two altogether different processes
of thought.

“But it may be said, that we do
learn, by means of observation and
experience, many universal truths;
indeed, all the general truths of which
science consists. Is not the doctrine
of universal gravitation learned by
experience? Are not the laws of
motion, the properties of light, the
general properties of chemistry, so
[Pg 423]
learned? How, with these examples
before us, can we say that experience
teaches no universal truths?

“To this we reply, that these truths
can only be known to be general, not
universal, if they depend upon experience
alone. Experience cannot bestow
that universality which she herself
cannot have, and that necessity
of which she has no comprehension.
If these doctrines are universally true,
this universality flows from the ideas
which we apply to our experience,
and which are, as we have seen, the
real sources of necessary truth. How
far these ideas can communicate their
universality and necessity to the results
of experience, it will hereafter
be our business to consider. It will
then appear, that when the mind
collects from observation truths of a
wide and comprehensive kind, which
approach to the simplicity and universality
of the truths of pure science;
she gives them this character by
throwing upon them the light of her
own fundamental ideas.”—Whewell,
Vol. I. p. 60.

Accordingly, Mr Whewell no sooner
arrives at any truth which admits of
an unconditional positive statement—a
statement defying all rational contradiction—than
he abstracts it from
amongst the acquisitions of experience,
and throwing over it, we suppose,
the light of these fundamental
ideas, pronounces it enrolled in the
higher class of universal and necessary
truths. The first laws of motion,
though established through great difficulties
against the most obstinate
preconceptions, and by the aid of repeated
experiments, are, when surveyed
in their present perfect form,
proclaimed to be, not acquisitions of
experience, but truths emanating from
a higher and more mysterious origin.[2]

This distinction, which assigns a
different mental origin to truths,
simply because (from the nature of
the subject-matter, as it seems to us)
there is a difference with regard to the
sort of certainty we feel of them, has
always appeared to us most unphilosophical.
It is admitted that we arrive
at a general proposition through
experience; there is no room, therefore,
for quibbling as to the meaning
of the term experience—it is understood
that when we speak of a truth
being derived from experience, we
imply the usual exercise of our mental
faculties; it is the step from a
general to a universal proposition
which alone occasions this perplexing
distinction. The dogma is this—that
experience can only teach us by a
limited number of examples, and therefore
can never establish a universal
proposition. But if all experience is
in favour of a proposition—if no experience
has occurred even to enable the
imagination to conceive its opposite,
what more can be required to convert
the general into a universal proposition?

Strange to say, the attribution of
these characteristics of universality
and necessity, becomes, amongst those
who loudly insist upon the palpable
nature of the distinction we are now
examining, a matter of controversy;
and there are a class of scientific
truths, of which it is debated whether
they are contingent or necessary.
[Pg 424]
The only test that they belong to the
latter order is, the impossibility of
conceiving their opposites to be the
truth; and it seems that men find a
great difference in their powers of
conception, and that what is impossible
with one is possible with another.
But (wisely, too) passing this over, and
admitting that there is a distinction
(though a very ill-defined one) between
the several truths we entertain
of this nature; namely, that some we
find it impossible, even in imagination,
to contradict, whilst of others we can
suppose it possible that they should
cease to be truths—does it follow
that different faculties of the mind are
engaged in the acquisition of them?
Does nothing depend on the nature of
the subject itself? “That two sides
of a triangle,” says Mr Whewell,
“are greater than the third, is a universal
and necessary geometrical
truth; it is true of all triangles; it is
true in such a way that the contrary
cannot be conceived. Experience
could not prove such a proposition.”
Experience is allowed to prove it of
this or that triangle, but not as an inseparable
property of a triangle. We
are at a loss to perceive why the same
faculties of the mind that can judge,
say of the properties of animal life, of
organized beings, cannot judge of the
properties of a figure—properties
which must immediately be conceived
to exist the moment the figure is presented
to the imagination. We say,
for instance, of any animal, not because
it is this or that animal, a sheep
or an ox, but simply as animal, that
it must sustain itself by food, by the
process of assimilation. This, however,
is merely a contingent truth,
because it is in our power to conceive
of organized beings whose substance
shall not wear away, and consequently
shall not need perpetual restoration.
But what faculty of the mind is unemployed
here that is engaged in
perceiving the property of a triangle,
that as triangle, it must have two sides
greater than the third? The truths
elicited in the two cases have a difference,
inasmuch as a triangle differs
from an animal in this, that it is impossible
to conceive other triangles
than those to which your truth is
applicable, and therefore the proposition
relating to the triangle is called a
necessary truth. But surely this
difference lies in the subject-matter,
not in the nature of our mental faculties.

But we had not intended to interpose
our own lucubrations in the
place of those of Mr Mill.

Mr Mill does not deny that there
exists a distinction, as regards ourselves,
between certain truths (namely,
that of some, we cannot conceive
[Pg 426]
them to be other than truths,) but he
sets no value on this distinction, inasmuch
as there is no proof that it has
its counterpart in things themselves;
the impossibility of a thing being by
no means measured by our inability
to conceive it. And we may observe,
that Mr Whewell, in consistency
with the metaphysical doctrine
upon space and time which he has
borrowed from Kant, ought, under
another shape, to entertain a similar
doubt as to whether this distinction
represent any real distinction in the
nature of things. He considers, with
Kant, that space is only that form
with which the human mind invests
things—that it has no other than this
merely mental existence—is purely
subjective. Presuming, therefore,
that the mind is, from its constitution,
utterly and for ever unable to conceive
the opposite of certain truths, (those,
for instance, of geometry;) yet as the
existence of space itself is but a subjective
truth, it must follow that all
other truths relating to it are subjective
also. The mind is not conversant
with things in themselves, in the
truths even of geometry; nor is there
any positive objective truth in one
department of science more than
another. Mr Whewell, therefore,
though he advocates this distinction
between necessary and contingent
truth with a zeal which would seem
to imply that something momentous,
or of peculiar interest, was connected
with it, can advocate it only as a
matter of abstract metaphysical
science. He cannot participate in
that feeling of exaltation and mystery
which has led many to expatiate upon
a necessary and absolute truth which
the Divine Power itself cannot alter,
which is equally irresistible, equally
binding and compulsory, with God as
with man. Of this spirit of philosophical
enthusiasm Mr Whewell cannot
partake. Space and Time, with
all their properties and phenomena,
are but recognized as the modes of
thought of a human intelligence.

We have marked a number of passages
for annotation and extract—a
far greater number than we can possibly
find place for alluding to. One
subject, however, which lies at the
very basis of all our science, and
which has received a proportionate
attention from Mr Mill, must not be
amongst those which are passed over.
We mean the law of Causation. What
should be described as the complete
and adequate notion of a cause, we
need not say is one of the moot points
of philosophy. According to one
school of metaphysicians, there is in
our notion of cause an element not
derived from experience, which, it is
confessed on all hands, can teach us
only the succession of events. Cause,
with them, is that invisible power,
that mysterious bond, which this succession
does but signify: with other
philosophers this succession constitutes
the whole of any intelligible notion
we have of cause. The latter opinion
is that of Mr Mill; at the same time
the question is one which lies beyond
or beside the scope of his volumes.
He is concerned only with phenomena,
not with the knowledge (if
such there be) of “things in themselves;”
that part, therefore, of our
idea of cause which, according to all
systems of philosophy, is won from
experience, and concerns phenomena
alone, is sufficient for his purpose.
That every event has a cause, that is,
a previous and uniformly previous
event, and that whatever has happened
will, in the like circumstances,
happen again—these are the assumptions
necessary to science, and these
no one will dispute.

Mr Mill has made a happy addition
to the usual definition of cause given
by that class of metaphysicians to
which he himself belongs, and which
obviates a plausible objection urged
against it by Dr Reid and others.
These have argued, that if cause be
nothing more than invariable antecedence,
then night may be said to be
the cause of day, for the one invariably
precedes the other. Day does succeed
to night, but only on certain conditions—namely,
that the sun rise.
“The succession,” observes Mr Mill,
“which is equivalent and synonymous
to cause, must be not only invariable
but unconditional. We may define,
therefore,” says our author, “the cause
of a phenomenon to be the antecedent,
or the concurrence of antecedents,
upon which it is invariably and
unconditionally consequent.”—Vol. I.
p. 411.

A dilemma may be raised of this
kind. The universality of the law of
causation—in other words, the uniform
course of nature—is the fundamental
principle on which all induction
[Pg 427]
proceeds, the great premise on which all
our science is founded. But if this
law itself be the result only of experience,
itself only a great instance of
induction, so long as nature presents
cases requiring investigation, where
the causes are unknown to us, so long
the law itself is imperfectly established.
How, then, can this law be a guide and
a premiss in the investigations of science,
when those investigations are
necessary to complete the proof of the
law itself? How can this principle
accompany and authorise every step
we take in science, which itself needs
confirmation so long as a process of
induction remains to be performed?
Or how can this law be established by
a series of inductions, in making which
it has been taken for granted?

Objections which wear the air of a
quibble have often this advantage—they
put our knowledge to the test.
The obligation to find a complete answer
clears up our own conceptions.
The observations which Mr Mill
makes on this point, we shall quote at
length. They are taken from his
chapter on the Evidence of the Law of
Universal Causation; the views in
which are as much distinguished for
boldness as for precision.

After having said, that in all the
several methods of induction the universality
of the law of causation is
assumed, he continues:—

Hypotheses.—Mr Mill’s observations
on the use of hypotheses in scientific
investigation, except that they
are characterized by his peculiar distinctness
and accuracy of thought, do
not differ from the views generally entertained
by writers on the subject.
We are induced to refer to the topic,
to point out what seems to us a harsh
measure dealt out to the undulatory
theory of light—harsh when compared
with the reception given to a theory
of Laplace, having for its object to
account for the origin of the planetary
system.

We had occasion to quote a passage
from Mr Mill, in which he remarks
that the majority of scientific men
seem not yet to have completely got
over the difficulty of conceiving matter
to act (contrary to the old maxim)
[Pg 429]
where it is not; “for though,” he
says, “they have at last learned to
conceive the sun attracting the earth
without any intervening fluid, they
cannot yet conceive the sun illuminating
the earth without some such medium.”
But it is not only this difficulty
(which doubtless, however, is
felt) of conceiving the sun illuminating
the earth without any medium by
which to communicate its influence,
which leads to the construction of the
hypothesis, either of an undulating
ether, or of emitted particles. The
analogy of the other senses conducts
us almost irresistibly to the imagination
of some such medium. The
nerves of sense are, apparently, in all
cases that we can satisfactorily investigate,
affected by contact, by impulse.
The nerve of sight itself, we know,
when touched or pressed upon, gives
out the sensation of light. These
reasons, in the first place, conduct us
to the supposition of some medium,
having immediate communication with
the eye; which medium, though we
are far from saying that its existence
is established, is rendered probable by
the explanation it affords of optical
phenomena. At the same time it is
evident that the hypothesis of an
undulating ether, assumes a fluid or
some medium, the existence of which
cannot be directly ascertained. Thus
stands the hypothesis of a luminiferous
ether—in what must be allowed
to be a very unsatisfactory condition.
But a condition, we think, very superior
to the astronomical speculation of
Laplace, which Mr Mill, after scrutinizing
the preceding hypothesis with
the utmost strictness, is disposed to
treat with singular indulgence.

Now, it seems to us that there is
quite as much of hypothesis in this
speculation of Laplace as in the undulatory
theory of light. This atmosphere
of the sun extending to the utmost
limits of our planetary system!
What proof have we that it ever existed?
[Pg 430]
what possible grounds have we for
believing, what motive even for imagining
such a thing, but the very same
description of proof given and rejected
for the existence of a luminiferous
ether—namely, that it enables us to
explain certain events supposed to result
from it? Nor is the thing here
imagined any the less a novelty, because
it bears the old name of an atmosphere.
An atmosphere containing
in itself all the various materials
which compose our earth, and whatever
else may enter into the composition
of the other planets, is as violent
a supposition as an ether, not perceptible
to the senses except by its influence
on the nerves of sight. And
this cooling down of the sun! What
fact in our experience enables us to
advance such a supposition? We
might as well say that the sun was
getting hotter every year, or harder or
softer, or larger or smaller. Surely
Mr Mill could not have been serious
when he says, that “the known laws
of matter authorize us to suppose, that
a body which is constantly giving out
so large an amount of heat as the sun
is, must be progressively cooling”—knowing,
as we do, as little how the
sun occasions heat as how it produces
light. Neither can it be contended
that because no absolutely new substance,
or new property of matter, is
introduced, but a fantastic conception
is framed out of known substances and
known properties, that therefore there
is less of rash conjecture in the supposition.
In fine, it must be felt by
every one who reads the account of
this speculation of Laplace, that the
only evidence which produces the
least effect upon his mind, is the corroboration
which it receives from the
calculations of the mathematician—a
species of proof which Mr Mill himself
would not estimate very highly.

Many are the topics which are
made to reflect a new light as Mr Mill
passes along his lengthened course;
we might quote as instances, his chapters
on Analogy and the Calculation of
Chances: and many are the grave and
severe discussions that would await
us were we to proceed to the close of
his volumes, especially to that portion
of his work where he applies the
canons of science to investigations
which relate to human nature and the
characters of men. But enough for
the present. We repeat, in concluding,
the same sentiment that we expressed
at the commencement, that
such a work as this goes far to redeem
the literature of our age from
the charge of frivolity and superficiality.
Those who have been trained in
a different school of thinking, those
who have adopted the metaphysics of
the transcendental philosophy, will
find much in these volumes to dissent
from; but no man, be his pretensions
or his tenets what they may, who has
been accustomed to the study of philosophy,
can fail to recognize and admire
in this author that acute, patient,
enlarged, and persevering thought,
which gives to him who possesses it
the claim and right to the title of
philosopher. There are few men who—applying
it to his own species of
excellence—might more safely repeat
the Io sono anche! of the celebrated
Florentine.

[Pg 431]

MY COUNTRY NEIGHBOURS.

People are fond of talking of the
hereditary feuds of Italy—the factions
of the Capulets and Montagues, the
Orsini and Colonne—and, more especially,
of the memorable Vendette of
Corsica—as if hatred and revenge
were solely endemic in the regions of

Mere prejudice! There is as good
hating going on in England as elsewhere.
Independent of the personal
antipathies generated by politics, the
envy, hatred, and malice arising out
of every election contest, not a country
neighbourhood but has its raging
factions; and Browns and Smiths
often cherish and maintain an antagonism
every whit as bitter as that of
the sanguinary progenitors of Romeo
and Juliet.

I, for instance, who am but a country
gentleman in a small way—an
obscure bachelor, abiding from year’s
end to year’s end on my insignificant
farm—have witnessed things in my
time, which, had they been said and
done nearer the tropics, would have
been cited far and near in evidence of
the turbulence of human passions,
and that “the heart is deceitful above
all things, and desperately wicked.”
Seeing that they chanced in a homely
parish in Cheshire, no one has been at
the trouble to note their strangeness;
though, to own the truth, none but
the actors in the drama (besides myself,
a solitary spectator) are cognizant
of its incidents and catastrophe.
I might boast, indeed, that I alone
am thoroughly in the secret; for it is
the spectator only who competently
judges the effects of a scene; and
merely changing the names, for reasons
easily conceivable, I ask leave to
relate in the simplest manner a few
facts in evidence of my assertion, that
England has its Capuletti e Montecchi
as well as Verona.

In the first place, let me premise
that I am neither of a condition of
life, nor condition of mind, to mingle
as a friend with those of whose affairs
I am about to treat so familiarly, being
far too crotchety a fellow not to
prefer a saunter with my fishing-tackle
on my back, or an evening
tête-à-tête with my library of quaint
old books, to all the good men’s feasts
ever eaten at the cost of a formal
country visit. Nevertheless, I am
not so cold of heart as to be utterly
devoid of interest in the destinies of
those whose turrets I see peering over
the woods that encircle my corn-fields;
and as the good old housekeeper, who
for these thirty years past has presided
over my household, happens to
have grandchildren high in service in
what are called the two great families
in the neighbourhood, scarcely an
event or incident passes within their
walls that does not find an echo in
mine. So much in attestation of my
authority. But for such an introduction
behind the scenes, much of the
stage business of this curious drama
would have escaped my notice, or
remained incomprehensible.

I am wrong to say the two great
“families;” I should have said the
two great “houses.” At the close
of the last century, indeed, our parish
of Lexley contained but one; one
which had stood there since the days
of the first James, nay, even earlier—a
fine old manorial hall of grand dimensions
and stately architecture, of
the species of mixed Gothic so false
in taste, but so ornamental in effect,
which is considered as betraying the
first symptoms of Italian innovation.

The gardens extending in the rear
of the house were still more decidedly
in the Italian taste, having clipped
evergreens and avenues of pyramidal
yews, which, combined with the intervening
statues, imparted to them
something of the air of a cemetery.
There were fountains, too, which, in
the memory of man, had been never
known to play, the marble basins
being, if possible, still greener than
the grim visages of the fauns and dryads
standing forlorn on their dilapidated
pedestals amid the neglected
alleys.

The first thing I can remember of
Lexley Hall, was peeping as a child
through the stately iron gratings of
the garden, that skirted a by-road
leading from my grandfather’s farm.
[Pg 432]
The desolateness of the place overawed
my young heart. In summer
time the parterres were overgrown
into a wilderness. The plants threw
up their straggling arms so high, that
the sunshine could hardly find its way
to the quaint old dial that stood there
telling its tale of time, though no man
regarded; and the cordial fragrance
of the strawberry-beds, mingling with
entangled masses of honeysuckle in
their exuberance of midsummer blossom,
seemed to mock me, as I loitered
in the dusk near the old gateway,
with the tantalizing illusions of a
fairy-tale—the Barmecide’s feast, or
Prince Desire surveying his princess
through the impermeable walls of her
crystal palace.

But if the enjoyment of the melancholy
old gardens of Lexley Hall
were withheld from me, no one else
seemed to find pleasure or profit therein.
Sir Laurence Altham, the lord
of the manor and manor-house, was
seldom resident in the country.
Though a man of mature years, (I
speak of the close of the last century,)
he was still a man of pleasure—the
ruined hulk of the gallant vessel
which, early in the reign of George
III., had launched itself with unequalled
brilliancy on the sparkling
current of London life.

At that time, I have heard my
grandfather say there was not a mortgage
on the Lexley estate! The timber
was notoriously the finest in the
county. A whole navy was comprised
in one of its coppices; and the
arching avenues were imposing as the
aisles of our Gothic minsters. Alas!
it needed the lapse of only half a
dozen years to lay bare to the eye of
every casual traveller the ancient
mansion, so long

and only guessed at till you approached
the confines of the court-yard.

It was hazard that effected this.
The dice-box swept those noble avenues
from the face of the estate. Soon
after Sir Laurence’s coming of age,
almost before the church-bells had
ceased to announce the joyous event
of the attainment of his majority, he
was off to the Continent—Paris—Italy—I
know not where, and was
thenceforward only occasionally heard
of in Cheshire as the ornament of the
Sardinian or Austrian courts. But these
tidings were usually accompanied by a
shaking of the head from the old
family steward. The timber was to
be thinned anew—the tenants to be
again amerced. Sir Laurence evidently
looked upon the Lexley property
as a mere hotbed for his vices.
At last the old steward turned surly
to our enquiries, and would answer
no further questions concerning his
master. My grandfather’s small farm
was the only plot of ground in the
parish that did not belong to the
estate; and from him the faithful old
servant was as careful to conceal the
family disgraces, as to maintain the
honour of Sir Laurence’s name in
the ears of his grumbling tenants.

The truth, however, could not long
be withheld. Chaisefuls of suspicious-looking
men in black arrived at
the hall; loungers, surveyors, auctioneers—I
know not what. There
was talk in the parish about foreclosing
a mortgage, no one exactly understood
why, or by whom. But it
was soon clear that Wightman, the
old steward, was no longer the great
man at Lexley. These strangers bade
him come here and go there exactly
as they chose, and, unhappily, they
saw fit to make his comings and goings
so frequent and so humiliating, that
before the close of the summer the
old servitor betook himself to his rest
in a spot where all men cease from
troubling. The leaves that dreary
autumn fell upon his grave.

According to my grandfather’s account,
however, few even of his village
contemporaries grieved for old
Wightman. They felt that Providence
knew best; that the old man
was happily spared the mortification
of all that was likely to ensue. For
before another year was out the ring
fence, which had hitherto encircled the
Lexley property, was divided within
itself; a paltry distribution of about
a hundred acres alone remaining attached
to the old hall. The rest was
gone! The rest was the property of
the foreclosee of that hateful mortgage.

Within view of the battlements of
the old manor-house, nearly a hundred
workmen were soon employed in digging
the foundations of a modern
mansion of the noblest proportions.
The new owner of the estate, though
only a manufacturer from Congleton,
chose to dwell in a palace; and by
[Pg 433]
the time his splendid Doric temple
was complete, under the name of Lexley
Park, the vain-glorious proprietor,
Mr Sparks, had taken his seat in Parliament
for a neighbouring borough.

Little was known of him in the
neighbourhood beyond his name and
calling; yet already his new tenants
were prepared to oppose and dislike
him. Though they knew quite as
little personally of the young baronet
by whom they had been sold into
bondage to the unpopular clothier—him,
with the caprice of ignorance,
they chose to prefer. They were
proud of the old family—proud of the
hereditary lords of the soil—proud of
a name connecting itself with the
glories of the reign of Elizabeth, and
the loyalty shining, like a sepulchral
lamp, through the gloomy records of
the House of Stuart. The banners
and escutcheons of the Althams were
appended in their parish church. The
family vault sounded hollow under
their head whenever they approached
its altar. Where was the burial-place
of the manufacturer? In what obscure
churchyard existed the mouldering
heap that covered the remains of the
sires of Mr Jonas Sparks? Certainly
not at Lexley! Lexley knew not, and
cared not to know, either him or his.
It was no fault of the parish that its
young baronet had proved a spendthrift
and alienated the inheritance of
his fathers; and, but that he had preserved
the manor-house from desecration,
they would perhaps have ostracized
him altogether, as having lent
his aid to disgrace their manor with
so noble a structure as the porticoed
façade of Lexley Park!

Meanwhile the shrewd Jonas was
fully aware of his unpopularity and
its origin; and, during a period of
three years, he allowed his ill-advised
subjects to chew, unmolested, the cud
of their discontent. Having a comfortable
residence at the further extremity
of the county, he visited
Lexley only to overlook the works,
or notice the placing of the costly new
furniture; and the grumblers began
to fancy they were to profit as little
by their new masters as by their old.
The steward who replaced the trusty
Wightman, and had been instructed
to legislate among the cottages with
a lighter hand, and distribute Christmas
benefaction in a double proportion,
was careful to circulate in the
parish an impression that Mr Sparks
and his family did not care to inhabit
the new house till the gardens were
in perfect order, the succession houses
in full bearing, and the mansion thoroughly
seasoned. But the Lexleyans
guessed the truth, that he had no
mind to confront the first outbreak of
their ill-will.

Nearly four years elapsed before
he took possession of the place; four
years, during which Sir Laurence
Altham had never set foot in the hall,
and was heard of only through his
follies and excesses; and when Mr
Sparks at length made his appearance,
with his handsome train of equipages,
and surrounded by his still
handsomer family, so far from meeting
him with sullen silence, the tenantry
began to regret that they had
not erected a triumphal arch of evergreens
for his entrance into the park,
as had been proposed by the less eager
of the Althamites.

After all, their former prejudice in favour
of the young baronet was based on
very shallow foundations. What had
he ever done for them except raise
their rents, and prosecute their trespasses?
It was nothing that his forefathers
had endowed almshouses for
their support, or served up banquets
for their delectation—Sir Laurence
was an absentee—Sir Laurence was
as the son of the stranger. The fine
old kennel stood cold and empty, reminding
them that to preserve their
foxes was no longer an article of Lexley
religion; and if any of the old
October, brewed at the birth of the
present baronet, still filled the oaken
hogsheads in the cellars of the hall,
what mattered it to them? No chance
of their being broached, unless to
grace the funeral feast of the lord of
the manor.

To Jonas Sparks, Esq. M.P., accordingly,
they dedicated their allegiance.
A few additional chaldrons
of coals and pairs of blankets, the first
frosty winter, bound them his slaves
for ever. Food, physic, and wine,
were liberally distributed to the sick
and aged whenever they repaired for
relief to the Doric portico; and, with
the usual convenient memory of the
vulgar, the Lexleyans soon began to
remember of the Altham family only
their recent backslidings and ancient
feudal oppressions: while of the
Sparkses they chose to know only
[Pg 434]
what was evident to all eyes—viz.,
that their hands were open and faces
comely.

Into their hearts—more especially
into that of Jonas, the head of the
house—they examined not at all; and
were ill-qualified to surmise the intensity
of bitterness with which, while
contemplating the beauty and richness
of his new domain, he beheld the
turrets of the old hall rising like a
statue of scorn above the intervening
woods. There stood the everlasting
monument of the ancient family—there
the emblem of their pride,
throwing its shadow, as it were, over
his dawning prosperity! But for that
force of contrast thus afforded, he
would scarcely have perceived the
newness of all the objects around him—the
glare of the fresh freestone—the
nakedness of the whited walls. A
few stately old oaks and elms, apparently
coeval with the ancient structure,
which a sort of religious feeling
had preserved from the axe, that they
might afford congenial shade to the
successor of its founder, seemed to
impart meanness and vulgarity to the
tapering verdure of his plantations,
his modern trees—his pert poplars and
mean larches—his sycamores and
planes. Even the incongruity between
his solid new paling and the decayed
and sun-bleached wood of the
venerable fence to which it adjoined,
with its hoary beard of silvery lichen,
was an eyesore to him. Every passer-by
might note the limit and circumscription
dividing the new place from
the ancient seat of the lords of the
manor.

Yet was the landscape of Lexley
Park one of almost unequalled beauty.
The Dee formed noble ornament
to its sweeping valleys; while
the noble acclivities were clothed with
promising woods, opening by rich
vistas to a wide extent of champaign
country. A fine bridge of granite,
erected by the late Sir Windsor Altham,
formed a noble object from the
windows of the new mansion; and
but for the evidence of the venerable
pile, that stood like an abdicated
monarch surveying its lost dominions,
there existed no external demonstration
that Lexley Park had not from the
beginning of time formed the estated
seat of the Sparkses.

The neighbouring families, if
“neighbouring” could be called certain
of the nobility and gentry who
resided at ten miles’ distance, were
courteously careful to inspire the new
settler with a belief that they at least
had forgotten any antecedent state of
things at Lexley; for they had even
reason to congratulate themselves on
the change. Jonas had long been
strenuously active in the House of
Commons in promoting county improvements.
Jonas was useful as a
magistrate, and invaluable as a liberal
contributor to the local charities.
During the first five years of his occupancy,
he did more for Lexley and its
inhabitants than the half-dozen previous
baronets of the House of Altham.

Of the man he had superseded,
meanwhile, it was observed that Mr
Sparks was judiciously careful to
forbear all mention. It might have
been supposed that he had purchased
the estate of the Crown or the Court
of Chancery, so utterly ignorant did
he appear of the age, habits, and
whereabout of his predecessor; and
when informed by Sir John Wargrane,
one of his wealthy neighbours,
that young Altham was disgracing
himself again—that at the public gaming-tables
at Toplitz he had been a
loser of thirty thousand pounds—the
cunning parvenu listened with an air
of as vague indifference as if he were
not waiting with breathless anxiety
the gradual dissipation of the funds,
secured to the young spendthrift by
the transfer of his estate, to grasp at
the small remaining portion of his
property. Unconsciously, when the
tale of Sir Laurence’s profligacy met
his ear, he clenched his griping hand,
as though it already recognized its
hold upon the destined spoil, but not
a word did he utter.

Meanwhile, the family of the new
squire of Lexley were winning golden
opinions on all sides. “The boys
were brave—the girls were fair,” the
mother virtuous, pious, and unpretending.
It would have been scandalous,
indeed, to sneer to shame the
modest cheerfulness of such people,
because their ancestors had not fought
at the Crusades. By degrees, they
assumed an honourable and even eminent
position in the county; and the
first time Sir Laurence Altham condescended
to visit the county-palatine,
he heard nothing but commendations
and admiration of the charming
family at Lexley Park.

[Pg 435]
“Charming family!—a Jonas
Sparks, and charming!” was his supercilious
reply. “I rejoice to find
that the fumier I have been forced
to fling on my worn-out ancestral estate
is fertilizing its barrenness. The
village is probably the better for the
change. But, as regards the society,
I must be permitted to mistrust the
attractions of the brood of a Congleton
manufacturer.”

The young baronet, who now,
though still entitled to be called young,
was disfigured by the premature defeatures
of a vicious life, mistrusted it
all the more, when, on visiting the old
hall, he was forced to recognize the
improvements effected in the neighbouring
property (that he should be
forced to call it “neighbouring!”) by
the judicious administration of the
new owner. It was impossible to
deny that Mr Sparks had doubled its
value, while enhancing its beauties.
The low grounds were drained, the
high lands planted, the river widened,
the forestry systematically organized.
The estate appeared to have attained
new strength and vigour when dissevered
from the old manor-house;
whose shadow might be supposed to
have exercised a baleful influence on
the lands wherever it presided.

But it was not his recognition of
this that was likely to animate the
esteem of Sir Laurence Altham for
Mr Jonas Sparks. On the contrary,
he felt every accession of value to the
Lexley property as so much subtracted
from his belongings; and his detestation
of the upstarts, whose fine mansion
was perceptible from his lordly
towers—like a blot upon the fairness
of the landscape—increased with the
increase of their prosperity.

Without having expected to take
delight in a sojourn at Lexley Hall—a
spot where he had only resided for
a few weeks now and then, from the
period of his early boyhood—he was
not prepared for the excess of irritation
that arose in his heart on witnessing
the total estrangement of the retainers
of his family. For the mortification
of seeing a fine new house,
with gorgeous furniture, and a pompous
establishment, he came armed to
the teeth. But no presentiments had
forewarned him, that at Lexley the
living Althams were already as much
forgotten as those who were sleeping
in the family vault. The sudden glow
that pervaded his whole frame when
he chanced to encounter on the highroad
the rich equipage of the Sparkses;
or the imprecation that burst from his
lips, when, on going to the window of a
morning to examine the state of the
weather for the day, the first objects
that struck him was the fair mansion
in the plain below, laughing as it were
in the sunshine, the deer grouped
under its fine old trees, and the river
rippling past its lawns as if delighting
in their verdure——Yes! there was
decided animosity betwixt the hill and
the valley.

Every successive season served to
quicken the pulses of this growing
hatred. Whether on the spot or at a
distance, a thousand aggravations
sprang up betwixt the parties: disputes
between gamekeepers, quarrels
between labourers, encroachments by
tenants. Every thing and nothing
was made the groundwork of ill-will.
To Sir Laurence Altham’s embittered
feelings, the very rooks of Lexley
Park seemed evermore to infringe
upon the privileges of the rookery at
Lexley Hall; and when, in the parish
church, the new squire (or rather his
workmen, for he was absent at the
time attending his duties in Parliament)
inadvertently broke off the foot
of a marble cherub, weeping its alabaster
tears, at the angle of a monument
to the memory of a certain Sir
Wilfred Altham, of the time of James
II., in raising the woodwork of a pew
occupied by Mr Sparks’s family, the
rage of Sir Laurence was so excessive
as to be almost deserving of a strait-waistcoat.

The enmity of the baronet was all
the more painful to himself that he
felt it to be harmless against its object.
In every way, Lexley Park had
the best of it. Jonas Sparks was not
only rich in a noble income, but in a
charming wife and promising family.
Every thing prospered with him; and,
as to mere inferiority of precedence,
it was well known that he had refused
a baronetcy; and many people even
surmised that, so soon as he was able
to purchase another borough, and give
a seat in Parliament to his second son,
as well as resign his own to the eldest,
he would be promoted to the Upper
House.

The only means of vengeance,
therefore, possessed by the vindictive
man whose follies and vices had been
[Pg 436]
the means of creating this perpetual
scourge to his pride, was withholding
from him the purchase of the remaining
lands indispensable to the completion
of his estate, more especially
as regarded the water-courses, which,
at Lexley Park, were commanded by
the sluices of the higher grounds of
the Hall; and mighty was the oath
sworn by Sir Laurence, that come
what might, however great his exigencies
or threatening his poverty,
nothing should induce him to dispose
of another acre to Jonas Sparks. He
was even at the trouble of executing
a will, in order to introduce a clause
imposing the same reservation upon
the man to whom he devised his small
remaining property—the heir-at-law,
to whom, had he died intestate, it
would have descended without conditions.

“The Congleton shopkeepers,”
muttered he, (whenever, in his solitary
evening rides, he caught sight of
the rich plate-glass windows of the
new mansion, burnished by the setting
sun,) “shall never, never lord it
under the roof of my forefathers!
Wherever else he may set his plebeian
foot, Lexley Hall shall be sacred.
Rather see the old place burned
to the ground—rather set fire to it
with my own hands—than conceive
that, when I am in my grave, it could
possibly be subjected to the rule of
such a barbarian!”

For it had reached the ears of Sir
Laurence—of course, with all the
exaggeration derived from passing
through the medium of village gossip—that
a thousand local legends
concerning the venerable mansion,
sanctified by their antiquity in the
ears of the family, afforded a fertile
source of jesting to Jonas Sparks.
The Hall abounded in concealed staircases
and iron hiding-places, connected
with a variety of marvellous traditions
of the civil wars; besides a
walled-up suite of chambers, haunted,
as becomes a walled-up suite of chambers;
and justice-rooms and tapestried-rooms,
to which the long abandonment
of the house, and the heated
imaginations of the few menials left
in charge of its desolate vastness, attributed
romances likely enough to
have provoked the laughter of a matter-of-fact
man like the owner of Lexley
Park. But neither Sir Laurence
nor his old servants were likely to
forgive this insult offered to the family
legends of a house which had little
else left to boast of. Even the neighbouring
families were displeased to
hear them derided; and my grandfather
never liked to hear a joke on
the subject of the coach-and-four
which was said to have driven into
the court-yard of the Hall on the eve
of the execution of the rebel lords in
1745, having four headless inmates,
who were duly welcomed as guests
by old Sir Robert Altham. Nay, as
a child, I had so often thrilled on my
nurse’s knees during the relation of
this spectral visitation, that I own I
felt indignant if any one presumed to
laugh at a tale which had made me
quake for fear.

Among those who were known to
resent the familiar tone in which Mr
Sparks had been heard to criticise
the pomps and vanities exhibited at
Lexley Hall by the Althams of the
olden time, was a certain General
Stanley, who, inhabiting a fine seat
of his own at about ten miles’ distance,
was fond of bringing over his
visitors to visit the old Hall, as an interesting
specimen of county antiquity.
He knew the peculiarities of
the place, and could repeat the traditions
connected with the hiding-places
better than the housekeeper herself;
and I have heard her say it was a
pleasure to hear him relating these
historical anecdotes with all the fire
of an old soldier, and see his venerable
grey hair blown about as he
stood with his party on the battlements,
pointing out to the ladies the
fine range of territory formerly belonging
to the Althams. The old
lady protested that the general was
nearly as much grieved as herself to
behold the old mansion so shorn of its
beams; and certain it is, that once
when, on visiting the hall after Sir
Laurence had been some years an absentee,
he found the grass growing
among the disjointed stones of the
cloisters and justice-hall, he made a
handsome present to one of the housekeeper’s
nephews, on condition of his
keeping the purlieus of the venerable
mansion free from such disgraceful
evidences of neglect.

All this eventually reached the ears
of the baronet; but instead of making
him angry, as might have been expected,
from one so tetchy and susceptible,
he never encountered General
[Pg 437]
Stanley, either in town or country,
without demonstrations of respect.
Though too reserved and morose for
conversation, Sir Laurence was observed
to take off his hat to him with
a respect he was never seen to show
towards the king or queen.

About this time I began to take
personal interest in the affairs of the
neighbourhood, though my own were
now of a nature to engross my attention.
By my grandfather’s death, I
had recently come into the enjoyment
of the small inheritance which has
sufficed to the happiness of my life;
and, renouncing the profession for
which I was educated, settled myself
permanently at Lexley.

Well do I remember the melancholy
face with which the good old
rector, the very first evening we spent
together, related to me in confidence
that he had three years’ dues in arrear
to him from Lexley Hall; but that so
wretched was said to be the state of Sir
Laurence’s embarrassments, that, for
more than a year, his dread of arrest
had kept him a close prisoner in his
house in London.

“We have not seen him here these
six years!” observed Dr Whittingham;
“and I doubt whether he will ever
again set foot in the county. Since
an execution was put into the Hall, he
has never crossed the threshold, and
I suspect never will. Far better were
he to dispose of the property at once!
Dismembered as it is, what pleasure can
it afford him? And, since he is unlikely
to marry and have heirs, there is less
call upon him to retain this remaining
relic of family pride; yet I am assured—nay,
have good reason to
know, that he has refused a very liberal
offer on the part of Mr Sparks.
Malicious people do say, by the way,
that it was by the advice of Sparks’s
favourite attorneys the execution was
enforced, and that no means have been
left unattempted to disgust him with
the place. Yet he is firm, you see,
and persists in disappointing his creditors,
and depriving himself of the comforts
of life, merely in order that he
may die, as his fathers did before him—the
lord of Lexley Hall!”

“I don’t wonder!” said I, with the
dawning sentiments of a landed proprietor—”‘Tis
a splendid old house,
even in its present state of degradation;
and, by Jove! I honour his pertinacity.”

Thus put upon the scent, I sometimes
fancied I could detect wistful
looks on the part of my prosperous
neighbour of the Park, when, in the
course of Dr Whittingham’s somewhat
lengthy sermons, he directed his
eyes towards the carved old Gothic
tribune, containing the family-pew of
the Althams, in the parish church;
and, whenever I happened to encounter
him in the neighbourhood of the
Hall, his face was so pointedly averted
from the house, as if the mere object
were an offence. I could not but
wonder at his vexation; being satisfied
in my own mind, that sooner or
later the remaining heritage of the
spendthrift must fall to his share.

Judge, therefore, of my surprise,
when one fine morning, as I sauntered
into the village, I found the whole
population gathered in groups on the
little market-place, and discovered
from the incoherent exclamations of
the crowd, that “the new proprietor
of the Hall had just driven through in
a chaise-and-four!”

Yes—”the new proprietor!” The
place was sold! The good doctor’s
prediction was verified. Sir Laurence
was never more to return to
Lexley Hall!

The satisfaction of the villagers almost
equalled their surprise on finding
that General Stanley was their new
landlord. It suited them much better
that there should be two families settled
on the property than one; and
as it was pretty generally reported,
that, in the event of Sparks becoming
the purchaser, he intended to demolish
the old house, and reconsolidate the
estate around his own more commodious
mansion, they were right glad
to find it rescued from such a sentence—General
Stanley, who was the father
of a family, would probably settle
the hall on one of his daughters,
after placing it in the state of repair
so much needed.

When the chaise-and-four returned,
therefore, a few hours afterwards,
through the village, the General was
loudly cheered by his subjects. His
partiality for the place was so well
known at Lexley, that already these
people seemed to behold in him the
guardian of a monument so long the
object of their pride.

For my own part, nothing surprised
me so much in the business as that
Sparks should have allowed the
[Pg 438]
purchase to slip through his fingers. It
was worth thrice as much to him as
to any body else. It was the keystone
of his property. It was the one thing
needful to render Lexley Park the
most perfect seat in the county. But
I was not slow in learning (for every
thing transpires in a small country
neighbourhood) that whatever my
surprise on finding that the old Hall
had changed its master, that of Sparks
was far more overwhelming; that he
was literally frantic on finding himself
frustrated in expectations which formed
the leading interest of his declining
years. For the progress of time
which had made me a man and a landed
proprietor, had converted the stout
active squire into an infirm old man;
and it was his absorbing wish to die
sole owner of the whole property to
which the baronets of the Altham
family were born.

He even indulged in expressions of
irritation, which nearly proved the
means of commencing this new neighbourship
by a duel; accusing General
Stanley of having possessed himself
by unfair means of Sir Laurence’s
confidence, and employed agents,
underhand, to effect the purchase. In
consequence of these groundless representations,
it transpired in the
country that the decayed baronet had
actually volunteered the offer of the
estate to the veteran proprietor of
Stanley Manor; that he had solicited
him to become the proprietor, and
even accommodated him with peculiar
facilities of payment, on condition of
his inserting in the title-deeds an express
undertaking, never to dispose of
the old Hall, or any portion of the property,
to Jonas Sparks of Lexley
Park, or his heirs for ever. The solicitor
by whom, under Sir Laurence’s
direction, the deeds had been prepared,
saw fit to divulge this singular
specification, rather than that a hostile
encounter should run the risk of embruing
in blood the hands of two
grey haired men.

Excepting as regarded the disappointment
of our wealthy neighbour,
all was now established on the happiest
footing at Lexley. The reparation
instantly commenced by the General,
gave employment throughout
the winter to our workmen; and the
evils arising from an absentee landlord
began gradually to disappear.
It was a great joy to me to perceive
that the new proprietor of the Hall
had the good taste to preserve the
antique character of the place in the
minutest portion of his alterations;
and though the old gardens were no
longer a wilderness, not a shrub was
displaced—not a mutilated statue removed.
The furniture had been sold
off at the time of the execution; and
that which came down in cart-loads from
town to replace it, was rigidly in accordance
with the semi-Gothic architecture
of the lofty chambers. Poor
Sparks must have been doubly mortified;
for not only did he find his old
eyesore converted into an irremediable
evil by the restoration of the Hall,
but the supremacy hitherto maintained
in the neighbourhood by the modern
elegance of his house and establishment,
was thrown into the shade
by the rich and tasteful arrangements
of the Hall.

From the contracted look of his
forehead, and sudden alteration of his
appearance, I have reason to think he
was beginning to undergo all the
moral martyrdom sustained for thirty
years past by the unfortunate Sir
Laurence Altham; and were I not by
nature the most contented of men, it
would have sufficiently reconciled me
to the mediocrity of my fortunes, to
see that these two great people of my
neighbourhood—the nobly-descended
baronet and rich parvenu—were miserable
men; that, so long as I could
remember, one or other of them had
been given over to surliness and discontent.

Before the close of the year the
grand old Hall had become one of the
noblest seats in the county. There was
talk about it in all the country round,
and even the newspapers took notice
of its renovation, and of General Stanley’s
removal thither from Stanley
Manor. Many people, of the species
who love to detect spots in the sun,
were careful to point out the insufficiency
of the estate, as at present constituted,
to maintain so fine a house.
But, after all, what mattered this to
General Stanley, who had a fine rent-roll
elsewhere?

The first thing he did, on taking
possession, was to give a grand ball to
the neighbourhood; nor was it till
the whole house was lighted up for
this festive occasion, that people were
fully aware of the grandeur of its proportions.
He was good enough to
[Pg 439]
send me an invitation on so especial
an occasion. But already I had imbibed
the distaste which has pursued
me through life for what is called
society; and I accordingly contented
myself with surveying from a distance
the fine effect produced by the light
streaming from the multitude of windows,
and exhibiting to the whole
country round the gorgeous nature of
the decorations within. To own the
truth, I could scarcely forbear regretting,
as I surveyed them, the gloomy
dilapidation of the venerable mansion.
This modernized antiquity was a very
different thing from the massy grandeur
of its neglected years; and I am
afraid I loved the old house better
with the weeds springing from its
crevices, than with all this carving
and gilding, this ebony, and iron, and
light.

The people of Lexley imagined that
nothing would induce the Sparks’s family
to be seen under General Stanley’s
roof. But we were mistaken.
So much the contrary, that the squire
of Lexley Park made a particular
point of being the first and latest of
the guests—not only because his reconciliation
with his new neighbour
was so recent, but from not choosing
to authenticate, by his absence, the
rumours of his grievous disappointment.

For all the good he was likely to
derive from his visit, the poor man
had better have stayed away; for that
unlucky night laid foundations of evil
for him and his, far greater than any
he had incurred from the animosity of
Sir Laurence. Nay, when in the
sequel these results became matter of
public commentation, superstitious
people were not wanting to hint that
the evil spirit, traditionally said to
haunt one of the wings of the old
manor, and to have manifested itself
on more than one occasion to members
of the Altham family, (and more
especially to the late worthless proprietor
of the Hall,) had acquired a
fatal power over the two supplanters
of the ruined family the moment they
crossed the threshold.

General Stanley, after marrying
late in life, had been some years a
widower—a widower with two daughters,
his co-heiresses. The elder of
these young ladies was a hopeless invalid,
slightly deformed, and so little
attractive in person, or desirous to
attract, that there was every prospect
of the noble fortunes of the General
centring in her sister. Yet this sister,
this girl, had little need of such an
accession to her charms; for she was
one of those fortunate beings endowed
not only with beauty and excellence,
but with a power of pleasing not
always united with even a combination
of merit and loveliness.

Every body agreed that Mary Stanley
was charming. Old and young,
rich and poor, all loved her, all delighted
in her. It is true, the good
rector’s maiden sisters privately hinted
to me their horror of the recklessness
with which—sometimes with her sister,
oftener without, but wholly unattended—she
drove her little pony-chaise
through the village, laughing like a
madcap at pranks of a huge Newfoundland
dog named Sergeant, the
favourite of General Stanley, which,
while escorting the young ladies, used
to gambol into the cottages, overset
furniture and children, and scamper
out again amid a general uproar. For
though Miss Mary was but sixteen,
the starched spinsters decided that
she was much too old for such folly;
and that, if the General intended to
present her at court, it was high time
for her to lay aside the hoyden manners
of childhood.

But, as every one argued against
them, why should this joyous, bright,
and beautiful creature lay aside what
became her so strangely? Mary
Stanley was not made for the formalities
of what is called high-breeding.
Her light, easy, sinuous figure, did not
lend itself to the rigid deportment
of a prude; and her gay laughing
eyes, and dimpled mouth, were ill calculated
to grace a dignified position.
The long ringlets of her profuse auburn
hair were always out of order—either
streaming in the wind, or straying
over her white shoulders—her
long lashes and beautifully defined eyebrows
of the same rich tint, alone preserving
any thing like uniformity—a
uniformity which, combined with her
almost Grecian regularity of features,
gave her, on the rare occasions when
her countenance and figure were at
rest, the air of some nymph or dryad
of ancient sculpture. But to compare
Mary Stanley to any thing of marble
is strangely out of place; for her real
beauty consisted in the ever-varying
play of her features, and a certain
[Pg 440]
impetuosity of movement, that would
have been a little characteristic of the
romp, but that it was restrained by
the spell of feminine sensibility. Heart
was evidently the impulse of every
look and every gesture.

For a man of my years, methinks I
am writing like a lover. And so I
was! From the first moment I saw
that girl, at an humble and unaspiring
distance, I could dream of nothing
else. Every thing and every body
seemed fascinated by Mary Stanley.
When she walked out into the fields
with the General, her two hands clasping,
like those of a child, her father’s
arm, his favourite colts used to come
neighing playfully towards them; and
not the fiercest dog of his extensive
kennel but, even when unmanageable
by the keeper, would creep fawning to
her feet.

It was strange enough, but still
more fortunate, that all the adoration
lavished upon this lovely creature by
gentle and simple, Christian and
brute, provoked no apparent jealousy
on the part of her elder sister. Selina
Stanley was afflicted with a cold,
reserved, unhappy countenance, only
too completely in unison with her disastrous
position. But her heart was
perhaps as genuine as her face was
forbidding; for she loved the merry,
laughing, handsome Mary, more as a
mother her child, than as a sister
nearly of her own years—that is, exultingly,
but anxiously. Every one
else foresaw nothing but prosperity,
and joy, and love, in store for Mary.
Selina prayed that it might prove
so;—but she prayed with tears in
her eyes, and trembling in her soul!
For where are the destinies of persons
thus exquisitely organized—thus
full of love and loveliness—thus readily
swayed to joy or sorrow, by the
trivial incidents of life—characterised
by what the world calls happiness—such
happiness, I mean, as is enjoyed
by the serene and the prudent, the
unexcitable, the unaspiring! Miss
Stanley foresaw only too truly, that
the best days likely to be enjoyed by
her sister, were those she was spending
under her father’s roof—a general
idol—an object of deference and delight
to all around.

At the General’s housewarming,
though not previously introduced into
society, Mary was the queen of the
ball; and all present agreed, that one
of the most pleasing circumstances of
the evening was to watch the animated
cordiality with which she flew
from one to the other of those old
neighbours of Stanley Manor, (whom
she alone had managed to persuade
that a dozen miles was no distance to
prevent their accepting her father’s
invitation;) and not the most brilliant
of her young friends received a more
eager welcome, or more sustained attention
throughout the evening, than
the few homely elderly people, (such
as my friends the Whittinghams,) who
happened to share the hospitality of
General Stanley. I daresay that even
I, had I found courage to accept his
invitation, should have received from
the young beauty some gentle word,
in addition to the kindly smiles with
which she was sure to return my respectful
obeisance whenever we met
accidentally in the village.

Mary was dressed in white, with a
few natural flowers in her hair, which,
owing to the impetuosity of her movements,
soon fell out, leaving only a
stray leaf or two, that would have
looked ridiculous any where but
among her rich, but dishevelled
locks; and the pleasant anxieties of
the evening imparted such a glow to
her usually somewhat pale complexion,
that her beauty is said to
have been, that night, almost supernatural.
She was more like the creature
of a dream than one of those
wooden puppets, who move mechanically
through the world under the
name of well brought-up young ladies.

It will easily be conceived how
much this ball, so rare an event in our
quiet neighbourhood, was discussed,
not only the following day, but for
days and weeks to come. Even at
the rectory I heard of nothing else;
while by my good old housekeeper,
who had a son in service at General
Stanley’s, and a daughter waiting-maid
to Miss Sparks, I was let in to
secrets concerning it of which even
the rectory knew nothing.

In the first place, though Mr Sparks
had peremptorily signified from the
first to his family, his desire that all
should accompany him to Lexley Hall
on this trying occasion, (and it was
only natural he should wish to solace
his wounded pride, by appearing before
his noble neighbour surrounded
by his handsome progeny,) two of his
[Pg 441]
children had risen up in rebellion
against the decree—and for the first
time—for Sparks was happy in a dutiful
and well-ordered family. But the
youngest daughter, Kezia, a girl of
high spirits and intelligence, who fancied
she had been pointedly slighted
by the Misses Stanley, when, in one of
Mary’s harum-scarum expeditions on
her Shetland pony, she had passed
without recognition the better-mounted
young lady of Lexley Park; and
the eldest son, who so positively refused
to accompany his father to the
house of a man by whom Mr Sparks
had inconsiderately represented himself
as aggrieved, that, for once, the
kind parent was forced to play the
tyrant, and insist on his obedience.

It was, accordingly, with a very ill
grace that these two, the prettiest of
the daughters, and by far the handsomest
of his three handsome sons,
made their appearance at the fête.
But no sooner were they welcomed
by General Stanley and his daughters,
than the brother and sister, who
had mutually encouraged each other’s
disputes, hastened to recant their
opinions.

“How could you, dearest father,
describe this courteous, high-bred
old gentleman, as insolent and overbearing?”—whispered
Kezia.

“How could you possibly suppose
that yonder lovely, gracious creature,
intended to treat you with impertinence?”—was
the rejoinder of her
brother; and already the Stanleys
had two enemies the less among their
neighbours at Lexley Park.

On the other hand, the General had
been forced to have recourse to severe
schooling to bring his daughters to a
sense of what was due to his guests,
as regarded the family of a man who
was known to have spoken disparagingly
of them all. Moreover, if the
truth must be owned, Mary was not
altogether free from the prejudices of
her caste; and, proud of her father’s
noble extraction, was apt to pout her
pretty lip on mention of “the people
at Lexley Park;” for the General, who
had no secrets from his girls, had
foolishly permitted them to see certain
letters addressed to him by the eccentric
Sir Laurence Altham, justifying
himself concerning the peculiar clause
introduced into his deeds of conveyance
of his Hall estate, on the grounds
of the degraded origin of “the upstart”
he was so malignantly intent
on discomposing.

“They will spoil our ball, dear
papa—I know these vulgar people will
completely spoil our ball!” said she.
“I think I hear them announced:—’Mr
Jonas Sparks, Miss Basiliza
and Miss Kezia Sparks!’—What
names?”

“The parents of Mr Sparks were
dissenters,” observed the General,
trying to look severe. “Dissenters
are apt to hold to scriptural names.
But name is not nature, Mary; and,
to judge by appearances, this man’s—this
gentleman’s—this Mr Sparks’s
daughters, have every qualification to
be an ornament to society.”

“With all my heart, papa, but I
wish it were not ours!” cried the
wayward girl. “On the present occasion,
especially, I could spare such
an accession to our circle; for I know
that Mr Sparks has presumed to speak
of——”

She was interrupted by a sterner
reproof on the part of the General
than he had ever before administered
to his favourite daughter; and the
consequence of this unusual severity
was the distinguished reception bestowed,
both by Selina and her sister,
on the family from Lexley Park.

Next day, however, General Stanley
found a totally different cause for
rebuke in the conduct of his dear
Mary.

“You talked to nobody last night,
but those Sparks’s!” said he. “Lord
Dudley informed me he had asked
you to dance three times in vain; and
Lord Robert Stanley assured me he
could scarcely get a civil answer from
you!—Yet you found time, Mary, to
dance twice in the course of the evening
with that son of Sparks’s!”

“That son of Sparks’s, as you so
despisingly call him, dearest papa, is
a most charming partner; while Lord
Dudley, and my cousin Robert, are
little better than boors. Everard
Sparks can talk and dance, as well as
they ride across a country. Not but
what he, too, passes for a tolerable
sportsman; and do you know, papa,
Mr Sparks is thinking seriously of
setting up a pack of harriers at Lexley?”

“At Lexley Park!” insisted her
father, who chose to enforce the distinction
instituted by Sir Laurence
Altham. “I fancy he will have to
[Pg 442]
ask my permission first. My land
lies somewhat inconveniently, in case
I choose to oppose his intentions.”

“But you won’t oppose them!—No,
no, dear papa, you sha’n’t oppose
them!”—cried Mary Stanley, throwing
her arms coaxingly round her father’s
neck, and imprinting a kiss on his
venerable forehead. “Why should
we go on opposing and opposing,
when it would be so much happier for
all of us to live together as friends
and neighbours?”

The General surveyed her in silence
for some moments as she looked up
lovingly into his face; then gravely,
and in silence, unclasped her arms
from his neck. For the first time,
he had gazed upon his favourite child
without discerning beauty in her countenance,
or finding favour for her supplications.

“My opinion of Mr Sparks and his
family is not altered since yesterday,”
said he coldly, perceiving that she
was about to renew her overtures for
a pacification. “Your father’s prejudices,
Mary, are seldom so slightly
grounded, that the adulation of a few
gross compliments, such as were paid
you last night by Mr Everard Sparks,
may suffice for their obliteration.
For the future, remember the less I
hear of Lexley Park the better. In
a few weeks we shall be in London,
where our sphere is sufficiently removed,
I am happy to say, from that of
Mr Jonas Sparks, to secure me against
the annoyance of familiarity with him
or his.”

The partiality of his darling Mary
for the handsomest and most agreeable
young man who had ever sought
to make himself agreeable to her, had
sufficed to turn the arguments of General
Stanley as decidedly against
his parvenu neighbours, as, two days
before, his eloquence had been exercised
in their defence.

And now commenced between the
young people and their parents, one
of those covert warfares certain to
arise from similar interdictions. Mr
Sparks—satisfied that he should have
further insults to endure on the part
of General Stanley, in the event of
his son pretending to the hand of the
proud old man’s daughter—sought a
serious explanation with Everard, on
finding that he neglected no opportunity
of meeting Mary Stanley in her
drives, and walks, and errands of village
benevolence; and by the remonstrances
of one father, and peremptoriness
of the other, the young couple
were soon tempted to seek comforts in
mutual confidences. Residing almost
within view of each other, there was
no great difficulty in finding occasion
for an interview. They met, moreover,
naturally, and without effort, in
all the country houses in the neighbourhood;
and so frequently, that I
often wondered they should consider
it worth while to hazard the General’s
displeasure by partaking a few moments’
conversation, every now and
then, among the old thorns by the
water-side, just where the bend of
the river secured them from observation;
or in the green lane leading
from Lexley Park to my farm,
while Miss Stanley took charge of the
pony-chaise during the hasty explanations
of the imprudent couple. Having
little to occupy my leisure during
the intervals of my agricultural pursuits,
I was constantly running against
them, with my gun on my shoulder
or my fishing-rod in my hand. I
almost feared young Sparks might
imagine that I was employed by the
General as a spy upon their movements,
so fierce a glance did he direct
towards me one day when I was unlucky
enough to vault over a hedge
within a few yards of the spot where
they were standing together—Miss
Mary sobbing like a child. But, God
knows! he was mistaken if he thought
I was taking unfair heed of their proceedings,
or likely to gossip indiscreetly
concerning what fell accidentally
under my notice.

Not that a single soul in the neighbourhood
approved General Stanley’s
opposition to the attachment. On the
contrary, from the moment of the
liking between the young people becoming
apparent, the whole country
decided that there could not be a
more propitious mode of reuniting
the dismembered Lexley estates; for
though the General was expressly debarred
from selling Lexley Hall to
Sparks or his heirs, he could not be
prevented bequeathing it to his daughters—the
heirs of Jonas Sparks being
the children of her body. And thus all
objections would have been remedied.

But such was not the proud old
man’s view of the case. He had set
his heart on perpetuating his own
name in his family. He had set his
[Pg 443]
heart on the union of his dear Mary
with her cousin Lord Robert Stanley;
and Everard Sparks might have
been twice the handsome, manly
young fellow he was—twice the gentleman,
and twice the scholar—it
would have pleaded little in his favour
against the predetermined projects of
the positive General. There was certainly
some excuse for his ambition
on Miss Mary’s account. Beauty,
merit, fortune, connexion, every advantage
was hers calculated to do honour
to a noble alliance; and as her
father often exclaimed, with a bitter
sneer, in answer to the mild pleadings
of Selina—”Such a girl as that—a
girl born to be a duchess—to sacrifice
herself to the son of a Congleton manufacturer!”

Two years did the struggle continue—during
the greater part of
which I was a constant eyewitness
of the sorrows which so sobered the
impetuous deportment of the light-hearted
Mary Stanley. Her father
took her to London, with the project
of separation he had haughtily announced;
but only to find, to his
amazement, that Eton and Oxford
had placed the son of Mr Sparks of
Lexley Park, a member of Parliament,
on as good a footing as himself
in nearly all the circles he frequented.
Even when, in the desperation of his
fears, he removed his family to the
Continent, the young lover (as became
the lover of so endearing and
attractive a creature) followed her, at
a distance, from place to place. At
length, one angry day, the General
provoked him to a duel. But Everard
would not lift his hand against
the father of his beloved Mary. An
insult from General Stanley was not
as an offence from any other man.
The only revenge taken by the high-spirited
young man, was to urge the
ungenerous conduct of the father as
an argument with the daughter to
put an end, by an elopement, to a
state of things too painful to be borne.
After much hesitation, it seems, she
most unhappily complied. They were
married—at Naples I think, or Turin,
or some other city of Italy, where we
have a diplomatic resident; and after
their marriage—poor, foolish young
people!—they went touring it about
gaily in the Archipelago and Levant,
waiting a favourable moment to propose
a reconciliation with their respective
fathers—as if the wrath and
malediction of parents was so mere a
trifle to deal with.

The first step taken by General
Stanley, on learning the ungrateful
rebellion of his favourite child, was to
return to England. He seemed to
want to be at home again, the better
to enjoy and cultivate his abhorrence
of every thing bearing the despised
name of Sparks; for now began the
genuine hatred between the families.
Nothing would satisfy the obstinate
old soldier, but that the elder Sparks
had, from the first, secretly encouraged
the views of his son upon the
heiress of Lexley Hall; while Mr
Sparks naturally resented with enraged
spirit the overbearing tone assumed
by his aristocratic neighbour towards
those so nearly his equals.
Every day produced some new grounds
for offence; and never had Sir Laurence
Altham, in the extremity of his
poverty, regarded the thriving mansion
in the valley with half the loathing
which the view of Lexley Park
produced in the mind of General Stanley.
He was even at the trouble of
trenching a plantation on the brow of
the hill, with the intention of shutting
out the detested object. But trees
do not grow so hastily as antipathies;
and the General had to endure the
certainty, that, for the remainder of
his life at least, that beautiful domain
must be unrolled, map-like, at his feet.
Nor is it to be supposed that the battlements
of the old hall found greater
favour in the sight of the parvenu
squire, than when in Sir Laurence’s
time the very sight of them was
wormwood to his soul.

Unhappily, while the Congleton
manufacturer contented himself with
angry words, the gentleman of thirty
descents betook himself to action.
General Stanley swore to be mightily
revenged—and he was so.

On the very day following his return
to England, before he even
visited his desolate country-house, he
sent for Lord Robert Stanley, and
made him the confidant of his indignation—avowed
his former good intentions
in his favour—betrayed all
Mary’s—all Mr Everard Sparks’s disparaging
opposition; and ended by
enquiring whether, since whichever of
his daughters became Lady Robert
Stanley would become sole heiress to
his property, his lordship could make
[Pg 444]
up his mind to accept Selina as a wife?
Proud as he was, the General almost
condescended to plead the cause of his
deformed daughter: enlarging upon her
excellences of character, and, still more,
upon her aversion to society, which
would secure the self-love of her husband
against any public remarks on
her want of personal attractions.

Alas! all these arguments were
thoroughly thrown away. Lord Robert
was, as his cousin Mary had
truly described him, little better than
a boor. But he was also a spendthrift
and a libertine; and had Miss Stanley
been as deformed in mind as she
was in person, he would have joyfully
taken to wife the heiress of ten thousand
a-year, and two of the finest
seats in the county of Chester.

To herself, meanwhile, no hint of
these family negotiations was vouchsafed;
and Selina Stanley had every
reason to suppose—when her cousin
became on a sudden an assiduous visitor
at the house, and very shortly a
declared lover—that their intimacy
from childhood had accustomed his
eye to her want of personal charms—she
had become endeared to him by
her mild and submissive temper. So
little was she aware of her father’s
testamentary dispositions in her favour,
that the interested nature of
Lord Robert’s views did not occur to
her mind; and, little accustomed to
protestations of attachment, Selina’s
heart was not very difficult to soften
towards the only man who had ever
pretended to love her, and whose apparent
attachment promised some
consolation for the loss of her sister’s
society, as well as the chance of reunion
with one whom her father had
sworn should never, under any possible
circumstances, again cross his
threshold.

Six months after General Stanley’s
pride had been wounded to the
quick by the newspaper account of a
marriage between his favourite child
and “a man of the name of Sparks,”
balm was poured into the wound by
another and more pompous paragraph,
announcing the union, by special license,
of the Right Hon. Lord Robert
Stanley and the eldest daughter and
heiress of Lieut.-Gen. Stanley, of
Stanley Manor, only son of the late
Lord Henry Stanley, followed by
the usual list of noble relatives gracing
the ceremony with their presence,
and a flourishing account of the departure
of the happy couple, in a travelling
carriage and four, for their
seat in Cheshire.

This announcement, by the way,
probably served to convey the intelligence
to Mr and Mrs Everard
Sparks; for the General having carefully
intercepted every letter addressed
by Mary to her sister, Lady Robert
had not the slightest idea in what direction
to communicate with one who
possessed an undiminished share in
her affections.

On General Stanley’s arrival in Cheshire,
at the close of the honeymoon,
the most casual observer might have
noticed the alteration which had taken
place in his appearance. Instead of
the sadness I had expected to find in
his countenance after so severe a
stroke as the disobedience of his darling
girl, I never saw him so exulting.
Yet his smiles were not smiles of good-humour.
There was bitterness at
the bottom of every word he uttered;
and a terrible sound of menace rung
in his unnatural laughter. Consciousness
never seemed a moment absent
from his mind, that he had defeated
the calculations of the designing family;
that he had distanced them;
that he was triumphing over them.
Alas! none at present entertained the
smallest suspicion to what extent!

Preparatory to the settlements made
by the General on Lord and Lady
Robert Stanley, it had been found necessary
to place in the hands of his
lordship’s solicitors the deeds of the
Lexley Hall estate; when, lo! to the
consternation of all parties, it appeared
that the General’s title was an unsound
one; that by the general terms
of this ancient property, rights of
heirship could only be evaded by the
payment of a certain fine, after intimation
of sale in a certain form to
the nearest-of-kin of the heir in possession,
which form had been overlooked
or wantonly neglected by Sir
Laurence Altham!

The discovery was indeed embarrassing.
Fortunately, however, the
sum of ten thousand pounds only had
been paid by the General to satisfy the
immediate funds of the unthrifty
baronet; the remainder of the purchase-money
having been left in the
form of mortgage on the property.
There was consequently the less difficulty,
though considerable expense,
[Pg 445]
in cancelling the existing deeds, going
through the necessary forms, and,
after paying the forfeiture to the heir,
(to whom the very existence of his
claims was unknown,) renewing the
contract with Sir Laurence; to whom,
so considerable a sum being still owing,
it was as essential as to General
Stanley that the covenant should be
completed without delay. But all
this occurred at so critical a moment,
that the General had ample cause to
be thankful for the promptitude with
which he decided Selina’s marriage;
for only four days after the signature
of the new deeds, Sir Laurence concluded
his ill-spent life—his death
being, it was thought, accelerated by
the excitement consequent on this
strange discovery, and the investigations
on the part of the heir to which
it was giving rise.

For the clause in the original grant
of the Lexley estate (which dated
from the Reformation) affected the
property purchased by Jonas Sparks
as fully as that which had been assigned
to the General; and the baronet
being now deceased, there was no
possibility of co-operation in rectifying
the fatal error. It was more than
probable, therefore, that Lexley Park,
with all its improvements, was now
the property of John Julius Altham,
Esq.!—the only dilemma still to be
decided by the law, being the extent
to which, his kinsman having died
insolvent and intestate, he was liable
to the suit of Jonas Sparks for the
return of the purchase money, amounting
to L.145,000.

Already the fatal intelligence had
been communicated by the attorneys
of John Julius Altham to those of
the astonished man, who, though still
convinced of the goodness of his cause,
(which, on the strength of certain
various statutes affecting such a case,
he was advised to contest to the utmost,)
foresaw a long, vexatious, and
expensive lawsuit, that would certainly
last his life, and prevent the possibility
of one moment’s enjoyment of
the estate, from which he had received
the usual notice of ejection. Fortunately
for him, the present Mr Altham
was not only a gentleman, and
disposed to exercise his rights in the
most decorous manner; but, of course,
unbiassed by the personal prejudices
so strongly felt by Sir Laurence, and
so unfairly communicated by him to
the General. Still, the question was
proceeding at the snail’s pace rate of
Chancery suits at the commencement
of the present century, and the unfortunate
Congleton manufacturer had
every reason to curse the day when
he had become enamoured of the
grassy glades and rich woodlands of
Lexley; seeing that, at the close of
an honourable and well-spent life, he
was uncertain whether the sons and
daughters to whom he had laboured
to bequeath a handsome independence,
might not be reduced to utter destitution.

Such was the intelligence that saluted
the ill-starred Mary and her
husband on their return to England!
Instead of the brilliant prospects in
which she had been nurtured—disinheritance
met her on the one side, and
ruin on the other!

Her vindictive father had even made
it a condition of his bounties to Lord
and Lady Robert, that all intercourse
should cease between them and their
sister; a condition which the former,
in revenge for the early slights of his
fairer cousin, took care should be
punctually obeyed by his wife.

Till the event of the trial, Mr
Sparks retained, of course, possession
of the Park; but so bitter was the
mortification of the family, on discovering
in the village precisely the same
ungrateful feeling which had so embittered
the soul of Sir Laurence, that
they preferred remaining in London—where
no one has leisure to dwell
upon the mischances of his neighbours,
and where sympathy is as little expected
as conceded. But when Mary
arrived—poor Mary! who had now
the prospect of becoming a mother—and
who, though affectionately beloved
by her husband’s family, saw
they regarded her as the innocent
origin of their present reverses—she
soon persuaded her husband to accompany
her to her old haunts.

“Do not imagine, dearest,” said she,
“that I have any project of debasing
you and myself, by intruding into my
father’s presence. Had we been still
prosperous, Everard, I would have
gone to him—knelt to him—prayed
to him—wept to him—so earnestly,
that his forgiveness could not have
been long withheld from the child he
loved so dearly. I would have described
to him all you are to me—all
your indulgences—all your devotion—and
[Pg 446]
you, too, my own husband,
would have been forgiven. But as it
is, believe me, I have too proud a
sense of what is due to ourselves,
to combat the unnatural hostility in
which my sister and her husband appear
to take their share. O Everard!
to think of Selina becoming the wife
of that coarse and heartless man, of
whom, in former times, she thought
even more contemptuously than I;
and who, with his dissolute habits,
can only have made my poor afflicted
sister his wife from the most mercenary
motives! I dread to think of
what may be her fate hereafter, when,
having obtained at my father’s death
all the advantages to which he looks
forward, he will show himself in his
true colours.”

Thus, even with such terrible prospects
awaiting herself, the good, generous
Mary trembled only to contemplate
those of her regardless sister;
and it was chiefly for the delight
of revisiting the spots where they had
played together in childhood—the
fondly-remembered environs of Stanley
Manor—that she persuaded her husband
to take up his abode in the deserted
mansion at the Park, where,
from prudential motives, Mr Sparks
had broken up his establishment, and
sold off his horses.

Attended by a single servant, in
addition to the old porter and his wife
who were in charge of the house,
Mary trusted that their arrival at
Lexley would be unnoticed in the
neighbourhood. Confining herself
strictly within the boundaries of the
Park, which neither her father nor
the bride and bridegroom were likely
to enter, she conceived that she might
enjoy, on her husband’s arm, those
solitary rambles of which every day
circumscribed the extent; without
affording reason to the General to suppose,
when, discerning every morning
from his lofty terraces the mansion
of his falling enemy, that, in place of
the man he loathed, it contained his
discarded child.

The dispirited young woman, on
the other hand, delighted in contemplating
from the windows of her dressing-room
the towers beneath, whose
shelter she had abided in such perfect
happiness with her doating father and
apparently attached sister. They
loved her no longer, it is true. Perhaps
it was her fault—(she would not
allow herself to conceive it could be a
fault of theirs)—but at all events she
loved them dearly as ever; and it was
comforting to her poor heart to catch
a glimpse of their habitation, and know
herself within reach, should sickness
or evil betide.

“If I should not survive my approaching
time,” thought Mary, often
surveying for hours, through her tears,
the heights of Lexley Hall, and fancying
she could discern human figures
moving from window to window, or
from terrace to terrace; “if I should
be fated never to behold this child,
already loved—this child which is to
be so dear a blessing to us both—in
my last hours my father would not
surely refuse to give me his blessing;
nor would Selina persist in her present
cruel alienation. It is, indeed, a
comfort to be here.”

Her husband thought otherwise.
To him nothing was more trying than
this compulsory sojourn at Lexley;
not that he required other society than
that of his engaging and attached
wife. At any other moment it would
have been delightful to him to enjoy
the country pleasures around them,
with no officious intrusive world to
interpose between their affection. But
in his present uncertainty as to his
future prospects, to be mocked by this
empty show of proprietorship, and
have constantly before his eyes the
residence of the man who had heaped
such contumely on his head, and inflicted
such pain on the gentlest and
sweetest of human hearts, was a state
of moral torment.

In the course of my fishing excursions—(for,
thanks to Mr Sparks’s
neighbourly liberality, I had a card of
general access to his parks)—I frequently
met the young couple; and
having no clue to their secret sentiments,
noticed, with deep regret, the
sadness of Mary’s countenance and
sinister looks of her husband. I feared—I
greatly feared—that they were
not happy together. The General’s
daughter repined, perhaps, after her
former fortunes. The young husband
sighed, doubtless, over the liberty he
had renounced.

It was spring time, and Lord Robert
having satisfied his cravings after the
pleasures of London, by occasional
bachelor visits on pretence of business,
the family were to remain at the Hall
till after the Easter holidays, so that
[Pg 447]
Mary had every expectation of the
accomplishment of her hopes previous
to their departure. Perhaps, in the
bottom of her heart, she flattered herself
that, on hearing of her safety, her
obdurate relations might be moved, by
a sudden burst of pity and kindliness,
to make overtures of reconciliation—at
all events to dispatch words of courteous
enquiry; for she was ever dwelling
on her good fortune that her
father should, on this particular year,
have so retarded the usual period of
his departure. Yet when the report
of these exulting exclamations on her
part reached my ear, I was ungenerous
enough to attribute them to a
very different origin, fancying that the
poor submissive creature was thankful
for being within reach of protection
from conjugal misusage.

Meanwhile, she was so far justified
in one portion of her premises, that no
tidings of her residence at Lexley
Park had as yet reached the ear of her
father. The fact was, that not a soul
had courage to do so much as mention,
in his presence, the name of his once
idolized child; and Lord Robert, having
been apprized of the circumstance,
instantly exacted a promise from his
wife, that nothing should induce her
to hazard her father’s displeasure by
communication with her sister, or by
acquainting the General of the arrival
of the offending pair. The consequence
was, that in the dread of
encountering her sister, (whom she
felt ashamed to meet as the wife of the
man they had so often decried together,)
Lady Robert rarely quitted the
house; and these two sisters, so long
the affectionate inmates of the same
chamber—the sisters who had wept
together over their mother’s deathbed—abided
within sight of each other’s
windows, yet estranged as with the
estrangement of strangers.

And then, we pretend to talk with
horror of the family feuds of southern
nations; and, priding ourselves on our
calm and passionless nature, feel convinced
that all the domestic virtues
extant on earth, have taken refuge in
the British empire!

Every day, meanwhile, I noticed
that the handsome countenance of
Everard Sparks grew gloomier and
gloomier; and how was I to know
that every day he received letters from
his father, announcing the unfavourable
aspect of their suit; and that
(owing, as was supposed, to the suggestions
of General Stanley’s solicitors)
even the conduct of the adverse
party was becoming offensive. The
elder Sparks wrote like a man overwhelmed
with mortification, and stung
by a sense of undeserved injury; and
his appeals to the sympathy and support
of his son, were such as to place
the spirited young man in a most painful
predicament as regarded the family
of his wife.

Unwilling to utter in her presence
an injurious word concerning those
who, persecute her as they might,
were still her nearest and dearest by
the indissoluble ties of nature, all he
could do, in relief to his overcharged
feelings, was to rush forth into the
Park, and curse the day that he was
born to behold all he loved in the
world overwhelmed in one common
ruin.

On such occasions, while pretending
to fix my attention on my float
upon the river, I often watched him
from afar, till I was terrified by the
frantic vehemence of his gestures.
There was almost reason to fancy that
the evil influences of the old Hall were
extending their power over the valley;
and that this distracted young man
was falling into the eccentricities of
Sir Laurence Altham.

After viewing with anxiety the wild
deportment of poor Mary’s husband, I
happened one day to pass along the
lane I have described as skirting the
garden of the manor-house, on my
way homewards to my farm; and on
plunging my eyes, as usual, into the
verdant depths of the clipped yew-walks,
visible through the iron-palisades,
was struck by the contrast
afforded to the scene I had just witnessed,
not only by its aristocratic
tranquillity, but by the grave and subdued
deportment of Lady Robert
Stanley, who was sauntering in one
of the alleys, accompanied by a favourite
dog I had often seen following her
sister in former days, and looking the
very picture of contented egotism.

I almost longed to call aloud to her,
and confide all I knew and all that I
supposed. But what right had I to
create alarms in her sister’s behalf?
What right had I to incite her to disobedience
against the father on whom
she and her husband were dependent?
Better leave things as they were—the
common philosophy of selfish, timid
[Pg 448]
people, afraid of exposing their own
heads to a portion of the storm their
interference may chance to bring
down, while assisting the cause of the
weak against the strong.

I used often to go home and think
of poor Mary till my heart ached.
That young and beautiful creature—that
creature till lately so beloved—to
be thus cruelly abandoned, thus
helpless, thus unhappy! Perhaps not
a soul sympathizing with her but myself—an
obscure, low-born, uninfluential
man, of no more value as a protector
than a willow-wand shivered
from the Lexley plantations! Not so
much as the merest trifle in which I
could demonstrate my good-will. I
thought and thought it over, and
there was nothing I could do—nothing
I could offer. When I did hit upon
some pretext of kindness, I only did
amiss. The fruit season was not begun—nay,
the orchards were only in
blossom—and times were over for
forcing-houses at Lexley Park!
Thinking, therefore, that the invalid
might be pleased with a basket of
Jersey pears, of which a very fine
kind grew in my orchard, I ventured
to send some to her address. But the
very next time I encountered Everard
in the village, he cast a look at
me as if he would have killed me for
my officiousness, or, perhaps, for taking
the liberty to suppose that Lexley
Park was less luxuriously provisioned
than in former years. Nor was it till
long afterwards I discovered that my
old housekeeper (who had taken upon
herself to carry my humble offering
to the park) had not only seen the
poor young lady, but been foolish
enough to talk of Lady Robert in a
tone which appears to have exercised
a cruel influence over her gentle
heart; so that, when her husband returned
home from rabbit-shooting, an
hour afterwards, he found her recovering
from a fainting fit, he visited
upon me the folly of my servant; and
such was the cause of his angry looks.

A few days afterwards, however,
he had far more to reproach his conscience
withal than poor Barbara.
Having no concealments from his
wife, to whom he was in the habit of
avowing every emotion of his heart, he
was rash enough to mention of having
met the travelling carriage of Lord
and Lady Robert on the London
road. They had quitted the Hall ten
days previous to the epoch originally
fixed for their departure.

“Gone—exactly gone!—already at
two hundred miles’ distance from me!”
cried poor Mary, nothing doubting
that her father had, as usual, accompanied
them, and feeling herself now,
for the first time, alone in the dreary
seclusion to which she had condemned
herself, only that she might breathe
the same atmosphere with those she
loved. “Yet they had certainly decided
to remain at the Hall till after
Easter! Perhaps they discovered my
being here, and the discovery hastened
their journey. Unhappy creature
that I am, to have become thus hateful
to those in whose veins my blood
is flowing! Everard, Everard! O,
what have I done that God should
thus abandon me?”

The soothing and affectionate remonstrances
now addressed to her by
her husband, had so far a good effect,
that they softened her despair to
tears. Long and unrestrainedly did
she weep upon his shoulder; tried to
comfort him by the assurance that
she was comforted, or at least that
she would endeavour to seek comfort
from the protection and goodness
whence it had been so often derived.

A few minutes afterwards, having
been persuaded by Everard to rest
herself on the sofa, to recover the effects
of the agitation his indiscreet
communication had excited, she suddenly
complained of cold, and begged
him to close the windows. It was a
balmy April day, with a genial sun
shining fresh into the room. The air
was as the air of midsummer—one of
those days on which you almost see
the small green leaves of spring bursting
from their shelly covering, and
the resinous buds of the chestnut-trees
expanding into maturity. Poor Everard
saw at once that the chilliness of
which his wife complained must be
the effect of illness. More cautious,
however, on this occasion than before,
he enquired, as her shivering increased,
what preparations she had made
for the events which still left her some
weeks for execution. “None. His
sisters had kindly undertaken to supply
her with all she might require;
and the services of the nurse accustomed
to attend his married sister,
were engaged on her behalf. At the
end of the month this woman was to
arrive at Lexley, bringing with her
[Pg 449]
the wardrobe of the little treasure
who was to accord renewed peace and
happiness to its mother.”

Though careful to conceal his anxiety
from his wife, Everard Sparks,
disappointed and distressed, quitted
the room in haste to send for the medical
man who had long been the attendant
of his family. But before he
arrived, the shivering fit of the poor
sufferer had increased to an alarming
degree. A calming potion was administered,
and orders issued that she
was to be kept quiet; but in the consternation
created in the little household
by the communication Dr R.
thought it necessary to make of the
possibility of a premature confinement,
poor Mrs Sparks’s maid, a young inexperienced
woman, dispatched a
messenger to my house for her old
kinswoman, and it was through Barbara
I became acquainted with the
melancholy incidents I am about to
relate.

The sedatives administered failed
in their effect. A fatal shock had
been already given; and while struggling
through that direful night with
the increasing pangs that verified the
doctor’s prognostications, the sympathizing
women around the sufferer
could scarcely restrain their tears at
the courage with which she supported
her anguish, rejoicing in it, as it were,
in the prospect of embracing her
child—when all present were aware
that the compensation was about to
be denied her, that the child was already
dead. Just as the day dawned,
her anxious husband was congratulated
on her safety, and then the truth
could no longer be concealed from
Mary. She asked to see her babe.
Her husband was employed to persuade
her to defer seeing it for an
hour or two, “till it was dressed—till
she was more composed.” But
the truth rushed into her mind, and
she uttered not another word, in the
apprehension of increasing his disappointment
and mortification.

So long did her silence continue,
that, trusting she had fallen asleep,
old Barbara’s granddaughter entreated
poor Everard to withdraw and
leave her to her rest. But the moment
he quitted the room, she spoke, spoke
resolutely, and in a firmer voice than
her previous sufferings had given them
reason to suppose possible.

“Now, then, let me see my boy,”
said she. “I know that he is dead.
But do not be afraid of shocking or
distressing me. I have courage to
look upon the poor little creature for
whom I have suffered so much, and
who, I trusted, would reward me for
all.”

The women remonstrated, as it was
their duty to remonstrate. But when
they saw that opposition on this point
only excited her, dreading an accession
of fever, they brought the poor
babe and laid it on the pillow beside
its mother. That first embrace, to
which she had looked forward with
such intensity of delight, folded to
her burning bosom only a clay-cold
child!

Even thus it was fair to look on—every
promise in its little form, that
its beauty would have equalled that
of its handsome parents; and Mary,
as she pressed her lips to its icy forehead,
fancied she could trace on those
tiny features a resemblance to its
father. Old Barbara, perceiving how
bitterly the tears of the sufferer were
falling on the cheeks of her lost treasure,
now interfered. But the mother
had still a last request to make. A
few downy curls were perceptible on
the temples—in colour and fineness
resembling her own. She wished to
rescue from the grave this slight
remembrance of her poor nameless
offspring; and her wish having been
complied with, she suffered the babe
to be taken from her relaxed and
moveless grasp.

“Leave me the hair,” said she, in
a faint voice. “Thanks—thanks!
I am happy now—I will try to sleep—I
am happy—happy now!”

She slept—and never woke again.
At the close of an hour or two, her
anxious husband, finding she had not
stirred, gently and silently approached
the bedside, and took into his own
the fair hand lying on the coverlid,
to ascertain whether fever had ensued.
Fever? It was already cold
with the damps of death!

Imagine, if you can, the agony and
self-reproach of that bereaved man!
Again and again did he revile himself
as her murderer; accusing himself—her
father—her sister—the whole world.
At one moment, he fancied that her
condition had not been properly
treated by her attendants; at another,
that the medical man ought not to
have left the house. Nay, hours and
[Pg 450]
hours after she was gone for ever—after
the undertakers had commenced
their hideous preparations—even while
she lay stretched before him, white
and cold as marble, he persisted that
life might be still recalled; and, but
for the better discrimination of those
around him, would have insisted on
attempts at resuscitation, calculated
only to disturb, almost sacrilegiously,
the sound peace of the dead!

I was one of the first to learn the
heart-rending news of this beloved being’s
untimely end; for my old woman
having asked permission to
remain with her through the night,
(explaining the exigency of the case,)
I could not forbear hurrying to the
house as soon as it was day, in the
hope of hearing she was a happy mother.
Somehow or other, I had never
contemplated an unfavourable result.
The idea of death never presented
itself to me in common with any thing
so young and fair; and as I walked
through the park, and crossed the
bridge, with the white cheerful mansion
before me, and the morning sun
shining full upon its windows, I
thought how gladsome it looked, but
could not forbear feeling that, even
with the prospect of losing it—even
with the certainty of beggary, Everard,
as a husband and father, was
the fellow most to be envied upon
earth!

I reached the house, and the old
man who answered my ring at the
office entrance, was speechless from
tears. Though usually hard as iron,
he sobbed as if his heart would break.
I asked to speak with Barbara—with
my housekeeper. He told me I could
not—that she was “busy laying out
the body.” I was answered. That
dreadful word told me all—I had no
more questions to ask. I cared not
who survived, or what became of the
survivors. And as I turned sickening
away, to bend my steps homewards,
I remember wondering how that fair
spring morning could shine so bright
and auspiciously, when she was gone
from us. It seemed to triumph in
our loss! Alas! it shone to welcome
a new angel to the kingdom of our
Father who is in heaven!

Suddenly it struck me, that I, too,
had a duty to perform. In that scanty
household there was no one to take
thought of the common forms of life;
so I hastened to the rectory, to suggest
to our good pastor a visit of consolation
to the house of mourning, and
acquaint his sisters with its forlorn
condition. Like myself, they began
exclaiming, “Alas! alas! It was but
the other day that”——reverting to
all the acts of charity and girlish
graces of that dear departed Mary
Stanley, who had been among us as
the shadow of a dream.

Before I left the rectory, Dr Whittingham
had issued his orders; and
lo! as I proceeded homewards, with
a heavy step and a heavier heart, the
sound of the passing bell from Lexley
church pursued me with its measured
toll, till I could scarcely refrain from
sitting me down by the wayside, and
weeping my very soul away.

On reaching the lane I have so
often described as skirting the gardens
of the old Hall, I noticed, through the
palisades, a person, probably one of
the gardeners, sauntering along Lady
Robert’s favourite yew-walk. No!
on a nearer approach, I saw, and almost
shuddered to see, that it was
General Stanley himself (who, I fancied,
had accompanied his son-in-law
to town) taking an early walk, to
enjoy the sweetness of that delicious
morning.

As I drew nearer, I averted my
head. At that moment I had not
courage to look him in the face. I
could scarcely suppose him ignorant
of what had occurred; and, if aware
of the sad event, his obduracy was
unmanly to a degree that filled me
with disgust. But just as I came opposite
the iron gates, he hailed me by
name—more familiarly and courteously
than he was wont—to ask whether
I came from the village, and for
whose death they were tolling?

If worlds had depended on my answer,
I could not have uttered a word!
But I conclude that, catching sight of
my troubled face and swollen eyelids,
the General supposed I had lost some
near and dear friend; for, instead of
renewing his question, he merely
touched his hat, and passed on, leaving
me to proceed in my turn. But the
spectacle of my profound affliction
probably excited his curiosity; for I
found afterwards, that, instead of pursuing
his walk, he returned straight to
the house, and addressed the enquiry
which had so distressed me, to others
having more courage to reveal the
fatal truth. I believe it was the old
[Pg 451]
family butler, who abruptly answered—”For
my poor young lady, General—for
the sweetest angel that ever
trod the earth!”

For my part, I wonder the announcement
did not strike him to
the earth! But he heard it without
apparent emotion; like a man who,
having already sustained the worst
affliction this world can afford, has no
sensibility for further trials. Still the
intelligence was not ineffective. Without
pausing an instant for reflection,
or the indulgence of his feelings, he
set forth on foot to Lexley Park.
With his hat pulled over his eyes,
and a determined air, rather as if
about to execute an act of vengeance
than offer a tardy tribute of tenderness
to his victim, he hurried to the
house—commanded the startled old
servant to show him the way to her
room—entered it—and knelt down
beside the bed on which she lay, with
her dead infant on her arm, asking
her forgiveness, and the forgiveness
of God, as humbly as though he were
not the General Stanley proverbial
for implacability and pride.

Old Barbara, who had not quitted
the room, assured me it was a heart-breaking
sight to behold that white
head bowed down in agony upon the
cold feet of his child. For he felt
himself unworthy to press her helpless
hand to his lips, or remove the cambric
from her face, but called, in broken
accents, upon the name of Mary!
his child! his darling! addressing her
rather with the fondling terms bestowed
upon girlhood than as a woman—a
wife—a mother!

“But a more affecting story still,”
said the old woman, “was to see that
Mr Everard took no more heed of the
General’s sudden entrance than though
it were a thing to be looked for. He
seemed neither to hear his exclamations
nor perceive his distress.” Poor
gentleman! His haggard eyes were
fixed, his mind bewildered, his hopes
blasted for ever, his life a blank. He
neither answered when spoken to, nor
even spoke, when the good rector, according
to his promise, came to announce
that he had dispatched the
fatal intelligence by express to his
family, beseeching his instructions
concerning the steps to be taken for
the burial of the dead.

But why afflict you and myself by
recurring to these melancholy details!
Suffice it, that this dreadful blow effected
what nothing else on earth
could have effected in the mind of
General Stanley. Humbled to the
dust, even the arrival of the once
despised owner of Lexley Park did
not drive him from the house. He
asked his pity—he asked his pardon.
Beside the coffin of his daughter he
expressed all the compunction a generous-hearted
and broken-hearted
man could express; and all he asked
in return, was leave to lay her poor
head in the grave of her ancestors.

No one opposed his desire. The
young widower had not as much consciousness
left as would have enabled
him to utter the negative General
Stanley seemed prepared to expect;
and as to his father, about to abandon
Lexley for ever, to what purpose erect
a family vault in a church which
neither he nor his were ever likely to
see again?

To the chapel at Stanley Manor,
accordingly, were the mother and
child removed. The General wrote
expressly to forbid his son-in-law and
Selina returning to the Hall, on pretence
of sustaining him in his affliction.
He chose to give way to it; he
chose to be alone with his despair.

Never shall I forget the day that
mournful funeral procession passed
through the village! Young and old
came forth weeping to their doors to
bid her a last farewell; even as they
used to come and exchange smiles
with her, in those happy days when
life lay before her, bright—hopeful—without
a care—without a responsibility.
I had intended to pay him the
same respect. I meant, indeed, to
have followed the hearse, at an humble
distance, to its final destination.
But when I rose that morning a sudden
weakness came upon me, and I
was unable to quit my room. I, so
strong, so hardy, who have passed
through life without sickness or doctor,
was as powerless that day as an
infant.

It was from the good rector, therefore,
I heard how the General (on
whom, in consequence of the precarious
condition of the afflicted husband,
devolved the task of chief mourner) sustained
his carriage to perform with dignity
and propriety his duty to the dead.
As he followed the coffin through the
churchyard, crowded by his old pensioners—many
of them praying on
[Pg 452]
their knees as it passed—his step was
as firm and his brow as erect as
though at the head of his regiment.
It was not till all was over—the
mournful ceremony done, the crowd
dispersed, the funeral array departed—that
having descended into the
vault, ere the stone was rolled to the
door of the sepulchre, in order to point
out the exact spot where he wished
her remains to be deposited, so that
hereafter his own might rest by her
side, he renounced all self-restraint,
and throwing himself upon the ground,
gave himself up to his anguish, and
refused to be comforted!

That summer was as dreary a season
at Lexley as the dreariest winter!
Both the Park and the Hall were shut
up; nor did General Stanley ever
again resume his tenancy of the old
manor. When the result of the Chancery
suit left Mr Altham in possession
of the former estate, the General literally
preferred forfeiting the moiety of
the purchase-money he had paid, and
giving up the place to be re-united
with the property, which the rigour
of the law thus singularly restored to
the last heirs of the Althams; and
such was the cause of my neighbour,
the present Sir Julius Altham, regaining
possession of the Hall.

It was not for many years, however,
that the cause was ultimately decided.
There was an appeal against the
Chancellor’s decree; and even after the
decree was confirmed, came an endless
number of legal forms, which so procrastinated
the settlement, that not
only the original unfortunate purchaser,
but poor Everard himself, was
in his grave when the mansion, in
which they had so prided themselves,
was pulled down, and all trace of their
occupancy effaced.

I sometimes ask myself, indeed,
whether the whole of this “strange
eventful history,” with which the
earliest feelings of my heart were
painfully interwoven, really occurred?
whether the manor ever passed for a
time out of the possession of the
ancient house of Altham? whether
the domain, now one and indivisible,
were literally partitioned off—a park
paling interposing only between the
patrician and plebeian. Often, after
spending hour after hour by the river
side, when the fly is on the water and
the old thorns in bloom, I recur to
the first day I came back into Lexley
Park after the funeral had passed
through, and recollect the soreness of
heart with which I lifted my eyes towards
the house, of which every trace
has since disappeared. At that moment
there seemed to rise before me,
sporting among the gnarled branches
of the old thorn-trees, the graceful
form of Mary Stanley, followed by
old Sergeant, bounding and barking
through the fern; and the General
looking on from a distance, pretending
to be angry, and desiring her to come
out of the covert and not disturb the
game. Exactly thus, and there, I
beheld them for the first time. What
would I not give to realize once more,
if only for a day, that happy, happy
vision!

Stanley Manor is let to strangers
during the minority of Lord Robert’s
sickly son; the father being an absentee,
the mother in an early grave.
She lived long enough, however, to
be a repining wife; and my neighbour,
Sir Julius Altham, has more
than once hinted to me, that, of the
whole family, the portion of Selina
most deserved compassion.

To me, however, her callous conduct
towards that gentle sister, always
rendered her the least interesting of
my Country Neighbours.

[Pg 453]

TRAVELS OF KERIM KHAN.[3]

Among the various signs of the
times which mark the changes of
manners in these latter days of the
world, not the least remarkable is the
increasing frequency of the visits paid
by the natives of the East to the regions
of Europe. Time was, within
the memory of most of the present
generation, when the sight of a genuine
Oriental in a London drawing-room,
except in the angel visits, “few
and far between,” of a Persian or
Moorish ambassador, was a rarity beyond
the reach of even the most determined
lion-hunters; and if by any
fortunate chance a stray Persian khan,
or a “very magnificent three-tailed
bashaw,” was brought within the
circle of the quidnuncs of the day,
the sayings and doings of the illustrious
stranger were chronicled with
as much minuteness as if he had been
the denizen of another planet. Every
hair of his beard, every jewel in the
hilt of his khanjar, was enumerated
and criticised; while all oriental etiquette
was violated by the constant
enquiries addressed to him relative to
the number of his wives, and the economy
of his domestic arrangements.
“Mais à present on a changé tout
cela.” The reforms of Sultan Mahmood,
the invention of steam, and
the re-opening of the overland route
to India, have combined to effect a
mighty revolution in all these points.
Osmanlis, with shaven chins and tight
trousers,[4] have long been as plenty
as blackberries in the saloons of the
West, eating the flesh of the unclean
beast, quaffing champagne, and even
(if we have been rightly informed)
figuring in quadrilles with the moon-faced
daughters of the Franks; and
though the natives of the more distant
regions of the East have not yet appeared
among us in such number,
yet the lamb-skin cap of the Persian,
the pugree, or small Indian turban, and
even the queer head-dress of the Parsee,
is far from being a stranger in
our assemblies. We doubt whether
the name of Akhbar Khan himself,
proclaimed at the foot of a staircase,
would excite the same sensation in the
present day, as the announcement of
the most undistinguished wearer of
the turban some ten or twenty years
ago; but of the “Tours” and “Narratives”
which are usually the inevitable
result of such an influx of pilgrims,
our Oriental visitors have as
yet produced hardly their due proportion.
For many years, the travels of
Mirza Abu-Talib Khan, a Hindustani[5]
Moslem of rank and education,
who visited Europe in the concluding
years of the last century, stood alone
as an example of the effect produced
on an Asiatic by his observation of
the manners and customs of the West;
and even of late our stock has not
been much increased. The journal
of the Persian princes (a translation
of which, by their Syrian mehmandar,
Assaad Yakoob Khayat, has been
printed in England for private circulation)
is curious, as giving a picture
of European ways and manners when
viewed through a purely Asiatic medium;
while the remarkably sensible
and well-written narrative of the two
Parsees who lately visited this country
for the purpose of instruction in
naval architecture,[6] differs little from
the description of the same objects
which would be given by an intelligent
and well-educated European, if
they could be presented to him in the
aspect of utter novelty. The latest
[Pg 454]
of these Oriental wanderers in the ungenial
climes of Franguestan, is the
one whose name appears at the head
of this article, and who, with a rare
and commendable modesty, has preferred
introducing himself to the public
under the protecting guidance of
Maga, to venturing, alone and without
a pilot, among the perilous rocks
and shoals of the critics of the Row;
him therefore we shall now introduce,
without further comment, to the favourable
notice of our readers.

Of Kerim Khan himself, the writer
of his narrative, and of his motives
for daring the perils of the kala-pani,
(or black water, the Hindi name for
the ocean,) on a visit to Franguestan,
we have little information beyond
what can be gathered from the MS.
itself. There can be no doubt, however,
that he was a Mussulman gentleman
of rank and consideration, and
of information far superior to that of
his countrymen in general; nor does
it appear that he was driven, like
Mirza Abu-Talib, by political misfortune,
to seek in strange climes the
security which his native land denied
him. His narrative commences abruptly:—”On
the 21st of Ramazan, in
the year of the Hejra 1255,” (Dec. 1,
A.D. 1839,) “between four and five
in the afternoon, I took leave of the
imperial city of Delhi, and proceeded
to our boat, which was at anchor near
the Derya Ganj.” The voyage down
the Jumna, to its junction with the
Ganges at Allahabad, a distance of
not more than 550 miles by land, but
which the endless windings of the
stream increase to 2010 by water,
presents few incidents worthy of notice:
but our traveller observes par
parenthèse, that “though it is said that
the sources of this river have not been
discovered, I have heard from those
who have crossed the Himalaya from
China, that it rises in that country on
the other side of the mountains, and,
forcing its way through them, arrives
at Bighamber. They say that gold is
found there in large quantities, and
the reason they assign is this—the
philosopher’s stone is found in that
country, and whatever touches it becomes
gold, but the stone itself can
never be found!” Near Muttra he
encountered the splendid cortège of
Lord Auckland, then returning to Calcutta
after his famous interview with
Runjeet Singh at Lahore, with such
a suwarree as must have recalled the
pomp and sultanut for which the memory
of Warren Hastings is even yet
celebrated among the natives of India:
“his staff and escort, with the civil
and military officers of government in
attendance on him, amounted to about
4000 persons, besides 300 elephants
and 800 camels.” The noble buildings
of Akbarabad or Agra, the capital
and residence of Akbar and
Shalijehan, the mightiest and most
magnificent of the Mogul emperors,
detained the traveller for a day; and
he notices with deserved eulogium the
splendid mausoleum of Shalijehan and
his queen, known as the Taj-Mahal.
There is nothing that can be compared
with it, and those who have visited the
farthest parts of the globe, have seen
nothing like it.[7] At Allahabad he
launched on the broad stream of the
Ganges; and after passing through
part of the territory of Awadh or
Oude, the insecurity of life and property
in which is strongly contrasted
with the rigid police in the Company’s
dominions, arrived in due time at the
holy city of Benares, the centre of
Hindoo and Brahminical sanctity.

The shrines of Benares, with their
swarms of sacred monkeys and Brahminy
bulls, were objects of little interest
to our Moslem wayfarer, who
on the contrary recounts with visible
satisfaction the destruction of several
of these But Khanas, or idol-temples, by
the intolerable bigotry of Aurungzib,
and the erection of mosques on their
sites. Among the objects of attraction
in the environs of the city, he
particularly notices a famous footprint[8]
upon stone, called the Kadmsherif,
or holy mark, deposited in a
[Pg 455]
mosque near the serai of Aurungabad,
and said to have been brought from
Mekka by Sheik Mohammed Ali
Hazin, whom the translator of his
interesting autobiography (published
in 1830 by the Oriental Society) has
made known to the British public, up
to the period when the tyranny of
Nadir Shah drove him from Persia.
“Here, during his lifetime, he used
to go sometimes on a Thursday, and
give alms to the poor in the name of
God. He was a very learned and
accomplished man; and his writings,
both in prose and verse, were equal
to those of Zahiri and Naziri. When
he first came to India, he resided for
some years at Delhi; but having had
some dispute with the poet-laureate of
the Emperor Mohammed Shah, he
found himself under the necessity of
retiring to Benares, where he lived
in great privacy. As he was a stranger
in the country, was engaged in no
calling or profession, and received no
allowance from the Emperor, it was
never known whence, or how, he was
supplied with the means of keeping
up the establishment he did, which
consisted of some hundred servants,
palanquins, horses, &c. It is said that
when the Nawab Shujah-ed-dowlah
projected his attack on the English in
Bengal, he consulted the Sheik on the
subject, who strongly dissuaded him
from the undertaking. He died
shortly after the battle of Buxar in
1180,” (A.D. 1766.) The battle of
Buxar was fought Oct. 23, 1764; but
that Sheik Ali Hazin died somewhere
about this time, seems more probable
than that his life was extended (as
stated by Sir Gore Ouseley) till
1779; since he describes himself at
the conclusion of his memoirs in 1742,
when only in his 53d year, as “leading
the dullest course of existence in
the dullest of all dull countries, and
disabled by his increasing infirmities
from any active exertion of either body
or mind”—a state of things scarcely
promising a prolongation of life to
the age of ninety.

Resuming his voyage from Benares,
the Khan notices with wonder the
apparition of the steamers plying between
Calcutta and Allahabad, several
of which he met on his course, and
regarded with the astonishment natural
in one who had never before
seen a ship impelled, apparently by
smoke, against wind and tide:—”I
need hardly say how intensely I
watched every movement of this extraordinary,
and to me incomprehensible
machine, which in its passage
created such a vast commotion in the
waters, that my poor little budjrow
(pinnace) felt its effects for the space
of full two hos,” (nearly four miles.)
The picturesque situation of the city
of Azimabad or Patna,[9] extending for
several miles along the right bank of
the Ganges, with the villas and beautiful
gardens of the resident English
interspersed among the houses, is described
in terms of high admiration;
and the mosques, some of which were
as old as the time of the Patan emperors,
are not forgotten by our Moslem traveller
in his enumeration of the marvels
of the city. A few days’ more boating
brought him to Rajmahal; “on one
side of which,” says he, “the country
is called Bengal, and on the other
Poorb, or the East”—a name from which
the independent dynasty of Moslem
kings, who once ruled in Bengal, assumed
the appellation of Poorby-Shaby.
He was now among the rice-fields, the
extent and luxuriance of which surprised
him: “There are a great variety
of sorts, and if a man were to
take a grain of each sort he might
soon fill a lota (water-pot) with them—so
innumerable are the different
kinds. The cultivators who have
measured the largest species, have declared
them to exceed the length of
fifty cubits; but I have never seen
any of this length, though others may
have.” He now entered the Bhagirutti,
or branch of the Ganges leading
to Calcutta, and which bears in the
lower part of its course the better
known name of the Hoogly—while
the main stream to the left is again
subdivided into innumerable ramifications,
the greater part of which lose
themselves among the vast marshes
[Pg 456]
of the Sunderbunds; but he complains,
that “though by this branch large
vessels and steamers pass up and
down to and from the Presidency, the
route is very bad, from the extensive
jungles on both banks, which are
haunted by Thugs and Decoits, (river
pirates:)—indeed I have heard and
read, that the shores of the Ganges
have been infested by freebooters,
pirates, and thieves of all sorts, from
time immemorial.” He escaped unharmed,
however, through these manifold
perils; and passing Murshidabad,
the ancient capital of Bengal, and
other places of less note, his remarks
upon which we shall not stay to quote,
reached the ghauts of Calcutta in
safety.

A place so often described as the
“City of Palaces,” presents little that
is novel in the narrative of the khan;
but he does full justice to the splendour
of the architecture, which he says
“exceeds that of China or Ispahan—a
superiority which arises from the immense
sums which every governor-general
has laid out upon public
works, and in improving and adorning
the city: the Marquis Wellesley,
in particular, expended lakhs of rupees
in this way.” The account which
he gives, however, from a Mahommedan
writer, of the disputes with the
Mogul government which led to the
transference of the British factory and
commerce from its original seat at
Hoogly to Kali-kata,[10] or Calcutta,
differs considerably from that given
by the British historians, if we are to
suppose the events here alluded to
(the date of which the khan does not
mention) to be those which occurred
in 1686 and 1687, when Charnock
defended the factory at Hoogly against
the Imperial deputy, Shaista Khan.
Our traveller’s version of these occurrences
is, that the factories of the
English, which were then established
on the Ghol Ghaut at Hoogly, having
been overthrown by an earthquake,
“Mr Charnock, the head officer of the
factory, purchasing a garden called
Banarasi, had the trees cut down, and
commenced a new building. But
while it was in progress, the principal
Mogul merchants and inhabitants laid
a complaint before Meer Nasir, the
foujdar, (chief of police,) that their
houses and harems would be overlooked,
and great scandal occasioned,
if the strangers should be allowed to
erect such lofty buildings in the midst
of the city.[11] The complaint was referred
by the foujdar to the nawab,
who forthwith issued orders for the
discontinuance of the works, which
were accordingly abandoned. The
Company’s agent, though highly offended
at this arbitrary proceeding,
was unable to resist it, having only
one ship and a few sepoys; and, in
spite of the efforts of the foujdar to
dissuade him, he embarked with all
his goods, and set sail for the peninsula,”
(qu. Indjeli?) “having first
set fire to such houses as were near
the river. At this time, however, the
Emperor Aurungzib was in the Carnatic,
beleaguered by the Mahrattas,
who had cut off all supplies from his
camp; and the Company’s agent in
that country, hearing of this, sent a
large quantity of grain, which had
been recently imported for their own
use, for the relief of the army. Having
thus gained the favour and protection
of the Asylum of the World,
the English were not only permitted
to build factories in various parts of
the country, but were exempted from
the duties formerly laid on their
goods. Charnock returned to Bengal
with the emperor’s firman; and the
nawab, seeing how matters stood,
withdrew his opposition to the erection
of the factory at Hoogly. The
English, however, preferred another
situation, and chose Calcutta, where
a building was soon erected, the same
which is now called the old fort.”
This account, which is in fact more
favourable to the English than that
given by their own writers, is the only
notice of these transactions we have
ever found from a Mahommedan author;
for so small was the importance
attached by the Moguls to these
[Pg 457]
obscure squabbles with a few Frank
merchants, that even the historian
Khafi-Khan, who acted as the emperor’s
representative for settling the
differences which broke out about the
same time in Bombay, makes no allusion
to the simultaneous rupture in
Bengal.

Our author, like Bishop Heber,[12]
and other travellers on the same route,
is struck by the contrast between the
robust and well-fed peasantry of Hindustan
Proper, and the puny rice-eaters
of Bengal; “who eat fish,
boiled rice, bitter oil; and an infinite
variety of vegetables; but of wheaten
or barley bread, and of pulse, they
know not the taste, nor of mutton,
fowl, or ghee, (clarified butter.) The
author of the Riaz-es-Selatin, is indeed
of opinion that such food does
not suit their constitutions, and would
make them ill if they were to eat it”—an
invaluable doctrine to establish
in dieting a pauper population! “As
to their dress, they have barely enough
to cover them—only a piece of cloth,
called a dhoti, wrapped round their
loins, while their head-dress consists
of a dirty rag rolled two or three
times round the temples, and leaving
the crown bare. But the natives of
Hindustan, and even their descendants
to the second and third generation,
always wear the jamah, or long
muslin robe, out of doors, though in
the house they adopt the Bengali custom.
The author of the Kholasat-al
Towārikh, (an historical work,) says
that both men and women formerly
went naked; and no doubt he is right,
for they can hardly be said to do
otherwise now.” Such are the peasants
of Bengal—a race differing from
the natives of Hindustan in language,
manners, food, dress, and personal
appearance; but who, from their vicinity
to the seat of the English Supreme
Government, have served as
models for the descriptions given by
many superficial travellers, as applying
to all the natives of British India,
without distinction! The horrible
Hindu custom of immersing the sick,
when considered past recovery, in the
Ganges, and holding their lower limbs
under water till they expire,[13] excites,
as may be expected, the disgust of the
khan; but the reason which he assigns
for it, “the belief of these people,
that if a man die in his own
house, he would cause the death of
every member of the family by assuming
the form of a bhut or evil spirit,”
is new to us, and appears to be analogous
to the superstitious dread entertained
by the Greeks and Sclavonians,
of a corpse reanimated into a Vroucolochas,
or vampire. “But if a man
escapes from their hands, and recovers
after this treatment, he is shunned by
every one; and there are many villages
in Bengal, called villages of the
dead, inhabited by men who have thus
escaped death; they are considered
dead to society, and no other persons
will dwell in the same villages.”

The stay of the khan in Calcutta
was prolonged for more than a month,
during which time he rented a house
from a native proprietor in the quarter
of Kolitolla. While removing his
[Pg 458]
effects from his boat to this residence,
he became involved in a dispute with
the police, in consequence of the violation
by his servants, through ignorance,
of the regulation which forbids
persons from the Upper Provinces to
enter the city armed; but this unintentional
infringement of orders was
easily explained and arranged by the
intervention of an European friend,
and the arms, of which the police
had taken possession, were restored.
While engaged in preparing for his
voyage, the khan made the best use
of his time in visiting the public buildings,
and other objects of interest,
among which he particularly notices
the minar or column erected in the
maidan, (square,) near the viceregal
palace of the Nawab Governor-General
Bahadur, by a subscription
among the officers of the army, native
as well as English, to the memory
of the late Sir David Ochterlony; but
rates it, with truth, as greatly inferior,
both in dimensions and beauty, to the
famous pillar of the Kootb-Minar near
Delhi. The colossal fortifications of
Fort-William are also duly commemorated;
“they resemble an embankment
externally, but when viewed
from within are exceedingly high—no
foe could penetrate within them, much
less reach the treasures and magazines
in the interior.” Our traveller also
visited the English courts of justice,
in the proceedings of which he seems
to have taken great interest, and was
apparently treated with much hospitality
by many of the European
functionaries and other residents, by
whom he was furnished with numerous
letters of introduction, as well as
receiving much information respecting
the manners and customs of Ingilistan,
or England. The choice of a
ship, and the selection of sea-stock,
were of course matters of grave consideration,
and the more so from the
peculiar unfitness of the habits and
religious scruples of an Indian Moslem
for the privations unavoidable at
sea; but a passage was at last taken
for the khan and his two servants on
board the Edinburgh of 1400 tons,
and it being agreed that he should
find his own provisions, to obviate all
mistakes on the score of forbidden
food, and the captain promising moreover
that his comforts should be carefully
attended to, this weighty negotiation
was at length concluded. It is
due to the khan to say, that whether
from being better equipped, or from
being endued with more philosophy
and forbearance than his compatriot,
Mirza Abu-Talib Khan, (to whom we
have above referred,) he seems to have
reconciled himself to the hardships of
the kala-pani, or ocean, with an exceedingly
good grace; and we find
none of the complaints which fill the
pages of the Mirza against the impurity
of his food, the impossibility of
performing his ablutions in appointed
time and manner, and sundry other
abominations by which he was so grievously
afflicted, that at a time of danger
to the vessel, “though many of
the passengers were much alarmed, I,
for my own part, was so weary of life
that I was perfectly indifferent to my
fate.” Abu-Talib, however, sailed in
an ill-regulated Danish ship; and in
summing up the horrors of the sea, he
strongly recommends his countrymen,
if compelled to brave its miseries, to
embark in none but an English vessel.

During the last days of the khan’s
sojourn in Calcutta, he witnessed the
splendid celebration of the rites of the
Mohurrum, when the slaughter of the
brother Imams, Hassan and Hussein,
the martyred grandsons of the Prophet,
is lamented by all sects of the
faithful, but more especially by the
Rafedhis or Sheahs, the followers of
Ali, “of whom there are many in
Calcutta, though they are less numerous
than the orthodox sect or Sunnis,
from whom they are distinguished,
at this season, by wearing black as
mourning. At the Baitak-Khana (a
quarter of Calcutta) we witnessed the
splendid procession of the Tazîya,[14]
with the banners and flags flying, and
the wailers beating their breasts.”…
“It is the custom here, at this season,
for all the natch-girls (dancers) to sit in
the streets of the Chandnibazar, under
[Pg 459]
canopies decorated with wreaths and
flowers in the most fantastic manner,
and sell sweetmeats, cardamums, betelnuts,
&c., upon stalls, displaying their
charms to the passers-by. I took
a turn here one evening with five
others, and found crowds of people
collected, both strangers and residents:
nor do they ordinarily disperse
till long after midnight.” On the second
day after his visit to this scene
of gaiety, he received notice that the
ship was ready for sea; and on the
8th of Mohurrum 1256, (March 13,
1840,) he accordingly embarked with
his baggage and servants on board the
Edinburgh, which was towed in seven
days, by a steamer, down the river to
Saugor; and the pilot quitting her
the next day at the floating light. “I
now found myself,” (says the khan,)
“for the first time in my life, in the
great ocean, where nothing was to be
seen around but sky and water.”

The account of a voyage at sea, as
given by an Oriental, is usually the
most deplorable of narratives—filled
with exaggerated fears, the horrors of
sea-sickness, and endless lamentations
of the evil fate of the writer, in being
exposed to such a complication of miseries.
Of the wailing of Mirza
Abu-Talib we have already given a
specimen: and the Persian princes,
even in the luxurious comfort of an
English Mediterranean steamer, seem
to have fared but little better, in their
own estimation at least, than the Mirza
in his dirty and disorderly Danish
merchantman. “Our bones cried,
‘Alas! for this evil there is no remedy.’
We were vomiting all the time, and
thus afflicted with incurable evils, in
the midst of a sea which appears
without end, the state of my health
bad, the sufferings of my brothers
very great, and no hope of being
saved, we became most miserable.”
Such is the naïve exposition of his
woes, by H. R. H. Najaf Kooli Mirza;
but Kerim Khan appears, both
physically and morally, to have been
made of different metal. Ere he had
been two days on board we find him
remarking—”I had by this time made
some acquaintance among the passengers,
and began to find my situation
less irksome and lonely;” shortly afterwards
adding—”The annoyances
inseparable from this situation were
relieved, in some measure, by the music
and dancing going on every day except
Sundays, owing to the numerous party
of passengers, both gentlemen and
ladies, whom we had on board—seeing
which, a man forgets his griefs and
troubles in the general mirth around
him.” So popular, indeed, does the
khan appear already to have become,
that the captain, finding that he had
hitherto abstained from the use of his
pipe, that great ingredient in Oriental
comfort, from an idea that smoking
was prohibited on board, “instantly
sent for my hookah, had it properly
prepared for me, and insisted on my
not relinquishing this luxury, the privation
of which he knew would occasion
me considerable inconvenience.”
In other respects, also, he seems to
have been not less happily constituted;
for though he says that “the rolling
and rocking of the ship, when it entered
the dark waters or open sea,
completely upset my two companions,
who became extremely sick”—his
remarks on the incidents of the voyage,
and the novel phenomena which
presented themselves to his view, are
never interrupted by any of those pathetic
lamentations on the instability
of the human stomach, which form so
important and doleful an episode in
the relations of most landsmen, of
whatever creed or nation.

The commencement of the voyage
was prosperous; and the ship ran to
the south before a fair wind, interrupted
only by a few days of partial
calm, till it reached the latitude of
Ceylon, where the appearance of the
flying fish excited the special wonder
of the khan, who was by this time
beginning, under the tuition of his
fellow passengers, to make some progress
in the English language, and had
even attempted to fathom some of the
mysteries of the science of navigation;
“but though I took the sextant which
the captain handed me, and held it precisely
as he had done, I could make
nothing of it.” The regular performance
of the Church service on Sundays,
and the cessation on that day
from the ordinary amusements, is specially
noticed on several occasions,
and probably made a deeper impression
on the mind of our Moslem
friend, from the popular belief current
in India that the Feringhis are men of
no caste, without religious faith or ceremonies—a
belief which the conduct
and demeanour of the Anglo-Indians
in past times tended, in too many
[Pg 460]
instances, to confirm. Off the southern
extremity of Ceylon, the ship was
again becalmed for several days; but
the tedium of this interval was relieved,
not only by the ordinary sea
incidents of the capture of a shark and
the appearance of a whale, (the zoological
distinctions between which and
the true fishes are stated by the khan
with great correctness,) but by the
occurrence of a mutiny on board an
English vessel in company, which was
fortunately quelled by the exertions
of the captain of the Edinburgh.

“The spicy gales of Ceylon,”
blowing off the coast to the distance,
as stated, of fifty miles, (an extremely
moderate range when compared with
the accounts of some other travellers,)
at last brought on their wings the
grateful announcement of the termination
of the calm; but before quitting
the vicinity of this famous island,
(more celebrated in eastern story under
the name of Serendib,) the khan
gives some notices of the legends connected
with its history, which show a
more extended acquaintance with Hindu
literature than the Moslems in
India in general take the trouble of
acquiring. Among the rest he alludes
to the epic of the Ramayuna, and the
bridge built by Rama (or as he calls
him, Rajah Ram Chunder) for the
passage of the monkey army and their
redoubled general, Huniman, from the
Indian continent into the island, in
order to deliver from captivity Seeta,
the wife of the hero. The wind still
continuing favourable, the ship quickly
passed the equator, and the pole-star
was no longer visible—”a proof
of the earth’s sphericity which I was
glad to have had an opportunity of
seeing;” and they left, at a short distance
to the right, the islands of Mauritius
and Bourbon, “which are not
far from the great island of Madagascar,
where the faithful turn their faces
to the north when they pray, as they
turn them to the west in India,” the
kiblah, or point of direction, being in
both cases the kaaba, or temple of
Mekka. They were now approaching
the latitude of the Cape; and our
voyager was astonished by the countless
multitudes of sea-birds which surrounded
the ship, and particularly by
the giant bulk of the albatrosses,
“which I was told remained day and
night on the ocean, repairing to the
coast of Africa only at the period of
incubation.” The Cape of Storms,
however, as it was originally named by
Vasco de Gama, did not fail on this
occasion to keep up its established
character for bad weather. A severe
gale set in from the east, which
speedily increased to a storm. A
sailor fell from “the third stage of the
mainmast,” (the main topgallant yard,)
and was killed on the deck; and as
the inhospitable shores of Africa were
close under their lee, the ship appears
for some time to have been in considerable
danger. But in this (to him)
novel scene of peril, the khan manifests
a degree of self-possession,
strongly contrasting with the timidity
of the royal grandsons of Futteh Ali
Shah, the expression of whose fears
during a gale is absolutely ludicrous.
“We were so miserable that we gave
up all hope; we gave up our souls,
and began to beseech God for forgiveness;
while the wind continued increasing,
and all the waves of the
western sea rose up in mountains, with
never-ceasing noise, till they reached
the planets.” Even after the violence
of the hurricane had in some measure
abated, the sea continued to run so
high that the ports were kept closed
for several days. “At last, however,
they were opened for the purpose of
ventilating the interior; and the band,
which had been silent for some days,
began to play again.” The appearance
of a water-spout on the same afternoon
is thus described:—”An object
became visible in the distance, in
the form of a minaret, and every one
on board crowded on deck to look at
it. On asking what it was, I was told
that what appeared to be a minaret
was only water, which was drawn
up towards the heavens by the force
of the wind, and when this ceased
would fall again into the sea, and was
what we should call a whirlwind. This
is sometimes extremely dangerous to
vessels, since, if it reaches them, it is
so powerful as to draw them out of
the sea in the same manner as it draws
up the water; in consequence of
which many ships have been lost when
they have been overtaken by this wonderful
phenomenon.”

The storm was succeeded by a calm,
which detained the ship for two days
within sight of the lofty mountains
near the Cape. “It was bitterly
cold, for the seasons are here reversed,
and instead of summer, as we should
[Pg 461]
have expected, it was now the depth
of winter. At length, however, (on
the 69th day after our leaving Calcutta,)
a strong breeze sprung up,
which enabled us to set all sail, and
carried us away from this table-land.”
The run from the Cape to St Helena
seems to have been barren of incident,
except an accidental encounter with a
vessel in distress, which proved to be
a slaver which had been captured by
an English cruiser, and had sustained
serious damage in the late storm while
proceeding to the Cape with a prize
crew. On approaching St Helena,
the captain “gave orders for the ship
to be painted, both inside and out, that
the people of the island might not say
we came in a dirty ship; and as we
neared the land, a white flag was
hoisted to apprise those on shore that
there was no one ill on board. In
cases of sickness a yellow flag is displayed,
and then no one is permitted
to land from the ship for fear of contagion.
The island is about twenty-six
miles in circuit, and is constantly
enveloped in fog and mist. It is
said to have been formerly a volcano,
but has now ceased to smoke. The
vegetation is luxuriant, but few of the
flowers are fragrant. I recognised
some, however, both flowers and fruits,
which seemed similar to those of India.
I took the opportunity of landing
with the captain to see the town,
which is small, but extremely well
fortified, the cannon being so numerous
that one might suppose the whole
island one immense iron-foundery. It
is populous, the inhabitants being
chiefly Jews and English; but as it
was Sunday, and all the shops were
shut, it had a dull appearance. After
surveying the town, I ascended a hill
in the country, leading to the tomb of
Napoleon Bonaparte, which is on an
elevated spot, four miles from the
town.

“This celebrated personage was a
native of Corsica; and enjoying a fortunate
horoscope, he entered the
French army, and speedily rose to the
rank of general; and afterwards, with
the consent of the people and the soldiery,
made himself emperor. After
this he conquered several kingdoms,
and the fame of his prowess and his
victories filled all the European world.
When he invaded Russia, he defeated
the Muscovites in several great battles,
and took their capital; but, in
consequence of the intensity of the
cold, several thousands of his army
both men and horses, perished miserably.
This catastrophe obliged him
to return to France, where he undertook
the conquest of another country.
At this time George III. reigned in
England; and having collected all
the disposable forces of his kingdom,
appointed Lord Wellington (the same
general who was employed in the
war against Tippoo Sultan in Mysore)
to command them, and sent
him to combat the French Emperor.
He entered Spain, and forced
the Emperor’s brother, Yusuf, (Joseph,)
who was king of that country,
to fly—till after a variety of battles
and incidents, too numerous to
particularize, the two hostile armies
met at a place called by the English
Waterloo, where a bloody battle was
fought, as famous as that of Pāshān,
between Sohrab and the hero Rustan:
and Napoleon was overthrown and
made prisoner. He was then sent,
though in a manner suitable to his
rank, to this island of St Helena,
where, after a few years, he finished
his earthly career. His tomb is much
visited by all who touch at the island,
and has become a durgah (shrine) for
innumerable visitors from Europe.
There are persons appointed to take
care of it, who give to strangers, in
consideration of a small present, the
leaves and flowers of the trees which
grow round the tomb. No other
Emperor of the Europeans was ever
so honoured as to have had his tomb
made a shrine and place of pilgrimage:
nor was ever one so great a
conqueror, or so renowned for his
valour and victories.”

The remainder of the voyage from
St Helena to England was apparently
marked by no incident worthy of
mention, as the khan notices only the
reappearance of the pole-star on their
crossing the line, and re-entering the
northern hemisphere, and their reaching
once more the latitude of Delhi,
“which we now passed many thousand
miles to our right; after which
nothing of importance occurred till
we reached the British Channel, when
we saw the Scilly Isles in the distance,
and about noon caught a
glimpse of the Lizard Point, and the
south coast of England, together with
the lighthouse: the country of the
French lay on our right at the
[Pg 462]
distance of about eighty miles. I was
given to understand that the whole
distance from St Helena to London,
by the ship’s reckoning, was 6328
miles, and 16,528 from Calcutta.”
In the Downs the pilot came on board,
from whom they received the news
of the attempt recently made by Oxford
on the life of the Queen; and
here the captain, anxious to lose no
time in reaching London, quitted the
vessel as it entered the Thames, “the
sources of which famous river, I was
informed, were near a place called
Cirencester, eighty-eight miles from
London, in the zillah (county) of
Gloucester.” The ship was now
taken in tow by a couple of steam-tugs,
and passing Woolwich, “where
are the war-ships and top-khana (arsenal)
of the English Padishah, at
length reached Blackwall, where we
anchored.”

“I now (continues the khan) returned
thanks to God for having
brought me safe through the wide
ocean to this extraordinary country—bethinking
myself of the answer once
made by a man who had undertaken
a voyage, on being asked by his
friends what he had seen most wonderful—’The
greatest wonder I have
seen is seeing myself alive on land!'”
The troubles of the khan, however,
were far from being ended by his arrival
on terra firma: for apparently
from some mistake or inadvertence,
(the cause of which does not very
clearly appear,) on the part of the
friends whom he had expected to meet
him, he found himself, on landing at
Blackwall and proceeding by the
railway to London, left alone by the
person who had thus far been his
guide, in apartments near Cornhill,
almost wholly unacquainted with the
English language, separated from his
baggage and servants, who were still
on board the Edinburgh, and with no
one in his company but another Hindustani,
as little versed as himself in
the ways and speech of Franguestan.
In this “considerable unhandsome
fix,” as it would be called on the other
side of the Atlantic, the perplexities
of the khan are related with such inimitable
naïveté and good-humour,
that we cannot do better than give
the account of them in his own words.
“As I could neither ask for any
thing, nor answer any question put to
me, I passed the whole night without
a morsel of food or a drop of water:
till in the morning, feeling hungry, I
requested my companion to go to some
bazar and buy some fruit. He replied
that it would be impossible for
him either to find his way to a bazar
through the crowds of people, or to
find his way back again—as all the
houses were so much alike. I then
told him to go straight on in the
street we were in, turning neither to
the right nor the left till he met with
some shop where we might get what
we wanted: and, in order to direct
him to the place on his return, I
agreed to lean half out of the window,
so that he could not fail to see me.
No sooner, however, did he sally
forth, than the people, men, women,
and children, began to stare at him
on all sides, as if he had dropped from
the moon; some stopped and gazed,
and numbers followed him as if he
had been a criminal about being led
to execution. Nor was I in a more
enviable position: the people soon
caught sight of me with my head and
shoulders out of the window; and in
a few minutes a mob had collected
opposite the door. What was I to
do? If I withdrew myself, my friend
on returning would have no mark to
find the house, while, if I remained
where I was, the curiosity of the
crowd would certainly increase. I kept
my post, however, while every one that
passed stopped and gazed like the rest,
till there was actually no room for
vehicles to pass; and in this unpleasant
situation I remained fully an hour,
when seeing my friend returning, I
went down and opened the door for
him. He told me he had gone straight
on, till he came to a fruit-shop, at the
corner of another street, when he
went in, and laying two shillings on
the counter, said in Oordu, (the polished
dialect of Hindustani,) ‘Give
me some fruit.’ The shopman, not
understanding him, spoke to him in
English; to which he replied again
in Oordu, ‘I want some fruit!’
pointing at the same time to the
money, to signify that he wanted two
shillings’ worth of fruit. The man,
however, continued confounded; and
my friend at last, not knowing of
what sort the fruits were, whether
sour or sweet, bitter or otherwise,
ventured, after much hesitation and
fruitless attempts to communicate
with the shopman by signs and
[Pg 463]
gestures, to take up four apples, and then
made his retreat in the best manner
he could, followed, as here, by the
rabble. I at last caught a glimpse of
him, as I have mentioned, and let him
in; and we sat down together, and
breakfasted on these four apples, my
friend taking two of them, and I the
others.”

It must be admitted that our khan’s
first meal in England, and the concomitant
circumstances, were not calculated
to impress him with a very
high idea, either of the comforts of
the country or the politeness of the
inhabitants; but the unruffled philosophy
with which he submitted to
these untoward privations was, ere-long,
rewarded by the arrival of the
East India agent to whose care he had
been recommended, and who, after
putting him in the way of getting his
servants and luggage on shore from
the vessel, took him out in a carriage
to show him the metropolis. “It was,
indeed, wonderful in every point of
view, whether I regarded the immense
population, the dresses and
faces of the men and women, the multitudes
of houses, churches, &c., and
the innumerable carriages running in
streets paved with stone and wood,
(the width and openness of which
seem to expand the heart,) and confining
themselves to the middle of the
road, without overturning any of the
foot-passengers.” The cathedral of
St Paul’s is described with great minuteness
of detail, and the expense of
its erection stated at seventy-three
lakhs of rupees, (about L.750,000;)
“but I have heard that if a similar
edifice were erected in the present
day, it would cost four times as much,
as the cost of every thing has increased
in at least that proportion.”

The difficulties of the khan, from
his ignorance of the language, and
Moslem scruples at partaking of food
not dressed by his own people, were
not yet, however, at an end. For
though, on returning to his lodging
in the evening, he found that his
friend had succeeded in procuring
from the ship a dish of kichiri, (an
Indian mess, composed of rice and
ghee, or clarified butter,) his inability
to communicate with his landlady still
occasioned him considerable perplexity.
“Having ventured to take some
pickles, which I saw on the sideboard,
and finding them palatable, I sent for
the landlady, and tried to explain to
her by signs, pointing to the bottles,
that I wanted something like what
they contained. Alas, for my ignorance!
She thought I wished them
taken out of the room, and so walked
off with them, leaving me in the utmost
astonishment. How was I to
get it back again? it was the only
thing I had to relish my kichiri. I
had, therefore, recourse to this expedient—I
got an apple and pared it,
putting the parings in a bottle with
water; and showing this to the landlady,
intimated, by signs, that I wanted
something like it to eat with my
rice. She asked many questions in
English, and talked a great deal, from
which I inferred that she had at last
discovered my meaning, but five minutes
had hardly elapsed when she
re-appeared, bearing in her hand a
bottle of water, filled with apple-parings
cut in the nicest manner imaginable!
This she placed on the
table in the most respectful manner,
and then retired!”

The good lady, however, conceiving
that her guest was in danger of
perishing with hunger, was benevolently
importunate with him to partake
of some nourishment, or at least
of some tea and toast, “since it is the
custom in this country for every one to
eat five times a-day, and some among
the wealthy are not satisfied even with
this!” The arrival of an English acquaintance,
who explained to the landlady
the religious prejudices of her
lodger, in some measure relieved him
from his embarrassment; but he was
again totally disconcerted, by finding
it impossible, after a long search, to
procure any ghee—an ingredient indispensable
in the composition of every
national dish of India, whether Moslem
or Hindu. “How shall I express
my astonishment at this extraordinary
ignorance? What! do they
not know what ghee is? Wonderful!
This was a piece of news I never expected—that
what abounds in every
little wretched village in India, could
not be purchased in this great city!”
How this unforeseen deficiency was
supplied does not appear; but probably
the khan’s never-failing philosophy
enabled him to bear even
this unparalleled privation with equanimity,
as we hear no further complaints
on the subject. He did not
remain, however, many days in those
[Pg 464]
quarters, finding that the incessant
noise of the vehicles passing day and
night deprived him of sleep; and, by
the advice of his friends, he took a
small house in St John’s Wood, where
he was at once at a distance from the
intolerable clamour of the streets, and
at liberty to live after the fashion of
his own country.

The first place of public resort to
which he directed his steps, appears
to have been the Pantheon bazar in
Oxford Street, whither the familiar
name perhaps attracted him—”for
the term bazar is in use also among
the people of this country;” but he
does not appear to have been particularly
struck by any thing he saw there,
except the richness and variety of the
wares. On the contrary, he complains
of the want of fragrance in the flowers
in the conservatory, particularly the
roses, as compared with those of his
native land—”there was one plantain-tree
which seemed to be regarded as
a sort of wonder, though thousands
grow in our gardens without any sort
of culture.” The presence of the
female attendants at the stalls, a sight
completely at variance with Asiatic
ideas, is also noticed with marked
disapprobation—”Most of them were
young and handsome, and seemed perfect
adepts in the art of selling their
various wares; but I could not help
reflecting, on seeing so many fine
young women engaged in this degrading
occupation, on the ease and comfort
enjoyed by our females, compared
to the drudgery and servile employment
to which the sex are subjected
in this country. Notwithstanding all
the English say of the superior condition
of their women, it is quite evident,
from all I have seen since my
arrival, that their social state is far
below that of our females.” This
sentiment is often repeated in the
course of the narrative, and any one
who has read, in the curious work of
Mrs Meer Hassan Ali, quoted above,
an account of the strict domestic seclusion
in which Moslem females
having any pretensions to rank, or
even respectability, are constantly retained
in India, will not be surprised
at the frequent expression of repugnance,
whenever the writer sees women
engaged in any public or out-of-doors
occupation—a custom so abhorrent
to Oriental, and, above all, to Indian
ideas.

We next find the khan in the Zoological
Gardens, his matter-of-fact
description of which affords an amusing
contrast with that of those veracious
scions of Persian royalty, who
luxuriate in “elephant birds just like
an elephant, but without the proboscis,
and with wings fifteen yards long”—”an
elephant twenty-four feet high,
with a trunk forty feet long;” and
who assure us that “the monkeys act
like human beings, and play at chess
with those who visit the gardens. On
this day a Jew happened to be at this
place, and went to play a game with
the monkey. The monkey beat, and
began to laugh loudly, all the people
standing round him; and the Jew,
exceedingly abashed, was obliged to
leave the place.” The khan, in common
with ourselves, and the generality
of visitors to the Regent’s Park, was
not fortunate enough to witness any
of the wondrous feats which gladdened
the royal eyes of the Shahzadehs—though
he saw some of the apes,
meaning the orang-outan, “drink tea
and coffee, sit on chairs, and eat their
food like human beings.” * * *

“There is no island or kingdom,” (he
continues,) “which has not contributed
its specimens of the animal kingdom
to these gardens: from the elephant
and rhinoceros, to the fly and the
mosquito, all are to be seen here”—but
not even the giraffes, strange as
their appearance must have been to
him, attract any particular notice;
though the sight of the exotics in the
garden draws from him a repetition
of his old complaint, relative to the
want of fragrance in the flowers as
compared with those produced under
the genial sun of India. The ceremony
of the prorogation of Parliament
by the Queen in person was now at
hand, and the khan determined to be
present at this imposing scene. But as
he takes this opportunity to introduce
his observations and opinions on the
laws and customs of this country, we
shall postpone to our next Number the
discussion of these weighty subjects.

[Pg 465]

THE THIRTEENTH.

A Tale of Doom.

It was on a sultry July evening that
a joyous party of young men were
assembled in the principal room of a
wine house, outside the Potsdam gate
of Berlin. One of their number, a
Saxon painter, by name Carl Solling,
was about to take his departure for
Italy. His place was taken in the
Halle mail, his luggage sent to the
office, and the coach was to call for
him at midnight at the tavern, whither
a number of his most intimate friends
had accompanied him, to drink a
parting glass of Rhenish wine to his
prosperous journey.

Supper was over, and some magnificent
melons, and peaches, and plates of
caviare, and other incentives to drinking,
placed upon the table; a row of
empty bottles already graced the sideboard,
while full ones of that venerable
cobweb-mantle appearance, so
dear to the toper, were forthcoming
as rapidly as the thirstiest throats
could desire. The conviviality was
at its height, and numerous toasts had
been given, among which the health
of the traveller, the prosperity of the
art which he cultivated, and of the
land of poetry and song to which he
was proceeding, had not been forgotten.
Indeed, it was becoming difficult
to find any thing to toast, but the
thirst of the party was still unquenched,
and apparently unquenchable.

Suddenly a young man started up,
in dress and appearance the very model
of a German student—in short
frock coat and loose sacklike trousers,
long curling hair hanging over his
shoulders, pointed beard and mustache,
and the scars of one or two sabre
cuts on his handsome animated countenance.

“You want a toast, my friends!”
cried he. “An excuse to drink, as
though drinking needed an excuse
when the wine is good. I will give
you one, and a right worthy one too.
Our noble selves here assembled; all,
so many as we are!” And he glanced
round the table, counting the number
of the guests. “One, two, three,
four—thirteen. We are Thirteen. Es
lebe die Dreizehn!“

He raised his glass, in which the
golden liquor flashed and sparkled,
and set it down, drained to the last
drop.

“Thirteen!” exclaimed a pale-faced,
dark-eyed youth named Raphael,
starting from his seat, and in
his turn counting the company. “‘Tis
true. My friends, ill luck will attend
us. We are Thirteen, seated at a
round table.”

There was evidently an unpleasant
impression made upon the guests by
this announcement. The toast-giver
threw a scornful glance around him—

“What!” cried he, “are we believers
in such nursery tales and old
wives’ superstitions? Pshaw! The
charm shall soon be broken. Halls!
Franz! Winebutt! Thieving innkeeper!
Rascally corkdrawer! where
are you hidden? Come forth! Appear!”

Thus invoked, there toddled into
the room the master of the tavern—a
round-bellied, short-legged individual,
whose rosy gills and Bacchus-like appearance
proved his devotion to the
jolly god whose high-priest he was.

“Sit down here!” cried the mad
student, forcing him into a chair;
“and now, Raphael and gentlemen
all, be pleased to shorten your faces
again, and drink your wine as if one
with a three after it were an unknown
combination of numerals.”

The conversation now took a direction
naturally given to it by what
had just occurred, and the origin and
causes of the popular prejudice against
the number Thirteen were discussed.

“It cannot be denied that there is
something mysterious in the connection
and combination of numbers,”
observed a student in philosophy;
“and Pythagoras was right enough
when he sought the foundation of all
human knowledge in the even and
uneven. All over the world the idea
of something complete and perfect is
associated with even numbers, and of
something imperfect and defective
with uneven ones. The ancients, too,
considered even numbers of good omen,
and uneven ones as unpropitious.”

[Pg 466]
“It is really a pity,” cried the mad
student, “that you philosophers should
not be allowed to invert and re-arrange
history in the manner you deem
fitting. You would soon torture the
crooked stream of time into a straight
line. I should like to know from what
authors you derive your very original
ideas in favour of even numbers. As
far as my reading goes, I find that
number three was considered a sacred
and a fortunate number by nearly all
the sects of antiquity, not excepting
the Pythagoreans. And the early
Romans had such a respect for the
uneven numbers, that they never allowed
a flock of sheep to be of any
number divisible by two.”

The philosopher did not seem immediately
prepared with a reply to
this attack.

“You are all of you looking too far
back for the origin of the curse that
attends the number Thirteen,” interposed
Raphael. “Think only of the
Lord’s Supper, which is rather nearer
to our time than Pythagoras and the
Roman shepherds. It is since then
that Thirteen has been a stigmatized
and fatal number. Judas Iscariot was
the Thirteenth at that sacred table and
believe me it is no childish superstition
that makes men shun so unblest a
number.”

“Here is Solling, who has not given
his opinion yet,” cried another of the
party, “and yet I am sure he has
something to say on the subject. How
now, Carl, what ails thee, man? Why
so sad and silent?”

The painter who, at the commencement
of the evening, had entered
frankly and willingly into the joyous
humour of his friends, had become
totally changed since the commencement
of this discussion on the number
Thirteen. He sat silent and thoughtful
in his chair, and left his glass
untasted before him, while his thoughts
were evidently occupied by some unpleasant
subject. His companions
pressed him for the cause of this
change, and after for some time evading
their questions, he at last confessed
that the turn the conversation had
taken had brought painful recollections
to his mind.

“It is a matter I love not to speak
about,” said he; “but it is no secret,
and least of all could I have any wish
to conceal it from you, my good and
kind friends. We have yet an hour
before the arrival of the mail, and if
you are disposed to listen, I will relate
to you the strange incidents, the recollection
of which has saddened me.”

The painter’s offer was eagerly accepted;
the young men drew their
chairs round the table, and Solling
commenced as follows:—

“I am a native of the small town of
Geyer, in Saxony, of the tin mines of
which place my father was inspector.
I was the twelfth child of my parents
and half an hour after I saw the light
my mother give birth to a Thirteenth,
also a boy. Death, however, was
busy in this numerous family. Several
had died while yet infants, and
there now survive only three besides
myself, and perhaps my twin brother.

“The latter, who was christened Bernard,
gave indications at a very early
age of an eccentric and violent disposition.
Precocious in growth and
strength, wild as a young foal, headstrong
and passionate, full of spiteful
tricks and breakneck pranks, he was
the terror of the family and the neighbours.
In spite of his unamiable qualities,
he was the pet of his father, who
pardoned or laughed at all his mischief,
and the consequence was, that
he became an object of fear and hatred
to his brothers and sisters. Our hatred,
however, was unjust; for Bernard’s
heart was good, and he would have
gone through fire and water for any
of us. But he was rough and violent
in whatever he did, and we dreaded
the fits of affection he sometimes took
for us, almost as much as his less
amiable humours.

“As far back as I can remember,
Bernard received not only from his
brothers, but also from all our playfellows,
the nickname of the Thirteenth,
in allusion, of course, to his
being my mother’s thirteenth child.
At first this offended him grievously,
and many were the sound thrashings
he inflicted in his endeavours to get
rid of the obnoxious title. Finally he
succeeded, but scarcely had he done
so when, from some strange perversity
of character, he adopted as an honourable
distinction the very name he had
taken such pains to suppress.

“We were playing one Sunday afternoon
in the large court of our house;
several of the neighbours’ children
were there, and it chanced that we
were exactly twelve in number. We
[Pg 467]
had wooden swords, and were having
a sort of tournament, from which,
however, we had managed to exclude
Bernard, who, in such games, was
accustomed to hit rather too hard.
Suddenly he bounded over a wall, and
fell amongst us like a thunderbolt.
He had painted his face in red and
black stripes, and made himself a pair
of wings out of an old leathern apron;
and thus equipped and armed with the
largest broomstick he had been able
to find, he showered his blows around
him, driving us right and left, and
shouting out, ‘Room, room for the
mad Thirteenth!’

“Soon after this incident my father
died. Bernard, who had been his
favourite, was as violent in his grief
as he had already shown himself to be
in every thing else. He wept and
screamed like a mad creature, tore his
hair, bit his hands till they bled, and
struck his head against the wall; raved
and flew at every body who came near
him, and was obliged to be shut up
when his father’s coffin was carried out
of the house, or he would inevitably
have done himself or somebody else a
mischief.

“My mother had an unmarried brother
in the town of Marienberg, a
wealthy man, and who was Bernard’s
godfather. On learning my father’s
death he came to Geyer, and invited
his sister and her children to go and
take up their abode with him. But
the worthy man little knew the plague
he was receiving into his house in the
person of his godson. Himself of a
mild, quiet disposition, he was greatly
scandalized by the wild pranks of his
nephew, and made vain attempts to
restrain him within some bounds; but
by so doing he became the aversion
of my brother, who showed his dislike
in every possible way. He gave him
nicknames, broke his china cups and
saucers, by which the old gentleman
set great store, splashed his white silk
stockings with mud as he went to
church, put the house clock an hour
forward or back, and tormented his
kind godfather in every way he could
devise.

“Bernard had not forgotten his title
of the Thirteenth; but it was probable
he would soon have got tired of it,
for it was not his custom to adhere
long to any thing, had not my uncle,
who was a little superstitious, strictly
forbidden him to adopt it. This opposition
was all that was wanting to
make my brother bring forward the
unlucky number upon every possible
occasion. When any body mentioned
the number twelve before him, or
called any thing the twelfth, Bernard
would immediately cry out, ‘And
I am the Thirteenth!’

“No matter when it was, or before
whom; time, place, and persons were
to him alike indifferent. For instance,
one Sunday in church, when the
clergyman in the course of the service
said, ‘Let us sing a portion of
such a psalm, beginning at the twelfth
verse,’ Bernard immediately screamed
out, ‘And I am the Thirteenth!’

“This was a grievous scandal to my
uncle, and Bernard was called that
evening before a tribunal, composed
of his godfather, my mother, and the
old clergyman whom he had so gracelessly
interrupted, and who was also
teacher of Latin and theology at the
school to which Bernard and I went.
But all their reproaches and remonstrances
were lost upon my brother,
who had evidently much difficulty to
keep himself from laughing in their
faces. My mother wept, my uncle
paced the room in great perplexity,
and the worthy old dominie clasped
his hands together, and exclaimed,
‘My child! I fear me, God’s chastisement
will be needed to amend
you.’ The event proved that he was
right.

“It was on the Friday before Christmas-day,
and we were assembled in
school. The near approach of the holidays
had made the boys somewhat
turbulent, and the poor old dominie
had had much to suffer during the whole
day from their tricks and unruliness.
My brother, of course, had contributed
largely to the disorder, much
to the delight of his bosom friend
and companion, the only son of the
master. This boy, whose name was
Albert, was a blue-eyed, fair haired
lad, gentle as a girl. Bernard had
conceived a violent friendship for him,
and had taken him under his protection.
Albert’s father, as may be supposed,
was little pleased at this intimacy,
but yet, out of consideration
for my uncle, he did not entirely forbid
it; and the more so as he perceived
that his son in no respect imitated his
wild playmate, but contented himself
with admiring him beyond all created
beings, and repaying with the warmest
[Pg 468]
affection Bernard’s watchful and jealous
guardianship.

“On the afternoon in question, my
brother surpassed himself in wayward
conceits and mischievous tricks, to the
infinite delight of Albert, who rocked
with laughter at each new prank.
The good dominie, who was indulgence
itself, was instructing us in
Bible history, and had to interrupt
himself every moment to repress the
unruliness of his pupils, and especially
of Bernard.

“It seemed pre-ordained that the lesson
should be an unlucky one. Every
thing concurred to make it so. Our
instructor had occasion to speak of
the twelve tribes of Israel, of the
twelve patriarchs, of the twelve gates
of the holy city. Each of these served
as a cue to my brother, who immediately
shouted out, ‘And I am the
Thirteenth!’ and each time Albert
threw himself back shrieking with
laughter, thus encouraging Bernard
to give full scope to his mad humour.
The poor dominie remonstrated, menaced,
supplicated, but all in vain. I
saw the blood rising into his pale face,
and at last his bald head, in spite of
the powder which sprinkled it, became
red all over. He contained himself,
however, and proceeded to the account
of the Lord’s Supper. He began,
‘And when the hour was come, he
sat down, and the twelve apostles with
him.’

“‘And I am the Thirteenth!’ yelled
Bernard.

“Scarcely were the words uttered,
when a Bible flew across the school,
the noise of a blow, and a cry of anguish
followed, and the old man fell
senseless to the ground. The heavy
Bible, the corners of which were
bound with silver, and that he had
hurled in a moment of uncontrollable
passion at my brother, had missed its
mark, and struck his own son on the
head. Albert lay bleeding on the
floor, while Bernard hung over him
like one beside himself, weeping, and
kissing his wounds.

“The boys ran, one and all, out of
the school-room, shrieking for assistance.
Our cries soon brought the
servants to the spot, who, on learning
what had happened, hastened with us
back to the school, and lifted up the
old master, who was still lying on the
ground near his desk. He had been
struck with apoplexy, and survived
but a few hours. Albert was wounded
in two places, one of the sharp corners
of the Bible having cut open his forehead,
while another had injured his
left eye. After much suffering he
recovered, but the sight of the eye
was gone.

“Bernard, however, had disappeared.
When we re-entered the school-room,
a window which looked into the playground
was open, and there were marks
of footsteps on the snow without. A
short distance further were traces of
blood, where the fugitive had apparently
washed his face and hands in
the snow. We have never seen him
since that day.”

The painter paused, and his friends
remained some moments silent, musing
on the tragical history they had
heard.

“And do you know nothing whatever
of your brother’s fate?” enquired
Raphael at last.

“Next to nothing. My uncle
caused enquiries to be made in every
direction, but without success. Once
only a neighbour at Marienberg, who
had been travelling on the Bohemian
frontier, told us that he had met at a
village inn a wandering clarinet-player,
who bore so strong a resemblance
to my brother that he accosted him
by his name. The musician seemed
confused, and muttering some unintelligible
reply, left the house in haste.
What renders it probable that this
was Bernard is, that he had a great
natural talent for music, and at the
time he left home, had already attained
considerable proficiency on the
clarinet.”

“How old was your brother when
he so strangely disappeared?” asked
one of the party.

“Fifteen, but he looked at least
two years older, for he was stout and
manly in person beyond his age.”

At this moment the rattling of
wheels, and sound of a postilion’s
horn, was heard. The Halle mail
drove up to the door, the guard bawling
out for his passenger. The
young painter took a hasty leave of
his friends, and sprang into the vehicle,
which the next instant disappeared
in the darkness.

There was an overplus of travellers
by the mail that night, and the carriage
in which Solling had got, was
not the mail itself, but a calèche, holding
four persons, which was used as a
[Pg 469]
sort of supplement, and followed close
to the other carriage. Two of the
places were occupied by a Jew horse-dealer
and a sergeant of hussars, who
were engaged in an animated, and to
them most interesting conversation,
on the subject of horse-flesh, to which
the painter paid little attention; but
leaning back in his corner, remained
absorbed in the painful reflections
which the incidents he had been narrating
had called up in his mind. In
spite of his brother’s eccentricities, he
was truly attached to him; and although
eight years had elapsed since
his disappearance, he had not yet
given up hopes of finding him, if still
alive. The enquiries that he and his
uncle had unceasingly made after their
lost relative, had put them, about three
years previous to this time, upon the
trace of a clarinet-player who had
been seen at Venice and Trieste, and
went by the name of Voltojo. This
might have been a name adopted by
Bernard, as being nearly the Italian
equivalent of Geyer, or hawk, the
name of his native town; and Solling
was not without a faint hope, that in
the course of his journey to Rome he
might obtain some tidings of his
brother.

He was roused from his reverie by
the postilion shouting out to the guard
of the mail, which was just before
them on the road, to know when they
were to take up the passenger who
was to occupy the remaining seat in
the calèche.

“Where will the Thirteenth meet
us?” asked the man.

“At the inn at Schoneber,” replied
the guard.

The Thirteenth! The word made
the painter’s blood run cold. The
horse-dealer and the sergeant, who
had begun to doze in their respective
corners, were also disturbed by the
ill-omened sound.

“The Thirteenth! The Thirteenth!”
muttered the Jew in his beard, still
half asleep. “God forbid! Let’s have
no thirteenth!”

A company of travelling comedians,
who occupied the mail, took up the
word. “The Thirteenth is coming,”
said one.

“Somebody will die,” cried another.

“Or we shall be upset and break
our necks,” exclaimed a third.

“No Thirteenth!” cried they all in
chorus. “Drive on! drive on! he
sha’n’t get in!”

This was addressed to the postilion,
who just then pulled up at the door of
a village inn, and giving a blast with
his horn, shouted loudly for his remaining
passenger to appear.

The door of the public-house opened,
and a tall figure, with a small knap-sack
on his shoulder and a knotty
stick in his hand, stepped out and approached
the mail. But when he
heard the cries of the comedians, who
were still protesting against the admission
of a Thirteenth traveller, he
started suddenly back, swinging his
cudgel in the air.

“To the devil with you all, vagabonds
that ye are!” vociferated he.
“Drive on, postilion, with your cage
of monkeys. I shall walk.”

At the sound of the stranger’s
voice, Solling sprang up in the carriage
and seized the handle of the
door. But as he did so, a strong arm
grasped him by the collar, and pulled
him back into his seat. At the same
moment the carriage drove on.

“The man is drunk,” said the sergeant,
who had misinterpreted his fellow-passenger’s
intentions. “It is
not worth while dirtying your hands,
and perhaps getting an ugly blow, in
a scuffle with such a fellow.”

“Stop, postilion, stop!” shouted
Solling. But the postilion either did
not or would not hear, and some time
elapsed before the painter could persuade
his well-meaning companion of
his peaceable intentions. At length
he did so, and the carriage, which had
meanwhile been going at full speed,
was stopped.

“You will leave my luggage at the
first post-house,” said Solling, jumping
out and beginning to retrace his
steps to the village, which they had
now left some distance behind them.

The night was pitch-dark, so dark
that the painter was compelled to feel
his way, and guide himself by the line
of trees that bordered the road. He
reached the village without meeting a
living creature, and strode down the
narrow street amid the baying of the
dogs, disturbed by his footfall at that
silent hour of the night. The inn
door was shut, but there was a light
glimmering in one of the casements.
He knocked several times without any
body answering. At length a woman’s
head was put out of an upper window.

[Pg 470]
“Go your ways,” cried a shrill
voice, “and don’t come disturbing honest
folk at this time o’ night. Do
you think we have nought to do but
to open the door for such raff as you?
Be off with you, you vagabond, and
blow your clarinet elsewhere.”

“You are mistaken, madam,” said
Solling; “I am no vagabond, but a
passenger by the Halle mail, and”—

“What brings you here, then?”
interrupted the virago; “the Halle
mail is far enough off by this.”

“My good madam,” replied the
painter in his softest tone, “for God’s
sake tell me who and where is the
person who was waiting for the mail
at your hotel.”

“Ha! ha!” laughed the hostess,
considerably mollified by the madam
and the hotel. “The mad Italian
musician, the clarinet fellow? Why, I
took you for him at first, and wondered
what brought him back, for he
started as soon as the mail left the
door. He’d have done better to have
got into it, with a dark night and a
long road before him. Ha! ha! He’s
mad, to be sure.”

“His name! His name!” cried
Solling, impatiently.

“His name? How can I recollect
his outlandish name? Fol—Vol——”

“Voltojo!” cried the painter.

“Voltojo! yes, that’s it. Ha! ha!
What a name!”

“It is he!” cried Solling, and without
another word dashed off full speed
along the road he had just come. He
kept in the middle of the causeway,
straining his eyes to see into the darkness
on either side of him, and wondering
how it was he had not met
the object of his search as he came to
the village. He ran on, occasionally
taking trees and fingerposts for men,
and cursing his ill luck when he saw
his mistake. The sweat poured down
his face in streams, and his knees began
to knock together with fatigue.
Suddenly he struck his foot against a
stone lying in the road, and fell, cutting
his forehead severely upon some pebbles.
The sharp pain drew a cry
from him, and a man who had been
lying on the grass at the roadside,
sprang up and hastened to
his assistance. At that moment a
flash of summer lightning lit up the
road.

“Bernard! Bernard!” cried the
painter, throwing his arms round
the stranger’s neck. It was his
brother.

Bernard started back with a cry of
horror.

“Albert!” he exclaimed in a hollow
voice, “Cannot your spirit rest?
Do you rise from the grave to persecute
me?”

“In God’s name, my dear brother,
what mean you? I am Carl—Carl,
your twin brother.”

“Carl? No! Albert! I see that horrid
wound on your brow. It still bleeds!”

The painter grasped his brother’s
hand.

“I am flesh and blood,” said he,
“and no spirit. Albert still lives.”

“He lives!” exclaimed Bernard,
and clasped his brother in his arms.

Explanations followed, and the
brothers took the road to Berlin.
When the painter had replied to Bernard’s
questions concerning their family,
he in his turn begged his brother
to relate his adventures since
they parted, and above all to give his
reasons for remaining so long severed
from his friends and home.

“Although I fully believed Albert
killed by the blow he received,” replied
Bernard, “it was no fear of
punishment for my indirect share in
his death, that induced me to fly.
But when I saw the father senseless
on the ground, and the son expiring
before my eyes, I felt as if I was accursed,
as if the brand of Cain were
on my brow, and that it was my fate
to roam through the world an isolated
and wretched being. When you all
ran out of the school to fetch assistance,
it seemed to me as though each
chair and bench and table in the room
received the power of speech, and
yelled and bellowed in my ears the
fatal number which has been the
cause of all my misfortunes—’Thirteen!
Thirteen! Thou art the Thirteenth,
the Accursed One!’

“I fled, and since that day no rest
or peace has been mine. Like my
shadow has this unholy number
clung to me. Wherever I went, in
all the many lands I have wandered
through, I carried with me the
curse of my birth. At every turn it
met me, aggravating my numerous
hardships, embittering my rare moments
of joy. If I entered a room
where a cheerful party was assembled,
all rose and shrunk from me as from
one plague-tainted. They were twelve—I
[Pg 471]
was the Thirteenth. If I sat down
at a dinner-table, my neighbour left
his chair, and the others would say,
‘He fears to sit by you. You are
the Thirteenth.’ If I slept at an inn—there
were sure to be twelve persons
sleeping there; my bed was the
Thirteenth, or my room would be number
Thirteen, and I was told that the
former landlord had shot or hung
himself in it.

“At length I left Germany, in the
vain hope that the spell would not
extend beyond the land of my birth.
I took ship at Trieste for Venice.
Scarcely were we out of port when a
violent storm arose, and we were
driven rapidly towards a rocky and
dangerous coast. The steersman
counted the seamen and passengers, and
crossed himself. We were thirteen.

“Lots were drawn who should be
sacrificed for the salvation of the
others. I drew number thirteen, and
they put me ashore on a barren rock,
where I passed a day and night half
dead with cold and drenched with sea
water. At length an Illyrian fisherman
espied me, and took me off in his boat.

“It is unnecessary to relate to you in
detail my wanderings during the last
eight years, or if I do, it shall be at
some future time. My clarinet enables
me to live in the humble manner
I have always done. You remember,
probably, that I had some
skill in it, which I have since much
improved. When travelling, my
music was generally taken as payment
for my bed and supper at the
petty hostelries at which I put up;
and when I came to a large town, I
remained a few days, and usually
gained more than my expenses.

“About a year since, I made some
stay at Copenhagen, and at last, getting
wearied of that city, I put myself
on board a ship, without enquiring
whither it was bound. It took me to
Stralsund.

“The day of my arrival, there was a
shooting-match in the suburb beyond
the Knieper, and I hastened thither
with my clarinet. It was a sort of
fair, and I wandered from one booth
to the other, playing the joyous mountain
melodies which I had not once
played since my departure from Marienberg.
God knows what brought
them into my head again; but it did
my heart good to play them, and a
feeling came over me, that I should
like once more to have a home, and
to leave the weary rambling life I had
so long led.

“I had great success that day, and
the people thronged to hear the wandering
Italian musician. Many were
the jugs of beer and glasses of wine
offered to me, and my plate was soon
full of shillings. As I left off playing,
an old greyheaded man pressed
through the crowd, and gazed earnestly
at me. His eyes filled with
tears, and he was evidently much
moved.

“‘What a likeness!’ he exclaimed.
‘He is the very picture of my Amadeus.
I could fancy he had risen out
of the sea. The same features, the
sane voice and manner.’

“He came up to me and took my
hand. ‘If you do not fear a high
staircase,’ said he with a kindly smile,
‘come and visit me. I live on the
tower of St Nicholas’s Church. Your
clarinet will sound well in the free
fresh air, and you will find those there
who will gladly listen.’ So saying,
he left me.

“The old man’s name was Elias
Kranhelm, better known in Stralsund
as the old Swede; he was the town
musician, and had the care of the
bells of St Nicholas. The next day
was Sunday, and I hastened to visit
him. His kind manner had touched
me, unaccustomed as I was to kindness
or sympathy from the strangers
amongst whom I always lived. When
I was halfway up the stairs leading
to the tower, the organ began to play
below me, and I recognised a psalm
tune which we used often to sing for
our old schoolmaster at Marienberg.
I stopped a moment to listen, and
thoughts of rest and home again came
over me.

“I was met at the tower door by
old Kranhelm, in his Sunday suit
of black; large silver buckles at his
knees and shoes, and a round black
velvet cap over his long white hair.
His clear grey eyes smiled so kindly
upon me, his voice was so mild, and
his greeting so cordial, that I thought
I had never seen a more pleasing
old man. He welcomed me as though
I had been an old friend, and without
further preface, asked me if I
should like to become his substitute,
and perform the duties for which
his great age had begun to unfit him.
His only son, on whom he had reckoned
[Pg 472]
to take his place, had left him
some time previously, to become a
sailor on board a Norwegian ship,
and had been drowned in his very
first voyage. It was my extraordinary
likeness to this son that had made
him notice me; and the good, simple-hearted
old man seemed to think that
resemblance a sufficient guarantee
against any risk in admitting a perfect
stranger into his house and intimacy.

“‘My post is a profitable one,’ said
he; ‘and, in consideration of my long
services, the worshipful burgomaster
has given me leave to seek an assistant,
now that I am getting too old for
my office. Consider then, my son,
if the offer suits you. You please me,
and I mean you well. But here comes
my Elizabeth, who will soon learn to
like you if you are a good lad.’

“As he spoke, a young girl entered
the room, with a psalm-book in her
hand, and attired in an old-fashioned
dress, which was not able, however,
to conceal the elegance of her figure,
and the charms of her blooming countenance.

“‘How think you, Elizabeth?’ said
her father. ‘Is he not as like our
poor Amadeus as one egg is to another?’

“‘I do not see the likeness, my dear
father,’ replied Elizabeth, looking
timidly at me, and then casting down
her eyes, and blushing.

“I accepted the old man’s offer with
joy, and took up my dwelling in the
other turret of the church tower. My
occupation was to keep the clock
wound up, to play the evening hymn
on the balcony of the tower, and to
strike the hours upon the great bell
with a heavy hammer.

“I soon felt the good effect of repose,
and of the happy, tranquil life I now
led; my spirits improved, and I began
to forget the curse which hung
over me—to forget, in short, that I
was the unlucky Thirteenth. Old
Kranhelm’s liking for me increased
rapidly, and, in less than three months,
I was Elizabeth’s accepted lover.
Time flew on; the wedding-day was
fixed, and the bridal-chamber prepared.

“It was on Friday evening, exactly
eight days ago, that I went out with
Elizabeth, and walked down to the
port to look at a large Swedish ship
that had just arrived. The passengers
were landing, and one amongst
them immediately attracted our attention.

“This was a tall, lean, raw-boned
woman, apparently about forty years
of age, who held in her hand a long,
smooth staff, which she waved about
her, nodding her head, and muttering,
as she went, in some strange, unintelligible
dialect. Her dress consisted
of a huge black fur cloak, and a cape
of the same colour fringed with red.
Her whole manner and appearance
were so strange, that a crowd assembled
round her as soon as she set foot
on shore.

“‘Hallo! comrade,’ cried one of
the sailors of the vessel that had
brought her, to a boatman who was
passing. ‘Hallo! comrade, do you
want a job? Here’s a witch to take
to Hiddensee.’

“We asked the sailor what he meant;
and he told us that this strange woman
was a Lapland witch, who every
year, in the dog-days, made a journey
to the island of Hiddensee, to gather
an herb which only grew there, and
was essential in her incantations.

“Meantime, the witch was calling
for a boat, but no one understood her
language, or else they did not choose
to come. My unfortunate propensity
to all that is supernatural or fantastic
impelled me, with irresistible force, towards
her. In vain Elizabeth held
me back. I pushed my way through
the crowd, until we found ourselves
close to the Lapland woman, who
measured us from head to foot with
her bright and glittering eyes. Slipping
a florin into her hand, I gave her
to understand, as well as I could, that
we wished to have our fortunes told.
She took my hand, and, after examining
it, made a sign that she either
could or would tell me nothing. She
then took the hand of Elizabeth, who
hung upon my arm, trembling like an
aspen leaf, and gazing intently upon
it, muttered a few words in broken
Swedish. I did not understand them,
but Elizabeth did, and, starting back,
drew me hastily out of the crowd.

“‘What did she say?’ enquired I,
as soon as we were clear of the
throng.

“Elizabeth seemed much agitated,
and had evidently to make a strong
effort before she could reply.

“‘Nothing,’ answered she, at last;
‘nothing, at least, worth repeating.
[Pg 473]
And yet ’tis strange; it tallies exactly
with a prediction made to my mother
when I was an infant, that I should
one day be in peril from the number
Thirteen. This strange woman cautioned
me against the same number,
and bade me beware of you, for that
you were the Thirteenth!’

“Had the earth opened under my feet,
or the lightning from heaven fallen on
my head, I could not have felt a greater
shock than was communicated to
me by these words. I know not what
I said in reply, or how I got home.
Elizabeth, doubtless, observed my
agitation, but she made no remark
on it. I felt her arm tremble upon
mine as we walked along, and by a
furtive glance at her face saw that she
was pale as death. Not a word passed
between us during our walk back to
the tower, on reaching which she
shut herself up in her room. I pleaded
a severe headach and wish to lie
down; and, begging the old man to
strike the hours for me, retired to my
chamber.

“It would be impossible to give an
idea of the agony of mind I suffered
during that evening. I thought at
times I was going mad, and there were
moments when I felt disposed to put
an end to my existence by a leap from
the tower window. Again, then, this
curse that hung over me was in full
force. Again had that fatal number
raised itself before me like an iron
wall, interposed between me and all
earthly happiness. Wearied out at
length by the storm within me, I fell
asleep.

“As may be supposed, I was followed
in my troubled slumbers by the recollection
of my misery. Each hour
that struck awoke me out of the most
hideous dreams to a scarce less hideous
reality. When midnight came,
and the hammer clanged upon the
great bell, a strange fancy took possession
of my mind that it would this
night strike Thirteen, and that at the
thirteenth stroke the clock, the tower,
the city, and the whole world, would
crumble into atoms. Again I fell
asleep and dreamt. I thought that
my head was changed into a mighty
bronze bell, and that I hung in the
tower and heard the clock beside me
strike Thirteen. Then came the old
schoolmaster, who yet, at the same
time, had the features of Elizabeth’s
father; and, as he drew near me, I
saw that the hammer he held in his
hand was no hammer, but a large silver-bound
Bible. In my despair I
made frightful efforts to cry out and
to tell him that I was no bell, but a
man, and that he should not strike me;
but my voice refused its service and
my tongue clove to my palate. The
greyhaired old man came up to me,
and struck thirteen times on my forehead,
till my brains gushed out at my
eyes.

“By daybreak the next morning I
was two leagues from Stralsund, having
left a few hurried ill-written lines
in my room, pleading I know not what
urgent family affairs, and a dislike to
leave-taking, as excuses for my sudden
departure. Over field and meadow,
through rivers and forests, on I went,
as though hell were at my heels, flying
from my destiny. But the further
I got from Stralsund the more
did I regret all I left there—my beautiful
and affectionate mistress, her
kind-hearted father, the peaceful happy
life I led on the top of the old
tower. The vow I had made to fly
from the haunts of men, and seek in
some desert the repose which my evil
fate denied me among my fellows, that
vow became daily more difficult to
keep. And yet I went on, dreading
to depart from my determination, lest
I should encounter some of those bitter
deceptions and cruel disappointments
that had hitherto been my lot
in life. Shame, too, at the manner in
which I had left the tower, withheld
me, or else I think I should already be
on my road back to Stralsund. But
now I have met you, brother, and that
my mind is relieved by the knowledge
that I have not, even indirectly, Albert’s
death to reproach myself with,
I must hasten to my Elizabeth to relieve
her anxiety, and dry the tears
which I am well assured each moment
of my absence causes her to shed. Come
with me, dearest Carl, and you shall
see her, my beautiful Elizabeth, and
her good old father, and the tower
and the bell. Ho! the bell, the jolly
old bell!”

The painter looked kindly but
anxiously in his brother’s face. There
was a mildness in his manner that
startled him, accustomed as he had
been to his eccentricities when a boy.

“You are tired, brother,” said he.
“You need repose after the emotions
and fatigues of the last week. I, too,
shall not be sorry to sleep. Let us to
bed for a few hours, and then we will
[Pg 474]
have post-horses and be off to Stralsund.”

“I have no need of rest,” replied
Bernard, “and each moment seems
to me an eternity till I can again
clasp my Elizabeth to my heart.
Let us delay, then, as little as may
be.”

As he spoke they entered the gates
of Berlin. The sun was risen, and
the hotels and taverns were beginning
to open their doors. Seeing Bernard’s
anxiety to depart, the painter
abandoned his intention of taking
some repose, and after hasty breakfast,
a post-chaise was brought to the
door, and the brothers stepping in,
were whirled off on their road northwards.

The sun was about to set when
the travellers came in sight of the
spires of Stralsund, among which the
church of St Nicholas reared its
double-headed tower. Bernard had
enlivened the journey by his wild sallies,
and merry but extravagant humour.
Now, however, that the goal
was almost reached, he became silent
and anxious. The hours appeared to
go too slowly for him, and his restlessness
was extreme.

“Faster! postilion,” cried Carl,
observing his brother’s impatience.
“Faster! You shall be paid double.”

The man flogged his horses till
they flew rather than galloped over
the broad level road. Suddenly,
however, a strap broke, and the postilion
got off his seat to tie it up.
Through the stillness of the evening,
no longer broken by the rattle of the
wheels and clatter of the horses’ feet,
a clock was heard striking the hour.
Another repeated it, and a third, of
deeper tone than the two preceding
ones, took up the chime. Bernard
started to his feet, and leaned so far
out of the carriage that his brother
seized hold of him, expecting him to
lose his balance and fall out.

“It is she!” exclaimed Bernard.
“‘Tis the bell of St Nicholas. Listen,
Carl—my Elizabeth calls me.
She strikes the bell. I come, dearest,
I come!”

And with these words he sprang
out of the carriage, and set off at full
speed towards the town, leaving his
brother thunderstruck at his mad impatience
and vehemence.

Running at the top of his speed,
Bernard soon reached the city gate,
and proceeded rapidly through the
streets in the direction of St Nicholas’s
church. It seemed to him as though
he had been absent for years instead
of a few days, and he felt quite surprised
at finding no change in the city
since his departure. All was as he
had left it; all conspired to lull him
into security. An old fruitwoman, of
whom he had bought cherries the
very day of his last walk with Elizabeth,
was in her usual place, and, as
he passed, extolled the beauty of her
fruit, and asked him to buy. A large
rose-tree, at the door of a silversmith’s
shop, which Elizabeth had often admired,
was still in full bloom; through
the window of a house in the market-place,
he saw a young girl, Elizabeth’s
dearest friend, dressing her hair at a
looking-glass, and as he passed the
churchyard, the old dumb sexton, who
appeared to be hunting about for a
place for a grave, nodded his head in
mute recognition.

Bernard opened the tower door, and
darted up the staircase. He was not
far from the top when he heard the
voices of two men above him. They
were resting on one of the landing-places
of the ladderlike stairs.

“It is a singular case, doctor,” said
one; “a strange and incomprehensible
case. It is evidently a disease
more of the mind than the body.”

“Yes,” replied the other, by his
voice apparently an old man. “If
we could only get a clue to the cause,
any thing to go upon, something might
be done, but at present it is a perfect
riddle.”

Bernard heard no more, for the men
continued their ascent.

“The old father must be ill,” said
he to himself; but as he said it a feeling
of dread and anxiety, a presentiment
of evil, came over him, and he
stood for a few moments unable to
proceed. The door at the top of
the stairs was now opened, and shut
with evident care to avoid noise.
“The old man must be very ill,”
said Bernard, as if trying to persuade
himself of it. He reached the door,
and his hand shook as he laid it upon
the latch. At length he lifted it, and
entered the room. It was empty;
but, just then, the door of Elizabeth’s
chamber opened, and old Kranhelm
stepped out. On beholding Bernard,
he started back as though he had seen
a ghost. He said a word or two in a
low voice to somebody in the inner
room, and then shutting the door,
[Pg 475]
bolted it, and placed his back against
it, as if to prevent Bernard from going
in.

“Begone!” cried he in a tremulous
voice; “in the name of God,
begone! thou evil spirit of my house;”
and he stretched out his arms towards
Bernard as though to prohibit his approach.
No longer master of himself,
the young man sprang towards him,
and, grasping his arm, thundered in
his ear the question—

“Where is my Elizabeth?”

The words rang through the old
tower, and the confused murmuring
of voices in the inner room was heard.
Bernard listened, and thought he distinguished
the voice of Elizabeth repeating,
in tones of agony, the fatal
number.

One of the physicians knocked, and
begged to be let out. The old tower-keeper
opened the door cautiously,
and, when the doctor had passed
through, carefully shut and barred it.
But during the moment that it had
remained open, Bernard heard too
plainly what his ears had at first been
unwilling to believe.

“Is that the man?” demanded the
physician hastily. “In God’s name,
be silent. You will kill the patient.
She recognized your voice, and fell
immediately into the most fearful
paroxysm. She has got back again
to the infernal number with which her
delirium began, and she shrieks it out
perpetually. It is a frightful relapse.
Begone! young man; yet stay—I
will go with you. You can, doubtless,
give us a key to this mystery.”

The old physician took Bernard’s
arm to lead him away; but at that
very moment there was a shrill scream
from the next room, and Elizabeth’s
voice was heard calling upon Bernard
by name. The unfortunate young man
could not restrain himself. Shaking
off the grasp of the physician, he
pushed old Kranhelm aside, tore back
the bolts, and flung open the door.
There lay Elizabeth on her deathbed,
her arms stretched out towards him,
her mild countenance ashy pale and
frightfully distorted, her soft blue eyes
straining from their orbits. She made
a violent effort to speak, but death
was too near at hand; the sound died
away upon her lips, and her uplifted
arms dropped powerless upon the bed;
her head fell back—a convulsive shudder
came over her: she was dead.
Her unhappy lover fell senseless to
the ground.

When Bernard awoke out of a long
and deathlike swoon, it was night, and
all around him was still and dark. He
was lying on the stone floor outside
Kranhelm’s dwelling. The physicians
had removed him thither; and, being
occupied with the old tower-keeper
and his daughter, they had thought no
more about him. On first recovering
sensation, he had but an indistinct
idea of where he was, or what had
happened. By degrees his senses returned
to a certain extent—he knew
that something horrible had occurred,
but without remembering exactly what
it was.

He felt about him, and touched a
railing. It was the balustrade round
the open turret where hung the great
bell. He was lying under the bell
itself, and, as he gazed up into its brazen
throat, the recollection of the
frightful dream which had persecuted
him the night before his flight from
Stralsund came vividly to his mind;
he appeared to himself to be still dreaming,
and yet his visions were mixed
up with the realities of his everyday
occupations.

He had just stepped out, he thought,
to strike the hour on the bell, and
rising with some difficulty from the
hard couch which had stiffened his
limbs, he sought about for the hammer.
He made no effort to shake off the sort
of dreaming semi-consciousness which
seemed to prevent him from feeling
the horror and anguish of reality.

“Thirteen strokes,” thought he;
“thirteen strokes, and at the Thirteenth
the tower will fall, the city crumble
to dust, the world be at an end.”
Such had been his dream, and the
moment of its accomplishment was
come.

He found the hammer, and struck
with all his force upon the bell. He
repeated the blow; twelve times he
struck, and each stroke rang with
deafening violence through his brain;
but at the Thirteenth, as he raised his
arms high above his head, and leaning
back against the railing, threw his
whole strength and energy into the
blow, the frail balustrade gave way
under his weight, and he fell headlong
from the tower. The last stroke tolled
out, sad and hollow as a funereal
knell, and the sound mingled with the
death-cry of the luckless Thirteenth!

[Pg 476]

REMINISCENCES OF SYRIA.[15]

Galloping, gossiping, flirting and
fighting, feasting and starving, but
always in high spirits and the best
possible humour, Colonel Napier
might answer an advertisement for
“A Pleasant Companion in a Post-chaise,”
without the slightest chance
of rejection. But it is difficult to
imagine so dashing a traveller, boxed
up in a civilized conveyance, rolling
quietly along a macadamized road,
with a diversity of milestones and an
occasional turnpike gate, the only incidents
by the way—no wild Maronite
glimpsing at him over the hedge; no
black-eyed houri peeping over the balustrades
of the caravanserai, (called
by vulgar men the Bricklayers’ Arms)—no
Saïces to help John Hostler to
change horses; but dulness, uniformity,
and most tiresome and unromantic
safety. England, we are sorry to
confess it, is not the land of stirring
adventures or hair-breadth ‘scapes—a
railway coach occasionally blows up;
a blind leader occasionally bolts into a
ditch; a wheel comes occasionally into
dangerous collision with one of
Pickford’s vans; but these are the utmost
that can be hoped for in the way
of peril, and other excitement there is
positively none. We have treated
life as the mathematician did Paradise
Lost—we have struck out all its
similes—obliterated its flights—expunged
its glorious visions—we have
made it prose. But fortunately for
us—for Colonel Napier—for the reading
public—there is a land where mathematicians
are unknown, and where
poetry continues to flourish in the full
vigour of cimeters and turbans—the
region of the sun—

It was in this very beautiful, but
rather overdone portion of earth’s surface,
that the adventures occurred of
which we are now to give some account;
and as probably most of our
readers have heard the name of Syria
pretty often of late, we need not display
much geographical erudition in
pointing out where it lies. It would
be pleasant to us if we could atone for
brevity in this respect, by illuminating
the reader on the causes that have
brought Syria so prominently forward;
but on this point we confess, with
shame and confusion of face, that we
know no more than Lord Ponsonby
or M. Thiers. The truth seems to be,
that some time, about two or three
years ago, five or six people in influential
stations went mad, and our Secretary
for Foreign Affairs took the
infection. He showed his teeth and
raised his “birse,” and barked in a
most audacious manner, till the French
kennel answered the challenge; an
old dog in Egypt cocked his tail at
the same time, and the world began to
be afraid that hydrophobia would be
universal. All parties were delighted
to let the rival yelpers fight it out on
so distant a field as Syria; and in that
country of heat and dryness, of poverty,
anarchy, cruelty, and superstition,
there was a skrimmage that kept
all Christendom on the tenter-hooks
for half-a-year; and this we believe
to be the policy of the Syrian campaign.
Better for all parties concerned,
that a few thousand turbaned
and malignant Turks or Egyptians
should bite the dust, than that there
should be another Austerlitz or Waterloo.
So the signal was accordingly
given, and the work began.

Wherever there is any fighting it is
not to be doubted that the English
hurra will be heard—and an apparition
had been seen in the smoke of
battle, which had sorely puzzled the
wisest of the soothsayers of Egypt to
explain. It was of a being apparently
human, but dressed as if to represent
Mars and Neptune at the same time,
charging along the tops of houses,
with the jolly cocked-hat of a captain
of a British man-of-war on the point
of his sword, and a variety of exclamations
in his mouth, more complimentary
to the enemy’s speed than his
courage. The muftis, we have said,
were sorely puzzled, and at last set it
down as an infallible truth that he
must be none other than Old Harry,
whereas there was not a sailor in the
fleet that did not know that it was
none other than Old Charley. And
[Pg 477]
this identical Old Charley, in a style
of communication almost as rapid as
his military evolutions, had indited the
following epistle to the author of the
volumes before us:—

“Headquarters of the Army of Lebanon.—Djouni,
Sept. 1840.

“Your affectionate father,
Charles Napier.”

And the dutiful son, who seems to
have no inconsiderable portion of the
paternal penchant for broken heads
and other similar divertisements, in
three weeks from the receipt of the
letter found himself on board the Hydra,
and rapidly approaching the classic
shores of Sidon, Tyre, Ptolemais;
the scenes of scriptural records and
deeds of chivalry—Palestine—the Holy
Land. But the broad pendant in
the mean time had been pulled down
on Mount Lebanon, and once more
fluttered to the sea breezes on board
the Powerful. Sir Charles Smith had
assumed the command of the land
forces, and whether from ill-humour
at finding half the work done during
his absence by the amphibious commodore,
or from some other cause,
his reception of the author was, at
first, far from cordial. Instead of
being useful, as he had hoped, he
found the sturdy old general blind to
the value of his accession; and when
the Powerful sailed he found himself
without quarters appointed him, or
even an invitation to join the officers’
mess. But with the usual good-luck
of people who bear disappointments
well, all turned out for the best, as
will be seen by the following extract: