BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCLXI.
NOVEMBER, 1845.
VOL. LXII.

CONTENTS.

EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;
AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.,

To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed.

SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.

BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCLXI.
NOVEMBER, 1845.
VOL. LXII.

Part I.

It wanted about an hour of sunset
on the last day of September 1833,
when two young men, whose respective
ages did not much exceed twenty
years, emerged from a country lane
upon the high-road from Tarazona to
Tudela, in that small district of Navarre
which lies south of the river
Ebro.

The equipments of the travellers—for
such the dusty state of their apparel,
and the knapsacks upon their
shoulders, indicated them to be—were
exactly similar, and well calculated
for a pedestrian journey across the steep
sierras and neglected roads of Spain.
They consisted, with little variation, of
the national Spanish dress—short jackets
of dark cloth, somewhat braided
and embroidered, knee-breeches of the
same material, and broad-brimmed
hats, surrounded by velvet bands.
Only, instead of the tight-fitting
stockings and neat pumps, which
should have completed the costume,
long leathern gamashes extended from
knee to ankle, and were met below
the latter by stout high-quartered
shoes. Each of the young men carried
a stick in his hand, rather, as it
appeared, from habit, or for purposes
of defence, than as a support, and
each of them had a cloak of coarse
black serge folded and strapped upon
his otter-skin knapsack. With their
costume, however, the similarity in
their appearance ceased; nothing
could be more widely different than
their style of person and countenance.
The taller of the two, who was also
apparently the elder, was of a slender,
active figure, with well-moulded
limbs, and a handsome, intelligent
countenance, in which energy and
decision of character were strongly
marked. His complexion was dark
olive; his eyes and short curling hair
were of a coal black; what little beard
he had was closely shaven, excepting
upon the upper lip, which was fringed
by a well-defined mustache, as gracefully
curved and delicately penciled
as any that Vandyke ever painted.
At this time, however, there was a
shade over his countenance other than
that cast by the broad leaf of his sombrero;
it was the look of mingled
hope, anxiety, and suspense, sometimes
worn by persons who are drawing
near to a goal, their attainment
of which is still doubtful, and at which,
even when attained, it is not quite
certain whether pleasure or pain
awaits them.

No such thoughts or anxieties were
to be read upon the joyous, careless[Pg 522]
countenance of the second traveller—a
stout, square-built young man,
whose ruddy complexion and light-brown
hair contrasted as strongly
with the dark locks and olive skin of
his companion as they differed from
the generally received notions of Spanish
physiognomy. The face wore
no particular expression, excepting
that of good-humoured insouciance;
his hazel eye had a merry twinkle,
and a slight fulness of lip and chin
seemed to denote a reasonable degree
of addiction to the good things of this
life. Altogether, and to judge them
by their physiognomies only, one
would have chosen the first for a
friend, the latter for a pleasant and
jovial boon-companion.

On leaving the cross-road, the two
pedestrians took a northerly direction,
in which they proceeded for nearly a
quarter of an hour without exchanging
a syllable, the one absorbed in
meditations which the other was apparently
unwilling to disturb. At the
end of that time they paused, as if by
preconcerted arrangement, in front of
a small venta, or country inn, less
remarkable for the accommodation it
afforded, than for its pleasant situation
and aspect. It stood a little back
from the road, in a nook formed by
the recession of a line of wooded hills
which there skirt the highway. The
front of the house, composed of rough
blocks of grey stone, was overgrown by
the twisted branches of a venerable
vine, the age of which did not prevent
it from becoming covered each spring
with leaves and tendrils, nor from
yielding in the autumn an abundant
supply of delicious gold-coloured
grapes. At a short distance in front
of the door, which opened into the
stable, whence a wooden step-ladder
led to the upper floor, there stood a
huge oak, throwing its broad shadow
over a table and some benches placed
beneath it for the accommodation of
guests. On one side of the venta,
and detached from it, but in a right
line with its front, was a massive
fragment of wall, which had probably,
at no very remote period, formed part
of a chapel or convent. Its summit,
which was broken and irregular, rose
full thirty feet from the ground
throughout more than double that
length, and along the wall, at about
two-thirds of a man’s height, ran a
horizontal black line, indicating, as
did also the numerous marks and
bruises upon the whitewashed surface,
that this ancient piece of masonry
enabled the frequenters of the venta
to indulge in the favourite juego de
pelota, or a game at ball, to which the
Navarrese and the northern Spaniards
generally are much addicted, and at
which most of them excel.

On the arrival of our travellers,
the benches in front of the venta had
already two occupants, belonging to
classes of men which may rank
amongst the chief supporters of Spanish
roadside inns. One of them was
a corporal of dragoons, returning to
his garrison at Tudela, whence he
had probably been sent with a despatch,
or on some similar mission.
He was a strapping, powerful fellow,
well set up, as the phrase goes, and
whose broad shoulders and soldierly
figure showed to advantage in his
dark-green uniform. His horse—a
high-crested, fine-legged Andalusian,
whose jetty coat looked yet blacker
by contrast with the white sheep-skin
that covered the saddle, and the
flakes of foam with which his impatient
champings had covered his broad
chest—was tied up near the stable
door, the bridle removed, finishing
out of a nose-bag a plentiful feed of
maize. The dragoon’s sabre and his
brass and leopard-skin helmet were
hanging at the saddle-bow, their
owner having temporarily covered his
head with a smart foraging-cap of
green and scarlet cloth, which set off to
great advantage his bearded and martial
countenance. Having provided for
his horse, the trooper was now attending
to the calls of his own appetite,
and doing immense execution on some
goat’s-milk cheese and excellent white
bread, which he moistened by copious
draughts of the thick black wine of
Navarre.

Seated opposite to the soldier, and
similarly employed, was a hardy-looking
man, who had arrived in company
with two mules, which were also
tethered to a ring in the venta wall,
but at a respectful distance from the
dragoon’s charger. A heap of chopped
straw and Indian corn leaves was
lying before them, at which they assiduously
munched—not, however,[Pg 523]
without occasionally casting wistful
glances at the more luxurious repast
of their neighbour. The soldier and
the muleteer had apparently met before;
and when the new-comers approached
them, they were discussing
with great animation the merits of the
various players in a ball-match which
they had recently witnessed near
Tudela. Thence they glided into a
discussion concerning ball-players in
general; the muleteer, who was a
Navarrese, asserting the invincibility
of his country at the game of pelota,
whilst the corporal, who came from
the neighbourhood of Oviedo, was
equally confident of the superiority of
the Asturians.

Whilst the younger of the travellers
was ascertaining from the patrona
the state of the larder, which, as is
usual enough in Spanish inns, was
but meagrely provided, his companion
sought out the landlord of the
venta, whom he found in the chimney-corner,
enjoying a supplementary
siesta amidst a cloud of wood smoke.

“The Conde de Villabuena,” enquired
the young man, when he had
shaken the drowsy host out of his
slumbers—”is he still at his house
between this and Tudela?”

The ventero, a greasy, ill-conditioned
Valencian, rubbed his eyes, muttered
a coarse oath, and seemed half
disposed, instead of replying, to pick
a quarrel with his interrogator; but a
glance at the athletic figure and resolute
countenance of the latter, dissipated
the inclination, and he answered
by a surly affirmative.

“And his daughter also?” continued
the stranger in a lower tone.

“Doña Rita? To be sure she is,
or was yesterday; for I saw her ride
by with her father and some other
cavaliers. What eyes the little
beauty has; and what a foot! It was
peeping from under her habit as she
passed. Sant’Antonio, what a foot!”

And now thoroughly awakened, the
ventero launched out into a panegyric
on the lady’s beauty, interlarded by
appeals to various saints as to the
justice of his praise, which was continued,
in the manner of a soliloquy,
for some time after the stranger had
turned his back upon him and descended
the stairs.

At the door of the venta the young
man encountered his companion, who
was issuing forth with a jug of wine
in his hand.

“Well, Luis,” said the latter, “have
you ascertained it? Is she still here,
or has our journey been in vain?”

“She is here,” was the reply.

“Good. Then I hope you will put
aside your melancholy, and eat and
drink with better appetite than you
have lately done. We have plenty
of time; it will not be dark for the
next two hours. So let us to supper,
such as it is; ham as rancid as an old
oil-cask, eggs that would have been
chickens to-morrow, and wine—but the
wine may atone for the rest—it is old
Peralta, or the patrona is perjured. I
have had the table spread under the
tree, in hopes that fresh air may
sweeten musty viands, and in order
that we may see the ball-play of yonder
soldier and muleteer.”

The young man who had been addressed
by the name of Luis, glanced
in the direction of the ball-court,
where the two men to whom his companion
referred were preparing for a
match. The discussion as to the
superiority of Navarrese or Asturian
ball-players had increased in warmth,
until the disputants, each obstinate
in his opinion, finding themselves,
perhaps, at a loss for verbal arguments,
had agreed to refer the matter
to a trial of individual skill. The
challenge came from the dragoon,
who, as soon as he heard it accepted,
proceeded to lighten himself for his
task. With great alacrity he threw
aside his foraging-cap, stripped off his
pouch-belt and uniform coat, and unfastened
his spurs. The preparations
of the muleteer were even more rapidly
completed. When he had thrown
off his jacket—the back of which was
adorned, according to the custom of
his class, with flowers and various
quaint devices, cut out in cloth of
many colours, and sewn upon the
brown material of which the garment
was composed—he stood in his shirt
and trousers of unbleached linen,
with light sandals of plaited hemp
upon his feet. In this latter respect
he had the advantage of the soldier,
who, not choosing to play barefooted,
was obliged to retain his heavy boots.
In apparent activity, too, the advantage
was greatly on the side of the[Pg 524]
Navarrese, who was spare and sinewy,
without an ounce of superfluous flesh
about him, but with muscles like iron,
and limbs as elastic and springy as
whalebone. His very face partook of
the hard, wiry character of his person;
the cheekbones were slightly prominent,
and, although he evidently
wanted some years of thirty, two deep
furrows or lines, such as are rarely
seen on the countenance of so young
a man, curved outwards from either
nostril to considerably below the
mouth, increasing in depth when he
talked or smiled, and giving, in conjunction
with a quick grey eye, considerable
character to his frank, and by
no means disagreeable countenance.

The game began with great spirit,
and with much appearance of equality
between the players, who would both
have been deemed first-rate in any
ball-court in Europe. The great
strength of the dragoon seemed at
first to give him the advantage; the
tremendous blows he delivered sent
the ball against the wall with as much
seeming force as if it had been driven
out of a cannon, and caused it to rebound
to an immense distance, keeping
the muleteer continually at the
very top of his speed. The match
was to be the best two out of three
games. The first of the three was
won by the muleteer, after the victory
had been long and well contested.

“Bien!” said the dragoon, as he
wiped the perspiration from his face,
and took a deep draught out of a jug
of wine which the ventero presented
to him. “Bien—that is one for you;
the next may go differently. I only
missed the ball through my foot slipping.
Curse boots for playing ball
in, say I! Hola, Valenciano! have
you never a pair of shoes or espadrillas
to lend me?”

The landlord, who acted as umpire,
and who, as well as his wife and two
or three loitering peasants, was taking
an intense interest in the game, ran
into the house and brought out a pair
of sandals. These the soldier tied
upon his feet, in lieu of the boots to
which he attributed his defeat. Then,
with renewed confidence, he took his
place opposite the wall, where the
muleteer was waiting for him.

But if, as the dragoon said, an accident
had lost him the first game, it
soon became evident that the superior
activity and endurance of his antagonist
were equally certain to make
him lose the second. The idleness of
a garrison life, fat feeding, and soft
lying, had disqualified the soldier to
compete for any length of time with
a man like the Navarrese, accustomed
to the severest hardships, whose most
luxurious meal was a handful of
boiled beans, his softest couch a bundle
of straw or the packsaddles of his
mules. Constant exposure and unceasing
toil had given the muleteer
the same insensibility to fatigue attributed
to certain savage tribes.
Whilst his antagonist, with inflamed
features and short-drawn breath, and
reeking with perspiration, was toiling
after the ball, the Navarrese went
through the same, or a greater amount
of exertion, without the least appearance
of distress. Not a bead of moisture
upon his face, nor a pant from
his broad, well-opened chest, gave
token of the slightest inconvenience
from the violent exercise he was
going through. On the contrary, as
he went on and got warm in the harness,
he seemed to play better, to run
faster, to catch the ball with greater
address, and strike it with more force.
Sometimes he would be standing close
to the wall, when a mighty blow from
the strong arm of the dragoon sent
the ball scores of yards in his rear.
It seemed impossible that he should
arrive soon enough to strike it. But
before it had time to rebound, he was
behind it, and by a blow of his horny
palm, less forcible perhaps, but more
dexterously applied than the one his
opponent had given, he sent it careering
back to the wall with greater
swiftness than it had left it. He
rarely struck the ball in the air, even
when the opportunity offered, but
allowed it to rebound—a less dashing,
but a surer game than he would perhaps
have played, had he not considered
the honour of “Navarra la
bella” to be at stake, represented in
his person. Again, when the ball
fell near the wall, he would sometimes
swing his arm as though about to
strike it a violent blow, and, whilst
the dragoon was already beginning to
retire in the direction he expected it
to take, he would change his apparent
intention, and drop it gently just[Pg 525]
above the line, so that his opponent,
although rushing up in desperate
haste, could scarcely arrive in time
to avoid being put out. It was by
a feint of this description that the
second game was decided in favour
of the Navarrese.

“Viva la Navarra!” shouted the
winner, bounding like a startled roebuck
three or four feet from the
ground, in front of the discomfited
soldier.

“Viva el demonio!” growled the
latter in reply. “Do you think that
because you have beaten me to-day,
thanks to your herring guts and dog’s
hide, that you could do the same if I
were in training, or had a month’s
practice? You would find it very different,
Master Paco.”

“Viva la Navarra!” repeated
Paco, chucking the small hard ball up
into the air, to a height at which it
appeared scarcely bigger than a bullet.
Then replying to the words of the
dragoon; “At your orders, Señor
Velasquez,” said he, “I shall pass
through Tudela some time next month,
and shall be ready to give you your
revenge.”

And catching the ball as it fell, the
Navarrese, whom victory had put
into extravagant spirits, began tossing
it from one hand to the other,
catching it behind his back, and performing
various other small feats of
address, looking the while at the corporal
with a sort of jeering smile,
which greatly aggravated the irritation
of the latter.

“Pues,” said Velasquez at last,
after gazing at Paco for the space of
a minute with a stern look, which was
insufficient, however, to make the
other lower his eyes, or alter the expression
of his countenance; “Well,
what do you stare at? Oh! I forgot—you
may well stare. It is the first
time that you have seen an Asturian
caballero beaten at any thing by a cur
of a Navarrese.”

“Not at all,” replied the muleteer
coolly; “your Señoria is mistaken.
It is only the first time that I have
seen an Asturian caballero with a
pipeclayed belt over his shoulder,
and a corporal’s bars upon his arm.”

And he broke out into one of those
wild shrill laughs of scorn and defiance
with which the peasant soldiers
of Navarre have so often, during recent
Spanish wars, caused the rocks
and ravines of their native province
to ring again.

“Hijo de zorra!” muttered the
soldier, enraged beyond endurance by
this last taunt; and drawing back his
right arm, he dealt so heavy and unexpected
a blow upon the breast of
the muleteer that the latter reeled a
couple of paces backwards, and then
fell headlong and with considerable
violence to the ground. The dragoon
gazed for an instant at the fallen man,
as if expecting him to rise and attack
him in turn; but, seeing that he did
not do so, he turned round and walked
slowly in the direction of his charger.

He had taken but a few steps when
the Navarrese sprang to his feet, and
thrust his hand into the red sash
which girded his waist, as though
seeking a weapon. He found none,
and, instantly darting forward, he
passed the soldier, and reached his
mules a moment sooner than the former
did his horse. The next instant
a long brown barrel was projected
across the packsaddles, and behind
it was seen the blue cap and pale
countenance of Paco, who, with glittering
eye and face livid from fury,
was taking a deadly aim at the soldier,
now standing beside the shoulder of
his charger. Without a moment’s
hesitation the Navarrese pulled the
trigger. As he did so, the dragoon,
suddenly aware of his danger, threw
himself on one side, and at the same
time his horse, either startled by the
movement or tormented by a fly,
tossed his head violently up and backwards.
The muleteer’s bullet, intended
for the rider, entered the brain of
the steed. There was a convulsive
quivering of the animal’s whole frame,
and then, before the smoke cleared
away, the horse fell over so heavily
and suddenly that he bore down Velasquez
under him. The soldier lay
with the whole weight of the expiring
animal resting upon his legs and thighs;
and, before he could make an attempt
to extricate himself, the Navarrese,
with a large dagger-shaped knife
gleaming in his hand, sprang across
the space that separated him from his
antagonist. The fate of the latter
would speedily have been decided,
had not the innkeeper, his wife, and[Pg 526]
the two young men, who had been
observing with much interest these
rapidly occurring incidents, thrown
themselves between Paco and the
object of his wrath.

“Out of the way!” roared the infuriated
muleteer. “He has struck me,
and by the Holy Trinity I will have
his blood. He has struck me, a free
Navarrese!” repeated he, striking his
own breast with the points of his
fingers, one of the expressive and
customary gestures of his countrymen.

“Let him be, Señor Don Paco!”
yelled the ventero and his wife, greatly
alarmed at the prospect of a murder
in broad daylight and at their
very threshold. “You have done
enough already to send you to the
galleys. Get on your mules, and ride
away before worse comes of it.”

“A los infiernos!” shouted Paco.
“As the horse now is, so shall be the
rider.” And he gave a long sweep of
his arm, making the bright blade of
his knife flash in the last red sun-rays
like a curved line of burnished gold.
The point of the weapon passed within
an inch or two of the face of the innkeeper,
who started back with a cry
of alarm. At the same moment the
wrist of the Navarrese was caught in
a firm grasp by the elder of the two
travellers, and the knife was wrested
from his hand. The muleteer turned
like a madman upon his new antagonist.
The latter had laid aside the
hat which shaded his face, and now
fixed his eyes upon the angry countenance
of the Navarrese.

“Do you not know me, Paco?”
said he, repulsing the first furious
onset of the muleteer.

Paco stared at him for a moment
with a look of doubt and astonishment.

“Don Luis!” he at last exclaimed.

“The same,” replied the stranger.
“You have been too hasty, Paco, and
we expose ourselves to blame by not
detaining you to answer for your attempt
on yonder soldier’s life, and for
the death of his horse. But you had
some provocation, and I, for one, am
willing to take the risk. Begone, and
that immediately.”

“I shall do your bidding, Señorito,”
said Paco, “were it only for old acquaintance
sake. But let that cowardly
Asturian beware how he meets
me in the mountains. I have missed
him once, but will answer for not
doing so again.”

“And you,” retorted the soldier,
whom the innkeeper and a peasant
had dragged from under the dead
horse, and placed upon a bench,
where he sat rubbing his legs, which
were numbed and bruised by the
weight that had fallen upon them—”and
you, have a care how you show
yourself in Tudela. If there is a stirrup-leather
or sword-scabbard in the
garrison, I promise you as sound a
beating as you ever yet received.”

The Navarrese, who had returned
to his mules and was busied reloading
his gun, snapped his fingers scornfully
at this menace. Don Luis walked up
to him.

“Listen, Paco,” said he, in a low
voice, “take my advice, and avoid
this neighbourhood for a while. Are
you still in the service of Count Villabuena?”

“No, Señor,” replied the man, “I
have left his Señoria, and the mules
are my own. I shall be passing near
the count’s house to-morrow, if you
have any thing to send.”

“I have nothing,” answered Don
Luis. “Should you by chance see
any of the family, it is unnecessary to
mention our meeting.”

Paco nodded his head significantly,
seated himself sideways on one of his
mules, his gun across his knees, and,
leading the other by the bridle, trotted
off at a brisk pace down a mountain
path nearly opposite to the venta.
Ten minutes later the dragoon, having
regained, in some degree, the use of
his legs, resumed his boots, took his
saddle and valise on his shoulders,
and set out on foot for his garrison.

The sun had set, and the twilight
passed away, the night was clear and
starlight, but moonless, when Luis and
his companion left the venta and
resumed their progress northwards.
After following the highway for a
short league, they took a cross-road,
on either side of which the richly cultivated
plain was sprinkled with farmhouses,
and with a few country villas.
In spite of the darkness, which was
increased by the overhanging foliage
of the fruit-trees that on either hand
bordered the road, Luis moved rapidly
and confidently forward, in the[Pg 527]
manner of one perfectly acquainted
with the ground; and presently, leaving
the beaten track, he passed through
a plantation of young trees, crossed a
field, and arrived with his companion
at a low hedge surrounding a spacious
garden. Jumping over this boundary,
the young men penetrated some distance
into the enclosure, and soon
found themselves within fifty yards
of a house, of which the white walls
were partially visible, rising out of a
thick garland of trees and bushes in
which the building was embowered.
Several of the windows were lighted
up, and the sound of music reached
the ears of Luis and his companion.

“This is far enough, Mariano,”
said the former. “To the right,
amongst the trees, you will find an
old moss-grown bench, upon which I
have often sat in happier days than
these. There await my return.”

“Let me accompany you further,”
replied Mariano. “There is no saying
what reception the count may
give you.”

“I shall not see the count,” answered
Luis; “and if by chance
I should, there is nothing to apprehend.
But my plan, as I have
already explained to you, is only to
seek one moment’s interview with
Rita. I am well acquainted with the
arrangements of the house, and you
may depend that I shall be seen by
no one whom I wish to avoid.”

Mariano turned into the shrubbery,
and Luis, with rapid but silent
step, advanced towards the villa, favoured
in his clandestine approach by
the darkness of the night and the
trees of the thickly-planted garden.

The house was a square edifice,
without balconies, and the windows
that were lighted up were those of
the first floor. On the side on which
Luis first approached the building,
the windows were closed, but, upon
moving noiselessly round to the front,
he perceived one which the fineness
of the weather, still mild and genial
although at the end of September,
had induced the occupants of the room
to leave open. The sound of laughter
and merriment issued from it; but this
was presently hushed, and two voices,
accompanied by guitars, began to sing
a lively seguidilla, of which, at the
end of each piquant couplet, the listeners
testified their approbation by a
hum of mirthful applause. Before
the song was over, Luis had sought
and found a means of observing what
was passing within doors. Grasping
the lower branch of a tree which grew
within a few feet of the corner of the
house, he swung himself up amongst
the foliage. A large bough extended
horizontally below the open window,
and by climbing along this, he was
enabled to look completely into the
apartment; whilst, owing to the thickness
of the leafage and the dark colour
of his dress, there was scarcely a possibility
of his being discovered.

The room was occupied by about
twenty persons, the majority of whom
were visitors, inhabitants of Tudela or
of neighbouring country-houses. With
four or five exceptions, the party consisted
of men, for the most part elderly
or middle-aged. One of the ladies
and a young officer of the royal guard
were the singers, and their performance
seemed partially to interrupt the
conversation of a group of the seniors
who were seated round a card-table at
the further end of the apartment.
The cards, however, if they had been
used at all, had long been thrown
aside, and replaced by a discussion
carried on in low tones, and with an
earnestness of countenance and gesture,
which gave to those engaged in
it the appearance rather of conspirators
than of friends met together for
the enjoyment of each other’s society.
The ladies, and a few of the younger
men, did not appear disposed to let
the gravity of their elders interfere
with their own pleasures. The song
and the dance, the pointed epigram
and witty repartee, all the varied resourccs
which Spaniards know so well
how to bring into play, and which
render a Spanish tertulia so agreeable,
had been in turn resorted to.
When the seguidilla—during the continuance
of which Luis had gained his
post of observation—was brought to a
close, there seemed to ensue a sort of
break in the amusements of the evening.
The younger members of the
company, whose conversation had previously
been general, separated into
groups of two or three persons; and
in more than one of those composed
of the former number, the flashing
eye, coquettish smile, and rapidly significant[Pg 528]
motions of the fan, bespoke
the existence of an animated flirtation.

Two ladies, neither of whom could
have seen more than eighteen summers,
now left the sofa upon which
they had been sitting, and, with arms
intertwined, approached the open
window. Luis remained motionless
as the leaves that surrounded him,
and which were undisturbed by a
breath of wind. The ladies leaned
forward over the window-sill, enjoying
the freshness of the night; and one
of them, the lively brunette who had
taken a part in the seguidilla, plucked
some sprays of jasmine which reared
their pointed leaves and white blossoms
in front of the window, and began
to entwine them in the hair of
her companion—a pale and somewhat
pensive beauty, in whose golden locks
and blue eyes the Gothic blood of old
Spain was yet to be traced. Presently
she was interrupted in this
fanciful occupation by a voice within
the room calling upon her to sing.
She obeyed the summons, and her
friend remained alone at the window.

No sooner was this the case than a
slight rustling occurred amongst the
branches of the tree, and the name of
“Rita” was uttered in a cautious
whisper. The lady started, and but half
suppressed a cry of terror. The next
instant the leaves were put aside, and
the light from the apartment fell upon
the countenance of Luis, who, with
uplifted finger, warned the agitated
girl to restrain her emotion.

“Santa Virgen!” she exclaimed,
leaning far out of the window, and
speaking in a hurried whisper, “this
is madness, Luis. My father is unchanged
in his sentiments, and I
dread his anger should he find you
here.”

“I will instantly depart,” replied
Luis, “if you promise me an interview.
I am about to leave Spain—perhaps
for ever; but I cannot go
without bidding you farewell. You
will not refuse me a meeting which
may probably be our last.”

“What mean you?” exclaimed
the lady. “Why do you leave Spain,
and when? But we shall be overheard.
To-morrow my father goes
to Tudela. Be here at mid-day.
Brigida will admit you.”

She held out her hand, which Luis
pressed to his lips. At that moment
the clatter of a horse’s hoofs, rapidly
approaching, was heard upon the hard
ground of the avenue. The lady
hastily withdrew her land and left
the window, whilst Luis again concealed
himself behind the screen of
foliage. Scarcely had he done so,
when a horseman dashed up to the
house, forced his steed up the three
or four broad steps leading to the
door, and, without dismounting or
looking for a bell or other means of
announcing his arrival, struck several
blows upon the oaken panels with
the butt of his heavy riding-whip.
Whilst the party above-stairs hurried
to the windows, and endeavoured to
discern who it was that disturbed
them in so unceremonious a manner,
a servant opened the small grated
wicket in the centre of the door, and
enquired the stranger’s pleasure.

“Is the Conde de Villabuena at
home?” demanded the horseman. “I
must see him instantly.”

“The name of your Señoria,” enquired
the domestic.

“It is unnecessary. Say that I
have a message to him from friends
at Madrid.”

The servant disappeared, and in
another moment his place was occupied
by a grave, stern-looking man,
between fifty and sixty years of age.

“I am Count Villabuena,” said he;
“what is your business?”

The stranger bent forward over his
horse’s mane, so as to bring his face
close to the wicket, and uttered three
words in a tone audible only to the
count, who replied to them by an
exclamation of surprise. The door
was immediately opened, and Villabuena
stood beside the horseman.

“When?” said he.

“Yesterday. I have ridden night
and day to bring you the intelligence,
and shall now push on to the interior
of Navarre. At the same time as
myself, others of our friends started,
north and south, east and west. Early
this morning, Santos Ladron heard it
at Valladolid, and Merino in Castile.
To-day the news has reached Vittoria;
this night they will be at Bilboa and
Tolosa. It is from the northern provinces
that most is expected; but
‘El Rey y la Religion’ is a rallying-cry[Pg 529]
that will rouse all Spaniards
worthy of the name. You are prepared
for the event, and know what
to do. Farewell, and success attend
us!”

The stranger set spurs to his horse,
and galloped down the avenue at
the same rapid pace at which he had
arrived. The count re-entered the
house; and, as soon as he had done so,
Luis dropped from his tree, and hurried
to rejoin Mariano. In another
hour they had returned to the venta.

Luis Herrera was the son of a Castilian
gentleman, who had suffered
much, both in person and property,
for his steady adherence to the constitutional
cause in Spain. Severely
wounded whilst fighting against the
Royalists and their French allies in
1823, Don Manuel Herrera with difficulty
escaped to England, taking with
him his only son, then a boy of eleven
years of age. In 1830 he changed his
residence to the south of France, and
thence, taking advantage of his proximity
to the frontier, and wishing his
son’s education to be completed in
Spain, he dispatched Luis to Madrid,
with a recommendation to the Conde
de Villabuena, who, notwithstanding
that his political principles were diametrically
opposed to those of Don
Manuel, was one of the oldest friends
of the latter. The count welcomed
Luis kindly, and received him into
his house, where for some months he
prosecuted his studies in company
with the young Villabuenas, and, at
the end of that time, went with them
to the university of Salamanca. The
vacations were passed by the young
men either at the count’s house at
Madrid, or at a country residence
near Tudela, north of which, in the
central valleys of his native province
of Navarre, the Conde de Villabuena
owned extensive estates. The count
was a widower, and, besides his two
sons, had an only daughter, who, at
the time of Luis’s arrival was in her
sixteenth year, and who added to
great personal attractions a share of
accomplishment and instruction larger
than is usually found even amongst
the higher classes of Spanish women.
During the first sojourn of Luis at the
count’s house, he was naturally thrown
a great deal into Doña Rita’s society,
and a reciprocal attachment grew up
between them, which, if it occasionally
afforded the young Villabuenas a subject
of good-humoured raillery, on the
other hand was unobserved or uncared
for by the count—a stern silent man,
whose thoughts and time were engrossed
by political intrigues. When
Luis went to Salamanca, his attachment
to Rita, instead of becoming
weakened or obliterated, appeared to
acquire strength from absence; and
she, on her part, as each vacation
approached, unconsciously looked forward
with far more eagerness to the
return of Herrera than to that of her
brothers.

The autumn of 1832 arrived, and
the count and his family, including
Luis, were assembled at the villa near
Tudela. The attachment existing
between Rita and Luis had become
evident to all who knew them; and
even the count himself seemed occasionally,
by a quiet glance and grave
smile, to recognise and sanction its
existence. Nor was there any very
obvious or strong reason for disapproval.
The family of Herrera was
ancient and honourable; and, although
Don Manuel’s estates had been confiscated
when he fled the country, he
had previously remitted to England a
sum that secured him a moderate independence.
The state of things in
Spain was daily becoming more favourable
to the hopes of political
exiles. The declining health of Ferdinand
had thrown the reins of
government almost entirely into the
hands of Queen Christina, who, in
order to increase the number of her
adherents, and ensure her daughter’s
succession to the throne, favoured the
return to Spain of the Liberal party.
Although Don Manuel, who was known
to be obstinate and violent in his
political views, had not yet been included
in the amnesties published, it
was thought that he speedily would
be so; and then time and importunity,
and an adherence to the established
order of things, might perhaps procure
him the restitution of some part
of his confiscated property.

It chanced, that on the fourth day
after the arrival of Luis and the Villabuenas
from Salamanca, the two
latter rode over to the Ebro, below
Tudela, for the purpose of bathing.
They were not good swimmers, and[Pg 530]
were moreover unaccustomed to bathe
in so rapid and powerful a stream. A
peasant, who observed two horses
tied to a tree, and some clothes upon
the grass by the river side, but who
could see nothing of the owners, suspected
an accident, and gave the alarm.
A search was instituted, and the dead
bodies of the unfortunate young men
were found upon the sandy shore of an
island some distance down the river.

This melancholy event was destined
to have an important influence on the
position of Luis Herrera in the family
of Count Villabuena, and on his
future fortunes. Mingled with the
natural grief felt by the count at the
untimely death of his children, were
the pangs of disappointed pride and
ambition. He had reckoned upon the
gallant and promising young men, thus
prematurely snatched away, for the
continuance and aggrandizement of
his ancient name. Upon his daughter
he had hitherto scarcely bestowed a
thought. She would marry—honourably
of course, richly if possible; but
even in this last respect he would not
be inflexible, for where his pride of
birth did not interfere, Villabuena
was not an unkind father. But the
death of his sons brought about great
changes. The next heir to his title
and estates was a distant and unmarried
cousin, and to him the count
determined to marry his daughter,
whose beauty and large fortune in
money and unentailed estates, rendered
any objection to the match on
the part of her kinsman a most improbable
occurrence. As a first step
towards the accomplishment of this
scheme, the count resolved to put an
end at once to what he considered the
childish attachment existing between
Rita and Luis. Within a week after
the death of his sons, he had a conversation
with young Herrera, in
which he informed him of his intentions
with regard to his daughter, and
pointed out to him the necessity of
forgetting her. In vain did Luis declare
this to be impossible, and plead
the strength which his attachment
had acquired by his long permitted
intercourse with Rita. The count
cared little for such lover-like arguments;
he assured Luis that he was
mistaken, that time and absence
brought oblivion in their train, and
that after a few months, perhaps
weeks, of separation, he would wonder
at the change in his sentiments, and
laugh at the importance he had attached
to a mere boyish fancy. It so
happened, that on the day preceding the
one upon which this conversation took
place, a letter had been received from
Don Manuel Herrera, announcing his
speedy return to Spain, the much-desired
permission having at length
been obtained. In order to give Luis
an opportunity of speedily testing the
effects of absence, the count proposed
that he should at once set out for the
French frontier to meet his father.
Under the existing circumstances, he
said, it was undesirable that he should
remain under the same roof with his
daughter longer than could be avoided.

Although bitterly deploring the
prospect of an immediate and lasting
separation from Rita, Luis had no
choice but to adopt the course proposed;
nor would his pride have
allowed him to remain in the count’s
house an instant longer than his presence
there was acceptable. He feared
that the count would prevent his
having a last interview with Rita;
but this Villabuena did not think it
worth while to do, contenting himself
with repeating to his daughter the
communication he had already made
to Luis. When the latter sought his
mistress, he found her in tears and
great affliction. The blow was so
sudden and unexpected, that she could
scarcely believe in its reality, and
still less could she bring herself to
think that the count would persist in
his cruel resolution. “He will surely
relent,” she said, “when he sees how
unhappy his decision makes me; but
should he not do so, rest assured,
Luis, that I will never be forced into
this odious marriage. Sooner than
submit to it, a convent shall receive
me.” And once more repeating the
vows of constancy which they had so
often interchanged, the lovers separated.
At daybreak upon the following
morning, Luis set out for Bayonne.

The joy experienced by Don Manuel
Herrera upon once more treading his
native soil, did not so engross him as
to prevent his observing the melancholy
of his son. In reply to his
father’s enquiries, Luis informed him[Pg 531]
of his attachment to Rita, and of the
interdict which the count had put
upon its continuance. Don Manuel
was indignant at what he termed the
selfish and unfeeling conduct of Villabuena,
who would thus sacrifice his
daughter’s happiness to his own pride
and ambition. He then endeavoured
to rouse the pride of Luis, and to convert
his regrets into indignation; but,
finding himself unsuccessful, he resolved
to try the effect of change of
scene and constant occupation. He
set out with his son for Old Castile,
of which he was a native, and undertook
various journeys through the
province in search of a small estate,
such as his means would permit him
to purchase, and upon which he might
in future reside. This he at last
found, a few leagues to the south of
Burgos. The purchase completed,
there were still many arrangements to
make before Don Manuel could settle
down and enjoy the peaceful country
life which he had planned for himself,
and in making these arrangements he
took care to find his son abundant and
varied employment. But all his well-meant
efforts were in vain. Luis
could not detach his thoughts from
one all-engrossing subject; and at last,
although Count Villabuena had expressly
forbidden any correspondence
between his daughter and young Herrera,
the latter, after some weeks’
absence, unable to resist any longer
his desire to hear from Rita, ventured
to write to her. The letter was intercepted
by the count, and returned
unopened, with a few haughty lines
expressive of his indignation at the
ingratitude of Luis, who was requiting
the kindness he had received at
his hands by endeavouring to thwart
his plans and seduce the affections of
his daughter. The terms in which
this letter was couched roused the
ire of Don Manuel, who in his turn
forbade his son to expose himself to a
repetition of similar insults by any
communication with the count or his
daughter. Shortly afterwards Luis
returned to Salamanca to complete his
studies.

The profession of the law, to which
young Herrera was destined, had
never had any charms for him. His
own inclinations pointed to a military
career, which he had on various occasions
urged his father to allow him to
adopt; but Don Manuel had invariably
refused his request, alleging the
poor prospect of advancement in time
of peace, and in a service in which
nearly all promotion was gained by
interest and court-favour. Nevertheless,
from his earliest youth Luis had
devoted his leisure hours to the attainment
of accomplishments qualifying
him for the trade of war. He was
the boldest horseman, most skilful
swordsman, and best shot in the University
of Salamanca. His superiority
in these respects, his decided character,
and agreeable manners, had
gained him considerable popularity
amongst his fellow-students, who frequently
expressed their surprise, that
one whose vocation was evidently
military should abide by the dusty
folios and dry intricacies of the law.

More insupportable than ever did
his studies now appear to Luis, who
nevertheless persevered in them for
several months after his father’s return
to Spain, endeavouring by strenuous
application to divert his thoughts
from his hopeless attachment. Weary
at length of the effort, he determined
to abandon a pursuit so uncongenial
to his tastes, and to seek a more active
course of life, and one for which
he felt he was better suited. His
plan was to repair to Africa, and endeavour
to obtain a commission in
one of the foreign corps which the
French were raising for their campaign
against the Bedouins. Should he fail
in this, he would serve as a volunteer,
and trust to his courage and merits
for procuring him advancement. Previously,
however, to the execution of
this scheme, he resolved to see Rita
once more, ascertain from her own
lips whether there was a chance of
the count’s relenting, and, should
there be none, bid her a last farewell.
He would then return to his father’s
house, and obtain Don Manuel’s sanction
to his project.

Since the unfortunate death of the
young Villabuenas, Herrera’s chief
intimate at the University had been
Mariano Torres, a hot-headed, warm-hearted
Arragonese, entirely devoted
to Luis, to whom he looked up as a
model of perfection. To this young[Pg 532]
man Luis had confided his love for
Rita, and her father’s opposition,
and to him he now communicated his
new plans. To his infinite surprise,
scarcely had he done so when Mariano,
instead of expressing regret at
his approaching departure, threw his
three-cornered student’s hat to the
ceiling, tore off his gown, and declared
his intention of accompanying his
friend to Africa, or to any other part
of the world to which he chose to betake
himself. Luis tried to persuade
him to abandon so mad a resolution;
but Torres persisted in it, protesting
that it would suit his taste
much better to fight against Bedouins
than to become a bachelor of
arts, and that he had always intended
to leave the University with
his friend, and to accompany him
wherever he might go. Trusting
that, by the time they should reach
Navarre, Mariano’s enthusiasm would
cool down, and his resolution change,
Luis at length yielded, and the
two friends left Salamanca together.
Travelling by the public conveyances,
they reached Valladolid, and
subsequently the town of Soria,
whence they had still nearly twenty
leagues of high-road to Tudela. The
path across the mountains being considerably
shorter, and in order to
diminish the risk of being seen by persons
who might inform the count of
his arrival, Luis resolved to complete
the journey on foot; and after two
short days’ march, the young men
reached the neighbourhood of Count
Villabuena’s residence.

The church and convent clocks of
the right Catholic city of Tudela had not
yet chimed out the hour of noon, when
Luis, impatient for the interview promised
by Rita, entered the count’s
domain by the same path as on the
previous evening. Before he came in
sight of the house, he was met at an
angle of the shrubbery by Rita herself.

“I was sure you would take this
path,” said she, with a smile in which
melancholy was mingled with the
pleasure she felt at seeing her lover;
“it was your favourite in days gone
by. Our interview must be very brief.
My father was to have remained
at Tudela till evening, but something
has occurred to derange his plans.
He sat up the whole night in close
conference with some gentlemen. At
daybreak two couriers were dispatched,
and the count rode away with his
friends without having been in bed.
He may return at any moment.”

Luis drew the arm of his mistress
through his own, and they slowly
walked down one of the alleys of the
garden. Rita had little to tell him
favourable to the hopes which he
still, in spite of himself, continued
to cherish. The appeals which she
had ventured to make to her father’s
affection, and to his regard for her
happiness, had been met by severe
reproof. Her evident depression and
melancholy remained unnoticed, or at
least unadverted to, by the count. All
that she said only confirmed Luis in
his resolution of seeking high distinction
or an honourable death in a
foreign service. He was deliberating,
with eyes fixed upon the ground, on
the best manner of breaking his intentions
to Rita, when an exclamation
of alarm from her lips caused him
to look up, and he saw Villabuena
crossing on horseback the end of the
walk along which they were advancing.
The count’s head was turned towards
them, and he had without doubt seen
and recognised them.

Herrera’s resolution was instantly
taken. He would seek the count’s
presence, take upon himself the whole
blame of his clandestine meeting with
Rita, and appease her father’s anger
by informing him of his proposed self-banishment.
Before, however, he
had succeeded in calming Rita’s fears,
he again perceived the count, who
had left his horse, and was advancing
slowly towards them, with a grave,
but not an angry countenance. On
his near approach, Luis was about to
address him; but by a wave of his
hand Villabuena enjoined silence.

“Return to the house, Rita,” said
he in a calm voice: “and, you, Señor de
Herrera, remain here; I would speak
a few words with you.”

Tremblingly, and with one last lingering
look at Luis, Rita withdrew.

“We will walk, sir, if you please,”
said the count; and the two men
walked for some distance side by side
and in silence; Villabuena apparently[Pg 533]
plunged in reflection, Luis wondering
at his forbearance, and impatient for
its explanation.

“You are surprised,” said the
count at last, “after all that has
passed, that I show so little resentment
at your uninvited presence here,
and at Rita’s infringement of my positive
commands.”

Luis would have spoken, but Villabuena
resumed.

“You will be still more astonished
to learn, that there is a possibility of
your attachment receiving my sanction.”

Herrera started, and his face was
lighted up with sudden rapture.

“You will of course have heard,”
continued the count, “of the important
intelligence received here last
night, and with which this morning
all the country is ringing. I allude
to the death of Ferdinand VII.”

“I had not heard of it,” replied
Luis, much surprised; for, although
the desperate state of the king’s
health was well known, his malady had
lasted so long that men had almost
left off expecting his death.

“I know I can depend upon your
honour, Luis,” said the count; “and
I am therefore about to speak to you
with a confidence which I should repose
in few so young and inexperienced.”

Luis bowed.

“Although,” resumed Villabuena,
“his Majesty Charles the Fifth is at
this moment absent from Spain, his
faithful subjects will not allow that
absence to be prejudicial to him. They
intend to vindicate his just rights, and
to overturn the contemptible faction
which, headed by an intriguing woman,
supports the unfounded claims
of a sickly infant. In anticipation of
Ferdinand’s death, all necessary measures
have been taken; and, before
three days elapse, you will see a
flame lighted up through the land,
which will speedily consume and destroy
the enemies of Spain, and of her
rightful monarch. Navarre and Biscay,
Valentia and Arragon, Catalonia and
Castile, will rise almost to a man in
defence of their king; the other provinces
must follow their example, or
be compelled to submission. Although
confident of success, it yet behoves us
to neglect no means of securing it;
nor are we so blinded as to think that
the faction which at present holds the
reins of government will resign them
without a struggle. Avoiding overconfidence,
therefore, which so often
leads to failure, each man must put
his shoulder to the wheel, and contribute
his best efforts to the one great
end, regardless of private sacrifices.
What I have to propose to you is
this. Time was when our universities
were the strongholds of loyalty
and religion; but that time is unfortunately
past, and the baneful doctrines
of republicanism and equality
have found their way even into those
nurseries of our priesthood and statesmen.
We are well informed that at
Salamanca especially, many of the
students, even of the better class, incline
to the self-styled Liberal party.
You, Luis, are ready of speech, bold
and prompt in action, and, moreover,
you are known to have great influence
amongst your fellow-students. Return,
then, to Salamanca, and exert
that influence to bring back into the
right path those who have been led
astray. Urge the just claims of
Charles V., hold out the prospect of
military glory and distinction, and of
the gratitude of an admiring country.
Let your efforts be chiefly directed to
gain over young men of wealthy and
influential families, and to induce them
to take up arms for the king. Form
them into a squadron, of which you
shall have the command, and the
private soldiers of which shall rank
as officers in the army, and subsequently
be transferred to other corps
to act as such. Appoint a place of
rendezvous; and, when your men are
assembled there, march them to join
the nearest division of the Royalist
army. I guarantee to you a captain’s
commission; and as soon as the king,
with whom I have some influence,
arrives in Spain, I will strongly recommend
you to his favour. Our
campaign, however brief, must afford
opportunities of distinction to brave
men who seek them. With your
energy, and with the natural military
talents which I am persuaded you
possess, high rank, honours, and riches
may speedily be yours. And when
Charles V., firmly seated on the throne[Pg 534]
of Spain, points you out to me as one
of those to whom he owes his crown,
and as a man whom he delights to
honour, I will no longer refuse to you
my daughter’s hand.”

However distant the perspective of
happiness thus offered to his view,
and although the avenue leading to it
was beset with dangers and uncertainties,
it promised to realize the
ardent hopes which Luis Herrera had
once ventured to indulge. Sanguine
and confident, he would at once have
caught at the count’s proposal, but
for one consideration that flashed
across his mind. He was himself
wedded to no political creed, and had
as yet scarcely bestowed a thought
upon the different parties into which
his countrymen were split. But his
father, who had so strenuously adhered
to the Liberal side, who had poured
out his blood with Mina, fought
side by side with Riego, sacrificed
his property, and endured a long
and wearisome exile for conscience
and his opinions’ sake—what would be
his feelings if he saw his only son
range himself beneath the banner of
absolutism? The struggle in the mind
of Luis, between love on the one hand
and filial duty and affection on the
other, was too severe and too equally
balanced to be instantly decided. He
remained silent, and the count, mistaking
the cause of his hesitation, resumed.

“You are surprised,” said he, “to
find me so willing to abandon my
dearest projects for the sake of a
remote advantage to the king’s
cause. But remember that I promise
nothing—all is contingent on your
own conduct and success. And although
you may have thought me unfeeling
and severe, I shall gladly, if
possible, indulge the inclinations of
my only surviving child.”

It required all Herrera’s firmness
and sense of duty to prevent him from
yielding to the temptation held out,
and pledging himself at once to the
cause of Charles V.

“You will not expect me, Señor
Conde,” said he, “to give an immediate
answer to a proposal of such
importance. I feel sincerely grateful
to you, but must crave a short delay
for consideration.”

“Let that delay be as brief as possible,”
said Villabuena. “In the
present circumstances, the value of
assistance will be doubled by its
promptness. When love and loyalty
are both in one scale,” added he, with
a slight smile, “methinks a decision
were easy.”

They had now approached the gate
of the garden, and Luis, desirous of
finding himself alone, to arrange his
thoughts and reflect on his future
conduct, took his leave. The count
held out his hand with some of his
former cordiality.

“You will write to me from Salamanca?”
said he.

Herrera bowed his head, and then,
fearful lest his assent should be misconstrued,
he replied—

“From Salamanca, or from elsewhere,
you shall certainly hear from
me, Señor Conde, and that with all
speed.”

The count nodded and turned towards
the house, whilst Luis retook
the road to the venta.

He found Mariano impatiently waiting
his return, and eager to learn the
result of his interview with Rita.
Upon being informed of the proposal
that had been made to Luis, Torres,
seeing in it only a means of happiness
for his friend, strongly urged him to
accept it. To this, however, Luis
could not make up his mind; and
finally, after some deliberation, he
resolved to proceed to Old Castile,
and endeavour to obtain his father’s
consent to his joining the party of
Don Carlos. Should he succeed in
this, of which he could not help entertaining
a doubt, he would no longer
hesitate, but at once inform the count
of his decision, and hasten to Salamanca
to put his instructions into
execution. Without further delay
the two friends set out for Tarazona,
where they trusted to find some means
of speedy conveyance to the residence
of Don Manuel.

In the kingdom of Old Castile, and
more especially in its mountainous
portions and the districts adjacent to
the Ebro, an extraordinary bustle
and agitation were observable during
the first days of October 1833. There
was great furbishing of rusty muskets,[Pg 535]
an eager search for cartridges, much
dusting of old uniforms that had long
served but as hiding-places for moths,
and which were now donned by men,
many of whom seemed but ill at ease
in their military equipments. For
ten years Spain had been tranquil, if
not happy; but now, as if even this
short period of repose were too long
for the restless spirit of her sons, a
new pretext for discord had been
found, and an ominous stir, the forerunner
of civil strife, was perceptible
through the land. Whilst Santos
Ladron, an officer of merit, who had
served through the whole of the war
against Napoleon, raised the standard
of Charles V. in Navarre, various
partisans did the same in the country
south of the Ebro. In the northeastern
corner of Castile, known as
the Rioja, Basilio Garcia, agent for
the Pope’s bulls in the province of
Soria—a man destitute of military
knowledge, and remarkable only for
his repulsive exterior and cold-blooded
ferocity—collected and headed
a small body of insurgents; whilst, in
other districts of the same province,
several battalions of the old Royalist
volunteers—a loose, ill-disciplined militia,
as motely and unsoldierlike in
appearance as they were unsteady
and inefficient in the field—ranged
themselves under the orders of a general-officer
named Cuevillas, and of
the veteran Merino. To these soon
joined themselves various individuals
of the half-soldier half-bandit class, so
numerous in Spain—men who had
served in former wars, and asked no
better than again to enact the scenes
of bloodshed and pillage which were
their element. The popularity and
acknowledged skill of Merino as a
guerilla-leader, secured to him the
services of many of these daring
and desperate ruffians, who flocked
joyously to the banner of the soldier-priest,
under whose orders some of
them had already fought.

Through a tract of champaign
country in the province of Burgos, a
column of these newly-assembled
troops was seen marching early upon
the third morning after the interview
between Luis Herrera and Count Villabuena.
It consisted of a battalion
of the Realista militia, for the most
part middle-aged citizens, who, although
they had felt themselves bound
to obey the call to arms, seemed but
indifferently pleased at having left
their families and occupations. Their
equipment was various: few had
complete uniform, although most of
them displayed some part of one; but
all had belts and cartridge-box, musket
and bayonet. Although they had
as yet gone but a short distance, many
of them appeared footsore and weary;
and it was pretty evident that, in the
event of a campaign, their ranks
would be thinned nearly as much by
the fatigues of the march as by the
fire of the enemy. In front and rear
of the battalion marched a squadron
of cavalry, of a far more soldierly
aspect than the foot-soldiers, although
even amongst them but little
uniformity of costume was found.
The bronzed and bearded physiognomy,
athletic form and upright carriage,
which bespeak the veteran
soldier, were not wanting in their
ranks; their horses were active and
hardy, their arms clean and serviceable.

At the head of the column, a few
paces in advance, rode a small group
of officers, the chief amongst whom
was only to be distinguished by the
deference shown to him by his
companions. Insignia of rank he
had none, nor any indications of his
military profession, excepting the
heavy sabre that dangled against the
flank of his powerful black charger.
His dress was entirely civilian, consisting
of a long surtout something
the worse for wear, and a round hat.
Heavy spurs upon his heels, and an
ample cloak, now strapped across his
holsters, completed the equipment of
the cura Merino, in whose hard and
rigid features, and wiry person, scarcely
a sign of decay or infirmity was
visible after more than sixty years of
life, a large portion of which had
been passed amidst the fatigues and
hardships of incessant campaigning.

As if infected by the sombre and
taciturn character of their leader, the
party of officers had been riding for
some time in silence, when they came
in sight of a house situated at a short
distance from the road, and of a superior
description to the caserias and[Pg 536]
peasants’ cottages which they had
hitherto passed. It was a building of
moderate size, with an appearance
of greater comfort and neatness
about it than is usually found in
Spanish houses. Stables adjoined it,
and, at some distance in its rear, a
range of barns and outhouses served
to store the crops produced by the
extensive tract of well-cultivated land
in the centre of which the dwelling
was situated. The front of the house
was partially masked from the road
by an orchard, and behind it a similar
growth of fruit trees seemed intended
to intercept the keen blasts from a
line of mountains which rose, grey
and gloomy, at the distance of a few
miles.

“Who lives yonder?” abruptly enquired
Merino, pointing to the house,
which he had been gazing at for some
time from under his bushy eyebrows.
The officer to whom the question was
addressed referred to another of the
party, a native of that part of the
country.

“Señor de Herrera,” was the answer.
“We have been riding for
some minutes through his property.
He purchased the estate about a year
ago, on his return from France.”

“What had he been doing in
France?”

“Living there, which he could not
have done here unless he had been
bullet-proof, or had a neck harder
than the iron collar of the garrote.”

“Herrera!” repeated the cura musingly—”I
know the name, but there
are many who bear it. There was a
Manuel Herrera who sat in the Cortes
in the days of the constitutionalists,
and afterwards commanded a battalion
of their rabble. You do not
mean him?”

“The same, general,” replied the
officer, addressing Merino by the rank
which he held in the Spanish army
since the war of Independence. A
most unpriestly ejaculation escaped
the lips of the cura.

“Manuel Herrera,” he repeated;
“the dog, the negro,[1] the friend of
the scoundrel Riego! I will hang him
up at his own door!”

All the old hatreds and bitter party
animosities of Merino seemed wakened
into new life by the name of one of
his former opponents. His eyes
flashed, his lips quivered with rage,
and he half turned his horse, as if
about to proceed to Herrera’s house
and put his threat into execution.
The impulse, however, was checked
almost as soon as felt.

“Another time will do,” said he,
with a grin smile. “Let us once
get Charles V. at Madrid, and we will
make short work of the Señor Herrera
and of all who resemble him.”
And the cura continued his march,
silent as before.

He had proceeded but a short half
mile when the officer commanding the
cavalry rode up beside him.

“We have no forage, general,”
said he—”not a blade of straw, or a
grain in our corn-sacks. Shall I send
on an orderly, that we may find it
ready on reaching the halting-place?”

“No!” replied Merino. “Send a
party to that house on the left of the
road which we passed ten minutes
ago. Let them press all the carts
they find there, load them with corn,
and bring them after us.”

The officer fell back to his squadron,
and the next minute a subaltern and
twenty men detached themselves from
the column, and, at a brisk trot, began
retracing their steps along the
road. Upon arriving in sight of the
house to which they were proceeding,
they leaped their horses over a narrow
ditch dividing the road from the
fields and struck across the latter in
a straight line, compelled, however,
by the heaviness of the ground to
slacken their pace to a walk. They had
not got over more than half the distance
which they had to traverse,
when they heard the clang of a bell,
continuously rung; and this was followed
by the appearance of two men,
who issued from the stables and out-buildings,
and hurried to the house.
Scarcely had they entered when the[Pg 537]
shutters of the lower windows were
pushed to, and the heavy door closed
and barred. The soldiers were now
within a hundred yards of the dwelling.

“Hallo!” cried the officer contemptuously,
“they will not stand a
siege, will they? The old don is a
black-hearted rebel, I know; but he
will hardly be fool enough to resist
us.”

The trooper was mistaken. The
courage of Don Manuel Herrera was
of that obstinate and uncalculating
character which would have induced
him to defend his house, single-handed,
against a much larger force than that
now brought against it. When he
had learned, three days previously,
that risings were taking place in his
own neighbourhood in the name of
Charles V., he had attached very
little importance to the intelligence.
An old soldier himself, he entertained
the most unmitigated contempt for
the Realista volunteers, whom he
looked upon as a set of tailors,
whose muskets would rather encumber
them than injure any body else;
and who, on the first appearance of
regular troops, would infallibly throw
down their arms, and betake themselves
to their homes. As to the
parties of insurgent guerillas which
he was informed were beginning to
show themselves at various points of
the vicinity, he considered them as
mere bandits, availing themselves of
the stir and excitement in the country
to exercise their nefarious profession;
and, should any such parties attempt
to molest him, he was fully determined
to resist their attacks. In this
resolution he now persevered, although
he rightly conjectured that the horsemen
approaching his house were either
the rearguard or a detachment of the
disorderly-looking column of which he
had a short time previously observed
the passage.

“Hola! Don Manolo!” shouted
the officer, as he halted his party in
front of the house; “what scurvy hospitality
is this? What are you fastening
doors and ringing alarm-bells
for, as if there were more thieves than
honest men in the land? We come
to pay you a friendly visit, and, instead
of welcome and the wine-skin,
you shut the door in our faces. Devilish
unfriendly, that, Don Manolito!”

The speaker, who, like many of
Merino’s followers, was an inhabitant
of the neighbouring country, knew
Don Manuel well by name and reputation,
and was also known to him as
a deserter from the Constitutionalists
in 1823, and as one of the most desperate
smugglers and outlaws in the
province.

“What do you want with me, Pedro
Rufin?” demanded Don Manuel,
who now showed himself at one of
the upper windows; “and what is the
meaning of this assemblage of armed
men?”

“The meaning is,” replied Rufin,
“that I have been detached from the
division of his Excellency General
Merino, to demand from you a certain
quantity of maize or barley, or
both, for the service of his Majesty
King Charles V.”

“I know no such persons,” retorted
Don Manuel, “as General Merino or
King Charles V. But I know you well,
Rufin, and the advice I give you is to
begone, yourself and your companions.
We shall have troops here to-day or
to-morrow, and you will find the
country too hot to hold you.”

The officer laughed.

“Troops are here already,” he said;
“you may have seen our column
march by not half an hour ago. But
we have no time to lose. Once more,
Señor Herrera, open the door, and
that quickly.”

“My door does not open at your
bidding,” replied Don Manuel. “I
give you two minutes to draw off your
followers, and, if you are not gone by
that time, you shall be fired upon.”

“Morral,” said the officer to one of
his men, “your horse is a kicker, I
believe. Try the strength of the
door.”

The soldier left the ranks, and turning
his rawboned, vicious-looking
chestnut horse with its tail to the
house-door, he pressed his knuckles
sharply upon the animal’s loins, just
behind the saddle. The horse lashed
out furiously, each kick of his iron-shod
heels making the door crack and
rattle, and striking out white splinters
from the dark surface of the oak
of which it was composed. At the[Pg 538]
first kick Don Manuel left the window.
The soldiers stood looking on,
laughing till they rolled in their saddles
at this novel species of sledge-hammer.
Owing, however, to the
great solidity of the door, and the
numerous fastenings with which it was
provided on the other side, the kicks
of the horse, although several times
repeated, failed to burst it open;
and at last the animal, as if wearied
by the resistance it met with, relaxed
the vigour of its applications.

“Famous horse that of yours,
Morral!” said the officer; “as good
as a locksmith or a six-pounder. Try
it again, my boy. You have made
some ugly marks already. Another
round of kicks, and the way is open.”

“And if another blow is struck
upon my door,” said Don Manuel,
suddenly reappearing at the window,
to the soldier, “your horse will
go home with an empty saddle.”

“Silence! you old rebel,” shouted
Rufin, drawing a pistol from his
holster. “And you, Morral, never
fear. At it again, man.”

The soldier again applied his
knuckles to his horse’s back, and the
animal gave a tremendous kick. At
the same instant a puff of smoke
issued from the window at which Don
Manuel had stationed himself, the report
of a musket was heard, and the
unlucky Morral, shot through the
body, fell headlong to the ground.

“Damnation!” roared the officer,
firing his pistol at the window whence
the shot had proceeded; and immediately
his men, without waiting for
orders, commenced an irregular fire
of carbines and pistols against the
house. It was replied to with effect
from three of the windows. A man
fell mortally wounded, and two of the
horses were hit. Rufin, alarmed at
the loss the party had experienced,
drew his men back under shelter
of some trees, till he could decide on
what was best to be done. It seemed
at first by no means improbable that
the Carlists would have to beat a retreat,
or at any rate wait the arrival
of infantry, which it was not improbable
Merino might have sent to their
assistance when the sound of the firing
reached his ears. The lower windows
of the house were protected by strong
iron bars; and, although the defenders
were so few in number, their
muskets, and the shelter behind which
they fought, gave them a great advantage
over the assailants, whose carbines
would not carry far, and who
had no cover from the fire of their
opponents. At last a plan was devised
which offered some chance of success.
The party dismounted; and
whilst four men, making a circuit, and
concealing themselves as much as
possible behind trees and hedges, endeavoured
to get in rear of the building,
the others, with the exception of
two or three who remained with the
horses, advanced towards the front of
the house, firing as rapidly as they
could, in order, by the smoke and by
attracting the attention of the besieged,
to cover the manœig;uvre of their
comrades. The stratagem was completely
successful. Whilst Don Manuel
and his servants were answering
the fire of their assailants with some
effect, the four men got round the
house, climbed over a wall, found a
ladder in an out-building, and applied
it to one of the back-windows, which
they burst open. A shout of triumph,
and the report of their pistols, informed
their companions of their entrance,
and the next moment one of them
threw open the front door, and the
guerillas rushed tumultuously into the
house.

It was about two hours after these
occurrences, that Luis Herrera and
Mariano Torres arrived at Don Manuel’s
residence. They had been delayed
upon the road by the disturbed
state of the country, which rendered
it difficult to procure conveyances, and
had at last been compelled to hire a
couple of indifferent horses, upon
which, accompanied by a muleteer,
they had made but slow progress
across the mountainous district they
had to traverse. The news of the
Carlist insurrection had inspired Luis
with some alarm on account of his
father, whom he knew to be in the
highest degree obnoxious to many of
that party. At the same time he had
not yet heard of the perpetration of
any acts of violence, and was far from
anticipating the spectacle which met
his eyes when he at last came in view
of the Casa Herrera. With an exclamation[Pg 539]
of horror he forced his horse,
up a bank bordering the road, and,
followed by Mariano, galloped towards
the house.

Of the dwelling, so lately a model
of rural ease and comfort, the four
walls alone were now standing. The
roof had fallen in, and the tongues of
flame which licked and flickered round
the apertures where windows had
been, showed that the devouring
element was busy completing its
work. The adjoining stables, owing
to their slighter construction, and to
the combustibles they contained, had
been still more rapidly consumed.
Of them, a heap of smoking ashes and
a few charred beams and blackened
bricks were all that remained. The
paling of the tastefully distributed garden
was broken down in several places;
the parterres and melon-beds were
trampled and destroyed by the hoofs
of the Carlist horses, which had seemingly
been turned in there to feed, or
perhaps been ridden through it in utter
wantonness by their brutal owners.
The ground in front of the house was
strewed with broken furniture, and
with articles of wearing apparel, the
latter of which appeared to have belonged
to the Carlists, and to have
been exchanged by them for others of
a better description found in the house.
Empty bottles, fragments of food,
and a couple of wine-skins, of which
the greater part of the contents had
been poured out upon the ground, lay
scattered about near the carcass of a
horse and three human corpses, two of
the latter being those of Carlists, and
the third that of one of the defenders of
the house. A few peasants stood by,
looking on in open-mouthed stupefaction;
and above the whole scene of
desolation, a thick cloud of black
smoke floated like a funereal pall.

In an agony of suspense Luis enquired
for his father. The peasant to
whom he addressed the question,
pointed to the buildings in rear of the
house, which the Carlists, weary perhaps
of the work of destruction, had
left uninjured.

“Don Manuel is there,” said he,
“if he still lives.”

The latter part of the sentence was
drowned in the noise of the horse’s
feet, as Luis spurred furiously towards
the buildings indicated, which consisted
of barns, and of a small dwelling-house
inhabited by his father’s steward.
On entering the latter, his
worst fears were realized.

Upon a bed in a room on the ground
floor, Don Manuel Herrera was lying,
apparently insensible. His face was
overspread with an ashy paleness, his
eyes were closed, his lips blue and
pinched. He was partially undressed,
and his linen, and the bed upon which
he lay, were stained with blood. A
priest stood beside him, a crucifix in
one hand and a cordial in the other;
whilst an elderly peasant woman
held a linen cloth to a wound in
the breast of the expiring man. In
an adjacent room were heard the sobbings
and lamentations of women and
children. With a heart swollen almost
to bursting, Luis approached the bed.

“Father!” he exclaimed as he took
Don Manuel’s hand, which hung
powerless over the side of the couch—”Father,
is it thus I find you!”

The voice of his son seemed to
rouse the sufferer from the swoon or
lethargy in which he lay. He opened
his eyes, a faint smile of recognition
and affection came over his features,
and his feeble fingers strove to
press those of Luis. The priest made
a sign to the woman, and, whilst she
gently raised Don Manuel’s head, he
held the cordial to his lips. The effect
of the draught was instantaneous and
reviving.

“This is a sad welcome for you,
Luis,” said Don Manuel. “Your
home destroyed, and your father
dying. God be thanked for sending
you now, and no sooner! I can die
happy since you are here to close my
eyes.”

He paused, exhausted by the exertion
of speaking. A slight red foam
stood upon his lips, which the priest
wiped away, and another draught of
the cordial enabled him to proceed.

“My son,” said he, “my minutes
are numbered. Mark my last words,
and attend to them as you value my
blessing, and your own repose. I
foresee that this country is on the eve
of a long and bloody struggle. How
it may end, and whether it is to be
the last that shall rend unhappy Spain,
who can tell? But your course is[Pg 540]
plain before you. By the memory of
your sainted mother, and the love
you bear to me, be stanch to the
cause I have ever defended. You are
young, and strong, and brave; your
arm and your heart’s best blood are
due to the cause of Spanish freedom.
My son, swear that you will defend
it!”

No selfish thought of his own happiness,
which would be marred by the
oath he was required to take, nor any
but the one absorbing idea of smoothing
his dying father’s pillow by a
prompt and willing compliance with
his wishes, crossed the mind of Luis
as he took the crucifix from the hand
of the priest, and, kneeling by the bedside,
swore on the sacred emblem to
obey Don Manuel’s injunctions both
in letter and spirit, and to resist to his
latest breath the traitors who would
enslave his country. His father listened
to the fervent vow with a well-pleased
smile. By a last effort he
raised himself in his bed, and laid his
hand upon the head of his kneeling
son.

“May God and his saints prosper
thee, Luis,” said he, “as thou observest
this oath!”

He sank back, his features convulsed
by the pain which the movement
occasioned him.

“Mother of God!” exclaimed the
woman, who was still holding the
bandage to the wound. The bleeding,
which had nearly ceased, had recommenced
with redoubled violence,
and a crimson stream was flowing
over the bed. The death-rattle was
in Don Manuel’s throat, but his eyes
were still fixed upon his son, and he
seemed to make an effort to extend
his arms towards him. With feelings
of unutterable agony, Luis bent forward
and kissed his father’s cheek.
It was that of a corpse.

For the space of a minute did the
bereaved son gaze at the rigid features
before him, as if unable to comprehend
that one so dear was gone from him
for ever. At last the sad truth forced
itself upon his mind; he bowed his
face upon the pillow of his murdered
parent, and his overcharged feelings
found relief in a passion of tears. The
priest and the woman left the apartment.
Mariano Torres remained
standing behind his friend, and after
a time made an effort to lead him
from the room. But Luis motioned
him away. His grief was of those
that know not human consolation.

It was evening when Mariano, who
had been watching near the chamber
of death, without venturing to intrude
upon his friend’s sorrow, saw the door
open and Luis come forth. Torres
started at seeing him, so great was
the change that had taken place in
his aspect. His cheeks were pale
and his eyes inflamed with weeping,
but the expression of his countenance
was no longer sorrowful; it was stern
even to fierceness, and his look was
that of an avenger rather than a
mourner. Taking Mariano’s arm, he
led him out of the house, and, entering
the stable, began to saddle his horse
with his own hands. Torres followed
his example in silence, and then both
mounted and rode off in the direction
of the high-road. Upon reaching it,
Mariano first ventured to address a
question to his friend.

“What are your plans, Luis?”
said he. “Whither do we now proceed?”

“To provide for my father’s funeral,”
was the reply.

“And afterwards?” said his friend,
with some hesitation.

“To revenge his death!” hoarsely
shouted Herrera, as he spurred his
horse to its utmost speed along the
rough road that led to the nearest
village.

We hear much, and much that is
true, of the ephemeral character of
a large part of our literature; but
to no branch of it are the observations
more truly applicable, than to
the greater number of travels which
now issue from the British press. It
may safely be affirmed that our writers
of travels, both male and female, have
of late years arrived at a pitch of weakness,
trifling, and emptiness, which is
unparalleled in the previous history
of literature in this or perhaps any
other country. When we see two
post octavos of travels newly done up
by the binder, we are prepared for a
series of useless remarks, weak attempts
at jokes, disquisitions on
dishes, complaints of inns, stale anecdotes
and vain flourishes, which almost
make us blush for our country,
and the cause of intelligence over the
world. The Russian Emperor, who
unquestionably has the power of
licensing or prohibiting any of his
subjects to travel at his own pleasure,
is said to concede the liberty only to
the men of intelligence and ability in
his dominions; the fools are all obliged
to remain at home. Hence the
high reputation which the Muscovites
enjoy abroad and the frequent disappointment
which is felt by travellers
of other nations, when they visit their
own country. It is evident, from the
character of the books of travels
which every spring issue from the
London press, with a few honourable
exceptions, that no such restraining
power exists in the British dominions.
We have no individuals or particular
works in view in these observations.
We speak of things in general. If any
one doubts their truth, let him enquire
how many of the numberless travels
which annually issue from the British
press are ever sought after, or heard
of, five years after their publication.

Our annual supply of ephemeral
travels is far inferior in point of
merit to the annual supply of novels.
This is the more remarkable, because
travels, if written in the right
spirit, and by persons of capacity and
taste, are among the most delightful,
and withal instructive, species of composition
of which literature can boast.
They are so, because by their very
nature they take the reader, as well as
the writer, out of the sphere of everyday
observation and commonplace remark.
This is an immense advantage:
so great indeed, that, if made use of
with tolerable capacity, it should give
works of this sort a decided superiority
in point of interest and utility over
all others, excepting History and the
higher species of Romance. Commonplace
is the bane of literature, especially
in an old and civilized state;
monotony—the thing to be principally
dreaded. The very air is filled with
ordinary ideas. General education,
universal reading, unhappily make
matters worse; they tend only to multiply
the echoes of the original report—a
new one has scarce any chance of
being heard amidst the ceaseless reverberation
of the old. The more ancient
a nation is, the more liable is it
to be overwhelmed by this dreadful
evil. The Byzantine empire, during a
thousand years of civilisation and opulence,
did not produce one work of
original thought; five hundred years
after the light of Athenian genius had
been extinguished, the schools of
Greece were still pursuing the beaten
paths, and teaching the doctrines of
Plato and Aristotle. It is the peculiar
and prodigious advantage of travelling,
that it counteracts this woful
and degrading tendency, and by directing
men’s thoughts, as well as
their steps, into foreign lands, has a
tendency to induce into their ideas a
portion of the variety and freshness
which characterize the works of nature.
Every person knows how great
an advantage this proves in society.
All must have felt what a relief it is
to escape from the eternal round of
local concerns or county politics, of
parish grievances or neighbouring
railroads, with which in every-day
life we are beset, to the conversation
of a person of intelligence who has
visited foreign lands, and can give to
the inquisitive at home a portion of
the new ideas, images, and recollections
with which his mind is stored.
How, then, has it happened, that the[Pg 542]
same acquaintance with foreign and
distant countries, which is universally
felt to be such an advantage in conversation,
is attended with such opposite
effects in literature; and that, while
our travellers are often the most
agreeable men in company, they are
beyond all question the dullest in
composition?

Much of this extraordinary and
woful deficiency, we are persuaded, is
owing to the limited range of objects
to which the education of the young
of the higher classes is so exclusively
directed in Oxford and Cambridge.
Greek and Latin, Aristotle’s logic
and classical versification, quadratic
equations, conic sections, the differential
calculus, are very good things,
and we are well aware that it is by
excellence in them that the highest
honours in these seminaries of learning
can alone be attained. They are
essential to the fame of a Parr or a
Porson, a Herschel or a Whewell.
But a very different species of mental
training is required for advantageous
travelling. Men will soon find that
neither Greek prose nor Latin prose,
Greek verse nor Latin verse, will
avail them when they come to traverse
the present states of the world.
The most thorough master of the higher
mathematics will find his knowledge
of scarce any avail in Italy or Egypt,
the Alps or the Andes. These acquisitions
are doubtless among the greatest
triumphs of the human understanding,
and they are calculated to
raise a few, perhaps one in a hundred,
to distinction in classical or scientific
pursuits; but upon the minds of the
remaining ninety-nine, they produce
no sort of impression. Nature simply
rejects them; they are not the food
which she requires. They do not do
much mischief to such persons in
themselves; but they are of incalculable
detriment by the time and the
industry which they absorb to no
available purpose. Ten years of youth—the
most valuable and important
period of life—are wasted in studies
which, to nineteen-twentieths of the
persons engaged in them, are of no
use whatever in future years. Thus
our young men, of the highest rank
and best connexions, are sent out
into the world without any ideas or
information which can enable them to
visit foreign countries with advantage.
Need we wonder that, when
they come to write and publish their
travels, they produce such a woful
brood of ephemeral bantlings?[2]

The reaction against this enormous
evil in a different class of society, has
produced another set of errors in
education—of an opposite description,
but perhaps still more fatal to the
formation of the mental character,
which is essential to the useful or
elevating observation of foreign countries.
The commercial and middle
classes of society, educated at the
London university, or any of the
numerous academies which have
sprung up in all parts of the country,
have gone into the other extreme.
Struck with the uselessness, to the
great bulk of students, of the classical
minutiæ required at one of the universities,
and the mathematical depth
deemed indispensable at the other,
they have turned education into an
entirely different channel. Nothing
was deemed worthy of serious attention,
except what led to some practical
object in life. Education was
considered by their founders as merely
a step to making money. Science
became a trade—a mere handmaid to
art. Mammon was all in all. Their
instruction was entirely utilitarian.
Mechanics and Medicine, Hydraulics
and Chemistry, Pneumatics and Hydrostatics,
Anatomy and Physiology,
constituted the grand staples of their
education. What they taught was
adapted only for professional students.
One would suppose, from examining
their course of study, that all men
were to be either doctors or surgeons,
apothecaries or druggists, mechanics,
shipwrights, or civil-engineers. No
doubt we must have such persons—no
doubt it is indispensable that places
of instruction should exist in which
they can learn their various and highly
important avocations; but is that the[Pg 543]
school in which the enlarged mind is
to be formed, the varied information
acquired, the appreciation of the grand
and the beautiful imbibed, which are
essential to an accomplished and really
useful writer of travels? Sulphuric
acid and Optics, Anatomy and Mechanics,
will do many things; but they
will never make an observer of Nature,
a friend of Man, a fit commentator
on the world of God.

Persons of really cultivated minds
and enlarged views will probably find
it difficult to determine which of these
opposite systems of education is the
best calculated to attain what seems
the grand object of modern instruction,
the cramping and limiting the
human mind. But without entering
upon this much-disputed point—upon
which much is to be said on both
sides, and in which each party will
perhaps be found to be in the right
when they assail their opponents, and
in the wrong when they defend themselves—it
is more material to our present
purpose to observe, that both are
equally fatal to the acquisition of the
varied information, and the imbibing
of the refined and elegant taste, which
are essential to an accomplished writer
of travels. Only think what mental
qualifications are required to form
such a character! An eye for the
Sublime and the Beautiful, the power
of graphically describing natural scenery,
a vivid perception of the peculiarities
of national manners, habits,
and institutions, will at once be acknowledged
to be the first requisites.
But, in addition to this, how much is
necessary to make a work which shall
really stand the test of time, in the
delineation of the present countries of
the world, and the existing state of
their inhabitants? How many branches
of knowledge are called for, how many
sources of information required, how
many enthusiastic pursuits necessary,
to enable the traveller worthily to discharge
his mission? Eyes and no
Eyes are nowhere more conspicuous in
human affairs; and, unhappily, eyes are
never given but to the mind which
has already seen and learned much.

An acquaintance with the history
of the country and the leading characters
in its annals, is indispensable to
enable the traveller to appreciate the
historical associations connected with
the scenes; a certain degree of familiarity
with its principal authors, to render
him alive to that noblest of interests—that
arising from the recollection of
Genius and intellectual Achievement.
Without an acquaintance with political
economy and the science of government,
he will be unable to give
any useful account of the social state
of the country, or furnish the most
valuable of all information—that relating
to the institutions, the welfare,
and the happiness of man. Statistics
form almost an indispensable part of
every book of travels which professes
to communicate information; but mere
statistics are little better than unmeaning
figures, if the generalizing
and philosophical mind is wanting,
which, from previous acquaintance
with the subjects on which they bear,
and the conclusions which it is of importance
to deduce from them, knows
what is to be selected and what laid
aside from the mass. Science, to the
highest class of travellers, is an addition
of the utmost moment; as it alone
can render their observations of use to
that most exalted of all objects, an
extension of the boundaries of knowledge,
and an enlarged acquaintance
with the laws of nature. The soul of a
poet is indispensable to form the most
interesting species of travels—a mind,
and still more a heart, capable of appreciating
the grand and the beautiful
in Art and in Nature. The eye of a
painter and the hand of a draughtsman
are equally important to enable him
to observe with accuracy the really
interesting features of external things,
and convey, by faithful and graphic
description, a correct impression of
what he has seen, to the mind of the
reader. Such are the qualifications
necessary for a really great traveller.
It may be too much to hope to find
these ever united in one individual;
but the combination of the majority
of them is indispensable to distinction
or lasting fame in this branch of
literature.

Compare these necessary and indispensable
qualifications for a great traveller,
with those which really belong
to our young men who are sent forth
from our universities or academies
into the world, and take upon themselves
to communicate what they have
seen to others. Does the youth come[Pg 544]
from Oxford? His head is full of
Homer and Virgil, Horace and Æschylus:
he could tell you all the amours
of Mars and Venus, of Jupiter and
Leda; he could rival, Orpheus or
Pindar in the melody of his Greek
verses, and Cicero or Livy in the correctness
of his Latin prose; but as, unfortunately,
he has to write neither
about gods nor goddesses, but mere
mortals, and neither in Greek verse
nor Latin verse, but good English
prose, he is utterly at a loss alike for
thought and expression. He neither
knows what to communicate, nor is he
master of the language in which it is
to be conveyed. Hence his recorded
travels dwindle away into a mere
scrap-book of classical quotations—a
transcript of immaterial Latin inscriptions,
destitute of either energy, information,
or eloquence. Does he
come from Cambridge? He could
solve cubic equations as well as Cardan,
is a more perfect master of logarithms
than Napier, could explain
the laws of physical astronomy better
than Newton, and rival La Grange in
the management of the differential
calculus. But as, unluckily, the world
which he visits, and in which we live,
is neither a geometric world nor an
algebraic world, a world of conic sections
or fluxions; but a world of
plains and mountains, of lakes and
rivers, of men and women, flesh and
blood—he finds his knowledge of little
or no avail. He takes scarce any interest
in the sublunary or contemptible
objects which engross the herd of ordinary
mortals, associates only with
the learned and the recluse in a few
universities, and of course comes back
without having a word to utter, or a
sentence to write, which can interest
the bulk of readers. Does he come
from the London University, or any of
the provincial academies? He is
thinking only of railroads or mechanics,
of chemistry or canals, of
medicine or surgery. He could descant
without end on sulphuric acid or
decrepitating salts, on capacity for
caloric or galvanic batteries, on steam-engines
and hydraulic machines, on
the discoveries of Davy or the conclusions
of Berzelius, of the systems of
Hutton or Werner, of Liebig or Cuvier.
But although an acquaintance
with these different branches of practical
knowledge is an indispensable
preliminary to a traveller in foreign
countries making himself acquainted
with the improvements they have
respectively made in the useful or
practical arts, they will never qualify
for the composition of a great or lasting
book of travels. They would
make an admirable course of instruction
for the overseer of a manufactory,
of a canal or railway company, of an
hospital or an infirmary, who was to
visit foreign countries in order to pick
up the latest improvements in practical
mechanics, chemistry, or medicine;
but have we really become a race of
shopkeepers or doctors, and is Science
sunk to be the mere handmaid of
Art?

We despair therefore, as long as the
present system of education prevails
in England, (and Scotland of course
follows in the wake of its great
neighbour,) of seeing any traveller
arise of lasting celebrity, or book of
travels written which shall attain to
durable fame. The native vigour
and courage, indeed, of the Anglo-Saxon
race, is perpetually impelling
numbers of energetic young men into
the most distant parts of the earth,
and immense is the addition which
they are annually making to the sum-total
of geographical knowledge. We
have only to look at one of our recent
maps, as compared to those which
were published fifty years ago, to see
how much we owe to the courage
and enterprise of Parry and Franklin,
Park and Horneman, of Burckhardt
and Lander. But giving all due
credit—and none give it more sincerely
than we do—to the vigour and courage
of these very eminent men, it is impossible
not to feel that, however
well fitted they were to explore unknown
and desert regions, and carry
the torch of civilization into the wilderness
of nature, they had not the
mental training, or varied information,
or powers of composition, necessary
to form a great writer of travels.
Clarke and Bishop Heber are most
favourable specimens of English travellers,
and do honour to the great
universities of which they were such
distinguished ornaments; but they
did not possess the varied accomplishments
and information of the continental
travellers. Their education,[Pg 545]
and very eminence in their peculiar
and exclusive lines, precluded it.
What is wanting in that character
above every thing, is an acquaintance
with, and interest in, a great many and
different branches of knowledge, joined
to considerable power of composition,
and unconquerable energy of
mind; and that is precisely what our
present system of education in England
renders it almost impossible for
any one to acquire. The system pursued
in the Scottish universities,
undoubtedly, is more likely to form
men capable of rising to eminence in
this department; and the names of
Park and Bruce show what travellers
they are capable of sending forth.
But the attractions of rank, connexion,
and fashion, joined to the advantage
of speaking correct English, are fast
drawing a greater proportion of the
youth of the higher ranks in Scotland
to the English universities; and the
education pursued at home, therefore,
is daily running more and more into
merely utilitarian and professional
channels. That system is by no
means the one calculated to form an
accomplished and interesting writer
of travels.

In this deficiency of materials for
the formation of a great body of male
travellers, the ladies have kindly
stepped in to supply the deficiency; and
numerous works have issued from the
press, from the pens of the most accomplished
and distinguished of our
aristocratic beauties. But alas! there
is no royal road to literature, any
more than geometry. Almack’s and
the exclusives, the opera and ducal
houses, the lordlings and the guards,
form an admirable school for manners,
and are an indispensable preliminary
to success at courts and coronations,
in ball-rooms and palaces. But the
world is not made up of courts or
palaces, of kings or princes, of dukes
or marquesses. Men have something
more to think of than the reception
which the great world of one country
gives to the great world of another—of
the balls to which they are invited,
or the fêtes which they grace
by their charms—or the privations to
which elegant females, nursed in the
lap of luxury, are exposed in roughing
it amidst the snows of the North
or the deserts of the South. We are
grateful to the lady travellers for
the brilliant and interesting pictures
they have given us of capitals and
manners,[3] of costume and dress,
and of many eminent men and women,
whom their rank and sex gave
them peculiar opportunities of portraying.
But we can scarcely congratulate
the country upon having
found in them a substitute for learned
and accomplished travellers of the
other sex; or formed a set-off on the
part of Great Britain, to the Humboldts,
the Chateaubriands, and
Lamartines of continental Europe.

It is impossible to contemplate the
works of these great men without
arriving at the conclusion, that it is
in the varied and discursive education
of the Continent, that a foundation
has been laid for the extraordinary
eminence which its travellers
have attained. It is the vast number
of subjects with which the young
men are in some degree made acquainted
at the German universities,
which has rendered them so capable
in after life of travelling with advantage
in any quarter of the globe, and
writing their travels with effect.
This advantage is in a peculiar manner
conspicuous in Humboldt, whose
mind, naturally ardent and capacious,
had been surprisingly enlarged and
extended by early and various study
in the most celebrated German universities.
He acquired, in consequence,
so extraordinary a command
of almost every department of physical
and political science, that there is
hardly any branch of it in which facts
of importance may not be found in
his travels. He combined, in a degree
perhaps never before equalled in one
individual, the most opposite and
generally deemed irreconcilable mental
qualities. To an ardent poetical
temperament, and an eye alive to the
most vivid impressions of external
things, he united a power of eloquence
rarely given to the most gifted
orators, and the habit of close and[Pg 546]
accurate reasoning which belongs to
the intellectual powers adapted for
the highest branches of the exact
sciences. An able mathematician, a
profound natural philosopher, an
exact observer of nature, he was at
the same time a learned statistician,
an indefatigable social observer, an
unwearied philanthropist, and the most
powerful describer of nature that
perhaps ever undertook to portray
her great and glorious features. It
is this extraordinary combination of
qualities that render his works so
surprising and valuable. The intellectual
and imaginative powers
rarely coexist in remarkable vigour
in the same individual; but when
they do, they produce the utmost
triumphs of the human mind. Leonardo
da Vinci, Johnson, Burke, and
Humboldt, do not resemble single
men, how great soever, but rather
clusters of separate persons, each
supremely eminent in his peculiar
sphere.

Frederick Henry Alexander, Baron
of Humboldt, brother of the celebrated
Prussian statesman of the same name,
was born at Berlin on the 14th September
1769, the same year with Napoleon,
Wellington, Goethe, Marshal
Ney, and many other illustrious men.
He received an excellent and extensive
education at the university of
Gottingeu, and at an academy at
Frankfort on the Oder. His first
step into the business of life was as a
clerk in the mercantile house of Buch,
at Hamburg, where he soon made
himself master of accounts and bookkeeping,
and acquired that perfect
command of arithmetic, and habit of
bringing every thing, where it is possible,
to the test of figures, by which
his political and scientific writings are
so pre-eminently distinguished. But
his disposition was too strongly bent
on scientific and physical pursuits, to
admit of his remaining long in the
comparatively obscure and uninviting
paths of commerce. His thirst for
travelling was from his earliest years
unbounded, and it erelong received
ample gratification. His first considerable
journey was with two naturalists
of distinction, Messrs Fontu
and Genns, with whom he travelled
in Germany, Holland, and England,
in the course of which his attention
was chiefly directed to mineralogical
pursuits. The fruit of his observations
appeared in a work, the first he
ever published, which was printed at
Brunswick in 1790, when he was only
twenty-one years of age, entitled
Observations sur les Basaltes du
Rhin.

To extend his information, already
very considerable, on mineralogical
science, Humboldt in 1791 repaired to
Freyburg, to profit by the instructions
of the celebrated Werner; and, when
there, he devoted himself, with the
characteristic ardour of his disposition,
to make himself master of geology and
botany, and prosecuted in an especial
manner the study of the fossil remains
of plants in the rocks around that
place. In 1792, he published at
Berlin a learned treatise, entitled
Specimen Floræ, Friebergensis Subterraniæ;
which procured for him
such celebrity, that he was soon after
appointed director-general of the
mines in the principalities of Anspach
and Bayreuth, in Franconia. His ardent
and philanthropic disposition
there exerted itself for several years
in promoting, to the utmost of his
power, various establishments of
public utility; among others, the
public school of Streben, from which
has already issued many distinguished
scholars. Charmed by the recent and
brilliant discoveries of M. Galvani in
electricity, he next entered with ardour
into that new branch of science;
and, not content with studying it in
the abstract, he made a great variety
of curious experiments on the effects
of galvanism on his own person, and
published the result in two octavos,
at Berlin, in 1796, enriched by the
notes of the celebrated naturalist
Blümenbach. This work was translated
into French by J. F. Jadelot,
and published at Paris in 1799.
Meanwhile Humboldt, consumed
with an insatiable desire for travelling,
resumed his wanderings, and
roamed over Switzerland and Italy,
after which he returned to Paris in
1797, and formed an intimacy with a
congenial spirit, M. Aimé Bonpland;
who afterwards became the companion
of his South American travels. At
this time he formed the design of
joining the expedition of Captain
Baudin, who was destined to circumnavigate[Pg 547]
the globe; but the continuance
of hostilities prevented him from
carrying that design into effect.
Baffled in that project, upon which
his heart was much set, Humboldt
went to Marseilles with the intention
of embarking on board a Swedish
frigate for Algiers, from whence he
hoped to join Napoleon’s expedition
to Egypt, and cross from the banks of
the Nile to the Persian Gulf and the
vast regions of the East. This was
the turning point of his destiny. The
Swedish frigate never arrived; the
English cruisers rendered it impossible
to cross the Mediterranean,
except in a neutral vessel; and after
waiting with impatience for about
two months, he set out for Madrid, in
the hope of finding means in the Peninsula
of passing into Africa from
the opposite shores of Andalusia.

Upon his arrival in the Spanish
capital, the German philosopher was
received with all the distinction which
his scientific reputation deserved; and
he obtained from the government
the extraordinary and unlooked-for
boon of a formal leave to
travel over the whole South American
colonies of the monarchy. This
immediately determined Humboldt.
He entered with ardour into the new
prospects thus opened to him; wrote to
his friend Aimé Bonpland to propose
that he should join him in the contemplated
expedition—an offer which
was gladly accepted; and soon the
visions of Arabia and the Himalaya
were supplanted by those of the
Pampas of Buenos Ayres and the
Cordilleras of Peru. The two friends
embarked at Corunna on board a
Spanish vessel, and after a prosperous
voyage, reached Cumana, in the New
World, in July 1799. From that
city they made their first expedition
in Spanish America, during which
they travelled over Spanish Guiana,
New Andalusia, and the Missions of
the Caribbees, from whence they returned
to Cumana in 1800. There
they embarked for the Havannah; and
the whole of the summer of that year
was spent in traversing that great and
interesting island, on which he collected
much important and valuable
information. In September 1801, he
set out for Quito, where he arrived in
January of the succeeding year, and
was received with the most flattering
distinction. Having reposed for some
months from their fatigues, Humboldt
and Bonpland proceeded, in the first
instance, to survey the country which
had been devastated in 1797 by the
dreadful earthquake, so frequent in
those regions, and which swallowed
up in a minute forty thousand persons.
Then he set out, in June 1802, to visit
the volcano of Tungaragno and the
summit of Chimborazo. They ascended
to the height of 19,500 feet on
the latter mountain; but were prevented
from reaching the top by impassable
ravines. Perched on one of the
summits, however, of this giant of
mountains, amidst ice and snow, far
above the abode of any living creature
except the condor, they made a
great variety of most interesting observations,
which have proved of essential
service to the cause of science.
They were 3485 feet above the most
elevated point which the learned Condamine,
who had hitherto ascended
highest, reached in 1745, but were still
2140 feet below the loftiest summit
of the mountain. They determined,
by a series of strict trigonometrical
observations, the height of the chief
peaks of that celebrated ridge—

Having returned, after this fatiguing
and dangerous mountain expedition,
to Lima, Humboldt remained several
months enjoying the hospitality of
its kind-hearted inhabitants, whose
warm feelings and excellent qualities
excited in him the warmest admiration.
In the neighbouring harbour
of Callao, he was fortunate enough to
see the passage of the planet Mercury
over the disk of the sun, of which
transit he made very important observations;
and from thence passed
into the province of New Spain, where
he remained an entire year, sedulously
engaged in agricultural, political,
and statistical, as well as physical
enquiries, the fruits of which added
much to the value of his published
travels. In April 1803, he proceeded
to Mexico, where he was so fortunate
as to discover the only specimen
known to exist of the tree called[Pg 548]
Cheirostomon Platanoides, of the
highest antiquity and gigantic dimensions.
During the remainder of that
year, he made several excursions over
the mountains and valleys of Mexico,
inferior to none in the world in interest
and beauty; and in autumn 1804,
embarked for the Havannah, from
whence he passed into Philadelphia,
and traversed a considerable part of
the United States. At length, in 1805,
he returned to Europe, and arrived
safe at Paris in November of that
year, bringing with him, in addition
to the observations he had made, and
recollections with which his mind was
fraught, the most extensive and varied
collection of specimens of plants and
minerals that ever was brought from
the New World. His herbarium consisted
of four thousand different plants,
many of them of extreme rarity even
in South America, and great part of
which were previously unknown in
Europe. His mineralogical collection
was of equal extent and value. But
by far the most important additions
he has made to the cause of science,
consist in the vast series of observations
he has made in the New World,
which have set at rest a great many
disputed points in geography, mineralogy,
and zoology, concerning that
interesting and, in a great degree,
unknown part of the world, and extended
in a proportional degree the
boundaries of knowledge regarding it.
Nor have his labours been less important
in collecting the most valuable statistical
information regarding the Spanish
provinces of those vast regions,
especially the condition of the Indian,
negro, and mulatto race which exist
within them, and the amount of the
precious metals annually raised from
their mines; subjects of vast importance
to Great Britain, and especially
its colonial and commercial interests,
but which have hitherto been in an
unaccountable manner neglected, even
by those whose interests and fortunes
were entirely wound up in the changes
connected with these vital subjects.

The remainder of Baron Humboldt’s
life has been chiefly devoted to the
various and important publications, in
which he has embodied the fruit of his
vast and extensive researches in the
New World. In many of these he
has been assisted by M. Aimé Bonpland,
who, his companion in literary
labour as in the danger and fatigues
of travelling, has, with the generosity
of a really great mind, been content
to diminish, perhaps destroy, his
prospect of individual celebrity, by
associating himself with the labours
Of his illustrious friend. Pursued
even in mature years by the desire of
fame, the thirst for still greater
achievements, which belongs to minds
of the heroic cast, whether in war or
science, he conceived, at a subsequent
period, the design of visiting the upper
provinces of India and the Himalaya
range. After having ascended higher
than man had yet done on the elevated
ridges of the New World, he was consumed
with a thirst to surmount the still
more lofty summits of the Old, which
have remained in solitary and unapproachable
grandeur since the waves
of the Deluge first receded from their
sides. But the East India Company,
within whose dominions, or at least
beneath whose influence, the highest
ridges of the Himalaya are situated,
gave no countenance to the design,
and even, it is said, refused liberty to
the immortal Naturalist to visit their
extensive territories. Whatever opinion
we may form on the liberality or
wisdom of this resolution, considered
with reference to the interests, physical,
moral, and political, of British
India, it is not to be regretted, for the
cause of science and literature over
the world, that the great traveller has
been prevented from setting out late
in life to a fresh region of discovery.
It has left the remainder of his life,
and his yet undiminished powers, to
illustrate and explain what he has
already seen. To do that, was enough
for the ordinary span of human life.

Humboldt’s works relating to the
New World are very numerous. I.
He first published, in 1805, at Paris,
in four volumes quarto, the Personal
Narrative of his travels from 1799
to 1804. Of this splendid and interesting
work, several editions have
since been published in French, in
twelve volumes octavo. It is upon
it that his fame with the generality
of readers mainly rests. II. Vues des
Cordilleras et Monumens des Peuples
Indigènes de l’Amerique—two volumes
folio: Paris, 1811. This magnificent
work, the cost of which is now[Pg 549]
£130, contains by far the finest views
of the Andes in existence. Its great
price renders it very scarce, and not
more than a few copies are to be met
with in Great Britain; but a cheap
edition, without the great plates, was
published at Paris in 1817. III.
Recueil d’Observations Astronomiques,
et de Mésures exécutées dans le Nouveau
Continent: two volumes quarto.
This learned work contains the result
of Humboldt’s astronomical and trigonometrical
observations on the
lunar distances, the eclipses of the
satellites of Jupiter, the transit of
Mercury, and upwards of five hundred
elevated points in the New
World, taken from barometrical observations,
with all the requisite allowances
and calculations carefully
made. IV. Essai sur la Geographie
des Plantes, ou Tableau Physique des
Regions Equinoxiales: in quarto, with
a great map. V. Plantes Equinoxiales
recueillies au Mexique, dans
l’Ile de Cuba, dans les Provinces de
Caraccas, &c.: two volumes folio.
A splendid and very costly work.
VI. Monographie des Mélastomes:
two volumes folio. A most curious
and interesting work on a most interesting
subject. VII. Nova Genera
et Species Plantarum: three volumes
folio. Containing an account of the
botanical treasures collected by him
in the New World, and brought home
in his magnificent herbarium. VIII.
Recueil des Observations de Zoologie et
d’Anatomie comparée faites dans un
Voyage aux Tropiques: two volumes
quarto. IX. Essai Politique sur la
Nouvelle Espagne. 1811: two volumes
quarto. Of this admirable
work a subsequent edition has been
published in 1822, in four volumes
octavo. It contains an astonishing
collection of important statistical facts,
arranged and digested with the utmost
ability, and interspersed with
political and philosophical reflections
on the state of the human race, and the
relation of society in the New World.
X. Ansichten der Natur. Tubingen,
1808: in octavo. It is remarkable
that this is the only one of the
learned author’s works on Spanish
America which originally appeared
in his own language; but it was soon
translated into French under the
title of Tableaux de la Nature. Paris:
1808. It contains a series of descriptions
of the different styles of scenery
and remarkable objects in the vast
regions he had visited, portrayed
with all the vigour and accuracy for
which the author is distinguished.
XI. De Distributione Geographicâ
Plantarum secundum Cœig;li Temperiem
et Altitudinem Montium, Prolegomena.
In octavo. Paris: 1817. The title
of this work explains its object and
its importance, in describing a portion
of the globe consisting of such lofty
and successive ridges and table-lands
as rise from the level of the sea to the
summits of the Cordilleras of Mexico
and Peru. XII. Sur l’Elevation des
Montagnes de l’Inde. Octavo. Paris:
1818. A work prepared when
the author was contemplating a journey
to the Himalaya and mountains
of Thibet. XIII. Carte du Fleuve
Orenoque. Presented to the Academy
of Sciences in 1817. M. Humboldt
has there demonstrated the singular
fact of the junction of the great rivers
Orinoco and of the Amazon by the
intermediate waters of the Rio Negro;
a fact which the sagacity of D’Anville
had long ago led him to suspect, but
which the travels of the indefatigable
German has established beyond a
doubt. XIV. Examen Critique de
l’Histoire de la Geographie du Nouveau
Continent, et du Progrès de l’Astronomie
Nautique aux 15me et 16me
siècles. Paris: 1837. XV. “Cosmos:”
in German—a “Scheme of a Physical
Description of the Universe.” This
last work embraces a much wider
sphere of learning and speculation
than any of the preceding, and is
more characteristic of the vast erudition
and ardent genius of the author.

From the brief account which has
now been given of the published
works of this indefatigable traveller
and author, the reader will be able to
appreciate the extent and variety of
his scientific and political attainments.
We shall now present him under a
different aspect, as an eloquent and
almost unrivalled describer of nature.
It need hardly be said that it is on
these splendid pictures, more even
than the numerous and valuable additions
he has made to the treasures
of science, that his reputation with
the world in general is founded.

The rapids of the Orinoco—one of the[Pg 550]
most striking scenes in America—are
thus described by our author:[4]—

Such is a specimen of the descriptive
powers of the great German
natural philosopher, geographer, botanist,
and traveller. When our
senior wranglers from Cambridge,
our high-honoured men from Oxford,
or lady travellers from London, produce
a parallel to it, we shall hope
that England is about to compete
with the continental nations in the
race of illustrious travellers—but not
till then.

As a contrast to this, we cannot
resist the pleasure of laying before our
readers the following striking description
of night on the Orinoco, in the
placid part of its course, amidst the
vast forests of the tropical regions:—

One of the most remarkable of the
many remarkable features of Nature
in South America, is the prodigious
plains which, under the name of
Llanos and Pampas, stretch from the
shores of the Atlantic to the foot of
the Andes, over a space from fifteen
hundred to two thousand miles in
breadth. Humboldt traversed them
more than once in their full extent,
and has given the following striking
description of their remarkable peculiarities.

These prodigious plains have been
overspread with the horses and cattle
of the Old World, which, originally introduced
by the Spanish settlers, have
strayed from the enclosures of their
masters, and multiplied without end in
the vast savannahs which nature had
spread out for their reception.

The enormous number of beasts of
prey which multiply with this vast accumulation
of animals to be devoured,
as well those introduced by man as
those furnished by the hand of nature,
renders the life of many of the inhabitants
of these regions little else than a
constant struggle with wild animals.
Many hairbreadth escapes and heroic
adventures are recounted by the natives,
which would pass for fabulous if
not stated on such unquestionable
authority as that of M. Humboldt,
and supported by the concurring testimony
of other travellers. The number
of alligators, in particular, on the
Orinoco, the Rio Apuré, and their
tributary streams, is prodigious; and
contests with them constitute a large
portion of the legendary tales of the
Indian and European settlers in the
forest.

If there is any one fact more than
another demonstrated by the concurring
testimony of travellers, historians,
and statistical observers, in all
ages and quarters of the world, it is,
that the possession of property in land
is the first step in social improvement,
and the only effectual humanizer of
Savage Man. Rousseau’s famous
paradox, “The first Man who enclosed
a field, and called it mine, is the
author of all the social ills which followed,”
is not only false but decidedly
the reverse of the truth. He was the
first and greatest benefactor of his
species. Subsequent ills have arisen,
not from following but forgetting his
example; and preferring to the simplicity
of country life the seductions
and vices of urban society. Humboldt
adds his important testimony to
the noble army of witnesses in all
ages, and from all parts of the world,
on this all important subject.

No spectacle in nature can exceed,
few equal, the sublimity and magnificence
of the scenery presented by
the vast chain of mountains which,
under the name of Cordilleras, Andes,
and Rocky Mountains, traverses the
whole continent of America, both north
and south, in the neighbourhood of the[Pg 555]
Pacific Ocean. Of this prodigious
pile of rocks and precipices, Humboldt,
in another of his works, has given the
following admirable account:—

In the rhythm of prose these are
the colours of poetry; but it is of
poetry chastened and directed by the
observation of reality, and possessing
the inimitable charm of being drawn
from real life, and sharing the freshness
and variety which characterize
the works of nature, and distinguish
them from the brightest conceptions
of human fancy. As we have set out in
this article with placing Humboldt at
the head of modern travellers, and much
above any that Great Britain has produced,
and assigned as the main reason
of this superiority the exclusive and
limited range of objects on which the
attention of our youth is fixed at our
great universities, we shall, in justice
to Oxford and Cambridge, present the
reader with a specimen of the finest
passages from Clarke and Bishop
Heber, that he may judge for himself
on their merit, great as it often is,
when compared with that of the ardent
and yet learned German.

Clarke, on leaving Greece, gives the
following brilliant summary of the
leading features of that classic land:—

So far Clarke—the accomplished
and famed traveller of Cambridge.
We now give a favourable specimen
of Bishop Heber—his companion in
traversing Russia—the celebrated author,
in early life at Oxford, of Palestine,
the amiable and upright Bishop of
Calcutta, whose life, if ever that could
be said of mortal, was literally spent
in doing good. This accomplished and
excellent prelate thus describes the
first view of the Himalaya range and
the summits of Nundidevi, the highest
mountain in the world, neatly 5000 feet
above the loftiest peak of Chimborazo.

On comparing the descriptions of[Pg 558]
the most interesting objects in Europe
and Asia—Greece and the Himalaya
range—by these two distinguished
British travellers, with the pictures
given by Humboldt of the Andes, the
falls of the Orinoco, the forests of the
same river, and the expanse of the
Pampas in South America, every one
must admit the great superiority of
the German’s powers of painting
Nature. Neither Clarke nor Heber
appear to attempt it. They tell you,
indeed, that certain scenes were grand
and beautiful, certain rocks wild,
certain glens steep; but they make
no attempt to portray their features,
or convey to the reader’s mind the
pictures which they tell you are for
ever engraven on their own. This is
a very great defect, so great indeed
that it will probably prevent their
works, how valuable soever as books
of authority or reference, from ever
acquiring lasting fame. It is a total
mistake to say that it is in vain to
attempt describing such scenes; that
is the same mistake as was formerly
committed by pacific academical historians,
who said it was useless to
attempt painting a battle, for they
were all like each other. How like
they really are to each other, has been
shown by Colonel Napier and many
other modern historians. We question
if even the sight of the rapids of the
Orinoco would make so vivid an impression
on the imagination, as Humboldt’s
inimitable description; or a
journey over the Pampas or the Andes,
convey a clearer or more distinct idea
of their opposite features than what has
been derived from his brilliant pencil.
It is the same with all the other scenes
in nature. Description, if done by a
masterly hand, can, to an intelligent
mind, convey as vivid an idea as
reality. What is wanting is the enthusiasm
which warms at the perception
of the sublime and the beautiful,
the poetic mind which seizes as by
inspiration its characteristic features,
and the pictorial eye which discerns
the appearances they exhibit, and by
referring to images known to all,
succeeds in causing them to be generally
felt by the readers.

With all Humboldt’s great and transcendent
merits, he is a child of Adam,
and therefore not without his faults.
The principal of these is the want of
arrangement. His travels are put
together without any proper method;
there is a great want of indexes and
tables of contents; it is scarcely possible,
except by looking over the whole,
to find any passage you want. This
is a fault which, in a person of his
accurate and scientific mind, is very
surprising, and the more inexcusable
that it could so easily be remedied by
mechanical industry, or the aid of
compilers and index-makers. But
akin to this, is another fault of a more
irremediable kind, as it originates in
the varied excellences of the author,
and the vast store of information on
many different subjects which he
brings to bear on the subject of his
travels. He has so many topics of
which he is master himself, that he
forgets with how few, comparatively,
his readers are familiar; he sees so
many objects of enquiry—physical,
moral, and political—in the countries
which he visits, that he becomes insensible
to the fact, that though each
probably possesses a certain degree of
interest to each reader, yet it is scarcely
possible to find one to whom, as to
himself, they are all alike the object
of eager solicitude and anxious investigation.
Hence, notwithstanding his
attempt to detail his personal narrative
from the learned works which
contain the result of his scientific researches,
he has by no means succeeded
in effecting their separation.
The ordinary reader, who has been
fascinated by his glowing description
of tropical scenery, or his graphic picture
of savage manners, is, a few pages
on, chilled by disquisitions on the
height of the barometer, the disk of
the sun, or the electricity of the atmosphere;
while the scientific student,
who turns to his works for information
on his favourite objects of study,
deems them strangely interspersed
with rhapsodies on glowing sunsets,
silent forests, and sounding cataracts.
It is scarcely possible to find a reader
to whom all these objects are
equally interesting; and therefore it
is scarcely to be expected that his
travels, unrivalled as their genius and
learning are, will ever be the object
of general popularity.

In truth, here, as in all the other
branches of human thought, it will be
found that the rules of composition
[Pg 559]are the same, and that a certain unity
of design is essential to general success
or durable fame. If an author
has many different and opposite subjects
of interest in his head, which is
not unfrequently the case with persons
of the higher order of intellect, and
he can discant on all with equal facility,
or investigate all with equal eagerness,
he will do well to recollect that
the minds of his readers are not
likely to be equally discursive, and that
he is apt to destroy the influence,
or mar the effect of each, if he blends
them together; separation of works is
the one thing needful there. A mathematical
proposition, a passage of
poetry, a page of history, are all admirable
things in their way, and each
may be part of a work destined to
durable celebrity; but what should
we say to a composition which should
present us, page about, with a theorem
of Euclid, a scene from Shakspeare,
and a section from Gibbon? Unity
of effect, identity of train of thought,
similarity of ideas, are as necessary in
a book of travels as in an epic poem, a
tragedy, or a painting. There is no
such thing as one set of rules for the
fine arts, and another for works of
thought or reflection. The Iliad is
constructed on the same principles as
the Principia of Newton, or the history
of Thucydides.

What makes ordinary books of
travels so uninteresting, and, in general,
so shortlived, is the want of any
idea of composition, or unity of effect,
in the minds of their authors. Men
and women seem to think that there
is nothing more to do to make a book
of travels, than to give a transcript of
their journals, in which every thing is
put down of whatever importance,
provided only it really occurred.
Scenes and adventures, broken wheels
and rugged rocks, cataracts and omelets,
lakes and damp beds, thunderstorms
and waiters, are huddled together,
without any other thread of
connexion than the accidental and
fortuitous one of their having successively
come under the notice of the
traveller. What should we say to
any other work composed on the
same principle? What if Milton,
after the speech of Satan in Paradise
Lost, were to treat us to an account
of his last dinner; or Shakspeare,
after the scene of the bones in Juliet,
were to tell us of the damp sheets in
which he slept last night; or Gibbon,
after working up the enthusiasm of
his readers by the account of the
storming of Constantinople by the
Crusaders, was to favour us with a
digression on the insolence of the
postilions in Roumelia? All the
world would see the folly of this: and
yet this is precisely what is constantly
done by travellers, and tolerated
by the public, because it is founded on
nature. Founded on nature! Is
every thing that is actually true, or
real, fit to be recorded, or worthy of
being recounted? Sketches from nature
are admirable things, and are the only
foundation for correct and lasting
pictures; but no man would think of
interposing a gallery of paintings with
chalk drawings or studies of trees.
Correctness, fidelity, truth, are the
only secure bases of eminence in all
the arts of imitation; but the light of
genius, the skilful arrangement, the
principles of composition, the selection
of topics, are as necessary in the writer
of travels, as in the landscape painter,
the historian, or the epic poet.

A Tale extracted from the History of Poland.

Albert Glinksi, the powerful, ostentatious,
and intriguing Duke of
Lithuania, was passing, distinguished
by his glancing plume and gorgeous
mantle, through one of the more retired
streets of the city of Cracow, at
this time (a.d. 1530) the capital of
Poland, when a domestic wearing the
livery of the palace deferentially accosted
him.

“Her Majesty,” he said, “commands
me to deliver these tablets into
your hands; you dropped them in
the palace.”

“I dropped no tablets,” replied the
duke; but instantly added, “Yes,
they are mine—Give them me.”

He took from the hands of the domestic
certain tablets of ivory, which
folded into a case of gold exquisitely
wrought by one of the most skilful artists
of Italy, and dismissed the bearer
with a liberal gratuity for his services.

“Ha! my excellent Bona! youthful
bride of our too aged monarch
Sigismund!” said the duke to himself
when he was left alone. “Each day
some new device. What have we in
these tablets? Here, in the corner
of each leaf, I see a solitary figure
finely pencilled in, which to any other
eye than mine would mean nothing,
but which tells me that at eight
o’clock this evening you will receive
your favoured duke. So, so! But,
charming Bona! it is not love—loveable
as you are—it is not love—it is
ambition gives its zest, and must
bring the recompense to this perilous
intrigue. The Duke of Lithuania is
no hot-brained youth to be entangled
and destroyed by a woman’s smiles.
To have a month’s happiness, as men
phrase it, and then the midnight dagger
of a jealous monarch—I seek no
such adventures. It is the crown of
Poland—yes, the crown—that you
must help me to, fair lady.”

As he stood reflecting on his ambitious
schemes, his rival in the state,
Count Laski, minister and chancellor
of the king, passed by him on his way
to the palace. The duke, assuming a
frank and cordial manner, called to
him. Laski paused. “What would
the Duke of Lithuania?” he asked in
his usual calm and reserved manner.

“Peace!” replied the duke—”amicable
terms. Political opponents it
seems we are destined to be. The
world gives us out as the selected
champions of two hostile factions. You
affect the commons, I side with the
nobility. Be it so. But there exists
between us, I hope, a mutual respect;
and it would be my greatest boast if,
in spite of this political antagonism, I
might reckon Count Laski amongst
my personal friends.”

A derisive smile played upon the
countenance of the chancellor as he
replied—”Such friendship, my lord,
as is consistent with perpetual strife—open
and concealed—shall, if it
please you, subsist between us. Pardon
me, but we prate a silly jargon
when we talk of private friendship and
public hostility.”

“At all events,” rejoined the duke,
“political rivalry does not exclude the
practice of the courtesies of life. It
has been reported to me that you admire
the marble statue of a nymph
which an Italian sculptor has lately
wrought for me. I, on my part, have
envied you the possession of a certain
Arab slave, a living statue, a moving
bronze, that you have amongst your
retainers. Let us, like Homeric heroes,
make an exchange. Give me
your statue-man, your swart Apollo,
and accept from me what many have
been pleased to call the living statue.”

Glinski had a secret motive for the
acquisition of this slave: his known
fidelity, his surprising address and
power, had protected the life of the
minister against more than one scheme
of assassination.

“The exchange,” replied Laski,
“is too much in my favour. Your
Italian marble would purchase a hundred
slaves. It would be a present
in disguise; and you know my rule—even[Pg 561]
from his Majesty himself I never
receive.”

“Yes, we know your tyrannous
munificence; but this,” said the duke
with a smile, “shall be pure barter.”

“What say you, then,” said the
count, “to those golden tablets which
you hold in your hand? Give me
leave to look at them. They might
suit my pedantic way of life. But,”
added he, as he examined their delicate
workmanship, “came you honestly
by this toy, my lord? What fair
frailty have you cheated of this knack,
that never, I will be sworn, was a
man’s marketing?”

“I am glad to hear so grave a gentleman
indulge so pleasant a view,”
said the duke.

As Count Laski was handling the
tablets, he touched, whether by accident
or design, a spring that had not
been observed by him to whom the
present had been sent. The outer
case flew back, and disclosed a miniature
of the queen!

“I have been indiscreet,” said the
count, and immediately folded up and
returned the tablets. “This is perilous
ware to deal in, Duke of Lithuania.
Have you aught else in the
way of honest barter to propose?”

“What you may infer,” said the
duke, reddening with anger, and grievously
embarrassed at his discovery—”What
you may infer from this silly
bauble I shall not be at the pains to
enquire. I addressed you, my lord,
in courteous and amicable terms; you
have ill responded to them; our conversation
had better close here.”

“As you will,” said the chancellor,
bowing; and he continued his way towards
the palace, with the same deliberate
step with which he was proceeding
when accosted by the duke.

“He is master of our secret,” muttered
the duke. “He or I”——

Chapter II.

In an apartment of the palace fitted
up with every luxury her native Italy
could supply, sat Bona, the young and
beautiful queen of Poland. She is
known to have transplanted into that
northern clime, not only the arts and
civilization of her own genial soil, but
also the intrigue and voluptuousness,
and the still darker crimes for which
it was celebrated. Daughter of the
crafty Sforza, Duke of Milan, educated
in a city and at a court where pleasure
reigned predominant, married
out of policy to a monarch many years
older than her own father, it was almost
to be expected that she should
seek, in the society of some gay cavalier,
a compensation for this banishment
to a northern country, and a
sexagenarian spouse. Nor had she
hesitated long in her choice. Albert
Glinski, Duke of Lithuania, who,
though he was the father of a son ripening
into manhood, was still in the vigour
of life, and surpassed all his younger
rivals in grace of manner and charm
of conversation, had soon fixed her
regard, and won whatever of affection
or love the luxurious princess had to
bestow.

She now sat waiting his arrival.
Punctually at the hour of eight he
entered. If any observer could have
watched the duke as he traversed the
corridor which led to the queen’s
apartment, he would have had great
difficulty in believing that it was a
favoured lover that was passing before
him; so serious a brow did he wear,
and so deep an air of abstraction was
there on his countenance. No sooner,
however, did he enter that apartment,
than, by a sudden effort, his countenance
lit up; his manner grew free
and unrestrained, and he assumed that
mingled tone of gaiety and pathos so
effective with the fair sex. Never had
the queen felt more entirely convinced
of the merits of her cavalier;
never had she more thoroughly approved
of the choice she had made.

When this favourable disposition
was at its height, the duke, adopting
gradually a more serious tone of conversation,
said—

“Has it never occurred to you,
charming Bona, that the most exalted
of your sex share with the humblest
this one privilege—love alone must
be the motive which brings a suitor
to their feet. That passion must be
genuine, must be fever-high, which
makes a subject quite forget his Queen
in the lovely woman before him, and[Pg 562]
tempts him to dare the vengeance of
a Monarch, as well as of a husband.”

“True, there is danger—perhaps to
both of us,” she replied, “but it daunts
us not.”

“No;—but it is at hand.”

“What mean you, Glinski?”

“We are betrayed.”

“How?—by whom?”

“How, or by whom, it matters little;
but that subtle demon, Count
Laski, knows that which in his hands
is a warrant for our destruction.”

“What is to be done? We will
bribe him. All my jewels, all my
hoards shall go to purchase his silence.”

“Bribe Laski! bribe the north
wind! bribe destiny itself, whose nature
it is to distribute good and ill,
but to feel neither. No, but I would
have a dagger in his throat before the
night were passed, but that his short
light slumbers are guarded by a slave
of singular power, whom the villains
fear to attack. I had meant to beg or
buy of him this same fierce automaton,
but something broke off the treaty.”

“We will poison the mind of the
king against him: he shall be dismissed
from all his offices.”

“That poison is too slow. Besides,
if he once communicate his suspicions
to the king—which at this very moment
he may be doing—see you not,
that it is no longer the minister, but
the jealous monarch that we have to
guard against. Hear me, Bona, one
of two fates must now be mine. Death—or
thy hand, and with it the crown
of Poland. Do not start. There is for
me no middle station. You may be
safe. A few tears, a few smiles, and the
old king will lapse into his dotage.”

“You speak in riddles, Glinski; I
comprehend nothing of all this.”

“Yet it is clear enough. Thus it
stands: the Duke of Lithuania loved
the wife of Sigismund, king of Poland.
Love!—I call to witness all the saints
in heaven!—love alone prompted his
daring suit. But now that fortune
has first favoured and then betrayed
him, where think you does his safety
lie? Where, but in the bold enterprises
of ambition? His only place of
refuge is a throne. He who has won
a queen must protect her with a
sceptre. You must be mine—my
very queen—you must extend your
hand and raise me to the royalty of
Poland, or see my blood flow ignominiously
upon the scaffold.”

“I extend my hand!” exclaimed
the agitated queen, “how can a feeble
woman give or take away the crown
of Poland?”

“Him who wears the crown—she
can take away.”

“Murder the king!” shrieked Bona.

“Or sentence me,” replied the duke.

It was no affected horror that the
queen here displayed. Though at a
subsequent period of her life, if history
speaks true, her imagination had
grown familiar with deeds of this very
nature, and she had become skilful in
the art of poisoning, she was at this
time young, and unpractised in crime,
and received its first suggestions with
the horror which it naturally inspires.
She had sought for pleasure only in
the society of Glinski; it was a cruel
disappointment, it was a frightful surprise,
to find herself thrust suddenly,
with unsandaled feet, on the thorny
path of ambition. She sank back on
the couch where they had both been
sitting, and, hiding her face in both
her hands, remained in that position
while the duke continued to unfold his
schemes at greater length.

He represented to her that the possession
of the duchy of Lithuania,
the inhabitants of which were distinguished
by their bravery and their
turbulence, would enable him—should
the king opportunely die—to seize
upon the vacant throne of Poland;—that
he had numerous and powerful
friends among the nobility;—that he
had already drawn together his Lithuanians,
under pretence of protecting
the frontier from the incursion of predatory
bands;—that he intended immediately
to place himself at their
head, and march towards Cracow.
Now, if at this moment the throne
should suddenly become vacant, what
power on earth could prevent him
from ascending it, and claiming the
hand of his then veritable queen?
And then he expatiated on the happiness
they should enjoy, when they
should live in fearless union,

“What is this,” exclaimed Bona,
suddenly starting up—”what is this
you would tempt me to? You dare[Pg 563]
not even name the horrid deed you
would have me commit. Avaunt!
you are a devil, Albert Glinski!—you
would drag me to perdition.”
Then, falling in tears upon his neck,
she implored him not to tempt her
further. “Oh, Albert! Albert!” she
cried, “I beseech you, plunge me not
into this pit of guilt. You can! I
feel you can. Have mercy! I implore
you, I charge you on your soul,
convert me not into this demon.
Spare me this crime!”

“Is it I alone,” said the duke, who
strove the while by his caresses to
soothe and pacify her—”Is it I alone
who have brought down upon us this
distressful alternative? Neither of us,
while love decoyed us on step by step,
dreamed of the terrible necessity towards
which it was hourly conducting
us. But here we are—half-way up,
and the precipice below. We must
rush still upwards. There is safety
only on the summit. Pause, and we
fall. Oh, did you think that you, a
queen, could play as securely as some
burgher’s wife the pleasant comedy of
an amorous intrigue? No, no; you
must queen it even in crime. High
station and bold deed become each
other. We are committed, Bona. It
is choice of life or death. His death
or ours. For—scarcely dare I breathe
the thought—the sudden revenge of
your monarch husband, whose jealousy
at least, age has not tamed, may
execute its purpose before his dotage
has had time to return.”

“Where do you lead me? What
shall I become?” cried the bewildered
queen. “I have loved thee, Albert,
but I hate not him.”

“I ask thee not to hate“——

“They married me to Sigismund
out of state policy. You I have
chosen for the partner of my heart,
and I will protect you to the uttermost.
Let things rest there—’tis well
enough.”

“We will consult further of our
plans, sweet Bona,” said the duke, and,
circling her with his arm, he led the
weeping queen into an adjoining room.

The victory, he felt, was his.

Chapter III.

The scene changes to an apartment
of a very different style. We enter
the house of the chancellor; but it is
not the chancellor himself who is first
presented to our view. In an antique
Gothic chamber, in the decoration and
structure of which the most costly
material had been studiously united
with the severest simplicity of taste,
sat Maria, the only daughter and child
of Count Laski. She sat at her embroidery.
The embroidery, however,
had fallen upon her lap; she leaned
back, resigned to her meditations, in a
massive arm-chair covered with purple
velvet, which it is impossible not to
think must have felt something like
pride and pleasure as her slight and
lovely form sank into it. It was a
long reverie.

In an angle of this lofty room, at some
distance, but not out of the range of
clear vision, stood, motionless as a statue,
the slave Hakem. His arms were
folded on his breast, his eye rested, without,
as it seemed, a power to withdraw
it, on the beautiful figure of the young
girl before him. It was one of those
long intense looks which show that the
person on whom it is fixed is still more
the object of meditation than of vision—where
it is the soul that looks.
Hakem gazed like a devotee upon the
sacred image of his saint.

Maria, quite unconscious of this gaze,
pursued her meditations. Her eye
caught the hour-glass that stood on a
small table beside her. “Sand after
sand,” said she, musing to herself—”Sand
after sand, thought after
thought. The same sand ever trickling
there; the same thought ever coursing
through my mind. Oh, love! love!
They say it enlarges the heart; I think
it contracts it to a single point.”

“Hakem,” she said, after a pause,
and turning towards the slave, “you
are true to my father, will you be true
also to me?”

“To her father!” he murmured to
himself, “as if”——And then, checking
himself and speaking aloud, he
answered—”The Christians are not
so true to your sweet namesake, the
Holy Virgin, whom they adore, as I
will be to you.”[Pg 564]

“A simple promise will suffice,”
said Maria. “You have, Hakem—let
me say it without offence—a style
of language—Eastern, I suppose—hyperbolical—which
either I must
learn to pardon, or you must labour
to reform. It does not suit our northern
clime.”

“I am mute. Yet, lady, you have
sometimes chid me for my long silence.”

“And is it for your much speaking
that I chide you now?” said the
maiden, with a smile. “You will
stand half the day like a statue there;
and, when spoken to, answer with a
gesture only—so that many have
thought you really dumb. Much
speaking is certainly not thy fault.”

“I understand. The slave speaks
as one who felt the indescribable
charm of thy presence. It is a presumption
worthy of death. Shall I
inflict the punishment?”

“Is this amendment of thy fault,
good Hakem, or repetition of it?”

“I await your commands. What
service can Hakem render?”

But Maria relapsed again into silence.
She seemed to hesitate in
making the communication she had
designed. Meantime, the arrival of
her father was announced, and the
slave left the apartment.

Never man felt more tender love
for his daughter than did the proud,
high-minded minister for this his
beautiful Maria. His demeanour towards
her, from childhood upwards,
had been one of unalterable, uninterrupted
fondness. He knew no other
mood, no other tone, in which he
could have addressed her. Did the
grave chancellor, then—some one,
who in his way, also, is very grave,
may ask—did he, by constant fondness,
spoil his child? No. It is the
fondness which is not constant that
spoils. It is the half-love of weak
and irritable natures, who are themselves
children amongst their children,
who can themselves be petulant, selfish,
and capricious—it is this that
mars a temper. But calm and unalterable
love—oh, believe it not that
such ever spoilt a child! Maria grew
up under the eye of affection, and the
ever-open hand of paternal love; and
she herself seemed to have learned no
other impulses but those of affection
and generosity.

Alas for fathers! when the child
grows into the budding woman, and
by her soft, intelligent companionship
fills the house with gladness, and the
heart with inappreciable content, then
comes the gay, permitted spoiler—comes
the lover with his suit—his
honourable suit—and robs them of
their treasure. The world feels only
with the lover—with the youth, and
the fair maiden that he wins. For
the bereaved parent, not a thought!
No one heeds the sigh that breaks
from him, as, amidst festivities and
mirth, and congratulatory acclamations,
he sees his daughter, with all
her prized affections, borne off from
him, in triumph, for ever.

There was, on this occasion, in the
manner of Laski towards his child, an
evident sadness. It was not that the
political horizon was darkening; he
had never permitted that to throw its
gloom over his companionship with
his daughter. It was because he had
grounds to believe that the events
which threatened the tranquillity of
Poland threatened also the peace of
his daughter, whose affections he had
divined were no longer exclusively his
own.

She, observing his emotion, and
attributing it to some untoward event
in the political world, could not refrain
from expressing the wish that he
would quit the harassing affairs of
state, and live wholly in his home.

“I would long since have done so,”
he replied, “if personal happiness had
been the sole aim of my existence.
But I have a taskwork to accomplish—one,
I think, which God, by fitting
me thereto, has pointed out as mine.
Else it is indeed here, with thee beside
me, that I find all that can bear the
name of happiness. The rest of life
is but sternest duty—strife, hostility,
contempt. But away with this gloomy
talk—what gossip is there stirring in
your idle world, Maria?”

“Pray, is there war forward?”

“I hope not. Why do you ask?”

“A maid of mine, who in the city
gathers news as busily as bees, in the
open fields, their honey”——

“Your simile, I fear, would scarce
hold good as to the honey.”

“No, in faith; and there is no
honey in the news she brings. She
tells me that a camp is forming in the[Pg 565]
frontiers between Poland and Lithuania,
and that Augustus Glinski is
sent there to command the troops.
Is this true?”

“It is; and she might have added
that the duke himself secretly left the
city last night, to place himself at
their head.”

“Is it a dangerous service?”

“The service on which the duke
has entered, and into which he misleads
his son, is dangerous. You
tremble, Maria. It was no maiden,
nor the tattle of the town, that brought
you this. When did you last see
or hear from him—from Augustus
Glinski?”

“Believe me,” said Maria, while a
crimson blush suddenly spread over
her countenance, “if I have concealed
any thing from you, it was not from
craft, nor subtlety, nor fear, but
from”——

“From a mere delicacy, a simple
bashfulness,” said the father, coming
to her assistance. “I know it well.
Had you a mother living, I would bid
you confide these sentiments of your
heart to her, and to her only; but,
having no other parent, make me your
confidant. Trust me, you shall not
find a woman’s heart more open to
your griefs, your fears, your joys, than
mine shall be. Make me your sole
confidant—you love this young Augustus?”

“When I was at my aunt’s we met
each other often—but to you, my father,
I have ever referred him as our
final arbiter. I need not say that the
known political rivalry between his
father and yourself has made him
backward in addressing you.”

“All men speak well of Augustus
Glinski. I blame you not, my child;
I only tremble for you. The duke,
his father, is a restless, bold ambitious
man, who will lead him—honourable
as he is, but too young to judge,
or to resist his parent—into treasonable
enterprises. Both father and son—if
they will play the rebel, and bring
down war on Poland—I stand prepared
to meet. The sword of justice
shall sweep them from the earth. But
if thy heart, my child, is doomed to
bleed in this encounter, the wound
will not be more yours than mine.
There shall be no secrets between us.
I will protect thee all I can; and if I
cannot prevent thy sorrows, I will at
least share them.”

A low tap was here heard at the door,
and a page made his appearance. On
seeing the minister, the stripling was
about to retire. Maria, however,
called him in, and bade him deliver his
message. “You come,” she said to the
youth, who still hesitated to speak—”you
come from the younger Glinski:
speak openly—what is it he has commissioned
you to say?”

“This, my lady,” answered the
page, “that he has ridden in all haste
from the camp—that he must quit the
city again before nightfall, and craves
an audience if only for one minute.”

Maria looked towards her father,
and thus referred the answer to him.

Count Laski was silent.

“Will you not,” said his daughter,
“tell this messenger, whether his master
may come here or not?”

“My child, he cannot! he is at this
moment under my arrest. Return, sir
page,” and he motioned him from the
room—”but return to the fortress of
—-; you will find your master there
a prisoner, under charge of high treason.”

“Oh, spare him! spare him!” cried
Maria, as she sank back almost senseless
with terror and alarm.

“My child! my child!” exclaimed
the minister in heart-breaking anguish,
as he bent over his weeping daughter.

Chapter IV.

After having in some measure
soothed the terrors of his daughter,
the chancellor called to him his trusty
Hakem. He briefly explained to him
that the Duke of Lithuania was at
that moment in open rebellion against
his Majesty, and placed in his hands
a warrant for his execution. “The
law cannot reach him through its usual
servants,” he said; “it is a bold enterprise
I propose to you—to decapitate
a general at the head of his troops.”

If this was a measure which hardly
another minister than Laski would
have contemplated, it was one also
which he would have hardly found[Pg 566]
another than Hakem to undertake and
accomplish. The bravery of this man
was all but miraculous, and was only
rescued from madness by the extreme
skill and address by which it was supported.
In battle, he rushed on danger
as a bold and delighted swimmer
plunges in the waves, which to him
are as innocuous as the breeze that is
freshening them. Yet, when the excitement
was passed, he relapsed into
a state of apparent apathy. He had
been taken captive in one of those engagements,
at this time not unfrequent,
between the Poles and the Turks,
with the latter of whom he had served
as a soldier of fortune. To say that
he was taken prisoner, is hardly correct;
for he was found lying half dead
on the field of battle, and was brought
home by the Poles, by some caprice
of compassion, with their own sick
and dying. Neither was it constraint
that held him beneath the roof of
Laski, or in the nominal condition of
a slave, for at all times escape would
have been easy to him. It was either
attachment to those who lived beneath
that roof, or an equal indifference to
every thing without or beyond it, that
retained him there.

To propose to Hakem some bold
and perilous enterprise, was to offer
him one of the few pleasures to which
he was open. He accepted, therefore,
of the strange commission now
entrusted to him without hesitation;
stipulating, only, that he might take
from the stables of the king a horse
which was much celebrated for its
amazing power and fleetness.

Mounted upon this incomparable
steed, he pursued his way to the camp
of the Duke of Lithuania. On his
journey he had made trial of its speed,
and yet had husbanded its strength.
Arrived at the plain where the insurgent
army was encamped, he there
lay in ambush for some time, till he
saw where the duke, passing his
troops in review, rode somewhat in
advance of what in the language of
modern warfare we should call his
staff. Hakem set spurs to his horse,
and rushed upon him with the velocity
of lightning, his drawn cimeter
flashing in the sun, and his loud cry
of defiance calling the duke to his defence.
Thus challenged, he put his
lance in rest to meet his furious assailant.
But the thrust of the lance
was avoided, and the next moment
the head of the duke was seen to roll
upon the field. The Arab wheeled
round, and, without quitting his steed,
picked up the severed head, placed it
on his saddle-bows, and darted off
fleeter than the wind. A cry of horror
and a shout of pursuit arose from the
whole army, who were spectators of
this scene. Every horse was in motion.
But where the contest is one
of speed, of what avail are numbers?
In the whole camp there was not a
steed which could compete with that
on which the solitary fugitive was
mounted, and was already seen scouring
the plain at a distance. As he
fled, a paper was observed to fall
from his hands, which the wind bore
amongst his innumerable pursuers; it
was the judicial warrant that had
been thus strangely executed.

Meanwhile, at the palace, the royal
mind of Sigismund was not a little
disquieted and alarmed by this sudden
rebellion of the powerful Duke of
Lithuania. That alarm would not
have been diminished had he been
aware that this open rebellion was
to be aided by a secret domestic treason,
which, in his own palace, was
lying in ambush for his life. The
queen, whilst watching her opportunity
to perform her part in this
criminal enterprise, affected to throw
all the blame of this formidable rebellion
on the unpopularity of the
minister Laski, whose measures, indeed,
the duke proclaimed as the main
motive of his conduct.

Matters were in this condition when
Count Laski, attended by his slave,
entered the royal apartment. There
were present, beside the queen, several
of the nobility—all prepared, by
the insinuations and address of the
queen, to give but a cold greeting to
the minister.

“In good time,” said the queen,
“Count Laski makes his appearance.
We wish to know how you will extricate
his Majesty from the peril in which
your unpopular counsels have thrust
him. With what forces will you meet
the Duke of Lithuania? Now, when
there is need of the brave chivalry of
Poland to defend the king from rebellion,
we find the nobility alienated
from the crown by your unwise, and[Pg 567]
arrogant, and plebeian policy. But let
us hear what is the excellent advice,
what is the good intelligence, that you
now bring us?”

“The Duke of Lithuania, madam,”
said the chancellor, slightly raising his
voice, but preserving the same calm
dignity as if he had been presiding in
a high court of justice—”the Duke
of Lithuania is in open, manifest rebellion;
and rebellion is, in the laws
of all nations, punished by death.”

“Punished!” said the queen scoffingly:
“are you speaking of some
trembling caitiff who holds up his
naked hand at your bar of justice?
Punished! you must conquer him.”

“Your Majesty will be pleased to
hear,” continued the chancellor with
a look full of significance, “that
Albert Glinski, Duke of Lithuania,
whose treason was open and proclaimed,
has been by the royal warrant sentenced”——

Count Laski paused.

“Sentenced!” exclaimed Bona, and
repeated her scornful laugh, which this
time but ill concealed a certain vague
terror that was rising in her mind. “Is
our chancellor mad, or does he sport
with us? This rebel, whom you talk of
sentencing—of condemning, we presume,
to the block—stands at the head
of a greater army than his Majesty
can at this moment assemble.”

“And the sentence,” pursued the
minister, “has been executed!”

As he pronounced these words, the
slave Hakem advanced, and drawing
aside his robe, which had hitherto concealed
it, he held up by the hair the
severed head of the Duke of Lithuania.

There ran a thrill of horror through
the assembly. But, the next moment,
a loud hysterical shriek drew the attention
of all parties to the queen: she
had fallen insensible at the feet of the
king. The council was abruptly dismissed.

Chapter V.

Thus far the cause of the chancellor
had prospered. Poland had been
preserved from the horrors of a civil
war. The king’s life had also been
saved, and a great crime prevented;
the career of assassination and of
poisoning, into which the queen afterwards
entered, was at all events postponed.
As a public man, the minister
was fully triumphant. But the minister
was a father; at this side he was
vulnerable; and fortune dealt her blow
with cruel and unexpected severity.

We have seen with what stern fidelity
to his ministerial duty, and at how
great a peril to his daughter’s happiness,
the chancellor had arrested Augustus
Glinski. The rebellion quelled,
the author of it punished and decapitated,
there seemed no just motive
for holding longer in imprisonment a
youth who could not be accused of
having any guilty participation in the
crime of his father. He accordingly
proposed his release. But the anger
of the king against the late duke, who
to his political offence had added that
of personal ingratitude, (for it was
Sigismund himself who had bestowed
on him the powerful duchy of Lithuania,)
was still unappeased, and he
insisted upon including the son in the
guilt and punishment of his parent.
The representations of the minister
were here unavailing; he would listen
to nothing but the dictates of his own
vindictive feelings.

Count Laski detailed the manner of
his arrest, and explained the singular
interest he felt in the pardon and
liberation of this youth; adding, that
if Angustus Glinski died upon the
scaffold, he feared the life of his
daughter. But even this was unavailing.
The old monarch thought he
was displaying a great acuteness when
he detected, as he imagined, in this plea
of a daughter’s happiness, a scheme
of selfish aggrandizement. “Ha!
ha!” said he, “so the wind sits in
that quarter. A good match—duchess
of Lithuania! I would rather you
asked for the dukedom yourself, and
married your daughter to another.”

It was in vain that the minister
again repeated his simple and true
statement; it was in vain that he
limited his request to the life of the
younger Glinski, consenting to the
forfeiture of his title and estates;
Sigismund was resolved this time not
to be overreached by his subtle minister.[Pg 568]
The language of entreaty was
new to Laski; he had tried it, and
had failed. It was new to Laski to
endure tamely the misconstruction of
his motives, or the least impeachment
of his veracity. He had no other
resource, no other response, left than
the resignation of his ministerial
office. But the obstinacy and anger
of the king were proof against this
also. The danger which threatened
his reign had been dispelled. He
could afford to be self-willed. He
would not be controlled. In short,
Count Laski left the royal presence—a
discarded minister.

In a monarchy uncontrolled and
unaided by representative assemblies,
the power which is secured perhaps
to one of the weakest of men or
women, perhaps to a child, has often
struck the observer of human affairs
as a strange anomaly. But the insecure
and precarious foundation of
the power of the great minister in
such a monarchy, is scarcely less
curious to contemplate. The sagacious
counsellor, the long-experienced
governor, who has for years wielded
the powers of the state, may be reduced
to obscurity and impotence
by a word—a word of puerile passion,
kindled perhaps by a silly intrigue.
A great ruler is displaced at the
caprice of a dotard. When Count
Laski entered the presence of the
king, he was in reality the governor
of Poland; Europe acknowledged
him amongst the controllers and directors
of human affairs; his country
expected many signal improvements
at his hands; the individual happiness
of thousands depended upon him;
but this power, which had devised
great schemes, and which was the
rock of support to so many, could
itself be shaken and overthrown in a
moment, by the splenetic humour of
an angry old man.

Who shall describe the grief and
despair of Maria when she heard of
the cruel resolution which the king
had taken, of the dreadful fate which
threatened Augustus Glinski? As
she sat this time in her Gothic chamber,
and in her accustomed chair,
what a mortal paleness had settled
upon her countenance! Her eye
glared out, and was fixed on the
vacant wall, as if a spirit had arisen
before her, and arrested her regard.
There was a spirit there. It was the
form of the young Augustus, whom
she saw withering and wasting in his
dungeon; a dungeon which would
deliver him up only to the scaffold.
After the events which had occurred
all idea of a union with Augustus,
presuming that his life should be
spared, had been resigned. How
could he, on whom the maxims of
that age especially imposed the duty
of revenging his parent, ally himself
to her? How could he choose for
his second father the very man who
had deprived him of his first and
natural parent? If she could but
hear that he had broken loose from
imprisonment, that he was but safe—this
was all that she felt entitled to
wish or to pray for. It need hardly
be added that it was additional bitterness
to reflect, that but for his unhappy
attachment to herself, his
arrest and captivity would never have
taken place.

Again, in the same angle of the
apartment, the Arab slave might
have been seen standing, silent and
motionless as before, regarding with
deep interest and commiseration the
beautiful daughter of Laski. The
secret which she was about, on one
occasion, to betray to Hakem, had
now betrayed itself to his own observation.
She loved—she loved the
son of him whom he had assassinated,
or executed. There was a profound
sadness on the features of the slave.

The silence of the room was suddenly
broken by Maria, who, turning
to the slave, exclaimed in a tone of
anguish—”Hakem, you must save
him! you must save him!” This
was said in mere desperation, certainly
not with any distinct hope
that it was in the power of Hakem to
obey. When, therefore, she heard his
voice reply, in a calm but saddened
tone, “I will!” she was almost as
much surprised as if she had not addressed
herself to him. She rose to
be assured that it was he who spoke;
to bid him repeat his consolatory
promise; to question him on his
means of fulfilling it: but Hakem was
no longer there; he had suddenly
quitted the apartment. It seemed as
if some voice in the air had sported
with her grief.[Pg 569]

Chapter VI.

But it was no voice that mocked
at her grief. Hakem proceeded that
very day to the palace, and sought
an interview with the queen. The
guard or sentinel to whom he addressed
himself, laughed at his request.
“Give her majesty this
paper,” said the slave, “and refuse
to deliver it at your peril.”

The paper was forwarded to the
queen—Hakem was immediately
ushered into her presence.

“You promise here,” she said,
pointing to the missive she had received,
“to revenge the death of the
Duke of Lithuania. I presume some
private motive of revenge against the
minister and your master, prompts
your conduct, and you seek from me
in additional recompense for an act
which you have already resolved on,
but which you think will be grateful
to me. Is it not so?

“Your Majesty is penetrating.”

“And this recompense, what
is it?”

“That which will cost you nothing,
though you alone can accomplish
it—the release and pardon of
Augustus Glinski. Obtain this from
the king—which to you will be easy—and
with my own hand I will assassinate
the assassin (for such you will
doubtless deem him) of the Duke of
Lithuania.”

“I will not ask what are your
motives in all this, nor how you have
divined my wishes, but revenge the
death of the Duke of Lithuania, and
far more than the liberation of the
young Augustus shall be your reward.”

“I ask, and will accept no other.
But his rescue must first be obtained.”

The queen had no objection to
urge against this condition; although
she had hitherto, for reasons which
may be easily surmised, avoided any
appearance of interest in the fate of
Augustus. She acquiesced, therefore,
in Hakem’s demand; surprised indeed
that she should have obtained the
gratification of her revenge at so slight
a cost.

What the influence and the reasonings
of the minister could not effect,
was very speedily brought about by
the blandishments of the queen. Augustus
Glinski was pardoned, and restored
to a portion of his father’s
wealth and dignities.

The warrant for the release of the
prisoner was conveyed to the hand
of Hakem, together with a message
that he was now expected to perform
his part of the engagement.

Hakem, bearing this warrant, and
accompanied by one of the officers of
justice, proceeded to the prison of
Augustus, and having liberated him,
carried him forthwith to the house of
the chancellor; the young man, who
as yet hardly apprehended that he
was master of his own movements,
permitting himself without remonstrance
to be led by his new conductor.

The chancellor and his daughter
sat together in the same apartment
to which we have already twice introduced
the reader. Had his daughter
been happy, what a release for
Laski had been his enfranchisement
from public office! “Banishment from
court!” he exclaimed to one who would
have condoled with him—”make
way there for a liberated prisoner!”
But the grief of his daughter, who
strove in vain to check her flowing
tears, entirely pre-occupied his mind.
These tears he never chid; her sadness
he never rebuked; he shared it,
and by renewed kindness strove to
alleviate it. They sat in silence together,
when Hakem, entering, made
his obeisance, and presented Augustus
to the astonished Maria.

“I have saved him!” was all he
said.

The joy of Maria was extreme.
It was soon, however, followed by a
painful embarrassment. Amongst all
parties there was a sad conflict of
feeling. Augustus would have given
worlds to have thrown himself at the
feet of Maria; but if the memory of
what had occurred had not been sufficient,
there stood her father in person
before him—the author of his own
father’s death.

Hakem broke the silence. “Beautiful
being!” he said, kneeling on one
knee before Maria, “whom I have in[Pg 570]
secret worshipped, whom alone to
worship I have lingered here in the
guise and office of a slave—you bade
me save him—and I have! Is there
any thing further for thy happiness
which the Arab can accomplish?”

“No, Hakem, and I feel already
overburdened with gratitude for this
service you have rendered me—how
rendered I cannot as yet divine. There
is no other service now I think that
any one can render me.” As she
spoke, her eye had already turned to
the spot where Augustus, hesitating
to approach or to retreat, was still
standing.

“No other service! But, by the
living God, there is!” cried Hakem,
starting to his feet. His countenance
flushed with sudden excitement; his
eye kindled with some generous sentiment.
“Hear me, gentle sir,” he
said, addressing himself to Augustus.
“Nature calls for vengeance—is it not
so? Christian and Mahometan, we all
resemble in this. Blood cries for
blood. But the hand that slew your
father—it was mine. I am the first
and direct object of your resentment.
Let now one victim suffice. Is the
Arab too ignoble a victim? That
Arab is the preserver of your life, at
what cost you may one day learn.
Let this enhance the value of the sacrifice.
Over my blood let peace be
made between you.” Turning once
more, and bowing with deep emotion
before Maria, he then, with a movement
quick as thought, plunged a
poniard in his bosom, and fell to the
ground. “Go, tell the queen,” he
said to the officer of justice, who had
stood a mute spectator of this scene—”tell
her what you have witnessed;
and add, that my promise has been
fulfilled. And you, Augustus Glinski—will
not this suffice? The assassin of
the duke lies here before you. Oh,
take her by the hand!” Then, looking
his last towards Maria, he murmured—”And
I, too—loved!” and
closed his eyes in death.

The prayer of Hakem was granted.
It was impossible to demand another
sacrifice—impossible not to accept
this as full atonement to the spirit of
revenge. Over the body of Hakem,
whom all lamented and admired,
peace was made.

The generous object of the slave
was fully accomplished. His death
procured the long happiness of Maria.

THE LAY OF STARKÀTHER.