HARPER’S

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

No. IX.—FEBRUARY, 1851.—Vol. II.

THE TRAVELER; OR, A PROSPECT OF SOCIETY.

BY OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

[From Mayhew’s Comic Almanac.]

AN INVITATION TO THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.

(BY A GENTLEMAN WITH A SLIGHT IMPEDIMENT IN HIS SPEECH.)

TO BE READ ALOUD.

[Pg 298]

FELLOWS OF THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY.

DEATH OF HOWARD THE PHILANTHROPIST.[1]

On the 5th of July, 1789, Howard quitted
England to return no more. Arriving at
Amsterdam on the 7th, he proceeded by slow
stages through Germany and Prussia into the
empire of the Czar, which he entered at Riga.
He was destined never more to quit the soil of
Russia. The tremendous destruction of human
life to which the military system of that country
gives rise, had not then, as it has since, become
a recognized fact in Western Europe; and the
unconceived and inconceivable miseries to which
Howard found recruits and soldiers exposed in
Moscow, induced him to devote his attention to
them and to their cause. In these investigations
horrors turned up of which he had never
dreamed, and impressed him still more profoundly
with a sense of the hollowness of the
Russian pretense of civilization. In the forced
marches of recruits to the armies over horrid
roads, being ill-clothed and worse fed, he found
that thousands fell sick by the way, dropped at
the roadside, and were either left there to die of
starvation, or transferred to miserable hospitals,
where fever soon finished what fatigue had begun.
This waste of life was quite systematic.
An hospital for the reception of the poor wretches
had recently been erected at Krementschuk, a
town on the Dnieper, which contained at that
time 400 patients in its unwholesome wards.
Thither Howard repaired to prosecute his new
inquiries. The rooms he found much too full;
many of the soldiers were dreadfully ill of the
scurvy, yet they were all dieted alike, on sour
bread and still sourer quas, alternated with a
sort of water-gruel, which, if not eaten one day,
was served up again the next. From this place,
Howard went down the Dnieper to Cherson,
where he examined all the prisons and hospitals,
and made various excursions in the neighborhood
for the same purpose. The hospitals were
worthy of the evil which they were designed to
alleviate. Our countryman thus sums up his
observations upon them: “The primary objects
in all hospitals seem here neglected—namely,
cleanliness, air, diet, separation, and attention.
These are such essentials, that humanity and
good policy equally demand that no expense
should be spared to procure them. Care in this
respect, I am persuaded, would save many more
lives than the parade of medicines in the adjoining
apothecary’s shop.”

[Pg 299]

While at Cherson, Howard had the profound
gratification of reading in the public prints of
the capture and fall of the Bastille; and he
talked with delight of visiting its ruins and
moralizing upon its site, should he be again
spared to return to the West. But, however
moved by that great event, so important for all
Europe, he did not allow it to divert him from
his own more especial work; the sufferings of
poor Russian soldiers in the hospitals of Cherson,
Witowka, and St. Nicholas, had higher claim
upon his notice at that moment, than even the
great Revolution making in the Faubourg St.
Antoine at Paris.

The reader will recall to mind, that, at the
time of Howard’s residence at Cherson, a desperate
war was raging between the Sultan and
the Autocrat. The strong fortress of Bender
had just fallen into the power of Russia, but as
the winter was already too far advanced to allow
the army to push forward until spring, the commander
of the imperial forces gave permission
to such of his officers as chose to go and spend the
Christmas with their friends in Cherson. That
city was consequently crowded with rank and
fashion. All the city was in high spirits. The
victories of the imperial troops produced a general
state of jubilation. Rejoicing was the order
of the day, and dancing and revelry the business
of the night. But in the midst of these festivities,
a virulent and infectious fever broke out—brought,
as Howard believed, by the military
from the camp. One of the sufferers from this
disorder was a young lady who resided about
twenty-four miles from Cherson, but who had
been a constant attendant at the recent balls
and routs. Her fever very soon assumed an
alarming form; and as a last resource her friends
waited upon Howard—whose reputation as a
leech was still on the increase—and implored
him to ride over and see her. At first he refused,
on the ground that he was only a physician to
the poor; but their importunities increasing, and
reports arriving that she was getting worse and
worse, he at length acceded to their wish—being
also pressed thereto by his intimate friend,
Admiral Mordvinoff, chief admiral of the Black
Sea fleet—and went with them. He prescribed
for the lady’s case; and then, leaving word that
if she improved they must send to him again,
but if she did not, it would be useless, went to
make some visits to the sick of an hospital in
the neighborhood. The lady gradually improved
under the change of treatment, and in a day or
two a letter was written to Howard to acquaint
him with the circumstance, and requesting him
to come again without delay. Very unfortunately
this letter miscarried, and was not delivered
for eight days—when it was brought to
him at Mordvinoff’s house. When he noticed
the date, Howard was greatly alarmed—for he
had become interested in the case of his fair
patient, and thought himself in a manner responsible
for any mishap which might have
befallen her. Although, when the note came
to hand, it was a cold, wintry, tempestuous
night, with the rain falling in torrents, he did
not hesitate for a moment about setting off for
her residence. Unfortunately, again, no post-horses
could be had at the time; and he was
compelled to mount a dray-horse used in the
admiral’s family for carrying water, whose slow
pace protracted the journey until he was saturated
with wet and benumbed with cold. He arrived,
too, to find his patient dying; yet, not willing
to see her expire without a struggle to save her,
he administered some medicines to excite perspiration,
and remained for some hours at her
side to watch the first signs of the effect produced.
After a time, he thought the dose was
beginning to operate, and, wishing to avoid exposing
her to the chance of a fresh cold by uncovering
her arms, placed his hand under the
coverlet to feel her pulse. On raising it up a
little, a most offensive smell escaped from beneath
the clothes, and Howard always thought
the infection was then communicated to him.
Next day she died.

For a day or two, Howard remained unconscious
of his danger; feeling only a slight indisposition,
easily accounted for by his recent
exertions; which he nevertheless so far humored
as to keep within doors; until, finding himself
one day rather better than usual, he went out
to dine with Admiral Mordvinoff. There was
a large animated party present, and he staid
later than was usual with him. On reaching
his lodgings he felt unwell, and fancied he was
about to have an attack of gout. Taking a
dose of sal volatile in a little tea, he went to
bed. About four in the morning he awoke,
and feeling no better, took another dose. During
the day he grew worse, and found himself
unable to take his customary exercise; toward
night a violent fever seized him, and he had
recourse to a favorite medicine of that period,
called “James’s Powders.” On the 12th of
January, he fell down suddenly in a fit—his
face was flushed and black, his breathing difficult,
his eyes closed firmly, and he remained
quite insensible for half an hour. From that
day he became weaker and weaker; though
few even then suspected that his end was near.
Acting as his own physician, he continued at
intervals to take his favorite powders; notwithstanding
which his friends at Cherson—for he
was universally loved and respected in that city,
though his residence had been so short—soon
surrounded him with the highest medical skill
which the province supplied. As soon as his
illness became known, Prince Potemkin, the
princely and unprincipled favorite of Catherine,
then resident in Cherson, sent his own physician
to attend him; and no effort was spared to preserve
a life so valuable to the world. Still he
went worse and worse.

On the 17th, that alarming fit recurred; and
although, as on the former occasion, the state
of complete insensibility lasted only a short
time, it evidently affected his brain—and from
that moment the gravity of his peril was understood
by himself, if not by those about him.[Pg 300]
On the 8th, he went worse rapidly. A violent
hiccuping came on, attended with considerable
pain, which continued until the middle of the
following day, when it was allayed by means
of copious musk drafts.

Early on the morning of the 20th, came to
see him his most intimate friend, Admiral
Priestman—a Russianized Englishman in the
service of the empress. During his sojourn at
Cherson, Howard had been in the habit of almost
daily intercourse with his gallant ex-countryman.
When taken ill, not himself considering
it at first serious, no notice of it had been
sent out; but not seeing his friend for several
days, Priestman began to feel uneasy, and went
off to his lodgings to learn the cause. He found
Howard sitting at a small stove in his bedroom—the
winter was excessively severe—and very
weak and low. The admiral thought him
merely laboring under a temporary depression
of spirits, and by lively, rattling conversation
endeavored to rouse him from his torpidity. But
Howard was fully conscious that death was
nigh. He knew now that he was not to die in
Egypt; and, in spite of his friend’s cheerfulness,
his mind still reverted to the solemn thought
of his approaching end. Priestman told him
not to give way to such gloomy fancies, and
they would soon leave him. “Priestman,” said
Howard, in his mild and serious voice, “you
style this a dull conversation, and endeavor to
divert my mind from dwelling on the thought
of death; but I entertain very different sentiments.
Death has no terrors for me; it is an
event I always look to with cheerfulness, if not
with pleasure; and be assured, the subject is
more grateful to me than any other.” And
then he went on to say—”I am well aware
that I have but a short time to live; my mode
of life has rendered it impossible that I should
get rid of this fever. If I had lived as you do,
eating heartily of animal food and drinking
wine, I might, perhaps, by altering my diet,
have been able to subdue it. But how can
such a man as I am lower his diet, who has
been accustomed for years to live upon vegetables
and water, a little bread and a little tea?
I have no method of lowering my nourishment—and
therefore I must die;” and then turning
to his friend, added, smiling—”It is only such
jolly fellows as you, Priestman, who get over
these fevers.” This melancholy pleasantry was
more than the gallant sailor could bear; he
turned away to conceal his emotion; his heart
was full, and he remained silent, while Howard,
with no despondency in his tone, but with a
calm and settled serenity of manner, as if the
death-pangs were already past, went on to speak
of his end, and of his wishes as to his funeral.
“There is a spot,” said he, “near the village
of Dauphiney—this would suit me nicely; you
know it well, for I have often said that I should
like to be buried there; and let me beg of you,
as you value your old friend, not to suffer any
pomp to be used at my funeral; nor let any
monument nor monumental inscription whatsoever
be made to mark where I am laid; but lay
me quietly in the earth, place a sun-dial over
my grave, and let me be forgotten.”

In this strain of true Christian philosophy did
Howard speak of his exit from a world in which
he felt that he had done his work. The ground
in which he had selected to fix his everlasting
rest, situated about two miles from Cherson, on
the edge of the great highway to St. Nicholas,
belonged to a French gentleman who had treated
him with distinguished attention and kindness
during his stay in the vicinity; and, having
made his choice, he was very anxious to know
whether permission could be obtained for the
purpose, and begged his gallant friend to set off
immediately and ascertain that for him. Priestman
was not very willing to leave his friend at
such a time and on such a gloomy errand; he
fancied people would think him crazy in asking
permission to make a grave for a man still
alive, and whom few as yet knew to be ill; but
the earnestness of the dying martyr at length
overcame his reluctance, and he set forth.

Scarcely had he departed on his strange mission,
when a letter arrived from England, written
by a gentleman who had just been down to
Leicester to see young Howard, giving a highly
favorable account of the progress of his recovery,
and expressing a belief that, when the philanthropist
returned to his native land, he would
find his son greatly improved. This intelligence
came to the deathbed of the pious Christian like
a ray of light from heaven. His eye brightened;
a heavy load seemed lifted from his heart; and
he spoke of his child with the tenderness and
affection of a mother. He called Thomasson to
his bedside, and bade him tell his son, when he
went home, how long and how fervently he had
prayed for his recovery, and especially during
this last illness.

Toward evening, Admiral Priestman returned
from a successful application; with this result
Howard appeared highly gratified, and soon
after his arrival retired to rest. Priestman,
conscious now of the imminency of the danger,
would leave him alone no more, but resolutely
remained, and sat at the bedside. Although
still sensible, Howard had now become too weak
to converse. After a long silence, during which
he seemed lost in profound meditation, he recovered
for a moment his presence of mind, and
taking the letter which had just before come to
hand—evidently the subject of his thoughts—out
of his bosom, he gave it to the admiral to
read; and when the latter had glanced it
through, said tenderly: “Is not this comfort
for a dying father?” These were almost the
last words he uttered. Soon after, he fell into
a state of unconsciousness, the calm of sleep,
of an unbroken rest—but even then the insensibility
was more apparent than real, for on Admiral
Mordvinoff, who arrived just in time to
see the last of his illustrious friend, asking permission
to send for a certain doctor, in whom
he had great faith, the patient gave a sign
which implied consent; but before this person[Pg 301]
could arrive he had fallen off. Howard was
dead!

This mournful event took place about eight
o’clock on the morning of the 20th of January,
1790—1500 miles from his native land, with
only strangers round about his bed; strangers,
not to his heart, though their acquaintance
with his virtues had been brief—but to his race,
his language, and his creed. He, however, who
was the friend of all—the citizen of the world,
in its highest sense—found friends in all. Never
perhaps had mortal man such funeral honors.
Never before, perhaps, had a human being existed
in whose demise so universal an interest
could be felt. His death fell on the mind of
Europe like an ominous shadow; the melancholy
wail of grief which arose on the Dnieper,
was echoed from the Thames, and soon re-echoed
from the Tagus, and the Neva, and the
Dardanelles. Every where Howard had friends—more
than could be thought till death cut off
restraint, and threw the flood-gates of sympathy
wide open. Then the affluent tide rolled in like
the dawn of a summer day. Cherson went into
deep mourning for the illustrious stranger; and
there was hardly a person in the province who
was not greatly affected on learning that he
had chosen to fix his final resting-place on the
Russian soil. In defiance of his own wishes on
the subject, the enthusiasm of the people improvised
a public funeral. The Prince of Moldavia,
Admirals Priestman and Mordvinoff, all
the generals and staff officers of the garrison,
the whole body of the magistrates and merchants
of the province, and a large party of cavalry,
accompanied by an immense cavalcade of private
persons, formed the funeral procession. Nor
was the grief by any means confined to the
higher orders. In the wake of the more stately
band of mourners, followed on foot a concourse
of at least three thousand persons—slaves, prisoners,
sailors, soldiers, peasants—men whose
best and most devoted friend the hero of these
martial honors had ever been; and from this
after, humbler train of followers, arose the
truest, tenderest expression of respect and sorrow
for the dead. When the funeral pomp was
over, the remains of their benefactor lowered
into the earth, and the proud procession of the
great had moved away, then would these simple
children of the soil steal noiselessly to the edge
of the deep grave, and, with their hearts full of
grief, whisper in low voices to each other of
all that they had seen and known of the good
stranger’s acts of charity and kindness. Good
indeed he had been to them. Little used to
acts or words of love from their own lords, they
had felt the power of his mild manner, his
tender devotion to them, only the more deeply
from its novelty. To them, how irreparable the
loss! The higher ranks had lost the grace of a
benignant presence in their high circle; but
they—the poor, the friendless—had lost in him
their friend—almost their father. Nature is
ever true; they felt how much that grave had
robbed them of. Not a dry eye was seen among
them; and looking sadly down into the hole
where all that now remained of their physician
lay, they marveled much why he, a stranger to
them, had left his home, and his friends, and
country, to become the unpaid servant of the
poor in a land so far away; and not knowing
how, in their simple hearts, to account for this,
they silently dropped their tears into his grave,
and slowly moved away—wondering at all that
they had seen and known of him who was now
dead, and thinking sadly of the long, long time
ere they might find another friend like him.

The hole was then filled up—and what had
once been Howard was seen of man no more.
A small pyramid was raised above the spot, instead
of the sun-dial which he had himself suggested;
and the casual traveler in Prussian Tartary
is still attracted to the place as to one of the
holiest shrines of which this earth can boast.

Words can not depict the profound sensation
which the arrival of this mournful news produced
in England. The death-shaft cut the
withes which had kept his reputation down.
All at once the nation awoke to a full consciousness
of his colossal fame and his transcendent
virtues. Howard was now—history. Envy
and jealousy were past: rivalry had ended on
the brink of the grave. Death alone sets a man
on fair terms with society. The death of a
great man is always a calamity; but it is only
when a country loses one of its illustrious children
in a distant land, and under peculiar circumstances,
that the full measure of the national
calamity is felt. They who can recollect the
wild and deep sensation of pity and regret which
the arrival of the news of Byron’s death at
Missolonghi produced in England, can alone
conceive of any thing like the state of the public
mind on the first announcement of the close of
a career still more useful and more glorious.
Every possible mark of honor—public and private—was
paid to the memory of Howard. All
orders of men vied with each other in heaping
honors upon his name. The court, the press,
parliament, the bar, the pulpit, and the stage—each
in its different fashion—paid the well-earned
tribute of respect. The intelligence of
his demise was publicly announced in the official
Gazette—a distinction never before accorded to
a private individual. The muses sang his virtues
with innumerable voices; the churches
echoed with his praise; the senate and the
judgment-seat resounded with the tribute to
his merits; and even at the theatres, his character
was exhibited in imaginary scenes, and a
monody on his death was delivered from the
foot lights.

Nor was a more enduring memorial wanting.
The long dormant Committee of the Howardian
fund was resuscitated, and the sculptor Bacon
was employed to make a full length marble
statue of the Philanthropist. At that time it
was in contemplation to make St. Paul’s serve
the double purpose of a cathedral and a Walhalla;
and this design was inaugurated by
placing there, as the first great worthy of England,[Pg 302]
the statue of John Howard. It stands
immediately on the right hand of the choir-screen;
it is a handsome figure, tolerably faithful,
and is illustrated by emblems of his noble
deeds, and by the following inscription: “This
extraordinary man had the fortune to be honored,
while living, in the manner which his
virtues deserved; he received the thanks of
both houses of the British and Irish Parliaments,
for his eminent services rendered to his country
and to mankind. Our national prisons and
hospitals, improved upon the suggestion of his
wisdom, bear testimony to the solidity of his
judgment, and to the estimation in which he
was held. In every part of the civilized world,
which he traversed to reduce the sum of human
misery—from the throne to the dungeon—his
name was mentioned with respect, gratitude,
and admiration. His modesty alone defeated
various efforts that were made during his life to
erect this statue, which the public has now
consecrated to his memory. He was born at
Hackney, in the county of Middlesex, September
2, 1726. The early part of his life he spent in
retirement, residing principally upon his paternal
estate at Cardington, in Bedfordshire; for which
county he served the office of sheriff in the year
1763. He expired at Cherson, in Russian Tartary,
on the 20th of January, 1790, a victim
to the perilous and benevolent attempt to ascertain
the cause of, and find an efficacious remedy
for the plague. He trod an open but unfrequented
path to immortality in the ardent but
unintermitted exercise of Christian charity:
may this tribute to his fame excite an emulation
of his truly glorious achievements!”

A SKETCH OF MY CHILDHOOD.

BY THE “ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER.”

(Continued from page 165.)

Once having begun, it followed naturally that
the war should deepen in bitterness. Wounds
that wrote memorials in the flesh, insults that
rankled in the heart—these were not features
of the case likely to be forgotten by our enemies,
and far less by my fiery brother. I, for
my part, entered not into any of the passions
that war may be supposed to kindle, except only
the chronic passion of anxiety. Fear it was not;
for experience had taught me that, under the
random firing of our undisciplined enemies, the
chances were not many of being wounded; but
the uncertainties that beset every conflict, as
regarded my power to maintain the requisite
connection with my brother, and the absolute
darkness that brooded over that last worst contingency—the
case of being captured, and carried
off to Gath as a trophy won from Israel—these
were penalties attached to the war that
ran too violently into the current of my constitutional
despondency, ever to give way under
any casual elation of success. Success we really
had at times—often in skirmishes; and once,
at least, as the reader will find to his mortification,
if he is wicked enough to take the side of
the Philistines, a most smashing victory in a
pitched battle. But even then, and while the
hurrahs were yet ascending from our jubilating
lips, the freezing memento came back to my
heart of that deadly depression which, duly at
the coming round of the morning and evening
watches, traveled with me like my shadow on
our approach to the memorable bridge. A bridge
of sighs[2] too surely it was for me; and even
for my brother it formed an object of fierce yet
anxious jealousy, that he could not always disguise,
as we first came in sight of it: for, if it
happened to be occupied in strength, there was
an end of all hope that we could attempt the
passage; and that was a fortunate solution of
the affair, as it imposed no evil beyond a circuit;
which, at least, enjoyed the blessing of
peace, although the sarcastic public might
choose to call it inglorious. Even this shade
of ignominy, however, my brother contrived to
color favorably, by calling us—that is, me and
himself—”a corps of observation;” and he
condescendingly explained to me, that although
making “a lateral movement,” he had his eye
upon the enemy, and “might yet come round
upon his left flank in a way that wouldn’t perhaps
prove very agreeable.” This, from the
nature of the ground, never happened. We
crossed the river out of sight from the enemy’s
position; and my brother’s vengeance, being
reserved until he came round into the rear of
Philistia, from which a good retreat was always
open to Greenhay; naturally discharged itself
in triple deluges of stones. On this line of policy
there was, therefore, no cause for anxiety;
but the common case was, that the numbers
might not be such as to justify this caution,
and yet quite enough for mischief. For my
brother, however, stung and carried headlong
into hostility by the martial instincts of his
nature, the uneasiness of doubt or insecurity
was swallowed up by his joy in the anticipation
of victory, or even of contest; while to myself,[Pg 303]
whose exultation was purely official and
ceremonial, as due by loyalty and legal process
from a cadet of the belligerent house, no such
compensation existed. The enemy was no enemy
in my eyes; his affronts were but retaliations;
and his insults were so inapplicable to
my unworthy self, being of a calibre exclusively
meant for the use of my brother, that from me
they recoiled, one and all, as cannon-shot from
cotton bags.

This inordinate pugnacity of my brother, this
rabid appetite for trials of prowess, had, indeed,
forced itself into display on the very first interview
I ever had with him. On the night of his
return from Louth, an artisan, employed in the
decorations of Greenhay, had entered into conversation
with him upon the pre-eminence of
Lancashire among the provinces of England.
According to him, the county of Lancaster (to
translate his meaning into Roman phrase) was
the prerogative tribe of England. And really I
am disposed to think that it still is such, mongrelized
as it has long been by Cambrian and
Hibernian immigrations. There is not on earth
such another focus of burning energy. Among
other things, the man had magnified the county
as containing (which it then did) by very much
the largest remnant of old Roman Catholic families—families
that were loyal to the back-bone
(in those days a crowning honor); that were of
the ancient faith, and of the most ancient English
blood; none of your upstart, dissenting terræ
filii, but men that might have shaken hands
with Cœur de Lion, or at least come of ancestors
that had. “And, in short, young gentleman,”
he concluded, “the whole county, not
this part, or that part, but take it as you find
it, north and south, is a very tall county.”

What it was exactly that he meant by tall,
I can not say. From the intense predominance
in Lancashire of old genuine mother English, it
is probable that he meant stout-hearted, for that
was the old acceptation of the word tall, and
not (as it is now understood) high in stature.
“A tall ship” meant a stout and sea-worthy
ship; “a tall man,” meant a man that was at
once able-bodied and true-hearted. My brother,
however, chose to understand it in the ordinary
modern sense, and he replied, “Yes, it’s tall
enough, if you take it south and north: from
Bullock Smithy in the south, to beyond Lancaster
in the north, it measures a matter of sixty
miles or more; certainly it’s tall, but then
it’s very thin, generally speaking.”

“Ay, but,” said the man, “thick or thin, it’s
a county palatine.”

“Well, I don’t care much for that,” rejoined
my brother; “palatine or not palatine, thick or
thin, I wouldn’t take any jaw (which meant insolence)
from Lancashire, more than from any
other shire.”

The man stared a little at this unlooked-for
attitude of defiance to a county palatine; but,
recovering himself, he said, that my brother
must take it, if Lancashire chose to offer it.

“But I wouldn’t,” replied my brother. “Look
here: Lincolnshire, the county that I’ve been
staying in for these, I don’t know how many
years—and a very tall county, too, tall and fat—did
I take any jaw from her? Ask the sheriff.
And Leicestershire, where I’ve generally spent
my holidays, did I take jaw from her? Tell me
that. Neither, again, did Louth ever dream of
giving me any of her jaw; then why should I
stand it from Lancashire?”

Certainly, why should he? I, who took no
part in all this but as a respectful listener, felt
that there was much reason in what my brother
said. It was true that, having imbibed from
my nurses a profound veneration for my native
county, I was rather shocked at any posture
(though but in a hypothetical case) of defiance
to Lancashire; and yet, if three out of four capital
L’s had been repulsed in some mysterious
offense, I felt that it was mere equity to repulse
the fourth. But I prepared anxiously to say,
on the authority of my last nurse, that Lancashire
(I felt sure) was not the county to offer
him any “jaw,” whatever that might be. Unhappily,
in seeking for words, which came very
slowly at all times, to express my benevolent
meaning, the opportunity passed over for saying
any thing at all on the subject; but, though
wounded by his squaring at Lancashire, I yet
felt considerable respect for a brother who could
thus resolutely set his arms a-kimbo against
three tall counties, two of them tolerably fat,
and one decent market-town.

The ordinary course of our day’s warfare was
this: between nine and ten in the morning,
occurred our first transit, and consequently
our earliest opportunity for doing business.
But at this time the great sublunary interest
of breakfast, which swallowed up all nobler
considerations of glory and ambition, occupied
the work-people of the factory (or what in the
brutal pedantry of this day are termed the
“operatives”), so that very seldom any serious
business was transacted. Without any formal
armistice, the paramount convenience of such
an arrangement silently secured its own recognition.
Notice there needed none of truce,
when the one side yearned for breakfast, and
the other for a respite; the groups, therefore,
on or about the bridge, if any at all, were loose
in their array, and careless. We passed
through them rapidly, and, on my part, uneasily;
exchanging only a few snarls, but seldom
or ever snapping at each other. The tameness
was almost shocking of those who in the afternoon
would inevitably resume their natural
characters of tiger-cats, wolves, and hunting-leopards.
Sometimes, however, my brother felt
it to be a duty that we should fight in the
morning, particularly when any expression of
public joy for a victory—bells ringing in the
distance, or when a royal birthday, or some
traditional commemoration of ancient feuds
(such as the 5th of November), irritated his
martial propensities. These being religious
festivals, seemed to require of us some extra
homage, for which we knew not how to find[Pg 304]
any natural or significant expression, except
through sharp discharges of stones, that being
a language older than Hebrew or Sanscrit, and
universally intelligible. But excepting these
high days of religious solemnity, when a man
is called upon to show that he is not a Pagan
or a miscreant in the eldest of senses, by
thumping, or trying to thump, somebody who
is accused or accusable of being heterodox, the
great ceremony of breakfast was allowed to
sanctify the hour. Some natural growls we
uttered, but hushed them soon, regardless (in
Mr. Gray’s language) “of the sweeping whirlpool’s
sway, that hushed in grim repose, looked
for his evening prey.”

That came but too surely. Yes, evening
never forgot to come—never for once forgot to
call for its prey. Oh! reader, be you sure of
that. Pleasures—how often do they forget
themselves, forget their duty, forget their engagements,
and fail to revolve! But this
odious necessity of fighting never missed its
road back, or fell asleep, or loitered by the way,
more than a bill of exchange, or a tertian fever.
Five times a week (Saturday sometimes, and
Sunday always, were days of rest) the same
scene rehearsed itself in pretty nearly the very
same succession of circumstances. Between
four and five o’clock, we had crossed the bridge
to the safe, or Greenhay side; then we paused,
and waited for the enemy. Sooner or later a
bell rang, and from the smoky hive issued the
hornets that night and day stung incurably my
peace of mind. The order and procession of
the incidents after this was odiously monotonous.
My brother occupied the main high
road, precisely at the point where a very gentle
rise of the ground attained its summit; for the
bridge lay in a slight valley; and the main
military position was fifty or eighty yards perhaps
above the bridge; then—but having first
examined my pockets in order to be sure that
my stock of ammunition, stones, fragments of
slate, with a reasonable proportion of brickbats,
was all correct and ready for action—he detached
me about forty yards to the right, my
orders being invariable, and liable to no doubts
or “quibbling.” Detestable in my ears was
that word “quibbling,” by which, for a thousand
years, if the war had happened to last so
long, he would have fastened upon me the imputation
of meaning, or wishing at least, to do
what he called “pettifogulizing”—that is, to
plead some little technical quillet, distinction,
or verbal demur, in bar of my orders, under
some colorable pretense that, according to their
literal construction, they really did not admit
of being fulfilled, or perhaps that they admitted
it too much as being capable of fulfillment in
two senses, either of them a practicable sense.
Unhappily for me, which told against all that I
could ever have pleaded in self-justification, my
Christian name was Thomas—an injury for
which I never ceased to upbraid secretly my
two godfathers and my one godmother; and
with some reason: they ought to have seen
what mischief they were brewing; since I am
satisfied to this hour that, but for that wretched
wo-begone name, saturated with a weight of
predestined skepticism that would sink a seventy-four
with the most credulous of ship’s companies
on board, my brother never would have
called me Thomas à Didymus, which he did
sometimes, or Thomas Aquinas, which he did
continually. These baptismal sponsors of mine
were surely answerable for all the reproaches
against me, suggested by my insufferable name.
All that I bore for years by reason of these reproaches,
I charge against them; and perhaps
an action of damages would have lain against
them, as parties to a conspiracy against me.
For any thing that I knew, the names might
have been titles of honor; but my brother took
care to explain the qualities, for better and
worse, which distinguished them. Thomas à
Didymus, it seemed, had exactly my infirmity
of doubting and misgiving, which naturally
called up further illustrations of that temper
from Bunyan—a writer who occupied a place
in our childish library, not very far from the
“Arabian Nights.” Giant Despair, the Slough
of Despond, Doubting Castle, mustered strong
in the array of rebukes to my weakness; and,
above all, Mr. Ready-to-sink, who was my very
picture (it seems) or prophetic type. As to
Thomas Aquinas, I was informed that he, like
myself, was much given to hair-splitting, or
cutting moonbeams with razors; in which I
think him very right; considering that in the
town of Aquino, and about the year 1400,
there were no novels worth speaking of, and not
even the shadow of an opera; so that, not being
employed upon moonbeams, Thomas’s razors
must, like Burke’s, have operated upon
blocks. But were these defects of doubting and
desponding really mine? In a sense, they
were; and being thus embodied in nicknames,
they were forced prematurely upon my own
knowledge. That was bad. Intellectually, if
you are haunted with skepticism, or tendencies
that way, morally, and for all purposes of action,
if you are haunted with the kindred misery of
desponding, it is not good to see too broadly
emblazoned your own infirmities: they grow by
consciousness too steadily directed upon them.
And thus far there was great injustice in my
brother’s reproach; true it was that my eye
was preternaturally keen for flaws of language,
not from pedantic exaction of superfluous accuracy,
but, on the contrary, from too conscientious
a wish to escape the mistakes which language
not rigorous is apt to occasion. So far
from seeking to “pettifogulize,” or to find evasions
for any purpose in a trickster’s minute
tortuosities of construction, exactly in the opposite
direction, from mere excess of sincerity, most
unwillingly I found, in almost every body’s
words, an unintentional opening left for double
interpretations. Undesigned equivocation prevails
every where;[3] and it is not the caviling[Pg 305]
hair-splitter, but, on the contrary, the single-eyed
servant of truth, that is most likely to insist
upon the limitation of expressions too wide
or vague, and upon the decisive election between
meanings potentially double. Not in
order to resist or evade my brother’s directions,
but for the very opposite purpose—viz., that I
might fulfill them to the letter; thus and no
otherwise it happened that I showed so much
scrupulosity about the exact value and position
of his words, as finally to draw upon myself the
vexatious reproach of being habitually a “pettifogulizer.”

Meantime, our campaigning continued to
rage. Overtures of pacification were never
mentioned on either side. And I, for my part,
with the passions only of peace at my heart, did
the works of war faithfully, and with distinction.
I presume so, at least, from the results.
For, though I was continually falling into treason,
without exactly knowing how I got into it,
or how I got out of it, and, although my brother
sometimes assured me that he could, in strict
justice, have me hanged on the first tree we
passed, to which my very prosaic answer had
been, that of trees there were none in Oxford-street—[which,
in imitation of Von Troil’s
famous chapter on the snakes of Lapland, the
reader may accept, if he pleases, as a complete
course of lectures on the natural history of Oxford-street]—nevertheless,
by steady steps, I continued
to ascend in the service; and, I am sure,
it will gratify the reader to hear, that, very
soon after my eighth birthday, I was promoted
to the rank of major-general. Over this sunshine,
however, soon swept a train of clouds.
Three times I was taken prisoner; and with
different results. The first time I was carried
to the rear, and not molested in any way.
Finding myself thus ignominiously neglected, I
watched my opportunity; and, by making a
wide circuit, without further accident, effected
my escape. In the next case, a brief council
was held over me: but I was not allowed to
hear the deliberations; the result only being
communicated to me—which result consisted in
a message not very complimentary to my brother,
and a small present of kicks to myself. This
present was paid down without any discount,
by means of a general subscription among the
party surrounding me—that party, luckily, not
being very numerous; besides which, I must, in
honesty, acknowledge myself, generally speaking,
indebted to their forbearance. They were
not disposed to be too hard upon me. But, at
the same time, they clearly did not think it
right that I should escape altogether from tasting
the calamities of war. And, as the arithmetic
of the case seemed to be, how many legs,
so many kicks, this translated the estimate of
my guilt from the public jurisdiction, to that of
the individual, sometimes capricious and harsh,
and carrying out the public award by means of
legs that ranged through all gradations of
weight and agility. One kick differed exceedingly
from another kick in dynamic value: and,
in some cases, this difference was so distressingly
conspicuous, and seemed so little in harmony
with the prevailing hospitality of the
evening, that one suspected special malice, unworthy,
I conceive of all generous soldiership.
Not impossibly, as it struck me on reflection,
the spiteful individual might have a theory:
he might conceive that, if a catholic chancery
decree went forth, restoring to every man the
things which truly belonged to him—your
things to you, Cæsar’s to Cæsar, mine to me—in
that case, a particular brickbat fitting, as
neatly as if it had been bespoke, to a contusion
upon the calf of his own right leg, would be
discovered making its way back into my great-coat
pockets. Well, it might be so. Such
things are possible under any system of physics.
But this all rests upon a blind assumption as
to the fact. Is a man to be kicked upon hypothesis?
That is what Lord Bacon would
have set his face against. However, some of
my new acquaintances evidently cared as little
for Lord Bacon as for me; and regulated their
kicks upon principles incomprehensible to me.
These contributors excepted, whose articles were
unjustifiably heavy, the rest of the subscribers
were so considerate, that I looked upon them as
friends in disguise.

On returning to our own frontiers, I had an
opportunity of displaying my exemplary greenness.
That message to my brother, with all its
virus of insolence, I repeated as faithfully for
the spirit, and as literally for the expressions,
as my memory allowed me to do: and in that
troublesome effort, simpleton that I was, fancied
myself exhibiting a soldier’s loyalty to his
commanding officer. My brother thought otherwise:
he was more angry with me than with
the enemy. I ought, he said, to have refused
all participation in such sansculottes’ insolence;
to carry it was to acknowledge it as fit to be
carried. “Speak civilly to my general,” I
ought to have told them; “or else get a pigeon
to carry your message—if you happen to have
any pigeon that knows how to conduct himself
like a gentleman among gentlemen.” What
could they have done to me, said my brother,
on account of my recusancy? What monstrous[Pg 306]
punishments was I dreaming of, from the days
of giants and ogres? “At the very worst, they
could only have crucified me with the head
downward, or impaled me, or inflicted the death
by priné,[4] or anointed me with honey (a Jewish
punishment), leaving me (still alive) to the
tender mercies of wasps and hornets.” One
grows wiser every day; and on this particular
day I made a resolution that, if again made
prisoner, I would bring no more “jaw” from the
Philistines. For it was very unlikely that he,
whom I heard solemnly refusing to take “jaw”
from whole provinces of England, would take it
from the rabble of a cotton factory. If these
people would send “jaw,” and insisted upon
their right to send it, I settled that, henceforward,
it must go through the post-office.

But, in that case, had I not reason to apprehend
being sawed in two? I saw no indispensable
alternative of that see-saw nature.
For there must be two parties—a party to saw,
and a party to be sawed. And neither party
has a chance of moving an inch in the business
without a saw. Now, if neither of the parties
will pay for the saw, then it is as good as any
one conundrum in Euclid, that nobody can be
sawed. For that man must be a top-sawyer,
indeed, that can keep the business afloat without
a saw. But, with or without the sanction
of Euclid, I came to the resolution of never
more carrying what is improperly called “chaff,”
but, by people of refinement, is called “jaw”—that
is to say, this was my resolution, in the
event of my being again made prisoner; an
event which heartily I hoped might never happen.
It did happen, however, and very soon.
Again, that is, for the third time, I was made
prisoner; and this time I managed ill indeed; I
did make a mess of it; for I displeased the commander-in-chief
in a way that he could not forget.

In my former captures, there had been nothing
special or worthy of commemoration in the
circumstances. Neither was there in this,[5] excepting
that, by accident, in the second stage
of the case, I was delivered over to the custody
of young woman and girls; whereas the ordinary
course would have thrown me upon the
vigilant attentions (relieved from monotony by
the experimental kicks) of boys. So far, the
change was by very much for the better. I
had a feeling myself—on first being presented
to my new young mistresses—for to be a prisoner,
I in my simplicity, believed, was to be a
slave—of a distressing sort. Having always,
or at least up to the completion of my sixth
year, been a privileged pet, and almost, I might
say, ranking among the sanctities of the household,
with all its female sections, whether
young or old (an advantage which I owed to a
long illness, an ague, stretching over two entire
years of my infancy), naturally I had learned to
appreciate the indulgent tenderness of women;
and my heart thrilled with love and gratitude,
as often as they took me up into their arms
and kissed me. Here it would have been as
every where else; but, unfortunately, my
introduction to these young women was in the
very worst of characters. I had been taken in
arms—in arms, against whom? and for what?
Against their own nearest relations and
connections—brothers, cousins, sweethearts; and
on pretexts too frivolous to mention, if any at
all. Neither was my offense of ancient date,
so as to make it possible for desperate good
nature to presume in me a change of heart, and
a penitential horror of my past life. On the
contrary, I had been taken but five minutes
before, in the very act of showering brickbats
on members of their own factory; and, if no
great number of stones appeared to swell my
pockets, it was not that I was engaged in any
process of weaning myself from such fascinating
missiles, but that I had liberally made over to
their kinsfolk most of those which I possessed.
If asked the question, it would be found that I
should not myself deny the fact of being at war
with their whole order. What was the meaning
of that? What was it to which war, and
the assumption of warlike functions, pledged a
man? It pledged him, in case of an opportunity
arising, to storm his enemies; that is, in
my own case, to storm the houses of these
young factory girls; briefly, and in plain English,
to murder them all; to cut the throats of
every living creature by their firesides; to float
the closets in which, possibly, three generations
of their family might have been huddled together
for shelter, with the gore of those respectable
parties. Almost every book of history in
the British Museum, counting up to many
myriads of volumes would tell them plainly,
and in pretty nearly the very same words,[Pg 307]
what they had to expect from every warrior,
and therefore from me, videlicet this—that
neither the guileless smiles of unoffending infancy,
nor the gray hairs of the venerable patriarch
sitting in the chimney corner; neither the
sanctity of the matron, nor the loveliness of the
youthful bride; no, nor the warlike self-devotion
of the noble young man, fighting as the champion
of altars and hearths; none of these searching
appeals would reach my heart; neither sex
nor age would confer any privilege with me;
that I should put them all to the edge of the
sword; that I should raze the very foundations
of their old ancestral houses; having done
which, I should probably plow up the ground
with some bushels of Nantwich salt, mixed
with bonedust from the graves of infants as a
top-dressing; that, in fact, the custom of all
warriors, and therefore by necessity of myself,
was notoriously to make a wilderness, and to
call it a pacification; with other bloody depositions
in the same key, and often in the very
same words.

All this was passing through my brain as
the sort of explanatory introduction which, in
mere honesty, I could not disown, if any body
should offer it, when suddenly one young woman
snatched me up in her arms, and kissed me;
from her, I was passed round to others of the
party, who all in turn caressed me, with scarcely
an allusion to that warlike mission against them
and theirs, which only had procured me the
honor of an introduction to themselves in the
character of captive. The too palpable fact,
that I was not the person meant by nature to
murder any one individual of their party, was
likely enough to withdraw from their minds the
counterfact—that too probably, in my military
character, I might have dallied with the idea
of murdering them all. Not being able to do
it, as regarded any one in particular, was illogically
accepted as an excuse for the military
engagement that bound me to attempt it with
regard to all in mass. Not only did these
young people kiss me, but I (seeing no military
reason against it) kissed them. Really, if young
women will insist on kissing major-generals,
they must expect that the generals will retaliate.
One only of the crowd adverted to the
character in which I came before them: to be
a lawful prisoner, it struck her too logical mind
that I must have been caught in some aggressive
practices. “Think,” she said, “of this
little dog fighting, and fighting our Jack.”
“But,” said another, in a propitiatory tone,
“perhaps he’ll not do so any more.” I was
touched by the kindness of her suggestion, and
the sweet merciful sound of that same “Not do
so any more,” which really I fear was prompted
by the charity in her that hopeth all things,
and despairs of no villain, rather than by any
signals of amendment that could have appeared
in myself. It was well for me that they gave
no time to comment on my own moral condition;
for, in that case, I should have told
them, that, although I had delivered, in my
time, many thousands of stones for the service
of their near relatives, and must, without vanity,
presume that, on the ratio of one wound to a
thousand shots, I had given them numerous
reasons for remembering me; yet that, if so, I
was sincerely sorry (which I was) for any pain
I had caused—the past I regretted, and could
plead only the necessities of duty. But, on the
other hand, as respected the future, I could not
honestly hold out any hopes of a change for the
better, since my duty to my brother, in two
separate characters, would oblige me to resume
hostilities on the very next day. While I was
preparing myself, however, for this painful exposition,
my female friends saw issuing from
the factory a crowd of boys not likely at all to
improve my prospects. Instantly setting me
down on my feet, they formed a sort of cordon
sanitaire behind me, by stretching out their
petticoats or aprons, as in dancing, so as to
touch; and then, crying out, “Now, little dog,
run for thy life,” prepared themselves (I doubt
not) for rescuing me, if any recapture should be
effected.

But this was not effected, although attempted
with an energy that alarmed me, and even
perplexed me with a vague thought (far too
ambitious for my years, but growing out of my
chivalrous studies) that one, perhaps, if not
two of the pursuing party might be possessed
by some demon of jealousy, since he might have
seen me reveling among the lips of that fair
girlish and womanish bevy, kissed and kissing,
loving and being loved; in which case from all
that ever I had read about jealousy (and I had
read a great deal—viz, “Othello,” and Collins’s
“Ode to the Passions”), I was satisfied that, if
again captured, I had very little chance for my
life. That jealousy was a green-eyed monster,
nobody could know better than I did. “Oh,
my lord, beware of jealousy!” Yes; and my
lord couldn’t possibly beware of it more than
myself; indeed, well it would have been for him
had his lordship run away from all the ministers
of jealousy—Iago, Cassio, Desdemona—and embroidered
handkerchiefs—at the same pace of
six miles an hour which kept me ahead of my
infuriated pursuers. Ah, that maniac, white
as a leper with flakes of cotton, can I ever forget
him, that ran so far in advance of his party?
What passion, but jealousy, could have sustained
him in so hot a chase? There were
some lovely girls in the fair company that had
so condescendingly caressed me; but, doubtless,
upon that sweet creature his love must have
settled, who suggested, in her low, soft, relenting
voice, a penitence in me that, alas! had
not dawned, saying, “Yes; but perhaps he will
do so no more.” Thinking, as I ran, of her
beauty, I felt that this jealous demoniac must
fancy himself justified in committing seven
times seven murders upon me, if he should have
it in his power. But, thank heaven, if jealousy
can run six miles an hour, there are other passions,
as for instance, fear, that can run, upon
occasion, six and a half; so, as I had the start[Pg 308]
of him (you know, reader), and not a very short
start—thanks be to the expanded petticoats of
my dear female friends! naturally it happened
that the green-eyed monster came in second
best. Time luckily was precious with him;
and therefore, when he had chased me into the
by-road leading down to Greenhay, he turned
back; and I, with somewhat sorrowful steps,
on the consideration that this scene might need
to be all acted over again, when Green-eyes
might happen to have better luck, and being
unhappy, besides, at having to number so many
kind-hearted girls among Philistines and daughters
of Gath, pensively pursued my way to the
gates of Greenhay. Pensively is not the word
that meets the realities of the case. I was unhappy,
in the profoundest sense, and not from
any momentary accident of distress that might
pass away and be forgotten, but from deep
glimpses which now, as heretofore, had opened
themselves, as occasions arose, into the interior
sadnesses, and the inevitable conflicts of life.
I knew—I anticipated to a dead certainty—that
my brother would not hear of any merit belonging
to the factory population whom every day
we had to meet in battle; on the contrary,
even submission on their part, and willingness to
walk penitentially through the Furcæ Caudinæ,
would hardly have satisfied his sense of their
criminality. Continually, indeed, as we came
in view of the factory, he used to shake his fist
at it, and say, in a ferocious tone of voice,
“Delenda est Carthago!” And certainly, I
thought to myself, it must be admitted by
every body that the factory people are inexcusable
in raising a rebellion against my brother.
But still rebels were men, and sometimes were
women; and rebels, that stretch out their petticoats
like fans for the sake of screening one
from the hot pursuit of enemies with fiery eyes
(green or otherwise), really are not the sort of
people that one wishes to hate.

Homeward, therefore, I drew in sadness, and
little doubting that hereafter I might have verbal
feuds with my brother on behalf of my fair
friends, but not dreaming how much displeasure
I had already incurred by my treasonable collusion
with their caresses. That part of the affair
he had seen with his own eyes from his position
on the field; and then it was that he left me indignantly
to my fate, which, by my first reception,
it was easy to see would not prove very
gloomy. When I came into our own study, I
found him engaged in preparing a bulletin (which
word was just then traveling into universal
use), reporting briefly the events of the day.
Drawing, as I shall again have occasion to mention,
was among his foremost accomplishments;
and round the margin of the border ran a black
border, ornamented with cypress, and other funeral
emblems. When finished, it was carried
into the room of Mrs. Evans. This Mrs. Evans
was an important person in our affairs. My
mother, who never chose to have any direct communication
with her servants, always had a
housekeeper for the regulation of all domestic
business; and the housekeeper for some years
at this period was this Mrs. Evans. Into her
private parlor, where she sat aloof from the under
servants, my brother and I had the entrée
at all times, but upon very different terms of
acceptance: he, as a favorite of the first class;
I, by sufferance, as a sort of gloomy shadow
that ran after his person, and could not well be
shut out if he were let in. Him she admired in
the very highest degree; myself, on the contrary,
she detested, which made me unhappy.
But then, in some measure, she made amends
for this, by despising me in extremity, and for
that I was truly thankful—I need not say why,
as the reader already knows. Why she detested
me, so far as I know, arose out of my reserve
and thoughtful abstraction. I had a great deal
to say, but then I could say it only to a very
few people, among whom Mrs. Evans was certainly
not one; and when I did say any thing,
I fear that my dire ignorance and savage sincerity
prevented my laying the proper restraints
upon my too liberal candor; and that could not
prove acceptable to one who thought nothing of
working for any purpose, or for no purpose, by
petty tricks, or even falsehoods—all which I held
in stern abhorrence, that I was at no pains to
conceal. The bulletin, on this occasion, garnished
with its pageantry of woe, cypress wreaths,
and arms reversed, was read aloud to Mrs. Evans,
indirectly therefore to me. It communicated,
with Spartan brevity, the sad intelligence (but
not sad to Mrs. E.), “that the major-general
had forever disgraced himself, by submitting to
the … caresses of the enemy.” I leave a
blank for the epithet affixed to “caresses,” not
because there was any blank, but, on the contrary,
because my brother’s wrath had boiled
over in such a hubble-bubble of epithets, some
only half-erased, some doubtfully erased, that it
was impossible, out of the various readings, to
pick out the true classical text. “Infamous,”
“disgusting,” and “odious,” struggled for precedency;
and infamous they might be; but on
the other affixes I held my own private opinions.
For some days, my brother’s displeasure continued
to roll in reverberating thunders; but at
length it growled itself to rest; and at last he
descended to mild expostulations with me, showing
clearly, in a series of general orders, what
frightful consequences must ensue, if major-generals
(as a general principle) should allow
themselves to be kissed by the enemy.

[From Bentley’s Miscellany.]

THE HISTORY AND MYSTERY OF THE GLASS-HOUSE.

Upward of two thousand years ago, perhaps
three, a company of merchants, who had a
cargo of nitre on board their ship, were driven
by the winds on the shores of Galilee, close to
a small stream that runs from the foot of Mount
Carmel. Being here weather-bound till the storm
abated, they made preparations for cooking their
food on the strand; and not finding stones to
rest their vessels upon, they used some lumps[Pg 309]
of nitre for that purpose, placing their kettles
and stew-pans on the top, and lighting a strong
fire underneath. As the heat increased, the
nitre slowly melted away, and flowing down
the beach, became mixed up with the sand,
forming, when the incorporated mass cooled
down, a singularly beautiful, transparent substance,
which excited the astonishment and
wonder of the beholders.

Such is the legend of the origin of Glass.

A great many centuries afterward—that is
to say, toward the close of the fifteenth century
of the Christian era—when some of the secrets
of the glass-house, supposed to have been known
to the ancients, were lost, and the simple art of
blowing glass was but scantily cultivated—an
artificer, whose name has unfortunately escaped
immortality, while employed over his crucible
accidentally spilt some of the material he was
melting. Being in a fluid state it ran over the
ground till it found its way under one of the
large flag-stones with which the place was paved,
and the poor man was obliged to take up the
stone to recover his glass. By this time it had
grown cold, and to his infinite surprise he saw
that, from the flatness and equality of the surface
beneath the stone, it had taken the form
of a slab—a form which could not be produced
by any process of blowing then in use.

Such was the accident that led to the discovery
of the art of casting Plate-Glass.

These are the only accidents recorded in the
History of Glass. For the rest—the discovery
of its endless capabilities and applications—we
are indebted to accumulated observation and
persevering experiment, which, prosecuting their
ingenious art-labors up to the present hour,
promise still farther to enlarge the domain of
the Beautiful and the Useful.

The importance of glass, and the infinite
variety of objects to which it is applicable, can
not be exaggerated. Indeed it would be extremely
difficult to enumerate its properties, or
to estimate adequately its value. This thin,
transparent substance, so light and fragile, is
one of the most essential ministers of science
and philosophy, and enters so minutely into the
concerns of life, that it has become indispensable
to the daily routine of our business, our
wants, and our pleasures. It admits the sun
and excludes the wind, answering the double
purpose of transmitting light and preserving
warmth; it carries the eyes of the astronomer
to the remotest region of space; through the
lenses of the microscope it develops new worlds
of vitality which, without its help, must have
been but imperfectly known; it renews the sight
of the old, and assists the curiosity of the young;
it empowers the mariner to descry distant ships,
and to trace far-off shores, the watchman on the
cliff to detect the operations of hostile fleets and
midnight contrabandists, and the lounger in the
opera to make the tour of the circles from his
stall; it preserves the light of the beacon from
the rush of the tempest, and softens the flame
of the lamps upon our tables; it supplies the
revel with those charming vessels in whose
bright depths we enjoy the color as well as the
flavor of our wine; it protects the dial whose
movements it reveals; it enables the student to
penetrate the wonders of nature, and the beauty
to survey the marvels of her person; it reflects,
magnifies, and diminishes; as a medium of light
and observation its uses are without limit; and
as an article of mere embellishment, there is no
form into which it may not be moulded, or no
object of luxury to which it may not be adapted.

Yet this agent of universal utility, so valuable
and ornamental in its applications, is composed
of materials which possess in themselves
literally no intrinsic value whatever. Sand and
salt form the main elements of glass. The real
cost is in the process of manufacture.

CURIOUS PROPERTIES OF GLASS.

Out of these elements, slightly varied according
to circumstances, are produced the whole
miracles of the glass-house. To any one, not
previously acquainted with the component ingredients,
the surprise which this information
must naturally excite will be much increased
upon being apprised of a few of the peculiarities
or properties of glass. Transparent in itself, the
materials of which it is composed are opaque.
Brittle to a proverb when cold, its tenuity and
flexibility when hot are so remarkable that it
may be spun into filaments as delicate as cobwebs,
drawn out like elastic threads till it becomes
finer than the finest hair, or whisked,
pressed, bent, folded, twisted or moulded into
any desired shape. It is impermeable to water,
suffers no diminution of its weight or quality by
being melted down, is capable of receiving and
retaining the most lustrous colors, is susceptible
of the most perfect polish, can be carved and
sculptured like stone or metal, never loses a
fraction of its substance by constant use, and,
notwithstanding its origin, is so insensible to
the action of acids that it is employed by
chemists for purposes to which no other known
substance can be applied.

The elasticity and fragility of glass are among
its most extraordinary phenomena. Its elasticity
exceeds that of almost all other bodies. If two
glass balls are made to strike each other at a
given force, the recoil, by virtue of their elasticity,
will be nearly equal to the original impetus.
Connected with its brittleness are some very
singular facts. Take a hollow sphere, with a
hole, and stop the hole with your finger, so as
to prevent the external and internal air from
communicating, and the sphere will fly to pieces
by the mere heat of the hand. Vessels made
of glass that has been suddenly cooled possess
the curious property of being able to resist hard
blows given to them from without, but will be
instantly shivered by a small particle of flint
dropped into their cavities. This property seems
to depend upon the comparative thickness of the
bottom. The thicker the bottom is, the more
certainty of breakage by this experiment. Some
of these vessels, it is stated, have resisted the[Pg 310]
strokes of a mallet, given with sufficient force
to drive a nail into wood; and heavy bodies,
such as musket-balls, pieces of iron, bits of
wood, jasper, bone, &c., have been cast into
them from a height of two or three feet without
any effect; yet a fragment of flint, not larger
than a pea, let fall from the fingers at a height
of only three inches, has made them fly. Nor
is it the least wonderful of these phenomena
that the glass does not always break at the instant
of collision, as might be supposed. A bit
of flint, literally the size of a grain, has been
dropped into several glasses successively, and
none of them broke; but, being set apart and
watched, it was found that they all flew in less
than three-quarters of an hour. This singular
agency is not confined to flint. The same effect
will be produced by diamond, sapphire, porcelain,
highly-tempered steel, pearls, and the
marbles that boys play with.[6]

Several theories have been hazarded in explanation
of the mystery; but none of them are
satisfactory. Euler attempted to account for it
on the principle of percussion; but if it were
produced by percussion the fracture would necessarily
be instantaneous. The best solution
that can be offered, although it is by no means
free from difficulties, refers the cause of the disruption
to electricity. There is no doubt that
glass, which has been suddenly cooled, is more
electric than glass that has been carefully annealed—a
process which we will presently explain;
and such glass has been known to crack
and shiver from a change of temperament, or
from the slightest scratch. The reason is obvious
enough. When glass is suddenly cooled
from the hands of the artificer, the particles on
the outer side are rapidly contracted, while
those on the inner side, not being equally exposed
to the influence of the atmosphere, yet
remain in a state of expansion. The consequence
is that the two portions are established
on conflicting relations with each other, and a
strain is kept up between them which would
not exist if the whole mass had undergone a
gradual and equal contraction, so that when a
force is applied which sets in motion the electric
fluid glass is known to contain, the motion goes
on propagating itself till it accumulates a power
which the irregular cohesion of the particles is
too weak to resist. This action of the electric
fluid will be better understood from an experiment
which was exhibited before the Royal
Society upon glass vessels with very thick bottoms,
which, being slightly rubbed with the
finger, broke after an interval of half an hour.[7]
The action of the electric fluid in this instance
is sufficiently clear; but why the contact with
fragments of certain bodies should produce the
same result, or why that result is not produced
by contact with other bodies of even greater size
and specific gravity, is by no means obvious.

Among the strangest phenomena observed in
glass are those which are peculiar to tubes. A
glass tube placed in a horizontal position before
a fire, with its extremities supported, will acquire
a rotatory motion round its axis, moving at the
same time toward the fire, notwithstanding that
the supports on which it rests may form an inclined
plane the contrary way. If it be placed
on a glass plane—such as a piece of window-glass—it
will move from the fire, although the
plane may incline in the opposite direction. If
it be placed standing nearly upright, leaning to
the right hand, it will move from east to west;
if leaning to the left hand, it will move from
west to east; and if it be placed perfectly upright,
it will not move at all. The causes of
these phenomena are unknown, although there
has been no lack of hypotheses in explanation
of them.[8]

It is not surprising that marvels and paradoxes
should be related of glass, considering the
almost incredible properties it really possesses.
Seeing that it emits musical sounds when water
is placed in it, and it is gently rubbed on the
edges; that these sounds can be regulated according
to the quantity of water, and that the
water itself leaps, frisks, and dances, as if it
were inspired by the music; seeing its extraordinary
power of condensing vapor, which may
be tested by simply breathing upon it; and knowing
that, slight and frail as it is, it expands less
under the influence of heat than metallic substances,
while its expansions are always equable
and proportioned to the heat, a quality not found
in any other substance, we can not be much
astonished at any wonders which are superstitiously
or ignorantly attributed to it, or expected
to be elicited from it. One of the most remarkable
is the feat ascribed to Archimedes,
who is said to have set fire to the Roman fleet
at the siege of Syracuse by the help of burning-glasses.
The fact is attested by most respectable
authorities,[9] but it is only right to add,
that it is treated as a pure fable by Kepler and
Descartes, than whom no men were more competent
to judge of the possibility of such an
achievement. Tzetzez relates the matter very
circumstantially; he says that Archimedes set
fire to Marcellus’s navy by means of a burning
glass composed of small square mirrors, moving
every way upon hinges; which, when placed in
the sun’s rays, directed them upon the Roman
fleet, so as to reduce it to ashes at the distance
of a bow-shot. Kircher made an experiment
founded upon this minute description, by which
he satisfied himself of the practicability of at
least obtaining an extraordinary condensed power
of this kind. Having collected the sun’s rays
into a focus, by a number of plain mirrors, he
went on increasing the number of mirrors until
at last he produced an intense degree of solar[Pg 311]
heat; but it does not appear whether he was
able to employ it effectively as a destructive
agent at a long reach. Buffon gave a more
satisfactory demonstration to the world of the
capability of these little mirrors to do mischief
on a small scale. By the aid of his famous
burning-glass, which consisted of one hundred
and sixty-eight little plain mirrors, he produced
so great a heat as to set wood on fire at a distance
of two hundred and nine feet, and to melt
lead at a distance of one hundred and twenty,
and silver at fifty; but there is a wide disparity
between the longest of these distances and the
length of a bowshot, so that the Archimedean
feat still remains a matter of speculation.

WHY IS NOT GLASS MALLEABLE?

In the region of glass, we have a puzzle as confounding
as the philosopher’s stone (which, oddly
enough, is the name given to that color in glass
which is known as Venetian brown sprinkled
with gold spangles), the elixir vitæ, or the
squaring of the circle, and which has occasioned
quite as much waste of hopeless ingenuity.
Aristotle, one of the wisest of men, is said, we
know not on what authority, to have originated
this vitreous perplexity by asking the question.
“Why is not glass malleable?” The answer
to the question would seem to be easy enough,
since the quality of malleability is so opposed
to the quality of vitrification, that, in the present
state of our knowledge (to say nothing
about the state of knowledge in the time of
Aristotle) their co-existence would appear to be
impossible. But, looking at the progress of
science in these latter days, it would be presumptuous
to assume that any thing is impossible.
Until, however, some new law of nature,
or some hitherto unknown quality shall have
been discovered, by which antagonist forces can
be exhibited in combination, the solution of this
problem may be regarded as at least in the last
degree improbable.

Yet, in spite of its apparent irreconcilability
with all known laws, individuals have been
known to devote themselves assiduously to its
attainment, and on more than one occasion to
declare that they had actually succeeded, although
the world has never been made the
wiser by the disclosure of the secret. A man
who is possessed with one idea, and who works
at it incessantly, generally ends by believing
against the evidence of facts. It is in the nature
of a strong faith to endure discouragement
and defeat with an air of martyrdom, as if every
fresh failure was a sort of suffering for truth’s
sake. And the faith in the malleability of
glass has had its martyrology as well as faith
in graver things. So far back as the time of
Tiberius, a certain artificer, who is represented
to have been an architect by profession, believing
that he had succeeded in making vessels
of glass as strong and ductile as gold or silver,
presented himself with his discovery before the
Emperor, naturally expecting to be rewarded
for his skill. He carried a handsome vase with
him, which was so much admired by Tiberius
that, in a fit of enthusiasm, he dashed it upon
the ground with great force to prove its solidity,
and finding, upon taking it up again, that it
had been indented by the blow, he immediately
repaired it with a hammer. The Emperor,
much struck with so curious an exhibition, inquired
whether any body else was acquainted
with the discovery, and being assured that the
man had strictly preserved his secret, the tyrant
instantly ordered him to be beheaded, from an
apprehension that if this new production should
go forth to the world it would lower the value
of the precious metals.[10] The secret, consequently,
perished. A chance, however, arose
for its recovery during the reign of Louis XIII.,
a period that might be considered more favorable
to such undertakings; but unfortunately
with no better result. The inventor on this
occasion submitted a bust formed of malleable
glass to Cardinal Richelieu, who, instead of rewarding
him for his ingenuity, sentenced him
to perpetual imprisonment, on the plea that the
invention interfered with the vested interests of
the French glass manufacturers.[11] We should
have more reliance on these anecdotes of the
martyrs of glass, if they had bequeathed to mankind
some clew to the secret that is supposed to
have gone to the grave with them. To die for
a truth, and at the same time to conceal it, is
not the usual course of heroic enthusiasts.

Many attempts have been made to produce a
material resembling glass that should possess
the quality of malleability, and respectable evidence
is not wanting of authorities who believed
in its possibility, and who are said to have gone
very near to its accomplishment. An Arabian
writer[12] tells us that malleable glass was known
to the Egyptians; but we must come closer to
our own times for more explicit and satisfactory
testimony. Descartes thought it was possible
to impart malleability to glass, and Boyle is
reported to have held the same opinion. But
these are only speculative notions, of no further
value than to justify the prosecution of experiments.
Borrichius, a Danish physician of the
seventeenth century, details an experiment by
which he obtained a malleable salt, which led
him to conclude that as glass is for the most
part only a mixture of salt and sand, he saw no
reason why it should not be rendered pliant.
The defect of his logic is obvious; but, setting
that aside, the fallacy is practically demonstrated
by his inability to get beyond the salt. Borrichius
also thought that the Roman who made
the vase for Tiberius, may have successfully used
antimony as his principal ingredient. Such suppositions,
however, are idle in an experimental
science which furnishes you at once with the
means of putting their truth or falsehood to the
test. There is a substance known to modern[Pg 312]
chemistry, luna cornea, a solution of silver,
which resembles horn or glass, is transparent,
easily put into fusion, and is capable of bearing
the hammer. Kunkel thought it was possible
to produce a composition with a glassy
exterior that should possess the ductile quality;
but neither of these help us toward an answer
to Aristotle’s question. Upon a review of the
whole problem, and of every thing that has been
said and done in the way of experiment and
conjecture, we are afraid we must leave it
where we found it. The malleability of glass
is still a secret.

DESCRIPTION OF A GLASS-HOUSE.

Dismissing history and theory, we will now
step into the glass-house itself, where the practical
work of converting sand into goblets, vases,
mirrors, and window-panes is going forward with
a celerity and accuracy of hand and head that
can not fail to excite wonder and admiration.
As the whole agency employed is that of heat,
the interior of the manufactory consists of furnaces
specially constructed for the progressive
processes to which the material is subjected before
it is sent out perfected for use. Look round
this extensive area, where you see numbers of
men in their shirt-sleeves, with aprons before
them, and various implements in their hands,
which they exercise with extraordinary rapidity,
and you will soon understand how the glittering
wonders of glass are produced. Of these furnaces
there are three kinds, the first called the calcar,
the second the working furnace, and the third
the annealing oven, or lier.

The calcar, built in the form of an oven, is
used for the calcination of the materials, preliminary
to their fusion and vitrification. This
process is of the utmost importance: it expels
all moisture and carbonic acid gas, the presence
of which would hazard the destruction of the
glass-pots in the subsequent stages of the manufacture,
while it effects a chemical union between
the salt, sand, and metallic oxides, which
is essential to prevent the alkali from fusing and
volatilizing, and to insure the vitrification of the
sand in the heat of the working furnace, to
which the whole of the materials are to be
afterwards submitted.

The working furnace, which is round, and
generally built in the proportion of three yards
in diameter to two in height, is divided into
three parts, each of which is vaulted. The
lower part, made in the form of a crown, contains
the fire, which is never put out. Ranged
round the circumference inside are the glass-pots
or crucibles, in which the frit, or calcined
material, is placed to be melted; and from several
holes in the arch of the crown below issues
a constant flame which, enveloping the crucibles,
accomplishes the process of melting. Round the
exterior of the furnace, you perceive a series of
holes or mouths; these are called boccas, from
the Italian, and it is through them the frit is
served into the crucibles and taken out when
melted. The volume of heat is here so intense,
that the boccas are provided with movable collars
or covers, generally composed of lute and
brick, to screen the eyes of the workmen who
stand outside in recesses formed for the purpose
in the projections of the masonry. The severest
part of the work arises when any of the pots, or
crucibles, happen to become cracked or worn out,
in which case the bocca must be entirely uncovered,
the defective pot taken out with iron hooks
and forks, and a new one substituted in its place
through the flames by the hands of the workman.
In order to enable him thus literally to
work in the fire, he is protected by a garment
made of skins in the shape of a pantaloon, and
heavily saturated with water. This strange
garment completely covers him from head to
foot, all except his eyes, which are defended by
glasses.

The material being now melted is fashioned
into the desired forms by the hands of the workmen
while it is yet hot, and then placed to cool
gradually in the third furnace, or annealing oven,
called the lier. This oven is a long, low chamber,
heated at one end, and furnished with movable
iron trays or pans, called fraiches (from the
French), upon which the various articles are set
down, and finally removed, when they are sufficiently
cold, through an opening which communicates
with the sarosel, or room where the
finished articles are kept.

The intensity of the fire requires that the furnaces
and crucibles, should be constructed of
materials the least fusible in their nature, and
the best calculated to resist the violent and incessant
action of heat; or the manufacturer will
incur the most serious losses and delays from
casualties which, even after the most careful
and costly outlay, can not be always averted.
The crucibles especially demand attention in
this respect, in consequence of the solvent property
of some of the materials which are melted
in them. These crucibles are deep pots, varying
in size according to the extent or objects of the
manufacture; and some notion may be formed
of the importance attached to them from the
fact, that they are not unfrequently made large
enough to contain individually not less than a
ton weight of glass. Great skill and care are
requisite in their structure, so as to adapt them
to the temperature in which their qualities are
to be tested; and even with the utmost attention
that can be bestowed upon them, they are
often found to break soon after they are exposed
to the furnace, by which heavy losses are entailed
upon the manufacturer. Nor is this the
only point which must be considered. The size
of the crucible should bear a proportionate relation
to that of the furnace, or one of two consequences,
equally to be avoided, will ensue;
either that there will be a waste of fuel, if the
crucibles are too small, or an inadequate heat,
if they are too large.[13]

We have now before us the three principal
processes—the calcination, by which the materials[Pg 313]
are prepared in the first instance—the
melting down of these materials into glass in
the great working furnace, and the annealing
of the finished article after it has been fashioned
by the workmen. These processes are
broad and simple; but that part of the manufacture
which is, probably, most calculated to
surprise the uninitiated, is the manner in which
the red-hot mass of glass, as it is taken out of
the crucible, is instantly, so to speak, shaped
into form by the dextrous hands and practiced
eyes of those men whom you see standing about
at tables and stools, twisting long iron rods
called pontils, blowing through pipes, and performing
mysterious evolutions with scissors,
pronged sticks, compasses, and other instruments,
with a rapidity that baffles the most
vigilant observer. From the infinite diversity
of objects into which glass is thus moulded, it
must be obvious that the operations of these
artificers embrace a variety of curious details
which it is impossible to enter upon here; but
a glance at some of them will enable the reader
to form a general notion of the curious manipulations
upon which they are so actively employed.

The initial movement of the glass-blower is
to dip a hollow iron rod or tube, about five feet
long, through the bocca, into one of the crucibles
containing the melted glass. Having collected
at the end of the tube a sufficient quantity of
material for the article he is about to fashion—a
drinking-glass, finger-glass, jug, or whatever
it may be (which requires, perhaps, two or three
dips according to the quantity he wants), he
withdraws the tube, and holds it perpendicularly
for a few seconds with the heated mass downward,
till the fluid drops and lengthens by its
own momentum beyond the end of the tube.
He then quickly raises it, and rolls it on a smooth
horizontal plate till it acquires a cylindrical
form. When he has got it into this shape, he
applies his mouth to the opposite end of the
tube, and blows into the heated mass which
swiftly becomes distended into a sphere. But
as the globe thus obtained is not rendered sufficiently
thin for his purpose by a single blowing,
he reheats it by holding it within the furnace,
and then blows again, repeating the operation
till he brings it to the desiderated size and
consistency. Thus prepared, he swings it in the
air like a pendulum, or twirls it round and
round rapidly, according to the elongated or
circular form he requires, the molten particles
obeying the tendency of the force and motion
employed.

Having advanced to this stage, and the mass
being ready for fashioning, a new instrument is
brought to bear upon it. This is a small, solid,
round iron rod, called the pontil, upon one end
of which a lesser portion of material has been
collected by another workman, and this portion
being applied to the extremity of the globe already
formed rapidly adheres to it. The whole
is now detached from the tube, or blowpipe, by
simply damping the point of contact, which
causes the glass to crack, so that a stroke upon
the tube separates it safely, leaving a small
hole in the globe where the tube had originally
entered.

By this time the temperature of the mass has
cooled down, and it becomes necessary to reheat
it, which is done as before. The artificer next
seats himself on a stool with elevated arms,
upon which he rests the pontil, which he grasps
and twirls with his left hand, having thus a
command over the red-hot glass with his right
hand, in which he holds a small iron instrument
called a procello, consisting of two blades with
an elastic bow, similar to a sugar-tongs. With
this little instrument the whole work of fashioning
is performed, and as it must be completed
while the glass is yet ductile (having always,
however, the power of reheating it when necessary),
the process is effected with wondrous celerity.
By the aid of the procello he enlarges
or contracts the mass, which he adapts to its
motions with his left hand, and where any
shapeless excrescences appear he instantly cuts
them off with a pair of scissors as easily as if
they were so much lace or cotton. And thus,
almost in less time than it has occupied us in
the description, articles of the most exquisite
form and delicacy are created by the art-magic
of these Vulcans of the glass-furnace.

That which chiefly excites astonishment and
admiration in the spectator is the ease and security
with which a material so fragile is cut,
joined, twirled, pressed out and contracted, by
the hands of the workmen. Long practice alone
can insure the requisite certainty and quickness
of manipulation, and the eye must be highly
educated to its work before it can achieve off-hand,
and, by a sort of accomplished instinct,
the beautiful shapes which are thus rapidly
produced.

The moment the article is finished it is detached
from the pontil and dropped into a bed
of ashes, from whence it is removed while it is
yet hot, by a pronged stick or wooden shovel, to
the tray to be deposited in the annealing oven
where it is gradually cooled.

HOW CROWN, PLATE, AND WATCH GLASSES ARE MADE.

In making crown-glass, which is used for windows,
a slight alteration in the process is observed.
When the globe is prepared as before
at the end of the tube, it is flattened at its extremity
by pressure against a plain surface; the
new material at the end of the pontil is then
attached to the flattened side, and the whole
mass detached from the tube, leaving a circular
hole at the point of separation. The mass is
now twirled round and round, at first slowly,
then more quickly, till its diameter, obeying the
centrifugal force, becomes wider and wider, the
hole expanding in proportion. At last, as the
motion increases in velocity, the double portion
suddenly bursts open, the whole forming a plain
disc of uniform density throughout, except at
the spot in the centre where the pontil is attached[Pg 314]
to it, and where there is accumulated
that small lump which is vulgarly called a
bull’s eye. The most surprising incident in this
process is the bursting open of the flattened
globe, a circumstance which would shiver the
entire mass if it were not kept up at a certain
heat.

The mode of casting plate-glass presents a
remarkable illustration of the skillful adaptation
of means to ends. When the glass is melted in
the crucible, a portion of it is transferred to a
smaller crucible, called a cuvette, which contains
the exact quantity requisite for the size of the
plate about to be formed. The cuvette is then
raised by means of a crane, and lifted over the
casting table. These tables have smooth metallic
surfaces which are carefully ground and
polished, and wiped perfectly clean, and heated
before they are used. Formerly they were made
of copper, but the British Plate Glass Company
have found that iron slabs answer the purpose
better. The table used by them is fifteen feet
long, nine feet wide, and six inches thick, and
weighs fourteen tons. For the convenience of
moving it to the annealing ovens it is placed
upon castors. The cuvette being swung over
the casting table, is gradually turned over, and
a flood of molten glass is poured out upon the
surface, and prevented from running off by ribs
of metal. As soon as it is entirely discharged,
a large hollow copper cylinder is rolled over the
fluid, spreading it into a sheet of equal breadth
and thickness. When the glass is sufficiently
cool to bear removal it is slipped into the annealing
oven, where it is placed in a horizontal
position,[14] great care having been taken to exclude
the external air, it being indispensable to
the beauty of these plates that the process of
cooling should be regular and gradual.

No less than twenty workmen are engaged
in these operations, and during the whole time
the apartment is kept perfectly still, lest a motion
of any kind should set the air in motion,
the slightest disturbance of the surface of the
plate being calculated to impair its value.
“The spectacle of such a vast body of melted
glass,” observes Mr. Parks, “poured at once from
an immense crucible, on a metallic table of
great magnitude, is truly grand; and the variety
of colors which the plate exhibits immediately
after the roller has passed over it, renders
this an operation more splendid and interesting
that can possibly be described.”[15]

To attempt the briefest outline of the vast
number of objects that are composed of glass,
and the variety of processes to which the material
is subjected in their production, would carry
us far beyond the limits within which we are
unavoidably confined. Even the most trifling
articles of daily use, apparently very simple in
their formation, involve many elaborate details.
Take a watch, for example. The history from
the furnace to the workshop, of those parts of a
watch which are composed of glass, is full of
curious particulars. The watch-glass maker
exercises a function distinct from any one of
those we have hitherto been considering. He
receives from the blower an accurate hollow
globe of glass, measuring eight inches in diameter,
and weighing exactly twelve ounces, which
is the guarantee at once of the regularity and
thinness of the material. Upon the surface of
this globe the watch-glass maker traces with a
piece of heated wire, sometimes with a tobacco
pipe, as many circles of the size he requires as
the globe will yield, and wetting the lines while
they are yet warm, they instantly crack, and
the circles are at once separated. He finds the
edges rough, but that is got rid of by trimming
them with a pair of scissors. The circles thus
obtained are deficient, however, in the necessary
convexity; he accordingly reheats them, and,
with an instrument in each hand, beats or
moulds them into the precise form desired,
much in the same manner as a dairy-maid, with
her wooden spoons beats a pat of butter into
shape. The edges are now ground off, and the
watch-glass is complete. The preparation of
the dial, which is composed of opaque white
glass, ordinarily known as enamel, is a much
more complicated work, involving several minute
processes and a larger expenditure of time. Upon
both sides of a thin plate of slightly convex
copper, bored with holes for the key, and the
hour and minute hands, is spread with a spatula
a coat of pounded glass which has gone
through several stages of solution and purification
before it is ready for application. In the
management of this operation, and the absorption
of any moisture that may linger in the
enamel, considerable care and delicacy of hand
are necessary. As soon as the dial-plate is
perfectly dried it is put into the furnace to be
heated gradually. These processes of firing and
enameling must be repeated altogether three
times before the work is finished; after which
the lines and divisions for the hours and minutes
are marked upon the surface by a totally
different process. We have here merely touched
the principal points in the formation of dial-plates;
the details are too complex for enumeration.

If we find in such articles as these the employment
of numerous chemical agencies, special
tools, and peculiar manipulation, we may easily
give credit to the greater wonders that remain
to be developed in more costly processes; such
as the composition of artificial gems, of the
pastes that are made to resemble diamonds and
pearls, amethysts, emeralds, and precious stones
of all colors and degrees of brilliancy, beads,
bulbs, striped tubes, and a hundred other fanciful
toys and ornaments; the formation of lenses
and eye-glasses; the coloring of glass for various
purposes; and the arts of staining and
painting, silvering, gilding, cutting, engraving,
and etching, each of which has its own mysteries,
and has been prosecuted in different ages[Pg 315]
by different means. When it is said that some
of these arts are lost, the fact must be taken in
a restricted sense, as merely implying that certain
chemical combinations, formerly in use, are
unknown to us; but the same arts are still practiced
by other means. It is a peculiarity in the
manufacture of glass that almost every establishment
has its own receipts, and, consequently,
its own secrets. Even in the materials employed
in the first process of calcination—not to
speak of subsequent working processes—there
is an infinite diversity of choice in the ingredients,
and the proportions in which they are
combined; and such is the jealousy of the great
manufacturers respecting these matters, that
they never admit visitors into their establishments
except under the seal of the strictest confidence.[16]
It is not surprising, therefore, that
while the elementary principles of the art have
descended to us, particular combinations and
processes should have died with their discoverers,
or be still kept shut up in the manufactories
where they are successfully practiced.

AN EXCELLENT MATCH; OR, THE BLESSINGS OF BAD LUCK.

“It is quite impossible,” said I, as I walked
round the garden with my old friend, the
vicar; “it is quite impossible to leave home in
May; the bees will be swarming, and it is the
very week of the school feast.”

“We will have the school feast a week earlier,”
answered he; “and, as to the bees, I
will look after them myself, and you will have
the pleasure of seeing a new colony or two safely
housed, and hard at work, when you come
back again.”

I was silenced on these points, and began to
reflect what other excuse I could find to put off
a disagreeable journey. But there was something
in my friend’s manner that warned me it
would be vain to offer any further objection.
He looked upon my attendance at my niece’s
wedding as a matter of duty, and he would
have removed every obstacle that my ingenuity
could oppose to it, with as much coolness as he
displayed at that moment, in sweeping a spider’s
web from the China rose-tree on my verandah.

I yielded, but not without a sigh. “Dear
Amy,” I said, “I love her very much, and
would do much to serve her, but my presence
at her fine wedding will be no advantage to
her, and a great annoyance to me, therefore it
would be better to put off my visit until the
fuss and ceremony is fairly over.”

My reverend friend shook his head. “We
are called on to rejoice with those who do rejoice,”
said he; “as well as to weep with
those who weep, although we may not always
be in a mood to obey the summons.”

This was very like a passage from one of the
good man’s sermons, but I knew the sentiment
it contained came from his heart, and what was
more, I knew it would have influenced his own
actions.

“Amy was indeed a charming child,” continued
he, “when you brought her to be cured
of the hooping-cough among our Cumberland
mountains. I only hope the little world of
boarding-schools, and the great one of fashion,
may not have spoilt her by this time.”

I hoped so, too, but I was by no means sanguine
on the subject. My friend was right;
Amy was a charming child when we had her
among us. With far more character and greater
talent than her elder sisters, she had promised
to equal them in grace and beauty; and her
warm heart and sunny temper captivated every
body who knew her. It would be a pity to
spoil such a nature as hers, and yet I could
not conceal from myself, that there were points
in her character which rendered her peculiarly
liable to be spoilt by the favors and flatteries
of the world.

“Then you will go?” were the last words
the vicar said to me, as we shook hands at
parting.

I answered in the affirmative, and a fortnight
after, encumbered with rather more in the way
of trunks and bandboxes than I usually travel
with, I set off.

Mrs. R. met me this time with a load of care
upon her brow. She was often anxious-looking,
for even her world, light and trifling as it was,
had its burdens, and at this time she seemed
overwhelmed by them. Who could wonder at
it? Next to the great change which removes
a beloved child from the embraces of her parents
to an unseen world, there is nothing in solemnity
equal to that tie which transfers the guardianship
of her happiness to a stranger. When a
daughter marries, her parents are deprived of
the first place in her love and reverence, and
bereaved for ever of the daily companionship,
which, in the decline of life, becomes so precious
a solace and so dear a joy. What a tremendous
responsibility there is in the choice of the person
who is to be intrusted with so costly a deposit,
and in whose favor are relinquished such
valued rights? How few are the men whose
characters present a combination of qualities,
which under such circumstances, could satisfy
the fears and misgivings of a parent’s love!

Something of all this I could not help expressing.
Mrs. R. replied that they had perfect confidence
in Mr. Lennox; it was in every respect
a most unexceptionable match; there was a
splendid income to begin with, and every prospect
of an immense fortune in a few years, and
an excellent position in society; as to moral
character, and that sort of thing, of course, all
was perfectly satisfactory. “What you say[Pg 316]
about parting with one’s children,” continued
she, and here she applied her exquisite pocket-handkerchief
to her eyes, “is very true—it is
very hard to part with Amy; but,” she philosophically
added, “it must be so, so it is no
use grieving about it.”

And she did not grieve about it any more,
but became very fluent upon other grievances,
which this affair had brought upon her; and
now I began to perceive that the true causes of
anxiety were something widely different from
those which I had anticipated.

“I am worried to death,” said my poor sister-in-law;
“every thing rests with me. I
have all the arrangements to make, and no one
to consult with, for Mr. R. takes no interest in
these matters, and as to Amy, she is a perfect
child. Louisa, too, has become so dull and indifferent,
she is of no use at all. I miss Fanny
beyond every thing; her wedding was comparatively
no trouble, for she helped me to
think; but now I am positively miserable lest
all should not go off as it ought to do.”

Here was a species of affliction, for which I
had certainly no ready-made speech of condolence,
and I should have been somewhat embarrassed
how to reply, if the entrance of the
girls had not rendered reply unnecessary. It
was some years since I had seen Amy, who had
always been my darling; and when I could disengage
myself from her warm embrace, I looked
at her earnestly, to notice all the changes which
those years had made in her. Her beauty was
something marvelous, and I was so much taken
up with her, that I did not at first pay much
attention to her sister, but when I did so, I felt
both shocked and surprised. The few summers
that had passed since I saw her a blooming
girl, did not warrant the change which had taken
place in her appearance. Her complexion had
lost its color; her features looked thin and
pinched; there was a querulous expression,
which I had never noticed before, about the
mouth; and the skin round the eyes had that
livid hue, which gives to the countenance so
peculiar an appearance of unhealthiness.

“My dear Louisa,” I exclaimed, “you are
surely not well!”

She answered she was tolerably well, and, as
she did not appear to like to be questioned, I made
no farther inquiries, but gave my attention to
the detail of the various arrangements that had
been entered into for the approaching ceremony.
I was to see the wedding clothes, of course, and
I exposed my ignorance, or at least forgetfulness,
of modern fashion, by asking for the bonnet.

“Bonnet! aunt,” cried Amy; “wreath I
suppose you mean—here it is,” and she placed it
on her beautiful brow. Louisa threw the costly
vail over her head, and there was a picture
which a Reynolds or a Lawrence might have
been proud to copy. I had not long to admire
it. Amy laughed and blushed, and threw the
things away again. What strange fashions
there are with respect to wedding clothes, thought
I; my mother was married in a riding-habit and
hat, just as if she had been going fox-hunting;
nowadays, nothing but a ball dress will do for
the ceremony; albeit it be performed on the
stone floor of a country church, at Christmas
time. Must a wedding dress, indeed, be one as
different as possible to the wearer’s daily habits
and every-day appearance—a kind of climax to
all the little duplicities, voluntary and involuntary,
which, it is said, are inseparable from
courtship? Well, well, be it so! Thy outward
attractions, Amy, will not have lost
much, when the blonds and satins are put into
the bandbox. God grant that it may be the
same with the other and dearer graces of the
heart and mind!

The few days which intervened between my
arrival and the wedding-day were very busy
ones; so busy that I could see very little of the
bride elect, and still less of the bridegroom.
What I did see of the latter, however, impressed
me very favorably. He seemed worthy of all
Amy might become, all he thought she was, for
he was passionately in love, as it is not difficult
to imagine a young man would be with a being
so beautiful and attractive. What her feelings
toward him were, I could not exactly decide.
Everybody said she loved him, and so she
thought herself; but I could not bring myself
to believe that her heart was yet awakened to
a profound and passionate sentiment of affection.
She admired her future husband, and was flattered
by being the choice of one who was universally
allowed to be a superior man; she liked
his company, and felt grateful to him for his
love. If this were not love, it was at least a
good foundation for it, and, perhaps, the wonder
was that it had not yet ripened into a warmer
sentiment. But Amy was a child—a child
whose whole life had been surrounded by trifles;
and there was a depth and seriousness in Edward
Lennox’s character to which her own was
yet but imperfectly attuned. Would the future
bring with it companionship and love, or estrangement
and indifference? A tremendous
question this appeared to me, but one which
apparently entered into the head of no one in
all that busy house, except into that of the
elderly spinster aunt.

The wedding took place. There is no occasion
to describe it; most people, at any rate the
young ones, know how such things are managed
nowadays. The bride and bridegroom departed,
and the bridesmaids dispersed until the return
of the wedded pair should re-assemble them for
the important business of receiving company.
As this return was not likely to be speedy, I
too said farewell, for I had engaged to visit
other friends, before returning to my hermitage—as
Mrs. R. persisted in denominating my cottage—although
it was situated close to a populous
village, and not far from a flourishing
market-town.

I went away very anxious about Louisa.
Mrs. R. was sensible of the change in her
daughter’s appearance and professed herself[Pg 317]
unable to understand it. No girls, as she observed,
had more indulgences or greater means
of amusement than hers had, but nothing pleased
or amused Louisa now. I inquired if any thing
had occurred to render her unhappy. Her
mother said there had been a slight love affair,
but that reasons sufficient to satisfy Louisa
herself had set it on one side, and that she did
not think the attachment still existed. My
future observations inclined me to agree with
Mrs. R. in this latter particular, but it seemed
to me as if this fancy, slight as it might have
been, had awakened the poor girl to the consciousness
that she had a heart and a soul;
that she possessed capacities which called for
nobler objects and a wider sphere of action, than
were furnished in the region of frivolity wherein
she dwelt. Not that she could have put her
feelings into words—they existed in her mind
too vaguely for that; her longings were indefinable
to herself, but they were real, and I was
convinced they were sapping the very foundations
of her existence. I would fain have taken
her home with me. I would have brought her
into contact with the genuine wants and woes
of humanity, represented, it might be, in humble
types, but varnished over by none of the falsehood
and glitter of fashionable society. I would
have done so, because I believed that here she
might find something to interest and rouse her
to action. This once accomplished, her energies
would no longer be left to prey upon themselves,
and the weariness of an aimless existence
would be at an end. But had my abode been,
indeed, the cell of an anchorite, and buried in
the depth of the wilderness, Mrs. R. could not
have shrunk with more horror from the idea of
trusting her daughter to my guardianship, than
she did when I made the proposal. In vain I
represented how happy Amy had always been
while under my care, and how infallible had
been the effect of Cumberland air upon all her
juvenile ailments. In as plain terms as were
consistent with her accustomed good breeding,
Mrs. R. intimated, that though it might do very
well for a child, Louisa would be moped to death
at my cottage. She needed amusement, interest,
that was certain; she must go to Brighton,
to Hastings, to Baden, if possible—any where,
to give her a complete change of scene and
ideas. I gave the matter up, but I believed
that in my solitude she would have found a
greater change of scene and ideas than she would
be likely to meet with in any fashionable watering-place.

Months rolled on. The bride and bridegroom
returned, but not before I was again settled at
home. I had letters from Amy, cheerful, happy
letters they were. How could they be otherwise?
The whole joys of the world were before
her, and with a lively fancy, and the keen sense
of enjoyment of eighteen, how could she be insensible
to their attractions! I had letters from
Mrs. R. too, full of Amy’s praises. They told
me how gracefully she had played her new part—how,
whether she appeared abroad or received
guests at home, she was the delight of
every eye, the praise of every tongue. This
was not all I would have known, but I could
learn no more, and it was two years before Amy
and I met again. She was then the mother of
a fine little boy, and as blooming and beautiful
as ever. She seemed happy too, and preserved
that uninterrupted flow of gayety which had
always been so charming. Not so her husband.
The ease and cheerfulness, which had once
characterized his conversation, had vanished;
he was silent and reserved; it seemed to me
that some hidden sorrow, for which he had no
confidant, was preying on his mind. When I
hinted to Amy the change in her husband’s
manner, she tossed her pretty head, and poutingly
remarked, that she supposed men were
always more agreeable in the days of courtship
than after marriage. But, in spite of her childish
petulance, a tear stole to her eye, which I was
not sorry to see there. True it was that Edward
Lennox was completely disenchanted. He
had found out that the thoughtless, inexperienced
girl, who had never been led to reflect on any
thing more serious than the amusement of the
present hour, was not the perfect woman, the
ideal of his fancy, and the echo of his every
thought and feeling. He was a man of an
almost jealously sensitive turn of mind, and
when he found he was not comprehended, he
shrank into himself, and took refuge in an impenetrable
reserve. Amy, poor child, had no
idea of all that was passing in her husband’s
mind. She was conscious of no change in herself,
and she little thought how different had
been his conception of her character to its reality.
She believed that what her mamma had
told her about the caprice of men, explained the
change which she could not but be sensible had
taken place in his sentiments toward her; and
though this change sometimes made her sad,
she did not love deeply enough to be quite heart-broken.
But Amy was still loved. If Mr. Lennox
did not love her as he could have loved
the true wife of his bosom, he cherished her as
a lovely child, whose happiness was intrusted
to his keeping, and it seemed to me as if fears
for her, as well as sorrow of his own, harassed
and perplexed him.

Mrs. R. was right. Nothing could be more
faultless than the easy grace with which Amy
presided at her husband’s table, or mixed in the
gay circles of fashionable amusement. With
perfect truth, I could congratulate her mother
on this point, but I felt a kind of wonder, well
as I knew Mrs. R., to observe what unmingled
satisfaction it afforded her. She evidently considered
that nothing was wanting to the complete
success of this marriage. Poor woman!
she soon changed her opinion most woefully!

Louisa was still poorly; she had rallied for a
while, but now seemed to droop more than ever.
I often went to spend the evening with her when
Mrs. R. and Amy were from home, and very
dear had these hours become to me. The prospect
of eternity had opened to that young spirit,[Pg 318]
and it had caused a rapid development of the
noblest powers of the soul. With the waking
of the spiritual nature, the intellect had been
aroused also, and, animated by these powers,
she was a different being. No wonder when
her mother caught her cheerful smile, or her
beaming eye, that she believed her convalescent,
and I, for one, could not destroy the illusion.

One evening when I had left Amy in the
hands of her maid, preparing to go out to dine,
I went into the library to look for a book which
I had promised to read to Louisa that evening,
and felt a little disconcerted to find Mr. Lennox
seated by the fire, with his arms folded, and apparently
so completely engrossed by his reflections
as scarcely to notice my entrance. As I
had believed him to be preparing to accompany
Amy, I had by no means expected to find him
here, and I explained my errand somewhat
apologetically. He started from his reverie,
and rising, completed my astonishment by requesting
five minutes’ conversation.

“Are you not going out?” I asked.

“Out? Oh, I had forgotten. No, not tonight.”

There was something in his whole manner
that alarmed me. “What is the matter?” said
I, and I believe I changed color, and said something
about my brother.

“Don’t be alarmed,” said he, “no one is in
trouble or danger but my unfortunate self, and,
through me, poor Amy. To be plain with you,
Miss R., for I believe I may speak out to you,
without apprehending a fit of fainting or hysterics,
I am a ruined man. Mind,” he added,
quickly, and a look of manly dignity replaced
the troubled expression of his brow and eye, “I
use the word in its ordinary, conventional signification.
You and I would call no man ruined,
in the literal sense of the word, who retained
his honor unstained, and the vigor of his head
and the strength of his hand unimpaired.”

I was so completely taken by surprise, that I
had no power to reply, and he went on; “If it
were only for myself, I could bear it, I believe,
as well as most people, but the thought of that
poor girl unmans me. Amusement, society,
luxury, seem to make up her very life, and to
tell her she must be deprived of these things, is
dreadful. Oh!” he continued, bitterly, “if I
could be to Amy all that she once was to me,
how light would all trials be while our love remained;
but that was an idle dream!”

“It may be no dream yet,” answered I.
“Amy has a heart, though her life, hitherto,
has offered little to prove its depth. Who
knows but that, when she is called on for sympathy
and action, she may prove all we could
wish?”

“Do not flatter me with false hopes,” he
said; “I have given up such ideas as those forever.”

I had some hope that matters were not so
bad as in the first moment I had been given to
understand they were, and I begged for further
information. I found, however, the statement
Mr. Lennox had made was substantially true;
he had, indeed, lost a handsome property, and
all that remained was an opportunity of realizing
a comfortable independence by personal exertion.
But the sacrifice of the luxuries, and
the worldly consideration which the possession
of wealth bestows, was inevitable; a sacrifice
which frequently causes distress very disproportionate
to the worth of the objects abandoned.

When he had in a few words put me in possession
of the actual state of his affairs, he said:
“Now comes the question of what is best to be
done with Amy. It is possible I may find it
advisable to go out to India, but, whether I go
or stay, I think it would be better for her to accompany
her mother and Louisa to Baden.
She will feel the change less at first, I have
consulted with her father, and he agrees with
me in this opinion.”

“Very likely,” said I, dryly; “and if it is
your intention that Amy should remain all her
life a spoiled child of fortune, you could not take
better means to attain your end. If she is ever
to prove what a rational being should be, it
must be by the discipline of life; do not, then,
attempt to shield her from trials which may be
of more benefit to her than all the favors of
fortune. Do not suppose you can guarantee her
from sorrow; rather call upon her to share your
distresses, than leave her to be consumed by the
selfish vexations which inevitably fall to the lot
of the idle and indulged. But, if you would inspire
her with devotion, you must give her your
confidence. Tell her all—let her know your
actual position—what you hope from her—what
you fear. You and she may live to bless the
day which brings these trials.”

“Ah! if I could think,” he began; “but no—you
do but judge after your own earnest nature—you
do not know Amy.”

“Nor you—nor any one; she does not know
herself. A girl’s character is like a rosebud,
folded up from every eye; but, unlike the flower,
it expands more under clouds and tempests than
under the genial sun.”

There was a pause, during which he sat musing,
then he said, “When I called your attention
to my unhappy affairs, it was with the intention
of requesting you to break the matter to Amy
for me, but you have half persuaded me to do it
myself.”

“Yourself, by all means,” said I; “and let
there be no concealment between you. What
am I to do about telling Louisa and Mrs. R.?”

“Oh! they must know, certainly,” answered
he. “Mrs. R. will be gone out when you arrive,
so you will be spared that scene. Louisa—who
has now more sense and courage than all of us
put together—will break it to her best in the
morning. Here is the carriage, let me put you
into it, and then for poor Amy.”

He was right. Louisa did seem to have more
sense and courage now than any of us. Perhaps,
she felt herself too near another world to affix an
undue value on the things of this, for none of the
agitation which I had feared resulted from the[Pg 319]
communication, and we consulted together calmly
and rationally on the best means of making
present circumstances useful to Amy, and tolerable
to her mother. But, calm as she was, I
thought it better to spare her the first burst of
Mrs. R.’s distress, and therefore I remained the
night over, and returned to Amy in the morning.

I found her alone in the nursery, with her
sleeping infant in her arms. Her eyes were
bent pensively on its countenance, and there
was an expression of serious thoughtfulness on
her beautiful features, which became them as
well as the gayety which was their native character.

“My dear, dear aunt,” she said, as I kissed
her cheek, “how much I owe you!”

“Owe me, my love! what do you mean?”

“If it had not been for you, Edward would
have told me nothing. I should never have
known half his causes of distress, and I should
have believed him cold and indifferent, when, on
the contrary, he was depressed by anxiety for
me, and for our boy.”

Here was a spring of action at once. The
fountains of sympathy, of gratitude, of love, were
opened; might not these waters prove sufficient
to fertilize a life? I believed so, and I felt that
Amy was saved.

I was not mistaken. From that day, she
was a new creature. If the sacrifices she was
called upon to make at first appeared great, they
were soon rendered insignificant by the regret
which she felt when she reflected how little her
previous education had prepared her to make
the best of a limited income, to prove the friend,
companion, and confidante, which her husband
would now need more than ever, or to fulfill the
office of guide and instructress which her little
boy would soon call upon her to perform.

“These are not subjects for regret, Amy,”
said I, when she poured out her heart to me, as
she had been in the habit of doing in her childish
days; “with youth and health, they are but
stimulants to exertion.”

Mr. Lennox went to India, but only for a year,
and, sorely against her will, Amy was left behind.
As she could not accompany him, she
wished to return home with me, for a year’s
schooling, as she playfully expressed it, and, in
spite of Mrs. R.’s remonstrances, I carried her off.

What a busy year we had of it! We cooked;
we cut out linen (the village schoolmistress was
for a time a cipher in that department); we tried
experiments in domestic economy; we made calculations;
then we read light books and heavy
books, history and philosophy, poetry and romance,
I being obliged to exercise great ingenuity
to avoid an immoderate proportion of educational
works, a department of literature to which
Amy, in common with many young mothers,
manifested a decided preference.

Thus occupied, the days and weeks glided
swiftly away, but not without leaving traces of
their passage. Amy’s intellectual and moral
growth in this twelvemonth was as rapid as was
her boy’s increase in physical proportions. She
felt it herself, and, with her increased self-respect,
increased her love and admiration of the husband,
for whose sake she had been stimulated to self-government
and self-tuition. Small had been
the joy of her wedding-day, compared to the
rapture with which, at the end of the year, she
threw herself into his arms; and slight had been
his disappointment after the honeymoon, to the
delightful surprise which he felt every day on
the discovery of some new improvement, or the
promise of some fresh excellence in his lovely
wife.

“Yes, yes,” I thought, as I watched them
walking in the garden, and talking over their
future plans, with that look of perfect confidence
which tells so much; “those hearts are united
now—they will soon grow so close that nothing
earthly will avail to separate them.”

I wiped my spectacles—they had often been
dimmed the last day or two—and taking little
Herbert’s hand, we, too, sallied forth for a confidential
tête-à-tête among the daisies.

I went to see Amy when she was once more
settled in a house of her own, and, though Mrs.
R. sighed and shook her head, every time poor
Amy’s domestic arrangements were alluded to,
I thought every thing about her charming.
True, she was waited upon by a tidy housemaid,
instead of a tall footman; true, if she
required a special dainty to appear upon her
table, she was obliged to soil the tips of her
own delicate fingers, instead of commanding the
service of a professional artiste; true, if she
wished to go abroad, she walked, instead of
using a carriage. But what then? I could
not see that she was a bit the worse for any of
these changes. Then, again, she did not now
go one night to the opera, another to the theatre,
and a third to a ball; but she was so busy in
the daytime, and so happy in the evening, in the
company of her husband, that she had no desire
for such amusements. She no longer presided
over great entertainments, but her small, cheerful,
pretty house, furnished with good taste and
thoroughly arranged for comfort, was always
hospitably open to those true friends whom adverse
fortune had not rendered shy or indifferent.

“Poor Amy does seem happy,” remarked her
mother, after we had spent a delightful evening
with the young folks, and a party of old friends;
“it is very strange, but she does seem happy in
spite of her misfortunes.”

“Misfortunes!” exclaimed my brother; “call
them blessings! Yes, Margaret, I am a convert
at last, and ready to confess that women are
improvable, and that the loss of wealth may
prove an inestimable blessing!”

ANECDOTES OF WORDSWORTH.

It is not our intention to criticise the writings
of the great philosophical poet of modern
times, but merely to note down a few recollections
of the benign old man before they pass
away forever with the fleeting shades of memory.

Glorious old man of the mountain, methinks[Pg 320]
we see him now: his deep-set gray eyes steeped
in contemplation; his hand buried in his waistcoat—one
leg crossed over the other—reciting
in a deep, but somewhat tremulous voice, a passage,
either from Milton or himself—the only
two poets he honored by his quotations. While
the vision stands before us, let us sketch the
outward and visible shape, which held a great
spirit within its fold.

Tall, and broadly formed, spare of flesh, with
a slight stoop, carelessly dressed; a fine oval face;
a nose aquiline, though somewhat heavy; bald
about the brow, with a few gray hairs straggling
over the forehead; fragments of gray
whiskers, and a mouth, inclined to be large,
but energetically compressed; his eyebrows turned
upward when listening, and contracted when
talking, with a deep voice, broken by its very
emphasis: this is as near a picture as we can
give of the “Bard of Rydal.” To a certain extent,
although in a different sense, what Pope
wrote for Gay, applies to Wordsworth:

Taking wit as poetical intellect, this is Wordsworth’s
character in a single sentence.

There was a strange mixture of the sublime
and the ridiculous in his composition. He would
descant on Milton, or the principles of poetry,
with a freshness and vigor of mind worthy of
the author of the “Laodamia,” and the next
minute utter such astounding opinions about
steamboats, reform, and human progress and
politics, as would positively make a child of ten
years old smile.

The most remarkable thing about him was
his entire ignorance of modern literature: the
poetry of the last thirty years was unknown to
him: no solicitation would possibly induce him
to read it—the only contemporaries he had read
or acknowledged, were Scott, Rogers, Landor,
Coleridge, and Southey.

The undue attention which he bestowed upon
what other men considered trifles, was another
remarkable trait in his character: he would correspond
perseveringly with the secretary of a
railway concerning an overcharge in the carriage
of a parcel, and he would walk a dozen
miles, and call at a dozen houses, to recover an
old cotton umbrella, not worth a shilling. The
importance of these small matters had doubtless
been forced upon him by his early poverty,
and by the manly independence and integrity
of his character.

Exact himself, he exacted exactness from
others, and if, when in company with a friend,
they took a cab together, he would on no account
suffer his companion to pay more than
his share: when the conveyance stopped, he
would inquire of the driver the fare, take out
his own half, and give it to the Jehu, leaving
his associate to do the same. We remember
on one occasion, when we had jumped out first,
and paying all the charge, and he afterward
paying the sharp Jehu his half, that he, on discovering
the imposition, wanted us to run half-way
down Southampton-street to get the overcharge
back, and regaled the company at dinner
that day with an energetic denunciation of the
rascality of cab-men, and the idleness and extravagance
of youth.

Among his weaknesses was a reverence for
rank and wealth, perfectly puzzling in so independent
a man: if he had promised to dine with
a baronet, and an invitation came from an earl
he considered it a piece of religious duty to forfeit
his prior engagement, and he would never
realize the idea that the baronet could possibly
feel offended.

Another curious trait in his character was his
inability to understand the slightest approach to
a joke: even when explained to him, he would
feel uneasy, and put it on a logical rack: with
him every thing was either absolutely true or
absolutely false:—he made no allowance for
pleasantry, badinage, persiflage, or even playfulness:
he took every thing literally.

A young lady, an intimate friend of his, related
to us a ludicrous instance of the embarrassments
this occasionally led to: being on a
visit to the Lakes for the first time, the old poet
took great pride in showing her all his pet spots
and finest views. They were, consequently, out
very often, for hours and hours together.

At an evening party, the niece of Lady F——
(whose grounds join the bard’s garden), in the
gayety of girlhood, said to the poet: “I saw
you this morning, Mr. Wordsworth, before any
body was up, flirting with my aunt on the lawn;
and then how slily you stole away by the back
entrance.” This alluded to a gate made to save
the detour of going into the road. The words
had scarcely passed the giddy girl’s lips, ere she
became painfully aware that she had committed
some tremendous crime. Wordsworth looked
distressed and solemn at his wife: his wife
looked muffled thoughts at her daughter, Miss
Wordsworth, and then they all three looked at
each other as though, holding a silent conclave.
Inspiration and speech came to the poet first.
Turning solemnly round to our informant, he
said, emphatically, to her: “After the remark
just made, it is of course necessary that I should
reply. Miss C——, you are young and lovely;
you have been alone with me repeatedly in solitary
spots, and I now put it to you, if I have
ever acted toward you in a manner unbecoming
a gentleman and a Christian?” Our friend thus
appealed to, could scarcely refrain from roaring
with laughter, but she thought it best to answer
in accordance with the spirit of the question;
and having considerable tact, she managed
to patch this “awful matter” up! A damper,
however, had fallen on the meeting, and it
ended drearily. We might recount other evidence
of the unpoetical thraldom to which constant
association with a few old ladies of the
Rydal neighborhood had bowed down the full,
vigorous intellect of Wordsworth. Yet, even in
these absurdities, he retains a simplicity and
earnestness of character, which almost supply
the want of that geniality and dignity we generally
associate with the great poet.

[Pg 321]

MODERN MUMMIES.—A VISIT TO THE TOMBS OF BORDEAUX.

The city of Bordeaux possesses much that is
interesting. Many historical associations
are connected with it, from the time of its occupation
by the Romans, downward. It was the
birthplace of the Latin poet Ausonius, and also
of the English Edward, the famous Black Prince;
Montesquieu was born in its neighborhood, and
Montaigne was once its mayor; the district of
which it is the centre gave its name to the celebrated
party of the Girondins. It enjoys very
considerable trade. The country round it produces
some of the best wines in France. Its
quays and many of its streets are handsome
and lively. The public buildings are not a little
remarkable. In particular, we may cite the
theatre, which, though surpassed by a few others
in size, is unrivaled in modern Europe for
the combination it presents of elegance, symmetry,
and perfect adaptation to its purpose. The
noble bridge, too, by which the Garonne—here
nearly the third of a mile wide—is crossed,
must not be forgotten either. When we consider
the difficulties attending the work, or the
success which has crowned it, the bridge is perhaps
the greatest boast of Bordeaux, and it is
not without reason that the pride of the Bordelais
pronounces it unique.

But the most curious thing, in its way, which
Bordeaux possesses, is a vault under St. Michael’s
church. That edifice itself presents but
little worth notice, except its mutilated tower,
which, with its spire, was once more than three
hundred feet high, and was reduced to its present
state by a gale of wind, the upper part of it
being literally blown over. Finding so little,
therefore, here to interest us, we are about to
leave the church, when our guide asks if we
would like to see the charnel-house of St. Andrew.
The name strikes us; we accept the
invitation and follow him, wondering what is
before us. We descend a staircase, and exchange
the pure air and bright sky of Guienne
for the close and stone-smelling atmosphere of a
subterraneous passage, and the darkness made
visible by the uncertain lamp of our conductor.
We arrive at a low doorway, and bend to pass
beyond it. This is the place. At first we see
nothing; our eyes, however, soon become accustomed
to the obscurity, and a strange spectacle
is disclosed to them. We find we are standing
in a round and vaulted chamber of rough masonry:
it resembles an inverted bowl, the spring
of its arch being but a little above the floor;
this floor is of uneven earth, and may be some
twenty feet in diameter. Round the walls, and
supported in a standing position, are a great
number of human bodies. There are ninety in
all. We are in a large company of the dead;
and the ground on which we tread is composed
of hundreds more, for that whitish dust is the
dust of bones, and the original bottom of the
pit is many feet below.

The fact is, as the guide informs us, that a
cemetery near the church having been disturbed,
the vault was made the receptacle of the remains
found in it. As for the bodies piled
round its sides, some peculiar property of the
spot in which they were originally deposited had
preserved them entire; and such as they now
are they will probably remain, for some of them
were living six hundred years ago. Their flesh
has been transformed into a substance resembling
tinder; the skin has much shrunk, and
has become brown, so that they resemble very
thin mulattoes, but, in most other respects, they
are scarcely changed. Many of them still possess
all their teeth; their hair remains—one has
a long beard. The expression their countenances
wore in death is still perfectly distinct. They
are of both sexes and of all ages, and, consequently,
of every size. The histories of a few
are known. In the case of most, you can read
something of their past lives in their faces and
forms, as you can in those of the living, so completely
does their physiognomy retain the impress
of the passions which once moved and
agitated them. One is the body of a man who
was a street porter in his time: it is fully seven
feet high. He was renowned for his strength,
but broke his back one day about a hundred
years back, under a burden too heavy for him.
Another presents the features of a singularly
beautiful and graceful woman who died of cancer.
On a third body, you remark the nun’s
dress in which the poor inmate of the cloister
was interred. Her face still wears a look of
sadness and melancholy resignation. You see
in the breast of one man the sword-thrust wound
which had caused his death. The most painful
to behold is the body of a young boy, the convulsed
contraction of whose features and members
presents a frightful appearance of moral
as well as of physical agony. Some medical
men have given it as their opinion that this unhappy
being had been buried alive, and that it
was in his frenzied efforts to burst his cerements
that his limbs stiffened into their present horrid
aspect. Speaking of medical men, there is one
of their fraternity in the collection, an old doctor,
who thus shares the tomb, it may be, of
some of those whom he, perhaps, helped to send
to it.

Such are the mummies of Bordeaux. As to
the cause of the phenomenon, we can offer no
explanation, though more learned men than we
will, doubtless, easily find many. We trust,
however, that such may be more reasonable
than that offered by an author before us, who
ascribes the preservation of the bodies to the
heat of the climate. The guide, of course, has
his own theory. A baker had his oven close to
the place in which they were at first interred,
and the heat of the said oven petrified them.
But, whatever may be the proper solution of the
question, St. Michael’s church at Bordeaux is
not the only locality which possesses such a
curiosity, though none that we are aware of can
boast a museum so complete. Similar discoveries
are said to have been made at Toulouse,[Pg 322]
under a Franciscan, and also under a Dominican
monastery, but we must say that, when in that
town, we never heard of them. We have, however,
ourselves seen the bodies preserved in a
crypt of the cathedral church of Bremen. This
crypt is called the Bleikeller, or lead-cellar, for
what precise reason we do not remember. It is
not entirely underground, but enjoys a certain
dubious daylight. The mummies here are contained
in rough wooden coffins, and are attired
in the usual vestments of the dead, but with
their faces exposed. Each has its history, which
the respectable lady who showed them to us
duly recounted, removing each coffin-lid as she
did so, and replacing it as she passed to another.
As at Bordeaux, one of them had been
slain by the sword; he was a student who fell
in a duel. Another was the body of an English
lady of the name of Stanhope. If we bore
that name, we should take measures to prevent
her remains being thus made a show of.

Since we are speaking of Bremen, we may
mention another object, of a somewhat similar
kind, which that town possesses. Gesche Gottfried
was a female prisoner, a modern Brinvilliers.
She poisoned her husband (two husbands,
unless we are mistaken), some of her
children, and several of her friends and relatives.
At last, in an attempt to poison a young man,
to whom she was about to be married, she was
detected, condemned, and decapitated. This
was a few years back, and they have now got
her head, preserved in spirits, in the Bremen
Museum.

RECOLLECTIONS OF CHANTREY, THE SCULPTOR.

Of Chantrey the recorded life and character
are eminently simple and compact. Easy
of comprehension is the tenor of both. The one
was marked by steady common-sense; the other
by progressive success. Chantrey was born at
Norton, in Derbyshire, in 1782. The son of one
of the few remaining small proprietors cultivating
their own land, he received a moderate education,
and was apprenticed, at his own instance,
to a working wood-carver. Every onward step
was marked by native sagacity. His natural
gifts led him to the more ambitious branches of
art. He began with portrait-painting. But his
craft of wood-carving, securing, as it did, a subsistence,
he did not relinquish till his position
as sculptor was assured: a wise plan, since for
eight years he, according to his own account,
scarce realized £5 by modeling. He began
with an imaginative effort or so, but soon found
his legitimate field. With the £10,000 brought
him by his wife in 1811, he provided himself
with house, studio, offices, marble, &c., like a
prudent speculator. From the epoch of his
bust of Horne Tooke—an important patron to
him—dates his success. This brought him into
notice. Commissions thenceforward flowed in.
The remainder of his life was a course of regular
labor, relieved by constant hospitality and
the periodic relaxation of country visits, and his
favorite amusement, angling: interspersed with
such occurrences as the visit to Italy; a few
other continental trips; the erection, at a cost
of £20,000, of a new house and offices, adapted
to the growing largeness of his dealings, and
his knighthood. With characteristic shrewdness,
he early avoided committing himself to
any political or party opinions. This, his prosperity,
and his common-sense rendered him a
great favorite with the English aristocracy.
But too often, indeed, is the inane world of
aristocratic Dilettantism felt hovering dimly
near, as we read these pages. His large income
and social disposition induced him to keep
a hospitable house. And it was part of his tact
to secure, without much reading, varied average
knowledge, by frequent intercourse with men of
science and letters. During the last two years
of his life, his health rapidly and wholly gave
way: the ordinary fate of his class, the hard
workers and social livers. He was in the maturity
of middle age, on his sudden death in
1841.

This course is as much that of a man of
business as of an artist. Yet Chantrey’s was a
truly estimable, though no exalted, or rare character.
There was a native dignity, a reality, an
English genuineness about the man, legible in
his whole life, and very engaging; even amid
the chaotic adumbrations of the present biography.
He was a favorable sample of a class not
uncommon among us, the prosperous men who
have risen through their own efforts, and deservedly.
Generous, frank, hearty he was; above
all, eminently direct in his dealings and character.
One of his distinguishing features as a
man, and as one of the class just mentioned,
was his honest pride in his origin and progress
in life. Without self-complacency, a manly
consciousness of his true relations to the world
pervaded him. The taint of flunkeyism in his
position so facile to catch, touched him not.
That respect for the intrinsic and essential, in
character and position, his early circumstances
naturally inspired, was never forsaken for worship
of the privileged caste which favored and
surrounded him.

One of those receiving freely and spending
freely, he showed his sense of the value of
money by its liberal devotion to the enjoyment
of himself and all around. Ever open to tales
of distress, he was the frequent dupe of his kind
impulses. To his brother artists, he was generous
in more ways than that of hospitality.
Few earning a large income have manifested a
better title thereto, by their use of it. In a
profession inevitably unequal in the attainment
of the prizes of fortune, compensation for the
direction of so large a share into one or two
fashionable channels, is found in so genial a
worldly head of it as Chantrey. His generosity
bordered on lavishness; yet even here, his prudence
did not wholly forsake him. He left a
large property; bequeathed, after Lady Chantrey,
to the Royal Academy in trust, for purposes
of doubtful judiciousness, but unquestionable[Pg 323]
good intention; in the way of fostering
the “higher branches of art.”

Rough and free in his manners, he was as
full of bonhommie as good feeling. His letters
are instinct with the heartiness and good fellowship
of the man, and have a very agreeable
freshness, and freedom from effort, if also, from
any claims in the matter of thought.

In person, Chantrey did not belie his inner self.
Mr. Jones, his biographer, indeed, gives us to
understand, in one place, he resembled Shakspeare;
in another, that it was Socrates he was
like; and thereon, would have us accept a deeper
similarity, of mind, to the Greek philosopher!
A notion nearer the mark, is graphically supplied
by his friend Thomson, when he begins
his letter with a red wafer stuck on the paper;
eyes, nose, mouth, &c., given in black. The
symbol so pleased the sculptor, he adopted it
himself as an occasional jocose signature.

Chantrey’s intellect was a limited but emphatically
capable, if not a very elevated one; ready
at command and certain. All he said or did
was, as far as it went, to the purpose. Altogether
practical was the whole man. The sagacity
of a sublimated common sense, was his
prevailing characteristic. His mind was a perceptive
one, not thoughtful or intense; making
use of all that came in his way; gleaning information;
receiving results, and applying them
shrewdly. He attained proficiency in all he undertook,
whether it were wood-carving, painting,
portrait-busts, fishing, shooting. Without his
range, were it but one step, he was helpless.
But then, as a rule, he took care never to advance
that step. And this was easy to him;
for he was averse to all beyond the literal, and
the every-day. The singular, the eccentric, in
thought, manner of art, way of wearing one’s
hair, or any other department, he detested.
“Let us stick to the broad, common high-way,
and do our best there,” was the instinctive
feeling of the man. He was haunted by no
unattainable, ever-retreating, fair ideals. No
dreaming aspirations, or indefinite yearnings,
had part in his life. His somewhat extreme,
and in Mr. Jones’s hands, quite over-done devotion
to “simplicity,” was very characteristic;
in unison with that really satisfactory in him,
but pointing to his wants, his restrictedness of
feeling and unimaginativeness.

The same practical tendency and restriction
of effort to things within reach, the sagacious,
unerringly successful application of himself to
the certain and definite, characterize his art: in
the artist, ever the blossom and result of the
whole man. Emphatic fulfillment does his success
afford of the celebrated apophthegm of
Mulready, “Know what you have to do, and
do it.” He did not spend himself on false
aims, nor once lose himself in a wrong track.
Having early ascertained his true field, portraiture,
he consistently adhered to it, notwithstanding
all “advice of friends;” though far from
lacking ambition, or high ideas of the so-called
higher branches. In this, his history is especially
instructive, worthy of heed. He was
faithful to the light that was in him. And in
better times of art he might have been a still
better artist.

SAILING IN THE AIR.—HISTORY OF AERONAUTICS.

(Continued from page 173.)

In the history of aeronautics, the name of Mr.
Charles Green, who first turned his attention
to the art in 1821, occupies a prominent place.
To him the art is indebted for the introduction
of carbureted-hydrogen, or coal gas, as the means
of inflating balloons. Great as was the improvement
effected by the substitution of hydrogen gas
for rarefied air, there are serious disadvantages
connected with the use of that gas. In the first
place, it is procured at vast expense; and, in
the second place, it is difficult to obtain it in
sufficient quantity, several days of watchful
anxiety having been often expended in the vain
endeavor to generate a sufficiency of the gas,
which, on account of the subtilty of its particles,
and its strong affinity for those of the surrounding
atmosphere, continued to escape almost as
fast as it was produced. Perplexed at the outset
with these difficulties and inconveniencies,
which had not only rendered experiments comparatively
rare, but even threatened the art with
premature extinction, Mr. Green conceived that
if coal gas, which is much cheaper and can be
generated with much greater facility than hydrogen,
could be employed for the purpose of inflation,
an important object would be gained.
To put the truth of his theory to the test, he
prepared a balloon, which he inflated with coal
gas, and made a successful ascent from the
Green Park, on the day of the coronation of
George IV. He has subsequently made some
hundreds of ascensions from the metropolis, and
various other parts of the empire, with balloons
so inflated; and, from the year 1821, coal gas
has been very generally used in experiments
of this nature. Besides its economy and easy
production, it has the advantage of being more
easily retained than hydrogen, which, for the
reasons already given, is much more readily dissipated.

The ingenuity of Mr. Green has been exerted
with the view of discovering other improvements
in the art of aerial navigation. One great obstacle
to the successful practice in the art is,
the difficulty of maintaining the power of the
balloon for any length of time undiminished in
its progress through the air. It is ascertained
by the uniform experience of aeronauts, that,
between the earth and two miles above the level
of the sea, a variety of currents exist, some blowing
in one direction and some in another; and
when the aeronaut has risen to the elevation
where he meets with a current that will waft
him in the desired direction, it is of importance
for him to be able to preserve that elevation.
But the balloon, in consequence of the increase
or diminution of weight to which it is liable
from a variety of causes, will not keep at that[Pg 324]
altitude. The great changes which are constantly
taking place in the weight of the atmosphere,
the deposition of humidity on the surface
of the balloon, and its subsequent evaporation
by the rise of temperature, the alternate heating
and cooling of the gaseous contents of the balloon,
according as it may be exposed to the action of
the solar rays or screened from them by the interposition
of clouds, not to advert to other
agencies, less known though not less powerful,
all combine in making the machine at one time
to ascend and at another to descend. Thus it
may be removed out of a favorable into an adverse
current. To overcome this difficulty, and
enable the aeronaut to keep the balloon at the
same level without expending its power, by discharging
gas from the valve to lower it, or by
casting out a portion of the ballast to raise it—processes
which must in time waste the whole
power of the largest balloon, and bring it to the
earth—Mr. Green suggested the contrivance of
a rope of sufficient length and material trailing
on the ground beneath, and if over the sea, the
rope is to be tied to a vessel filled with liquid
ballast, which floats on the surface. This rope
will act as a drag on the balloon, when, from
any of the causes we have referred to, it tends
to rise, for, in that case, it will draw up a portion
of the rope, and, by thus adding to its
weight, will be impeded in its upward course;
and, on the other hand, when, from opposite
causes, it tends to descend, it will, during every
foot of its descent, have its weight, and consequently
its descending tendency, diminished, by
throwing on the earth the labor of supporting an
additional portion of the rope. This, however,
at best, is a clumsy contrivance, and there are
various objections to its practical utility. It
could hardly be practicable on land, on account
of the damage and danger that would be occasioned
by the entanglement of the rope in trees
and buildings; and at great elevations above the
earth, the weight of the rope would become so
considerable as to require for its support a large
portion of the ascending power of any balloon.

In the United States, many aerial voyages
have been performed. The first of these was
made by a Frenchman, M. Blanchard, in Jan.,
1793, from Philadelphia, at which General
Washington was a spectator. Gillio and Robertson,
both Europeans, were the next after
Blanchard. No Americans were engaged in the
business until Mr. Durant, an ingenious citizen
of New York, took it up after Robertson. He
made a number of aerial excursions, and was
shortly followed by new adventurers in the art,
among whom the most celebrated is Mr. Wise,
a piano-forte maker in Philadelphia, who in 1835
betook himself to the trade of ascending in balloons,
and who up to this date has made upward
of a hundred ascents.

Mr. Wise is entitled to the merit of having
carefully studied and mastered the scientific
principles of aeronautics, and he is among the
most enthusiastic of his profession. While admitting
that the art has advanced but little
since its first discovery, compared with other
sciences, he anticipates from it, if perseveringly
cultivated by men of genius, the most splendid
results, adopting, as the motto on the title-page
of his work, the couplet from Shakspeare:

Some of his feats have been daring enough, and
others still more perilous he is willing to undertake.

Not long after commencing the practice of
his new profession, Mr. Wise resolved to test
the practicability of descending in safety with
the balloon, after it had burst, at the elevation
of a mile or two. It would then, he conceived,
form a parachute, and, from the resistance it
would meet with from the atmosphere in its
descent, would gently let him down to the earth.
Having prepared a balloon of cambric muslin,
which he coated with his newly-invented varnish,
he ascended, as had been advertised, from
Easton, in Pennsylvania, on the 11th of August,
1838, at a few minutes before two o’clock, afternoon,
with the full determination of making
the experiment, though he had concealed his intention
both from the public and from his personal
friends. He carried up with him two parachutes,
the one containing a cat, and the other a dog.
As the balloon approached a dense body of black
thunder-clouds, some vivid flashes of lightning,
accompanied by violent peals of thunder, greeted
his upward course. This gave the first part of
his voyage a terrific but grand and imposing
appearance. It seemed to him as if heaven’s
artillery were celebrating these efforts of the
new-born science, and, acting on his imagination,
this inspired him with a fresh determination
to explode the balloon. At different elevations,
he detached first one and then another
of the parachutes, with their occupants, which
landed in safety. At the altitude of about
13,000 feet, the gas became expanded to its
utmost tension, and the balloon was still rising,
making it evident that, unless the safety-valve
were speedily opened to allow a portion of the
gas to escape, an explosion would speedily ensue.
At this critical moment he became somewhat
excited, and looking over the side of his car, he
observed the sparkling coruscations of lightning
springing from cloud to cloud, a mile beneath
him, as the thunder-storm was passing, in its
last remnants, below. He took out his watch,
noted on his log-book the time—twenty minutes
past two—and as he was about returning it to
his pocket, thinking at the time whether it were
not best, by opening the valve, to abandon, for
the present, his favorite idea, the balloon exploded.
His confidence in the success of the
experiment never forsook him, and yet he admits
that this was a moment of awful suspense. The
gas rushed with a tempestuous noise from the
rupture in the top, and in less than ten seconds,
the balloon was emptied of every particle of
hydrogen. The descent at first was rapid, and
in a moment or two, on looking up, he discovered
that the balloon was canting over, but the[Pg 325]
weight of the car counteracted its tilting tendency,
giving it an oscillating motion, which it retained
until it reached the earth, which it struck
with a violent concussion, and the car striking
the earth obliquely, Mr. Wise was thrown forward
from it about ten feet. The landing was
made on a farm about ten miles from Easton,
and many minutes had not elapsed before he
had resolved in his mind to repeat the experiment
in Philadelphia on the first opportunity.

Having arrived in Philadelphia in the month
of September immediately following, he consulted
several scientific gentlemen as to his intention.
Doubtful of the safety of the experiment,
though neither questioning the philosophy
of atmospheric resistance, nor the theory of
converting the balloon into a parachute, they
earnestly endeavored to dissuade him from his
purpose. But confident of the perfect safety
with which, on scientific principles, he would
descend, he publicly announced that he would
ascend on the first of October, and explode the
balloon at the height of upward of a mile. On
the day advertised, at twenty minutes before
five o’clock, afternoon, he left the earth in the
presence of assembled thousands, and rose almost
perpendicularly, in a perfectly clear sky. When
the explosion took place, the lower part of the
balloon did not immediately invert, as in the
former experiment, for in this case the balloon
burst open from top to bottom, and caved sideways.
At the first discovery of this, he was
somewhat alarmed, fearing that it might come
down with a continuous accelerated velocity;
but from this anxiety he was soon relieved, for
it caught the wind like the mainsail of a ship,
and slid down upon the atmosphere in a spiral
course with a uniform velocity. The concussion,
though from the apparent rapidity of the
descent it threatened to be violent, was not
harder than that which would follow the jumping
from an elevation of ten feet to the ground.

From the experience of his numerous aerial
excursions, Mr. Wise is of opinion, that, at a
considerable elevation, there is a constant and
regular current of wind blowing at all times,
from west to east, with a velocity of from twenty
to forty, and even sixty miles per hour, according
to its height from the earth. On the strength
of this conviction, he believes it to be perfectly
practicable and safe, not only to cross the Atlantic,
but even to circumnavigate the globe, in
a balloon; and he has expressed his readiness to
undertake either of these voyages. About the
beginning of the year 1843, he actually proposed
to some gentlemen of the city of Philadelphia,
the project of making an aerial trip across the
Atlantic, in undertaking which, he assured them,
he would have as little hesitation as about embarking
in the most approved steam-vessel that
plied between the ports of New York and Liverpool.
At first, supposing him to be in jest, they
expressed their willingness to promote the design,
but finding that he was in sober earnest, they
began to evince conscientious scruples as to the
responsibility they would incur, if by any chance
his life should fall a sacrifice to the bold adventure.
He next determined to petition the
Congress of the United States, at their ensuing
session, for the necessary pecuniary means; and
flattering himself with the hope of the success
of his application, to provide against the accidents
which might arise from opposing local
currents and storms, or from omissions, imperfections,
and unforeseen necessities attendant
upon all first trials, he issued a proclamation,
addressed to all publishers of newspapers in the
world, announcing it as his intention to make
a trip across the Atlantic in a balloon in the
summer of 1844, and calling upon the seafaring
community of all climes not to be alarmed
should they happen to be in the vicinity of a
balloon, either on the ocean or in the atmosphere,
but endeavor to give aid to the adventurers.
He proposed to have for the car a sea-worthy
boat, which would be of service in case
the balloon should fail to accomplish the voyage;
and the crew was to consist of three individuals—an
aeronaut, a sea-navigator, and a scientific
landsman.

By the time the Congress met, Mr. Wise had
enlarged his idea of crossing the Atlantic to a
purpose of sailing round the world. In a petition
he presented to that assembly, dated Lancaster
City, Dec. 20, 1843, he certifies, that by
taking advantage of the current from west to
east, which, governed by a great general law,
blows at all times round the globe, it was quite
practicable, from the improved state to which
aeronautic machinery can now be perfected, to
travel eastward in a balloon with a velocity
that would circumnavigate the globe in from
thirty to forty days, and that the aeronaut, by
taking advantage of the local currents, could
vary from a straight course thirty or forty degrees
from the latitude of departure, so as to be able
to leave dispatches in Europe and China, and
return by way of Oregon Territory to Washington
City. He therefore prays the Congress to appropriate
the money necessary for constructing an
aerostadt of 100 feet in diameter of substantial
domestic cotton drilling, with a sea-boat capable
of enduring the ocean for a car, and so constructed
that the masts and rigging may be stowed, ready
for erection into sea service at any time that
emergency might require. And he concludes by
engaging, that, should his proposal meet with the
approbation of the Congress, he would readily
submit a plan in detail, and would cheerfully
superintend the construction of the machinery
at his own expense, asking nothing more than
the command or directorship of the first experimental
aerial voyage round the globe.

This petition was received and read by the
Congress, and referred to the committee of naval
affairs. But though the committee to which it
was committed might not doubt that Mr. Wise
had nerve sufficient to make the attempt, they
probably had some doubts as to its practicability
and safety, and therefore they made no report.
Most men will think that the committee of
Congress acted wisely, and that it is fortunate[Pg 326]
for Mr. Wise himself, that neither the Congress
nor his private friends have, by supplying the
necessary funds, put it in his power to risk his
life in either of those foolish projects. The many
accidents and hairbreadth escapes from severe
bodily injury, if not from death, which he has
met with, during the course of his profession,
when undertaking much smaller excursions,
scarcely warrant him to conclude, as he does,
that such voyages would be attended with fewer
risks than sailing in the most approved steam-vessels.
To attempt to realize even his first
idea of crossing the Atlantic in a balloon, would,
in the present imperfect state of aeronautics, be
nothing less than madness; to attempt to realize
the second, would be “cyclopicus furor,” to borrow
a phrase from John Calvin—”a gigantic
madness;” and we can only account for his
forming or broaching such ideas, on the principle
of vanity, or of that insensibility to physical
danger which the adventurous gradually and
unconsciously contract. We do not affirm that
such schemes are absolutely impracticable, or
that they will never be safely accomplished;
for the astonishing discoveries already made in
science render it impossible for us to say to what
extent the elements may be rendered obedient
to the sway of the human will. To speak of
crossing the ocean, against wind and tide, in a
vessel, by the simple aid of a kettle filled with
boiling water, was, not many years ago, laughed
at as the ravings of a crack-brained fool. A
shaved head and a strait waistcoat were the
promised rewards of the original projector of
that most noble enterprise. And yet the foaming
billows of the great deep are at this day
hourly plied by the rushing steam-ship, bounding
and puffing recklessly along, as though it
were itself the victim of the madness ascribed
to its projector, but landing, nevertheless, its
precious freight unharmed upon the distant
shores. Now, if such stupendous and astonishing
results have been realized, what may not
man, under the irresistible dominion of the great
master-spirit of the age—progress—what may
he not accomplish?” But it remains yet to
be demonstrated that a pathway in a balloon
through the atmosphere is less perilous than one
in a ship on the ocean. The safety of traveling
in balloons must be tested by smaller trips, before
men will believe that these frail vessels of
silk, or cambric muslin, may be safely trusted
as a means of locomotion across the mighty
Atlantic, or, what would be a still greater
achievement, around the globe itself.

Having thus briefly traced the history of
aeronautics, we shall now inquire into the practical
value of the art.

After the discovery of the hydrogen-gas balloon,
the most extravagant projects dazzled and
bewildered the minds of men. To journey
through the air from one part of the globe to
another, or even to circumnavigate the globe
itself, in balloons, was child’s play, compared
with the magnificent results that were anticipated.
It was fondly expected that the new
discovery would open up a channel of communication
between the earth and its sister planets,
and that the time was not far distant when men
would be embarking from the Earth, in a balloon,
for the Moon, or for Mercury, Venus, Mars, the
Asteroids, or some of the other planets, just as
they embarked in a ship for France, Italy, India,
China, Africa, or America. They forgot
that the laws of gravitation, which bind man
as by chains of adamant to this world, would
ever interpose an insurmountable obstacle to
the realization of such wild imaginings; that
the atmosphere has its limits as well as the
ocean, extending, it is calculated, not much beyond
forty miles above the earth’s surface; that,
at a certain height, it is as light, by reason of
its rarity, as the lightest gas with which a balloon
can be inflated, thereby rendering all farther
ascent impossible; and that, even before the
aeronaut had reached that height, very serious
consequences would ensue from the intense cold,
from the diminution of atmospheric pressure, and
from the inadequacy of a too rarified atmosphere
for supporting respiration. Such overwrought
expectations, however, produced by the
first excitement of a great discovery, soon subsided,
when men began soberly to reflect on the
immutable laws, or, which is the same thing,
the powerful mandate of the Creator, which confines
all things within their appointed sphere.

But though the idea of emigrating by means
of balloons to foreign worlds was relinquished,
there still existed a desire to render them subservient
to important terrestrial purposes, and
various suggestions were made as to the uses to
which they might be applied. It was proposed
to employ their power of ascension as a mechanical
force for raising water from mines, for transporting
obelisks, and placing them on greater
elevations, or for raising, without any scaffolding
a cross or a vane to the top of a high spire.
It was proposed that they might be employed
as a means of making an escape from surrounding
icebergs in the ocean, or for effecting a landing
to otherwise inaccessible mountains, and
observing their cloud-capped peaks—for exploring
the craters of volcanoes—for traversing vast
swamps and morasses—and for the improvement
of the infant science of meteorology. It
was besides predicted that they would become
a safe, easy, and expeditious mode of traveling,
and of conveying the products of every land
and clime from one part of the globe to another.
It is long since Dr. Dick suggested, in his
“Christian Philosopher,” that the missionaries
of the cross might yet be able to avail themselves
of the aid of balloons in going forth to
distant regions to proclaim to the heathen the
unsearchable riches of Christ, and that then
there would be a literal fulfillment of the prediction
of the last of the inspired seers, “And I
saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven,
having the everlasting gospel to preach unto
them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation,
and kindred, and tongue, and people.” But
to only two purposes has the ascending power of[Pg 327]
the balloon been as yet applied—to the reconnoitring
of hostile armies, by the French, for a
short time—and, in one or two instances, to the
making of scientific observations. Only a single
attempt, and a very absurd one, has been made
to get up a traveling balloon. The gold-hunters
of America, impatient of the slow process by
which ships transport them to the golden regions
of California, and, as if determined to press the
air into the service of giving them a speedier
conveyance, lately proposed to build a balloon,
to carry them out at the rate of 200 miles per
hour. A model of the machine was exhibited
in New York and Philadelphia, and it created
considerable sensation in the minds of the credulous.
It was stated, in a respectable journal
of New York, in 1849, that the machine was
actually in course of construction, and the
steam-engine finished, but nothing more has
since been heard of it. “Had these projectors,”
says Mr. Wise, “gone on from their miniature
model, to the erection of one capable of carrying
one or two persons, in order to prove its
practicability on a larger scale, there might
have been reason to believe that they harbored
an idea of its general usefulness. But when
the project embraced at once so magnificent a
scheme, as that contemplated in the swooping
strides toward the modern Dorado, with a cargo
of a hundred gold-hunters, it seemed too much
for sober-minded people; and brought upon itself
philosophical criticism and scientific condemnation,
and, with that, a good share of opposition
to the hopes and expectations of aerial
navigation in any shape.”

Aerostation is at present applied to no practical
useful purpose; it is a mere plaything, occupying
no higher a position than catchpenny mountebank
exhibitions. Ascents are made in balloons
from no other motive, or for no other object,
than to draw money from the pockets of the
multitude, by ministering to their enjoyment;
and when made by persons properly acquainted
with the principles and practice of the art—for
by such alone can they be effected with safety—and
with those precautions which experience
has shown to be requisite, they might be liable
to no great objection, so long as the people
are willing to pay for them; but if conducted
by unqualified persons, or by the most skillful,
with a daring recklessness of personal danger,
or in a manner involving suffering to any sentient
being, they ought to be discouraged in
every legitimate way by every friend of humanity,
as at variance alike with the principles of
morality and with the benevolent lessons of the
Christian faith. No man may lawfully peril
his own life, or subject the inferior animals to
unnecessary pain, for the gratification of the
all-devouring thirst of the public for exciting
exhibitions; and in the very act of encouraging
and witnessing such exhibitions, we are quenching
the merciful and fostering the cruel in our
natures. Of this objectionable character is
the practice recently introduced into France of
carrying up donkeys in balloons. The adventure
is indeed no new one. It was performed
by Mr. Green some twenty years ago. But the
merit, or rather the demerit, of having turned
it into one of the most popular shows in France,
is due to M. Poitevin, who has lately been exciting
the gaping admiration of thousands in
Paris, by this fool-hardy, barbarous, and contemptible
mode of aerostation. Early in July
this year (1850), he ascended on horseback in
a balloon from Champ de Mars, in the presence
of upwards of 10,000 persons, who had paid for
admission, and the President of the Republic
was one of the spectators. The horse, a handsome
dapple gray, had stout cloth placed round
its body, and several straps, passed over the
shoulders and loins, were united in rings, which
were attached by cords to the network of the
balloon. In this manner was the animal cruelly
suspended in the air, having no resting-place
for its feet, nor was there any thing to
protect the rider, had he lost his balance or
been thrown off. The feat having been more
successful than could reasonably have been expected,
Mr. Green proposed to amuse the inhabitants
of London by a similar adventure. Some
of the more humane of the English capital were
shocked at the announcement; and the secretary
of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals made application on the 30th of
July to the magistrates to put a stop to the
ascent. A case of interference not having been
made out to the satisfaction of the magistrates,
Mr. Green next day started on his journey to
the clouds mounted on a pony. It was put in
the car—a plan more humane than that of M.
Poitevin, who suspended his pony in the air.
But the whole affair was a miserably poor one,
and well fitted to bring all such experiments
into contempt. The nag was not larger than
an under-sized Newfoundland dog; and what
made the thing more ridiculous still, the poor
creature—which, by the way, had its eyes bandaged,
and was strongly tied by cords to the
network of the balloon—was so feeble that, on
mounting it, Mr. Green had to sustain his own
weight by a pile of sand bags placed on either
side. This sham equestrian excursion through
the air appears to have generally disappointed
onlookers, and pony ascensions have not been
attempted a second time in England. In France
they have met with greater favor. They have
been repeated by M. Poitevin and others in the
presence of immense multitudes: and it should
not be passed over without remark, as one proof
among others of what the animals suffer, and,
consequently, of the cruelty of the practice, that,
in some of these instances, blood flowed from their
ears and nostrils. That the practice is dangerous
to the aeronaut as well as cruel to the animal,
has been the judgment of all reflecting
men from the first; and the late melancholy
fate of Lieutenant Gale, an English, naval officer,
who ascended from the Hippodrome of Vincennes,
near Bordeaux, on Sabbath—a very unsuitable
day, surely, for such exhibitions—the
8th of September last, mounted on a horse,[Pg 328]
which was suspended beneath the car of the
balloon by girths passed under its body, reads
a lesson to which it would be wise to listen.
By the aid of several peasants who were in the
fields, he effected his descent without any accident
to himself or the horse; but, having unfastened
the animal, he again rose into the air,
and was afterward found dead in a field about
a mile from the place where the balloon made
its second descent. That this dreadful close of
the aeronautic career of Mr. Gale, which he
commenced only in 1848, will serve as a warning
to this reckless class of adventurers, we
hardly anticipate. That it will put a stop to
such fool-hardy and hazardous exhibitions, by
bringing them into disrepute with the idle multitude,
is what we as little expect. So long as
men are found sufficiently daring to run the
risk, there will not be wanting crowds abundantly
ready to pay down their money, and
gaze upon the spectacle with a stupid admiration.

It is a wretched result of the art of ballooning,
if it can be turned to no better account
than this. Can, then, nothing more important
be brought out of it? Can it never be rendered
subservient to the ordinary purposes of
human life? The opinion almost universally
prevalent among men, not excluding scientific
men, is that it can not. Some aeronauts, indeed,
assure us that the time is fast approaching
when aerial transition will inevitably be
placed as far before railroad and steam-boat
transition as the latter are before the old-fashioned
sail and horse-power modes. But the
most of men place little faith in these flattering
anticipations; they listen to or read them
with as dogged a skepticism as they read or
hear the celebrated vaticination of Bishop Wilkins,
that it would be as common for man hereafter
to call for his wings when about to make
a journey, as it then was to call for his boots
and spurs. They doubt whether, with all the
characteristic marks of progress that distinguish
the present age, balloons will ever become
a safe, cheap, and expeditious means of
traveling. Whether the aeronauts are most to
be justified in their sanguine expectations, or
the rest of mankind in their cautious incredulity,
time alone will determine. Our judgment, we
confess, strongly inclines to the side of the
skeptics.

Much is still desiderated, in order to the
practicability of ballooning as a generally useful
art. A new gas, at once cheap in its production,
and of sufficient buoyancy, must be discovered.
The gases at present employed for
inflating balloons are either too expensive or
too heavy. Hydrogen, which is almost fourteen
times lighter than common air, is the lightest
gas known, but the expense at which it is procured
is an insuperable objection to its practical
utility. To produce a quantity sufficient to raise
the weight of a pound, four and a half pounds
of iron or six of zinc, with equal quantities of
sulphuric acid, would be required. Carbureted
hydrogen or coal gas is much cheaper, and
brings the cost of what may be necessary for
experimental purposes—though this is by no
means inconsiderable—within the compass of
more ordinary means. But, as it is only about
one half lighter than atmospheric air, it would
require a machine of immense size to support
any great weight; and the whole experience of
ballooning proves the difficulty of managing a
body of great magnitude. Another great desideratum
in aerial navigation is a power of
guiding the balloon according to a given direction—of
propelling it through the atmosphere
as steam-boats are propelled on the ocean. It
has indeed been said that, as nature is very
profuse in the variety of atmospherical currents
within two miles above the level of the sea, we
are not, in sailing through the air, driven to the
necessity of attempting to go right against the
wind, but have only to ascend or descend, as the
case may be, to a current, which will waft the
vessel to its desired destination. But were we
even sure of always getting a favoring current,
which, from the limited amount of observations
made, is not yet established beyond a doubt,
there is another desideratum—we are in want
of an agent adapted for raising and lowering the
balloon without any waste of its power, so as to
get within the propitious current. Mr. Green’s
contrivance of the guide rope, is, as we have
seen, not likely to answer in practice; and
nothing better has yet been discovered.

[From Colburn’s London Magazine.]

RECOLLECTIONS OF SIR ROBERT PEEL

BY THE DEAN OF YORK.

The political career of the late Sir Robert
Peel is so well known, and has been so often
brought before the public eye, that it would be
almost impertinent to offer any further illustration
of it.

There are many anecdotes, however, of a
domestic nature which more clearly show the
real character of so distinguished a person, and
with which an intimacy of nearly fifty years
will enable me to gratify general curiosity, at
this moment of deep sympathy for his fate.

Soon after Peel was born, his father, the first
baronet, finding himself rising daily in wealth
and consequence, and believing that money in
those peculiar days could always command a
seat in parliament, determined to bring up his
son expressly for the House of Commons. When
that son was quite a child, Sir Robert would
frequently set him on the table, and say, “Now,
Robin, make a speech, and I will give you this
cherry.” What few words the little fellow produced
were applauded, and applause stimulating
exertion, produced such effects that, before Robin
was ten years old, he could really address the
company with some degree of eloquence.

As he grew up, his father constantly took
him every Sunday into his private room, and
made him repeat, as well as he could, the sermon
which had been preached. Little progress[Pg 329]
in effecting this was made, and little was expected,
at first; but by steady perseverance the
habit of attention grew powerful, and the sermon
was repeated almost verbatim.

When at a very distant day the senator, remembering
accurately the speech of an opponent,
answered his arguments in correct succession, it
was little known that the power of so doing was
originally acquired in Drayton church.

I first became acquainted with Mr. Peel when
he was a boy at school; but he evinced at that
early age the greatest desire for distinction. He
was attentive to his studies, and anxious to
realize his father’s expectations. The most remarkable
feature, however, of his character was
a certain firmness of nerves which prevented
him from ever being frightened or excited by
any thing.

I went with him and his father to look at an
estate in Herefordshire, called Hampton Court,
which Sir Robert thought of purchasing. We
slept at the inn in Leominster. It was full of
company, and only two bedrooms could be obtained.
Young Peel was obliged to sleep on a
sofa-bed, in a kind of cupboard attached to the
principal room. Soon after he got to sleep, he
was awakened by a light, and saw a man
standing by his couch with a drawn sword.
The man being questioned, bid him not to be
alarmed, for that he would not hurt him, but
that a freemasons’ meeting was being held in
the next room, and that he was placed there to
prevent any intruders from breaking in upon
their ceremonies. Mr. Peel turned round and
went instantly to sleep again. I asked him if
he had not been frightened? He said, “No—that
he was surprised at first, but did not suppose
the man would do him any harm.”

On inquiry from the waiter in the morning,
we learned that the armed man had remained
three hours in the room where the fearless youth
was soundly and calmly sleeping.

On another occasion, I went with him and a
party of relations to visit the Lakes. We
crossed from Lancaster over the dangerous sands
to Ulverstone. Some accident had delayed us
at starting, and when we got about half-way
over, it was evident that the tide was returning.
All the party were much and reasonably alarmed
except young Peel, who sat upon the box with
me. After looking about some time with much
coolness, he remarked to the drivers, that the
nearer they went to the shore the more loose
and deep was the sand, and the greater the
difficulty of proceeding to the horses; but that
if they would go boldly a little way into the
sea, where the sand was hard and firm, we
should proceed with greater speed. By following
this judicious advice from the youngest of the
party, we escaped a considerable danger.

This self-command, or imperturbability, which
showed itself in many other instances in the
boy, became a peculiar characteristic of the
man.

I never knew him to be in the least excited
by any thing but once, and that was at the
death of Mr. Perceval. He (Mr. Peel) had assisted
to secure the murderer; he had supported
the head of his dying friend, whom he greatly
admired and loved; and when he came out of
the House of Commons his face was certainly
flushed, and some emotion shown; but less
than would probably have been shown by any
other person under such powerful excitement.

Soon after Mr. Peel was of age he came into
parliament as member for an Irish borough (I
think for Tralee). Mr. Quintin Dick, who had
an all-powerful interest in that borough, had, by
some irregularity, become incapacitated from
representing an Irish constituency, but was
seeking to come into parliament for some English
borough. Sir Robert gave him great assistance—possibly
with his purse—and in return
Mr. Dick contrived so to influence the free and
independent electors of Tralee, that they elected
Mr. Peel to be their representative.

While sitting as member for that borough,
Mr. Peel made his first much-admired speech in
seconding the address, which speech his father
heard from the gallery, with tears, not certainly
excited by grief.

Mr. Peel went over shortly afterward as secretary
to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and
while there the parliament was dissolved, and
with it his connection with Tralee.

We looked for some other seat, and a gentleman,
whose name I forget, offered to sell Sir
Robert a number of houses in Chippenham, to
the tenants of which the right of voting for
members of parliament was by burgage-tenure
confined.

The bargain was, that the property should be
conveyed to Sir Robert for a large sum, but
that if at the end of six months he should be
dissatisfied with his purchase, the seller should
repurchase it for a smaller sum.

All of which was luckily done, for soon afterward
the Reform Bill made the old houses
valueless.

In consequence of this arrangement, Mr. Peel
was under no necessity of coming from Ireland;
but I went as his deputy to Chippenham, heard
him elected without opposition, and gave a dinner
to his faithful friends, and when parliament
met Mr. Peel took his seat accordingly.

Thus did he sit in parliament during two
sessions for places which he never saw in his
life, and the inhabitants of which never saw
him.

Such things are, I suppose, impossible in the
present age of purity.

Before the connection between Mr. Peel and
Chippenham was at an end, a vacancy occurred
in the representation of Oxford University. Mr.
Canning had long fixed his eye upon that seat
in parliament, and had been often flattered with
the hope of being agreeable to the electors; but
his noble and self-sacrificing vote in favor of the
Roman Catholics had alienated from him many
of his first supporters. At a fortunate moment,
the members of Christ Church being assembled
to determine what candidate they should espouse,[Pg 330]
Mr. Lloyd, who had been Peel’s private tutor,
pressed upon them the dangers to the Protestant
religion which would ensue, if a body of clergymen
should elect a favorer of Roman Catholics.
The electors of Christ Church, who are supposed
almost to command the return of one member,
were moved by the reasoning of Mr. Lloyd, and
Mr. Peel was invited to offer himself as member
for the university, being assured of the support
of the influential college of Christ Church.

I well remember the glee with which Mr.
Peel came to my house early one morning to
show me the letter which he had received by
express, announcing the welcome news and insuring
to him a prize which was then the object
of his highest hope.

We went together to his father, who was as
much delighted as his son, and promised to
supply money to any amount which might be
wanted in completing the triumph. We soon
found, however, that money was the last thing
needed.

After his first election for Oxford, Peel went
again to Ireland, and when there he had a
political quarrel with the famous Mr. O’Connell,
which ended in a challenge. But as Mr. O’Connell
was already bound to keep the peace in
Ireland, it was settled that the hostile party
should meet in France. Peel got immediately
into a small vessel and sailed for the Continent.
He had a narrow escape of being lost in the
Channel, having been exposed in a small and
ill-appointed ship to a severe gale of wind. Mr.
O’Connell, in the mean time, was again interrupted
by the interference of the police, and
prevented following to France. He was bound
over to keep the peace for one year against all
his Majesty’s subjects every where. So that,
after waiting ten or twelve days in no very
pleasing suspense, Peel and his friend, Colonel
Browne, came to Drayton, and the affair was
forgotten.

While Peel was also in Ireland, we received
many visits at Drayton from the somewhat
notorious Mr. Owen, of Lanark. Sir Robert
had brought a bill into parliament for shortening
the hours of labor in the cotton factories.
(This was the first legislative interference between
masters and their workmen, which has
since led to so many long debates). Mr. Owen,
expressing great anxiety for the further progress
of this measure, came frequently to Drayton, and
remained there many days.

Peel, hearing of the circumstance, wrote to
his father, saying that he had cause to believe
that Mr. Owen had strange opinions concerning
religion, and was not an eligible companion for
Sir Robert’s children. The baronet hereupon
asked Owen to tell him truly if he were a Christian.
The answer which he received induced
him to point out to Mr. Owen that his services
could be no longer useful in furthering the parliamentary
object, and that he would not detain
him any longer at Drayton. A second letter
came from Peel, stating that he had been told
that Owen’s great object, like Voltaire’s, was to
overturn the Christian religion, to which he pretended
to ascribe the unhappiness of mankind;
that he (Peel) humbly, but earnestly pressed
upon his father, that by giving so much countenance
to such a man, he might be assisting in
the unhallowed scheme, and fostering infidelity.

Owen, however, was gone, and no more thought
about him for some time. But, a few days afterward,
just as we were sitting down to dinner, a
carriage was seen approaching, and in it the
well-known face of the pseudo-philosopher.

Sir Robert, however, coinciding in opinion
entirely with his son, from whom he had received
a third remonstrance, rose from table,
desired the servant to keep Mr. Owen’s carriage
at the door, met his visitor in the drawing-room,
and expressing sorrow that Drayton House was
full of company, declined the honor of receiving
Mr. Owen. The renovator of human happiness
was obliged to depart impransus and little
pleased.

We saw no more of him.

THE MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT.

“Now, Barbara, I have done my duty by you
as far as lies in my power; your poor uncle’s
money is firmly settled on yourself as he
wished, mind you never act dishonestly by him
either, child.”

“Dishonestly! father.”

“Dishonestly, Bab; it is an ugly word, but
you must look it full in the face like many other
disagreeable things. Now understand me; I
do not like mercenary marriages, mixing up
money concerns with the most important event
in a woman’s life—but still she must know her
own position, and then she can act for herself
afterward. My maxim has been, share and
share alike in matrimony; your dear mother
and I did: we had one purse, one heart, and
I’ve been a prosperous man through life; therefore
I give you your share out and out. You
and Chepstowe can make ducks and drakes of
it if you like, or it may go into your business
and help you on; he’ll make a spoon or spoil a
horn, will Paul.”

“Oh, father.”

“No chance of his making a spoon you think,
or of his spoiling a horn either;” and the old
man chuckled over his first pun. “Well, any
how, I see that your money may be of great
service to him, if he looks sharp, so there it is.
I see, too, that he can not just now withdraw
sufficient capital from the concern to make a
settlement on you without cramping himself,
and as you are both willing to chance it, I’m
agreeable. But your uncle thought otherwise;
his money was left to you and your heirs—your
heirs, remember, Bab. If you have children
you only hold it in trust for them; and, mark
my words, you have no right to give up that
property under any circumstances, I don’t care
what they are. You can have no right to rob
your heirs.”

“I see it, father, and I’m sure Paul will
also.”

[Pg 331]

“I’m not so sure of that, girl; men are apt
to see things oddly when they’re in a pinch, or
when they’re going on well, and want a little
just to grease their wheels. The interest on
your uncle’s legacy brings you barely two hundred
a year. Now, if things go on well, Chepstowe
may fancy he could double it for you, or
if he meets with misfortunes he’ll be sure to
think it would just set him all right again.
Lord Eldon said every woman was kicked or
kissed out of her settlement; now promise me
you’ll never give up yours.”

“I never will.”

“That’s right, my girl; I think I may trust
you; you’ve the same quiet way your mother
had. But it will be a hard case for you to say
no to your husband, Barbara; for, dearly as you
may love him now, he will be dearer still to
you by-and-by, when time has hallowed the tie
between you, and you are used to each other’s
ways. Then, Barbara, it will go hard with you
to refuse him any thing; but for your children’s
sake, if you are blessed with any, it will be your
bounden duty not to go against your uncle’s
will.”

Barbara renewed her promise, and a few days
saw her the happy, trusting, hoping wife of Paul
Chepstowe.

Months verged into years, and her hopes had
become certainties; the timid girl who clung to
her father’s threshold, even when leaving it for
her new home, and with him who was more to
her than all the world beside, was now a fair
matron, serene in the assured dignity of her
position, calm in her husband’s love.

Paul and Barbara were very happy, and the
world had gone well with them. Their own
wants and wishes were moderate, and far within
their means; their infant family throve, and
the business prospered with a steady increase
which promised to be permanent. What more
could they desire? Alas! old Mr. Cox’s fears
had been prophetic; Paul had extended his concern
by the assistance of Barbara’s dowry, and
now thought he could speculate most advantageously
on her uncle’s legacy were it at his
disposal.

“God knows, my love!” he said, “I only
wish to make what I can for our children; I am
truly happy in our present circumstances; but
with an increasing family it is incumbent on us
to look about us, and I see a very good opening.
I could lay out that property of yours.”

“Ours, dear Paul!”

“No, Barbara; if it were mine I should not
have hesitated, I can assure you; the money is
yours, and yours only; I have nothing to do
with it: but, as I was saying, you may double
that money if you like.”

“Of course I should, but it gives us a very
good interest now—two hundred a year.”

“Pshaw! what is that? To hear you talk,
it might be thousands instead of a trumpery
couple of hundreds.”

“Well, but Paul, as we live, that income
nearly maintains us; and—”

“I shall always be able to maintain my wife
and children, if any.”

“I pray you may, dear; but certainly this
money has so far assisted you, as you have expended
comparatively little on us.”

“I am quite aware of the assistance your fortune
has been to me, Mrs. Chepstowe.”

“Paul!”

“But with all due deference to your father’s,
your uncle’s, and your own united wisdom, I
can not help feeling that it is a painful thing
to be trammeled in my endeavors to assist my
children; I am in an inferior position.”

“My dear love, how can you say such cruel
things?”

“Why do you bring them home to me, Barbara?
Put yourself in my place. I can at
this moment double your pittance; but you,
my wife, are afraid to trust me with your property;
you have no confidence in my judgment,
and our children are the sufferers: I repeat it,
this is galling.”

“Indeed, Paul, you wrong me, and my father
also. We freely gave up to your control my
share in his property; have we ever sought to
advise you even with respect to that? But my
uncle wished his legacy to be settled on me with
a reversion to the children, and I can not think
that we have a right to risk it. The best intentions
can not justify us, for the money is not
entirely ours. Suppose, love, this proposed investment
should not answer.”

“Nonsense, Barbara, I tell you it can not
fail; the concern is as good as the bank, and
the returns will be enormous; if you doubt my
word, see Jackson, he will satisfy your scruples;
but once you placed entire faith in me.”

“And do now, dear Paul; but before my
marriage I promised dear father I would preserve
this property for my children, according to
the deed of settlement. Now do not look so
angrily at me; I repeated this promise on his
death-bed, for he foresaw this trial, he knew
what pain I should suffer; but a promise is a
sacred thing. Paul, that money can not, must
not be touched.”

“Very well, Mrs. Chepstowe; you are losing
a noble opportunity, but of course you know
best: I am only sorry I can not get rid of the
cursed affair altogether. What good will it
ever do the children? However, I’ll never presume
to advise respecting your fortune again,
madam.”

Paul flounced out of the room and banged
the doors matrimonially, each clap having an
oath in it; while Barbara, after a hearty good
cry, hid, as all women learn to do, an aching
heart under a smiling countenance. This was
their first difference; that it should be on money
matters, and her money too, made it more bitter
to her; and she often felt inclined to follow
her husband, cancel the deed, and allow him to
act as he wished. His mortification was so
great, yet so natural. Could he really think
she distrusted him? Was he not her husband?
was she acting rightly? Oh, no, no! But she[Pg 332]
remembered her father’s words, her own promises,
and her doubts were removed: her duty
was to retain her rights; her children’s claims
were no less sacred than their father’s. She
might not risk their property; she could not
honestly frustrate her uncle’s intentions.

We will now follow Chepstowe, who was for
once thoroughly angry with his wife, himself,
and all the world. He was unfeignedly vexed,
as a man of business and a bit of a speculator,
at losing so fine an opportunity of turning a
penny. He grieved as a father, because he
could not benefit his family to the extent of his
wishes; he was in a terrible passion as a married
man unused to contradiction, because his
wife had dared not only to think for herself but
to have a will of her own. Thus, Mr. Paul
Chepstowe, though generally an amiable, clear-headed,
flourishing young man, was at this moment
disposed to think himself particularly ill-used
by his wife and her family, and was more
determined than ever to get rich in order to
spite them all. Barbara had dared even to
doubt the eligibility of this investment; therefore,
her worthy husband decided on placing
every farthing he could raise in it. “He would
not be led by the nose—not he; he was his
own master.”

Oh, ye lords of creation, which of ye can
master yourself? Which of ye is not hag-ridden
by some pet passion? For one wife that
leads you, you are driven by fifty hobbies—by
your own weaknesses, by friends, by the world,
by fear of petticoat government.

To return to our “muttons.” Paul, though
any thing but a black sheep, was now in a humor
to stop at no folly in order to assert his
independence. Besides, he had declared his intention
of taking up a certain number of shares
in the new speculation he had wished to patronize,
and consequently chose to fancy he could
not withdraw from that determination; he therefore
allowed his broker to proceed, trusting that
Barbara would give way so as to enable him to
pay up the first call. His pride, however, was
too great to allow him again to address her
openly on the subject, and he contented himself
with a dignified ill-humor and certain obscure
allusions, to which his wife, having the option
of not understanding them, chose to turn a deaf
ear. She shed many bitter tears, though, over
his unkindness; but painful as her position
was, his was still worse. Pay-day was coming
on, and he must either sell the shares, now rapidly
rising, or meet the call. The former would
have been the wiser plan, but pride and an over
sanguine temperament led him to another course.
He secretly raised money in different quarters,
and retained the shares. This hampered him,
for he had heavy interest to pay, and his concern,
though flourishing, could not sustain this
drain. Money that should have been expended
in his business went to this extraneous speculation,
where it lay idle. The shares fell; he had
buried his talent. This would not have been
so bad, as this unfortunate investment was one
which must in the long run prove profitable, to
those who had sufficient capital to “bide their
time;” but the fact that he was so large a
shareholder became known, and was injurious
to him; persons chose to fancy he had “too
many irons in the fire.” There was a talk that
he had required “accommodation,” his credit
began to totter. Even now he might have recovered
himself had he possessed sufficient nerve
to go boldly on, like a skater on breaking ice,
but no—he hesitated—he tottered—he failed.

Of all those whom this failure surprised, Barbara,
as often happens, was most unprepared for
it. Her husband had struggled on from day to
day, now wildly hoping that all would yet be
right; now desponding, but determined to avert
the knowledge of impending evil as long as possible
from those dear ones at home. Besides,
a really conscientious woman’s eye, even though
a wife’s, is often to be feared in these cases.
Paul yet thought the blow might be escaped;
but he knew that with this prospect before
them, Barbara would insist on instant retrenchment,
and his pride could not brook such an
open confession while yet a hope remained. So
all was unchanged at home, all save its master;
and, though the wife was doomed to seem unconscious
of her husband’s fitful temper, her
heart bled at each harsh word to herself or the
little prattlers who now fled from “papa.”
She had dreaded the loss of her earthly treasure,
the riches of his love; to her the truth was a
relief, even though embittered by fresh differences
or a revival of old complaints.

Things were now desperate with Chepstowe,
but when will not a drowning man cling to a
straw? He persuaded himself that Barbara
might, at the sacrifice of her property, retrieve
all, and bent his proud spirit to speak to her.
Even now he could not bring himself to own
the extent of his involvements, but spoke of
some mere temporary embarrassment.

“You see, Barbara, my capital is just now
locked up; I can not meet these bills of Roby’s,
and there’ll be the devil to pay; he’s a crusty
chap, one of the old school, and it’s no good
asking him for time. Now your uncle’s legacy
would set all straight.”

“Could we offer it as security?”

“Security be hanged! no one would advance
me more than three thousand on it; I want
five. I wish you to sell out at once, Barbara;
it will save us from beggary and disgrace.”

“Disgrace, Paul! disgrace! Oh, tell me,
you can not fear disgrace?”

“Is not ruin disgrace? I tell you that
Hampden’s failure has cramped me confoundedly;
I can not honor my acceptances; I must
declare myself insolvent unless you help me.”

“But still, love, as your misfortunes are
caused by another’s failure, you can not be disgraced;
besides, surely with a business like yours
the banks would accommodate you.”

“You know nothing about the matter; it is
no good talking of business to a woman, you
can not understand it. If you don’t choose to[Pg 333]
assist your husband in his greatest need, say so
at once; but don’t fancy you are to preach to
me or give me your advice; I did not come to
you for dictation.”

“Indeed, dear, I would not presume to advise
or dictate; you mistake me cruelly. I only
wished for the children’s sake to see what our
situation really is. Paul, remember this may
be all the support left to them; they are young,
they must be educated, brought forward; is it
right to deprive them of their property?”

“Pish! I can double it for them to-morrow.
By heaven, Barbara, I will not live to see my
name in the Gazette, to be disgraced. Choose
between your husband and your money.”

“Were that indeed the choice, you know in
your own heart that I should not hesitate one
moment. No, the choice is between my husband
and our children. I will not believe that
even insolvency can disgrace you.”

“Not when my debts are unpaid, and my
wife keeps her fortune?”

“A fortune you have often laughed at as a
pittance. It can afford us no luxuries; your
creditors have no claim on it; it had no interest
with your business, it never influenced your
credit; had you not married me your position
would have been the same. Were I—could I
be induced to break my trust and sacrifice my
children’s interest, this money should go among
all your creditors; I never would part with it
for the benefit of one alone.”

“So you would deprive me of character and
credit, submit me to the indignities of the insolvent
court, blast my fame and future prospects,
rather than part with a paltry sum?
And yet you can talk of duty. You will remain
quiet at home, while I am exposed to all
the curses of poverty.”

“Do you think that these ills can fall on you
alone, Paul? Am I not your wife? If disgrace
be your portion, must not I share it?
Yes, and as freely as I have shared your better
days’ love, for the disgrace will be unmerited.
Do I not know that my decision will be canvassed
by all, blamed by the many?”

“Then why expose yourself to this blame?”

“For our children’s sakes. You did not require
this money when it was settled on me and
them; they do now, and you may.”

“I!—I will never degrade myself by a farthing
of it; so do not make me your excuse for
your selfishness. You have chosen, you say;
take care how it may end.”

A bankruptcy ensued, and Paul survived it.
People who threaten not to live, seldom keep
that promise. At the worst he could only be
charged with over-speculation. His dividend
was excellent, his embarrassments clearly attributable
to a year of panic, and the failure of
some other houses doing business with him.
Barbara had truly said, there might be imprudence
but there was no disgrace attached to his
name, and he obtained a certificate of the first
class.

What was the poor wife’s suffering meanwhile?
As she expected, many and harsh
comments were passed on her conduct; her
summer friends looked coldly on her; her servants
were disposed to be insolent.

Paul too, who, in spite of all evidence, persisted
in asserting and believing that Barbara’s
property would have saved him, was almost
savage in his ill-temper. Ostentatiously economical,
but requiring the same comforts and attendance
he had enjoyed with more than double
their present income, nothing but devoted affection
and a reliance in his innate good qualities
could have preserved his wife’s last comfort, a
reliance on him, a respect for her husband. The
wife who ceases to look up is indeed alone and
miserable. In the pettish recklessness of his
grief, he had chosen to make a parade of giving
up every thing; not an indignity was spared his
family; and many comforts they might have
honorably retained, were cast from them, that
Barbara might more fully feel the enormity of
her fault. The children could but half understand
the change; and their innocent murmurs,
their cowed looks, their gentle pity for “poor
mamma” were so many daggers to her heart.

Paul Chepstowe’s credit was so good that he
might have recommenced life; he was offered a
capital on the security of his wife’s fortune; but
he scorned a boon emanating from that source,
and preferred taking a subordinate clerkship in
a mercantile house. Some people have a pleasure
in “cutting off the nose to spite the face,”
and our hero was of that class. Like Mawworm,
“he liked to be despised;” for some time it literally
did his heart good to come home and say
he had been treated with supercilious pride and
incivility, and thus maunder over his troubles.
He was almost sorry to find that home still neat
and comfortable, to see his children flourishing
in mind and body, to feel that some of their old
connections yet considered his wife their equal.
Time and the hour, however, will wear through
the longest day; and Paul gradually accustomed
himself to his happiness, and to look upon
himself once more as a respectable member of
society.

The illusion, however, was dispelled, and this
time it was Barbara who meditated sacrifices
and talked of “disgrace.” Their eldest child, a
girl, was now fifteen years old, when, to the
father’s horror, he discovered a plan for sending
her as governess pupil to a school. He disapproved,
remonstrated, scolded, talked of “candle-end
savings,” and “ridiculous economy with
their income,” but to no purpose. Once he had
given up the reins from pique, and now his wife
chose to drive, and would not relinquish them;
so Annie did as her mother had decided, and was
placed in a way of earning her own livelihood.
She was a clever, ardent girl, and was soon
enabled to add her mite to the general hoard,
as a younger sister was received in return for
her services. Their only boy remained longer
on their hands; he was a persevering, keen lad,
with a decided turn for mechanics, and was apprenticed
at his own request to an engineer.[Pg 334]
His more ambitious father wished first to give
him the benefit of a college education, to send
him to mathematical Cambridge; but Mrs.
Chepstowe strenuously opposed this plan. “We
can not afford to give Harry a suitable income,”
she said, “and he shall never with my consent
be exposed to the miseries and temptations of a
dubious position. No, Harry has his way to
fight in the world; he can not begin too soon;
we have no right to mislead him as to his situation,
or to fetter his right arm with the trammels
of gentility.”

“And so you have treasured up your uncle’s
money just to make your son a mechanic, and
his sisters governesses! I expected that, at all
events, our children would have benefited by that
miserable bequest.”

“They have been educated, Paul, until they
were of an age to assist themselves; we have
spared no expense on them. We have now
every right to use the interest at least of their
money, and there is a purpose to which we would
willingly appropriate it; indolence or luxuries
would now disgrace us.”

Paul had a glimmering of what his wife
meant; he could not blame her purpose, though
he chose to fancy it overstrained and romantic.
Mingled feelings kept him silent, however, and
things went on as usual.

It was a sparkling winter’s day in the Christmas
week; the girls were home from their respective
situations; Harry had come over from
a neighboring railway town, where he had obtained
permanent and lucrative employment;
and the Chepstowes were again united. The
clear windows glistened in the sun; the holly
sprays poked up their pert berries and bright
leaves from all parts of the room, suggestive of
the misletoe’s delicate beads with its cherished
privileges; the mahogany shone in the firelight;
the arm-chairs yawned invitingly; the very cat
licked its paws with an air; every thing had a
gala look, a smile of innate happiness; not a
stick in that snug parlor but would have put to
flight a legion of blue devils. Paul, notwithstanding
his children’s degradation, and his own
misery, was cosily concocting a glorious bowl of
punch; while Barbara, though years had left
silvery traces of their passage on her silken
curls, had all the matured charms of fat, fair,
and forty. And well might both parents feel
proud and happy as they gazed on their blooming,
joyous children. The girls were not “poor
governesses, interesting victims,” but conscientious,
well-informed women, who had entered
on high duties, and were prepared to fulfill them
to the best of their endeavors, and were in the
meantime enjoying home with twofold pleasure;
and Harry, no yellow-kid dawdle waiting for his
friends’ exertions, had already made a way for
himself in the stirring world. But this was not
all; the aim of Barbara’s late years was achieved—Paul’s
debts were entirely paid off; by her
own long-continued and little suspected savings,
she had early laid by a small sum for that purpose;
as each child was able to understand her,
the story of her trials was related, and each was
devoted to the good work. Their economy was
added to hers; and gradually the whole interest
of her property was reserved also. Money makes
money; it accumulates like a snow-ball; interest
and compound interest heaped on each other
soon form a round sum.

A happier family ne’er sat down to a Christmas
table than the Chepstowes. They had self-respect
and contentment to bless them, what
cared they for the world? but little; and therefore,
as is usual in these cases, the world chose
to think a great deal of them. The only piece
of plate on their modest sideboard was a handsome
salver, a present from their creditors to
P. Chepstowe, Esq., as a mark of respect, of
which his wife and daughters were duly proud,
and by this salver lay certain visiting tickets,
dearer still to Harry. His employer’s wife, a
rich and high-born woman, visited his family on
equal terms; two of his friends were always hovering
round Annie and her sister Barbara; he
had a shrewd suspicion that it was not for his
sake only, that John Gray and Tom Frankland
came so frequently to the cottage, no, nor even
for the walk, though both declared it was the
pleasantest in England.

Paul was doomed to be a disappointed man,
and to be happy withal. When his first emotions
were over he hoped his daughters would
now remain at home with him. But lo, Annie
was to be married as soon as John was comfortably
settled, and wished in the meanwhile to
continue her exertions, for they now meant to
lay by on Harry’s account, that he might have
a little capital to begin business upon without
encroaching on their father’s income. And thus
they toiled on and each was provided for; while
Paul at length, to please his admirable wife,
gave up his post, and lives comfortably on the
fruits of her settlement.

AN APOLOGY FOR BURNS.

Burns, to be justly judged, must be estimated
by a reference to the times in which
he lived. If James I. and Sir Matthew Hale
believed in witchcraft, and were agents in the
burning of helpless, ignorant, and decrepit old
women, was it not the cruel superstition and
vice of their time? If Calvin condemned Servetus
to the stake—aside from any personal
motive, or from his own views of Christianity,
“without the smile, the sweetness, or the grace”—was
not the destruction of heretics equally
the vice of his time? If the immortal Bacon—the
“wisest, greatest, meanest (?) of mankind”—disgraced
the judgment-seat, and stained
his own great name—not, we believe, to pervert,
but to expedite justice—was not bribery,
which stained the ermine on infinitely meaner
shoulders, also the vice of his time? If the great
political martyrs, Lord William Russell and Algernon
Sydney, accepted bribes from Louis XIV.—as
shown by Mr. Macaulay, on the authority
of Barillon, which authority we ourselves have
consulted with astonishment and regret—was[Pg 335]
such corruption not also the vice of their time,
in which nearly the whole House of Commons
participated? If the pious Addison was addicted
to wine, and, as that vain and courtly
sycophant, Horace Walpole, sneeringly asserted,
“died drunk,” was it not a propensity and a
morbid craving, engendered by a diseased physical
organization, and was not wine-bibbing pre-eminently
the vice of his day? In those days,
when Pope or Swift penned maudlin notes to
Arbuthnot, night’s candles being burnt out, and
jocund day standing tiptoe on the misty mountain-top,
and in drunken hilarity went reeling
to bed, were not such orgies, in their day, almost
without shame and without reproach?
When the excellent and venerable Lord-President
Forbes, as shown in Mr. Burton’s valuable
Memoir, was kept in a state of feverish
crapulence for a whole month at a time, was
not dissipation emphatically the raging and besetting
sin of his day? But not to multiply
more modern instances—and many such might
be adduced—we would pause, to ask the charitable
reader: Is Robert Burns to be held up to
the never-dying desecration of posterity, as a
man steeped in evil and impiety, because, with
fiery ardor, he rushed into the polemic war then
raging in Ayrshire, lashed with unsparing and
terrible sarcasm and wit the vices and superstitions
of his age, and, unfortunately, fell a
victim to the social habits of the day, before
his better judgment and nobler principles had
gained the moral ascendency over the burning
passions of his youth? Following out this view
of the infirmities of men, we are prepared to
look with sad complacency on the rudeness and
superstition of Johnson—the madness and misery
of poor Chatterton, who “perished in his
pride”—the gourmandizing of Pope—the sublime
wailings of disappointed ambition in Young—the
baffled rage and insanity of Swift—the
misery of the exquisite Elia—the hallucinations
of the inspired Coleridge, whose whole life was a
distempered dream—the bright morning dream
of Keats—the cruel disappointment and heart-breaking
of poor Haydon, when he stood in solitude
among his great pictures, and saw the
whole world of London flocking to gaze on General
Tom Thumb!—the solitary pride of Wordsworth—the
egotism of the Ettrick Shepherd—the
intolerance of Scott—the mirth and melancholy
of Hood, who has given to the world the
most powerful and pathetic song that has sounded
from the poetic lyre in our day, illustrating
the sad truth, that

in short, all the long and sorrowful catalogue
of “mighty poets in their misery dead”—that
terrible death-roll, inscribed with “fears of the
brave and follies of the wise,” and written within
and without with mourning, and lamentation,
and woe.

And so of Robert Burns. From his earliest
years, we learn, he was subject to palpitation
and nervous excitement. The victim of hypochondria,
with fitful glimpses or sunbursts, lighting
up the waste of life with ineffable beauty
and love, to escape from its terrible shadow,
which haunted him through life, he, unfortunately,
was driven to take refuge from himself
in the excitement and vivacity of the social
board, as Johnson fled from himself to the tavern
dinner, to revel in his astonishing powers of
conversation, while Burke and Beauclerk quailed
under the eye of the critical dictator.

But Robert Burns was no drunkard, in the
ordinary sense of drunkenness. From his physical
organization, he paid dearly for every such,
even the smallest deviation. It is the sentiment
of social enjoyment, not the sensuality of
the sot or drunkard, that inspires his convivial
songs, however much they may be misunderstood;
and it can not be denied that he purified,
with exquisite genius and taste, the lyrical
literature of his country, which, in Allan Ramsay’s
time, as shown by the “Tea-Table Miscellany,”
was polluted by false and filthy wit
and obscenity. We may have written strongly,
but we wish the reader to understand that we
are writing from the best authority, and in the
spirit of truth and sincerity. We wish to record
our emphatic protest against the injustice
hitherto done to the memory and name of Burns.
Not only was he left to die in poverty and neglect,
but he was singled out as a stricken deer
from the herd, the galling arrows of the hunters
entering into his soul, and, we fear, yet vibrating
in the hearts of his near and dear friends.

A TALE OF SHIPWRECK.

It was precisely on the 5th of November,
1821, that a terrible gale from the northwest
set in. It rose very early in the morning,
and blew hurricanes all day. There was a
hasty and precipitate running and crowding of
fishing-boats, colliers, and other vessels into the
friendly ports of Scarborough and Filey, for
these once past, excepting Burlington, which is
far less sheltered, there is no place of refuge
nearer than the Humber to flee to. As the
morning broke dark and scowling, the inhabitants
looking from their windows saw whole
fleets of vessels thronging into the port. Men
were seen on the heights, where the wind
scarcely allowed them either to stand or breathe,
looking out to descry what vessels were in the
offing, and whether any danger were threatening
any of them. Every one felt a sad certainty,
that on that bleak coast, where this wind, when
in its strength, drives many a luckless ship with
uncontrollable force against the steep and inaccessible
cliffs, such a day could not go over
without fearful damage. Before noon the sea
was running mountains high, and the waves
were dashing in snowy foam aloft against the
cliffs, and with the howling winds filling the
air with an awful roar. Many a vessel came
laboring and straining toward the ports, yet by
all the exertions of the crews, kept with difficulty
from driving upon the inevitable destruction
of the rocky coast.

[Pg 336]

Among the fishing-vessels which made the
Bay of Filey in safety, was one belonging to a
young man of the name of George Jolliffe. By
his own active labors, added to a little property
left him by his father, also a fisherman, George
Jolliffe had made himself the master of a five-man-boat,
and carried on a successful trade.
But the boat was his all, and he sometimes
thought, with a deep melancholy, as he sate
for hours through long nights looking into the
sea, where his nets were cast—what would become
of him if any thing happened to the
“Fair Susan?” The boat was christened after
his wife; and when George Jolliffe pictured to
himself his handsome and good Susan, in their
neat little home, in one of the narrow yet clean
little lanes of Scarborough, with his two children,
he was ready to go wild with an inward
terror at the idea of a mishap to his vessel.
But these were but passing thoughts, and only
made him the more active and vigilant.

He had been out some days at the Doggerbank,
fishing for cod, and had taken little, when
the sky, as he read it, boded a coming storm.
He immediately hauled his nets, trimmed his
sails, and made for home with all his ability.
It was not long before he saw his own belief
shared by the rest of the fishermen who were
out in that quarter; and from whom all sail
was bent landward. Before he caught sight of
land, the wind had risen to a violent gale; and
as he drew nearer the coast, he became quite
aware that he should not be able to make his
own port, and must use all energy to get into
Filey. In the afternoon of this 5th of November,
he found himself, after stupendous labor,
and no little anxiety, under shelter of the land,
and came to anchor in a crowd of other strange
vessels.

Wearied, drenched with wet, and exhausted
by their arduous endeavors to make this port,
as he and his four comrades ascended the steps
to Filey village, their attention was soon excited
by the crowds of sailors and fishermen
who were congregated at the foot of the signal-house,
and with glasses and an eager murmur
of talk were riveting their attention on something
seaward. They turned, and saw at once
the object of it. A fine merchant vessel, under
bare poles, and apparently no longer obeying
the helm, was laboring in the ocean, and driving,
as it appeared, hopelessly toward that sheer
stretch of sea-wall called the Spectan Cliff—against
which so many noble ships had been
pitched to destruction.

“Nothing can save her!” said several voices
with an apparent calmness which would have
struck a landsman as totally callous and cruel.
Already there might, however, be seen a movement
in the crowd, which George Jolliffe and
his comrades knew from experience, meant that
numbers were going off to assist, if possible, in
saving the human life on board the vessel,
which itself no power on earth could save.
Little hope, indeed, was there of salvation of
life, for the cliff was miles in extent, and for
the whole distance presented a perpendicular
wall of two hundred feet in altitude, against
which the sea was hurling its tremendous
billows to a terrific height. But wearied as
George Jolliffe was, he instantly resolved to join
in the endeavor to afford what help was possible,
or at least to give to the terrified people on
board the doomed ship the satisfaction of perceiving
that their more fortunate fellow-creatures
on land were not indifferent to their misery.

Hurrying, therefore, into the Ship public-house
close at hand, he drank a pint of beer as
he stood, took a couple of stout pieces of bread
and cheese in his hand, and in the next moment
was hauled up into a cart which was going off
with a quantity of fishermen on the same errand.
One only of his crew accompanied him, and that
was his younger brother; the three hired men
declared themselves half-dead with fatigue, and
staid behind.

The cart drove along at an almost furious
rate, and there were numbers of others going
the same road, with the same velocity; while
they could see streams of young men on foot,
running along the tops of the cliffs, taking the
nearest course toward the scene of the expected
catastrophe. Long before George Jolliffe and
those with whom he went reached the point
where they left their cart, and started forward
bearing coils of rope, and even warm garments
with them, they heard the firing of guns of distress
from the jeopardized vessel. It would
seem that up to a certain moment the people
on board trusted to be able to bring the ship
under shelter of the land, and then get an
anchorage: but the dreadful reality of their
situation had now evidently burst upon them;
and the crowds hastening toward the cliff,
hurried forward more anxiously as the successive
boomings of these melancholy guns reached
their ears.

When Jolliffe and his companions reached the
crest of the cliff, and looked out on the sea, it
was already drawing toward evening. The
wind still blew furiously. The ocean was one
chaos of tossing and rolling billows, and the
thunder of their discharge on the face of the
cliff, was awful. The first sight of the unhappy
vessel made the spectator ejaculate “Oh Lord!”
That was all that was uttered, and it spoke
volumes. The throng stood staring intently
down on the ship, amid the deafening thunder
of the ocean, and the suffocating violence of the
winds. On came the devoted vessel like a
lamed thing, one of its masts already gone by
the board, and but few people to be seen on the
deck. These, however, raised their hands in
most imploring attitude toward the people on
the cliff, as if relying on them for that aid which
they despaired to afford. As the helpless vessel
came nearer the cliff, it encountered the refluent
force of the waves that were sent with a stunning
recoil from their terrible shock against the
precipice. It staggered, stooped, and was turned
about without power of self-guidance. One
mountainous sea after another washed over her,[Pg 337]
and the few human beings disappeared with
shrieks that pierced even through the turbulent
dissonance of the tempest. The assembled
crowd on the cliff shuddered with horror, and
felt that all need of their presence was at an
end. But they stood and stared, as with a
fascinated intensity, on the vessel that now
came nearer and nearer to its final catastrophe;
when all at once there was discerned an old
man, with bare head and white streaming hair,
lashed to the main-mast. He stood with lifted
hands and face gazing up to them as if clinging
firmly to the hope of their saving him. A
simultaneous agitation ran through the crowd.
The ship was lifted high on the back of the
billows, and then pitched down again within a
short distance of the cliff. A few more seconds—another
such a heave, and she must be dashed
to pieces. At once flew out several coils of
ropes, but the fury of the wind, and the depth
to which they had to go defeated them. They
were hurled against the crags, and came nowhere
near the vessel. Again were thrown out
others, and among these one was seized by the
old man. There was a loud shout at the sight;
but the moment was too terrible to allow of
much rational hope. The vessel was close upon
the cliff—one more pitch, and she would perish.
All eyes were strained to see when the old man
had secured the rope round him. He was
evidently laboring to do this before he loosed
himself from the mast, lest he should be washed
away by the next sea. But he appeared feeble
and benumbed, and several voices exclaimed,
“He will never do it!” A sea washed over
him. As it went by they saw the old man still
stand by the mast. He passed his arm over
his face as if to clear his eyes from the water—and
looked up. He still held convulsively by
the rope which they had thrown; but it was
evident he was too much exhausted to secure it
round him. At that moment the huge vessel
struck with a terrific shock against the solid
wall, and staggering backward, became half
buried in the boiling waters. Again it was
plunged forward with a frightful impetus, and
the next instant the mast fell with a crash—and
the whole great hull seemed to dissolve in
the liquid chaos. In another moment the black
stern of the ship was seen to heave from the
waves, and then disappear, and anon spars and
casks were seen churning in the snowy surf, and
tossed as playthings by the riotous sea again
and again to the annihilating wall.

The next morning the wind had greatly abated;
and, with the first peep of day, numbers of fishing-boats
put out to see whether any thing of
value which had floated from the wreck could
be picked up. George Jolliffe was among the
earliest of these wreckers; but in his mind the
face and form of that old man were vividly
present. He had dreamed of them all night;
and while the rest of his crew were all alert on
the look-out for corks or other floating booty, he
could not avoid casting a glance far and wide,
to see if he could descry any thing of a floating
mast. Though the wind was intensely still, the
sea still rose high, and it was dangerous to approach
the cliff. The vessels around them were
busily engaged in securing a number of articles
that were floating; but George still kept a steady
look-out for the mast: and he was now sure
that he saw it at a considerable distance. They
made all sail for it; and, sure enough it was
there. They ran their vessel close alongside of
it, and soon saw, not only a sling rope encircling
its lower end, but a human arm clutching fast
by it. Jolliffe had the cobble soon adrift, and,
with a couple of rowers, approached the floating
timber. With much difficulty, from the uneasy
state of the sea, he managed to secure a cord
round the drowned man’s wrist, and with an ax
severed the rope which tied him to the mast.
Presently they actually had the old man in the
boat, whom they last evening saw imploring
their aid from the wreck. Speedily they had
him hoisted into the yawl; and when they got
on board, and saw him lying at his length on
deck, they were astonished at his size and the
dignity of his look. He was not, as he seemed
from the altitude of the cliff, a little man: he
was upward of six feet in height, of a large and
powerful build; and though of at least seventy
years of age, there was a nobility of feature,
and a mild intelligence of expression in him,
which greatly struck them.

“That,” said George Jolliffe, “is a gentleman
every inch. There will be trouble about him
somewhere.”

While saying this he observed that he had
several jeweled rings on his fingers, which he
carefully drew off; and said to his men, “You
see how many there are:” and put them into
his waistcoat-pocket. He then observed that
he had a bag of stout leather, bound by a strong
belt to his waist. This he untied, and found in
it a large packet wrapped in oil-cloth, and sealed
up. There was also a piece of paper closely and
tightly folded together, which being with difficulty,
from its soaked state, opened and spread
out, was found to contain the address of a great
mercantile house in Hull.

“These,” said George Jolliffe, “I shall myself
deliver to the merchants.”

“But we claim our shares,” said the men.

“They are neither mine nor yours,” said
George; “but whatever benefit comes of doing
a right thing, you shall partake of. Beyond
that, I will defend this property with my whole
life and strength, if necessary. And now let
us see what else there is to be got.”

The men, who looked sullen and dogged at
first, on hearing this resumed their cheerfulness,
and were soon in full pursuit of other floating
articles. They lashed the mast to the stern of
their vessel, and in the course of a few hours
were in possession of considerable booty. Jolliffe
told them that, to prevent any interference of the
police or the harbor-master with the effects of
the old gentleman, he would put out near Filey,
and they must steer the yawl home. He secured
the bag under his tarpaulin coat, and was soon[Pg 338]
set ashore at a part of the bay where he could
make his way, without much observation, to the
Hull road. He met the coach most luckily, and
that night was in Hull. The next morning he
went to the counting-house of the merchants
indicated by the paper in the drowned gentleman’s
bag, and informed the principals what
had happened. When he described the person
of the deceased, and produced the bag, with the
blotted and curdled piece of paper, the partners
seemed struck with a speechless terror. One
looked at the other, and at length one said,
“Gracious God! too sure it is Mr. Anckersvœrd!”

They unfolded the packet, conferred apart for
some time with each other, and then, coming to
Mr. Jolliffe, said, “You have behaved in a most
honorable manner: we can assure you that you
will not fail of your reward. These papers are of
the utmost importance. We tell you candidly
they involve the safety of a very large amount
of property. But this is a very sorrowful business.
One of us must accompany you, to see
respect paid to the remains of our old and valued
friend and partner. In the mean time here are
ten pounds for yourself, and the same sum to
distribute among your men.”

George Jolliffe begged the merchants to favor
him with a written acknowledgment of the receipt
of the packet and of the rings which he
now delivered to them. This he obtained; and
we may shorten our recital by here simply saying,
that the remains of the drowned merchant
were buried, with all respectful observance, in the
old church-yard at Scarborough: a great number
of gentlemen from Hull attending the funeral.

That winter was a peculiarly severe and
stormy one. Ere it was over George Jolliffe
himself had been wrecked—his “Fair Susan”
was caught in a thick fog on the Filey rocks,
his brother drowned, and only himself and
another man picked up and saved. His wife,
from the shock of her nerves, had suffered a
premature confinement, and, probably owing to
the grief and anxiety attending this great misfortune,
had long failed to rally again. George
Jolliffe was now a pennyless man, serving on
board another vessel, and enduring the rigors
of the weather and the sea for a mere weekly
pittance. It was in the April of the coming
year that one Sunday his wife had, for the first
time, taken his arm for a stroll to the Castle
Hill. They were returning to their little house,
Susan pale and exhausted by her exertions, with
the two children trudging quietly behind, when,
as they drew near their door, they saw a strange
gentleman, tall, young, and good-looking, speaking
with Mrs. Bright, their next neighbor.

“Here he is,” said Mrs. Bright; “that is
Mr. Jolliffe.”

The stranger lifted his hat very politely, made
a very low bow to Mrs. Jolliffe, and then, looking
a good deal moved, said to George, “My
name is Anckersvœrd.” “Oh,” said George;
all that rushing into his mind which the stranger
immediately proceeded to inform him.

“I am,” said he, “the son of the gentleman
who, in the wreck of the ‘Danemand,’ experienced
your kind care. I would have a little
conversation with you.”

George stood for a moment as if confused,
but Mrs. Jolliffe hastened to open the door with
the key, and bade Mr. Anckersvœrd walk in.
“You are an Englishman?” said George, as the
stranger seated himself. “No,” he replied, “I
am a Dane, but I was educated to business in
Hull, and I look on England as my second country.
Such men as you, Mr. Jolliffe, would make
one proud of such a country, if we had no other
interest in it.” George Jolliffe blushed, Mrs.
Jolliffe’s eyes sparkled with a pleasure and pride
that she took no pains to conceal. A little conversation
made the stranger aware that misfortune
had fallen heavily on this little family
since George had so nobly secured the property
and remains of his father.

“Providence,” said Mr. Anckersvœrd, “evidently
means to give full effect to our gratitude.
I was fast bound by the winter at Archangel,
when the sad news reached me, or I should have
been here sooner. But here I am, and in the
name of my mother, my sister, my wife, my
brother, and our partners, I beg, Mr. Jolliffe, to
present you with the best fishing-smack that
can be found for sale in the port of Hull—and
if no first-rate one can be found, one shall be
built. Also, I ask your acceptance of one hundred
pounds, as a little fund against those disasters
that so often beset your hazardous profession.
Should such a day come—let not this
testimony of our regard and gratitude make you
think we have done all that we would. Send at
once to us, and you shall not send in vain.”

We need not describe the happiness which
Mr. Anckersvœrd left in that little house that
day, nor that which he carried away in his own
heart. How rapidly Mrs. Jolliffe recovered her
health and strength, and how proudly George
Jolliffe saw a new “Fair Susan” spread her
sails very soon for the deep-sea fishing. We
had the curiosity the other day to inquire
whether a “Fair Susan” was still among the
fishing vessels of the port of Scarborough. We
could not discover her, but learnt that a Captain
Jolliffe, a fine, hearty fellow of fifty, is master of
that noble merchantman, the “Holger-Danske,”
which makes its regular voyages between Copenhagen
and Hull, and that his son, a promising
young man, is an esteemed and confidential
clerk in the house of Davidsen, Anckersvœrd,
and Co., to whom the “Holger-Danske” belongs.
That was enough; we understood it all, and felt
a genuine satisfaction in the thought that the
seed of a worthy action had fallen into worthy
soil, to the benefit and contentment of all parties.
May the “Holger-Danske” sail ever!

THE GIPSY IN THE THORN-BUSH.

FROM THE GERMAN.

A rich man once hired a boy, who served
him honestly and industriously; he was the
first to rise in the morning, the last to go to bed[Pg 339]
at night, and never hesitated to perform even
the disagreeable duties which fell to the share
of others, but which they refused to do. His
looks were always cheerful and contented, and
he never was heard to murmur. When he had
served a year, his master thought to himself,
“If I pay him his wages he may go away; it
will therefore be most prudent not to do so; I
shall thereby save something, and he will stay.”
And so the boy worked another year, and, though
no wages came, he said nothing and looked happy.
At last the end of the third year arrived;
the master felt in his pockets, but took nothing
out; then the boy spoke.

“Master,” said he, “I have served you honorably
for three years; give me, I pray you, what
I have justly earned. I wish to leave you, and
see more of the world.”

“My dear fellow,” replied the niggard, “you
have indeed served me faithfully, and you shall
be generously rewarded.”

So saying he searched his pockets again, and
this time counted out three crown pieces.

“A crown,” he said, “for each year; it is
liberal; few masters would pay such wages.”

The boy, who knew very little about money,
was quite satisfied; he received his scanty pay,
and determined now that his pockets were full,
he would play. He set off therefore to see the
world; up-hill and down-hill, he ran and sang
to his heart’s content; but presently, as he
leaped a bush, a little man suddenly appeared
before him.

“Whither away, Brother Merry?” asked the
stranger, “your cares seem but a light burden
to you!”

“Why should I be sad?” answered the boy,
“when I have three years’ wages in my pocket.”

“And how much is that?” inquired the little
man.

“Three good crowns.”

“Listen to me,” said the dwarf; “I am a
poor, needy creature, unable to work; give me
the money; you are young, and can earn your
bread.”

The boy’s heart was good; it felt pity for the
miserable little man; so he handed him his hard-gotten
wages.

“Take them,” said he, “I can work for
more.”

“You have a kind heart,” said the mannikin,
“I will reward you by granting you three wishes—one
for each crown. What will you ask?”

“Ha! ha!” laughed the boy; “you are one
of those then who can whistle blue! Well, I
will wish; first, for a bird-gun, which shall hit
whatever I aim at; secondly, for a fiddle, to the
sound of which every one who hears me play on
it must dance; and, thirdly, that when I ask
any one for any thing, he shall not dare to refuse
me.”

“You shall have all,” cried the little man, as
he took out of the bush, where they seemed to
have been placed in readiness, a fine fiddle, and
bird-gun—”no man in the world shall refuse
what you ask!”

“My heart, what more can you desire!” said
the boy to himself, as he joyfully went on his
way. He soon overtook a wicked-looking man,
who stood listening to the song of a bird, which
was perched on the very summit of a high tree.

“Wonderful!” cried the man, “such a small
animal with such a great voice! I wish I could
get near enough to put some salt on its tail.”

The boy aimed at the bird with his magic gun,
and it fell into a thorn-bush.

“There, rogue,” said he to the other, “you
may have it if you fetch it.”

“Master,” replied the man, “leave out the
‘rogue’ when you call the dog; but I will pick
up the bird.”

In his effort to get it out, he had worked himself
into the middle of the prickly bush, when
the boy was seized with a longing to try his
fiddle. But, scarcely had he begun to scrape,
when the man began also to dance, and the
faster the music, the faster and higher he
jumped, though the thorns tore his dirty coat,
combed out his dusty hair, and pricked and
scratched his whole body.

“Leave off, leave off,” cried he, “I do not
wish to dance!”

But he cried in vain. “You have flayed
many a man, I dare say,” answered the boy,
“now we will see what the thorn-bush can do
for you!”

And louder and faster sounded the fiddle, and
faster and higher danced the gipsy, all the thorns
were hung with the tatters of his coat.

“Mercy, mercy,” he screamed at last; “you
shall have whatever I can give you, only cease
to play. Here, here, take this purse of gold!”

“Since you are so ready to pay,” said the
boy, “I will cease my music; but I must say
that you dance well to it—it is a treat to see
you.”

With that he took the purse and departed.

The thievish-looking man watched him until
he was quite out of sight; then he bawled insultingly
after him:

“You miserable scraper! you ale-house fiddler!
wait till I find you alone. I will chase
you until you have not a sole to your shoe; you
ragamuffin! stick a farthing in your mouth, and
say you are worth six dollars!”

And thus he abused him as long as he could
find words. When he had sufficiently relieved
himself, he ran to the judge of the next town:

“Honorable judge,” cried he, “I beg your
mercy; see how I have been ill-treated and
robbed on the open highway; a stone might
pity me; my clothes are torn, my body is pricked
and scratched, and a purse of gold has been taken
from me—a purse of ducats, each one brighter
than the other. I entreat you, good judge, let
the man be caught and sent to prison!”

“Was it a soldier,” asked the judge, “who
has so wounded you with his sabre?”

“No, indeed,” replied the gipsy, “it was one
who had no sabre, but a gun hanging at his back,
and a fiddle from his neck; the rascal can easily
be recognized.”

[Pg 340]

The judge sent some people after the boy;
they soon overtook him, for he had gone on very
slowly; they searched him, and found in his
pocket the purse of gold. He was brought to
trial, and with a loud voice declared:

“I did not beat the fellow, nor steal his gold;
he gave it to me of his own free will, that I might
cease my music, which he did not like.”

“He can lie as fast as I can catch flies off the
wall,” cried his accuser.

And the judge said, “Yours is a bad defense;”
and he sentenced him to be hanged as a highway
robber.

As they led him away to the gallows, the
gipsy bawled after him, triumphantly, “You
worthless fellow! you catgut-scraper! now you
will receive your reward!”

The boy quietly ascended the ladder with the
hangman, but, on the last step, he turned and
begged the judge to grant him one favor before
he died.

“I will grant it,” replied the judge, “on condition
that you do not ask for your life.”

“I ask not for my life,” said the boy, “but
to be permitted to play once more on my beloved
fiddle!”

“Do not let him, do not let him,” screamed
the ragged rogue.

“Why should I not allow him to enjoy this
one short pleasure?” said the judge; “I have
granted it already; he shall have his wish!”

“Tie me fast! bind me down!” cried the
gipsy.

The fiddle-player began; at the first stroke
every one became unsteady—judge, clerks, and
bystanders tottered—and the rope fell from the
hands of those who were tying down the tatterdemalion;
at the second, they all raised one leg,
and the hangman let go his prisoner, and made
ready for the dance; at the third, all sprang into
the air; the judge and the accuser were foremost,
and leaped the highest. Every one danced, old
and young, fat and lean; even the dogs got on
their hind-legs, and hopped! Faster and faster
went the fiddle, and higher and higher jumped
the dancers, until at last, in their fury, they
kicked and screamed most dismally. Then the
judge gasped:

“Cease playing, and I will give you your
life!”

The fiddler stopped, descended the ladder, and
approached the wicked-looking gipsy, who lay
panting for breath.

“Rogue,” said he, “confess where you got
that purse of ducats, or I will play again!”

“I stole it, I stole it!” he cried, pitifully.

The judge, hearing this, condemned him, as a
thief and false accuser, to be hanged, instead of
the boy, who journeyed on to see the world.

VISIT TO A COLLIERY.

Abercarn Colliery is about ten miles from
Newport, England. A very polite invitation
had been sent from the proprietors or manager
of this colliery to Dr. Pennington and myself
to visit their pits, and instructions had
been given to the agent at Newport to provide
us a conveyance, and to offer us every attention.
Accordingly, on Friday morning, a handsome
carriage and pair were at our door, and a
very gentlemanly young man presented himself
as our guide. It was a lovely day, and the ride
up to the mountains a most delightful one; the
scenery becoming more and more wild and picturesque
as we approached the coal district;
and our guide gave us much curious information
connected with our local Welsh legends
and superstitions. We were also accompanied
by a very intelligent young man, a draper at
Newport, who was quite at home with the
Welsh language, and gave us many particulars
connected with the etymology of the names of
places that we passed. Thus we sped along
most agreeably until we reached the region of
tall chimneys, ponderous engines, and all the
apparatus for disemboweling the mountains.
Dismissing our carriage at the entrance to the
works, we proceeded to the counting-house,
where we were most courteously received by
the head clerk, who first unrolled a large map,
and explained to us the geography of the diggings,
the mode in which the shafts and levels
were cut, and the coal worked; we then proceeded
to the robing-room, and under the care
of one or two grimy valets de chambre, we were
soon rigged out in toggery that would render us
the observed of all observers at a masquerade.
Fancy the learned doctor in a coarse white flannel
coat that was a sort of compromise between
an Oxonian and a dustman, but with sleeves
reaching only to the elbow; his trowsers turned
half-way up his boots, and a coarse black felt
sou-wester stuck on his head.

My costume was ditto. With a stout stick in
our hand, we were conveyed to the pit’s mouth,
and handed over to the custody of “Thomas”—a
great man, in every sense of the word. He
was the overseer of the under-ground workings,
and was one of the finest men I ever saw. The
shaft down which we were to descend was a
perpendicular well, I won’t say how many hundred
yards deep, up and down which traveled
two platforms side by side, about the size of an
ordinary breakfast table; one bringing up a full
wagon of coal, while the other took down an
empty wagon. The platform comes up, the full
wagon is wheeled away; but instead of the
empty one, Thomas takes his stand in the centre,
and desires us four to stand round him, and
hold on by his jacket, but not to grasp any part
of the platform. We obey, with an unpleasantly
vivid remembrance of the description given of
the last moments of Rush and the Mannings.
Thomas becomes a sort of momentary Calcraft;
and when he roars out, “Go!” and we feel the
platform give way beneath our feet, we cling
desperately to him with a savage satisfaction
that he is with us, and must share our fate.
We are rattled, rumbled, jolted down a gigantic
telescope, with just light enough from above to
make us painfully aware that there is exactly
sufficient room between the edge of our platform[Pg 341]
and the sides of the shaft for us to fall
through. We are conscious of clammy drops
falling and clinging to us—they may be cold
sweat, or perhaps dirty water from the sides of
the pit—it occurs to us that five lives are at
the mercy, or rather tenacity, of a rusty link,
and I enter into unpleasant calculations of the
time it might take to fall, say 350 feet. There
is a sensation that may be vertigo, perhaps faintness—possibly
an inclination to suicide, when a
sudden jolt brings us to the ground, and, but for
our hold on Thomas, would certainly capsize our
perpendicular. We are at the bottom of the
shaft, and quit the platform, very glad that the
meeting is dissolved. We find ourselves in a
small, dark vault, just visible by the glimmer of
a single candle stuck in the wall. Thomas lights
five candles, and we each take one. We then
perceive that there is an iron tramway winding
from under the shaft toward a couple of low
doors. We are placed in single file in the centre
of this tramway, and Thomas suggests a
game of follow the leader. The gate-keeper (a
most important person, upon whom depends very
much the proper ventilation of the mine) opens
the doors, and we enter a level—the doors being
immediately closed behind us. We find it
necessary at once to stoop, and we tramp forward
through the dirtiest of all Petticoat-lanes—a
thick, black mud coming half-way over our
insteps, and our candles being now and then reflected
in a running gutter that might be thought
to discharge itself from a waste pipe from Day
and Martin’s. There is an incessant rumbling
over our heads, as though a procession of railway
trains were out for the day. Large lumps
of coal, dropped from the wagons, and cross-beams
connecting the tram-rails, render the footing
very precarious, and produce a very oscillating
wave-like line of march. I am following the
sable dustman; he suddenly flounders, flourishes
his stick and his candle desperately for a moment;
I see the white coat dash forward; I
hear a shout and a hiss; the doctor’s candle is
in the gutter, and he is groping his way up to
his feet again. We are more cautious, and find
it necessary to stoop still lower; the stratification
of the rock is pointed out to us, and we are
told that this is a layer of coal, that of iron-stone,
which, we believe from our boundless faith
in Thomas’s word, not that we see any thing to
remind us of the contents of our scuttle at home,
or of the handle of our pump. We go on so
many hundred yards, but we do not count, when
we come to a side cutting, and are conscious of
a ghostly apparition at the entrance. It moves
on; we might mistake it for a block of coal set
up endways. It is a miner, who speaks, and
his language seems exactly to harmonize with
the place. The deep, guttural Welsh, from its
utter incomprehensibility to us, seems, like the
man, a part of the mine; and our reverence for
Thomas rises when we find that this gibberish
is as intelligible to him as all the other dark
mysteries of the pit. This is a cutting where
they are mining out the coal. At a short distance
huge blocks are lying scattered over the
path; the place is about four feet high and six
feet broad. We are invited to enter and see the
process of mining out a block. We seat ourselves
on lumps of coal, and at the end of the
hole we see a miner crouched upon the ground,
hacking out a space about eighteen inches deep,
into the coal at the bottom, forming a sort of
recess wide enough to slip in a six inch drawer
the whole width of the place; the labor of doing
this is inconceivably great in the miner’s
cramped position; he pants loudly at every
stroke of the pick, and breathes an atmosphere
of thick coal dust. When he has scooped out
the bottom place, he cuts, with a very sharp
pick, a slice down each side, leaving the mass
supported only by its hold above; a wedge is
now driven in close to the ceiling, and with
about a dozen heavy blows, down tumbles the
whole mass, the miner and the little candle boy
who lights him keeping a sharp look out to dart
back just as the mass falls. Thus are we supplied
with coal; and it is impossible to see these
poor fellows toiling in those dark, stifling holes,
crouching in positions that threaten dislocation
to every joint, and with deep, rapid inspirations
drawing in dust that must convert their lungs
into so many coal-beds, without feeling how
much of our comfort we owe to a race of men,
the real character of whose labor is so little understood
and appreciated. They are paid so much
per ton, and generally remain under-ground about
ten hours at a stretch; but sometimes, when
they wish to fetch up lost time after a holiday
or a drinking bout, they will work for fourteen
hours without stopping. Their wages range
from twenty to thirty shillings a week. They
have been much addicted to drink, but the Temperance
movement has produced a beneficial
change in this respect in some districts. We remained
under-ground nearly an hour; now and
then a rumbling noise warned us of the approach
of a wagon, and, stepping aside, a spectral-looking
horse flitted by, tugging its hubbly
load, visible a moment in the dim light, and
vanishing again instantly into utter darkness.
Having completed our inspection, and returned
to the entrance of the shaft, we again endured
the process of suspended animation, and emerged
into daylight with a higher estimate than ever
of the blessed sunlight and the green fields. We
were taken into a shed at the pit’s mouth,
where Thomas curried us down with a birch
broom and a wisp of straw, after which we doffed
our togs, had a good wash, and once more
resumed our civilized appearance, highly gratified
and instructed by our introduction to the
shades below.

THE KAFIR TRADER; OR, THE RECOIL OF AMBITION.

Years, with their summers and winters, their
joys and sorrows, have passed away, since
the Cleopatra, her long and wearying voyage
over, cast anchor in one of the extensive bays
of Southern Africa. How eagerly and anxiously[Pg 342]
her many passengers looked across the belt
of heaving waters toward the land, which, low
at first, gradually rose into ranges of lofty hills,
stretching far into the distance! For most of
them had crossed the ocean, and bidden adieu
to their remoter kindred, in the hope of finding,
amid its secluded valleys, some “forest sanctuary,”
where the bonds of the world that had
hitherto chafed them might be unfelt, and their
efforts at earning a livelihood for themselves
and little ones be better rewarded.

Foremost among them stood a man, the eagle
keenness of whose eye bespoke him one fitted to
cope, and successfully, with the world, in whatever
phase it might present itself. But it was
not so; and Robert Tryon, despite years of unwearying
effort, now stood gazing on the shores
of the far south, a world-worn and almost penniless
man, and one whose spirit was embittered,
and his heart hardened, by seeing others, whom
he deemed less worthy, victors in the arena
where he could achieve nothing.

While thus he stood pondering with contracted
brow, on what might be the result of this last
decisive step of emigration, a sweet, childish
voice by his side exclaimed,

“Let me see too, father.”

Immediately the stern expression passed away,
and with a bright smile he raised the little girl
to stand where she might easily look over the
bulwark. Robert Tryon was devotedly attached
to his wife and family; and the more the chilling
blasts of adversity had frozen his heart toward
the world, the more did it gush forth in
warm affection to those surrounding his own
humble and sometimes ill-supplied fireside; and
he felt that to see them possessed of the comforts
of life befitting their station—more he
asked not, wished not—would be a happiness
that would, in his estimation, render the labor
of even a galley-slave light.

But dearer than all was his little fairy Kate,
as fair and beautiful a child as the eye need
wish to rest upon, with soft, dark, earnest eyes,
looking forth from among her brown clustering
curls as though the misfortunes of her parents
had dispelled the joyous beams of childhood,
and awakened her already to the realities of
life, and a sweet smile playing upon her rosy
lips, as if, in the buoyancy of her innocent
spirit, hoping and trusting a brighter future.

And the child’s trust seemed not misplaced,
for brighter days soon began to dawn upon them.
Robert Tryon obtained a small farm in one of
the deep fertile hollows branching off from the
great valley of the Fish River; and though it
needed both time and labor to render it productive,
both were ungrudgingly bestowed; and
some five or six years after his arrival, Willow
Dell (so named from the fringe of Babylonian
willows that swept the little streamlet murmuring
through it), was as fair a scene of rural
promise as the wide frontier could show.

And for a while Robert Tryon was a happy
and contented man; his loved ones were growing
up beautiful and joyous around him, and
the humble competence he once had sighed for
was now theirs: few, indeed, are they whose
wishes are so fully gratified! But it sufficed
not long. With prosperity loftier ideas awoke
in Tryon’s breast; and after a time he began
to pine for riches to bestow on the children
whom every succeeding day rendered yet dearer,
and whom he felt assured wealth would grace
so well. How, as he wandered at evening beside
the willows, he would dream of the proud
future that—could his wishes be realized—might
be in store for his promising sons and beautiful
daughters, in some higher sphere; and how in
years to come they might revisit their fatherland,
and look scornfully down on those who in
other days had despised himself!

Occupied with such visions, discontent began
to take possession of his heart. It would be
years—many years—ere by his farm he could
hope to obtain such results; and ere that his
children’s youth would be passed—their lot in
life decided, and riches not so precious; and
again he felt that he could toil as man never
yet had toiled, to bestow wealth on his children.

Of the many objects man pursues with avidity,
gold is not the one that most frequently
eludes him, for there are many modes by which
it may be obtained, and one of these presented
itself to Tryon.

He was riding with one of his nearest neighbors
into Graham’s Town, when on their way
they passed an extensive and beautiful farm,
and on a rising ground saw a large, well-built
house peeping from among the trees. Tryon
commented upon the beauty of the scene.

“Its owner’s name is Brunt,” observed his
companion; “some twenty years ago he was
sent out by the parish.”

“How did he make his money?” demanded
Tryon, almost breathlessly.

“As a Kafir trader.”

A Kafir trader! It was strange that had
never occurred to him, though he was aware
that large fortunes had been made, were constantly
being made, by taking into Kafirland
various articles of British manufacture, and
bartering them with the natives for ivory,
skins, &c. That was a mode of acquiring
wealth, that, amid all his search for a shorter
road to riches, he had quite overlooked.

The farm at Willow Dell had so far improved
Tryon’s circumstances, that there was no difficulty
in carrying out his new resolve; and a
very short time saw him depart into Kafirland
with two wagons heavily laden, two trusty drivers,
and two boys, on the first of many journeys
that brought more gold beneath his roof than had
ever been there before.

Tryon was on his return from one of these expeditions.
Evening was coming on; but he felt
that, by riding fast, and using a nearer ford to
cross the Fish River than that by which the wagons
must pass, he might reach home that night,
and he longed to see those for whose sake all
this exertion was made. Therefore, leaving directions
with his people to go round by the upper[Pg 343]
and shallow ford, and setting spurs to his horse,
he started for the nearer one, well known on the
frontier as the Kafir drift (or ford), and as being
nearly or quite the most dangerous along the
border, consisting merely of a ledge of rock across
the bed of the deep and turbid river, considered
scarcely passable save when the tide is low, and
in attempting which at undue seasons, many an
unwary traveler has met his death.

The light was so dim, that when Tryon stood
on the steep hill overlooking the valley, he could
not discern the state of the river so far beneath
him, and it was not until he emerged from the
trees, and stood beside the brink, that he was
aware that the tide was up, or rather just begun
to ebb. But he knew that with due caution the
river might be crossed in safety even then, by one
accustomed to it, and he accordingly prepared
to take advantage of the remaining daylight by
passing without delay.

His horse’s fore-feet were already in the water,
when a man started up on the opposite bank,
and called aloud. Tryon paused.

“Do not attempt to cross; it is dangerous!”
cried the stranger.

“I am not afraid; I am used to the drift,”
replied Tryon.

“But it is spring-tide!”

Tryon looked again at the river; it was certainly
higher than was its wont, but not sufficiently
so to alarm him who had crossed it so
often that he thought he knew every stone of
the way; and, intimating as much to the stranger,
he spurred his horse in. But his knowledge
was less accurate, or the tide was stronger than
he deemed; for scarce had he reached the middle
of the stream, when the good steed lost his
footing, and both horse and rider were borne
down among the eddies of the impetuous current
toward the sea, which, at a short ten miles’
distance, was breaking in giant surges on its
rocky bar.

His idolized children! they were provided for,
but not too well! was Tryon’s last thought, ere
the waters overpowered him; and, with a wild
rushing in his ears, both sense and sensation
passed away.

But the stranger on the southern bank was
not one to stand idly by and see a fellow-creature
perish, without making an effort for his
rescue, even though that effort might involve
him in a like danger; and when Walter Hume
threw himself into that dark, troubled water, he
knew the chances were equal that he would never
tread those banks again. But Walter’s was too
generous and fearless a heart to be chilled by
such selfish considerations, and he exerted himself
to the uttermost in his arduous task. His
efforts were successful: and Tryon was drawn
to the shore some distance down the river, insensible,
but still living; while the steed, whose
fate he had so nearly shared, was borne more
and more rapidly toward the waves that seemed
roaring impatiently for their victim.

After this, Walter Hume was a frequent guest
at Willow Dell, and a most welcome one to all
save its master, for he soon divined that but
for the dark eyes and sweet tones of his beautiful
and gentle Kate, Walter had been less often
seen. And Tryon destined not his Kate, the
fairest flower in his fair parterre, to share the
humble fortunes of a frontier farmer; though in
bygone days he would have rejoiced to think
so comfortable a home—and shared by one so
worthy—would ever be hers. But now his
hopes were higher far for her, his best beloved
one; and though he might not receive otherwise
than cordially the man who had risked life
to save him from certain death, yet he looked
with a displeased eye on Walter’s evident devotion
to Kate, and with a secret resolution that
not even the weight of that obligation should
induce him to sacrifice his daughter’s welfare:
rather, far rather, would he have perished among
the dark eddies of the river.

Absorbed in his ambitious dreams, Tryon
never thought of asking himself whether the
true sacrifice to Kate might not consist in giving
up one to whom, in the warmth of her gratitude
and the worthiness of its object, her young
heart was becoming deeply attached. And
when at length he suspected that it was so, his
regret and mortification knew no bounds; yet
he shrunk from wounding the feelings of his
child by any allusion to the subject, and contented
himself by resolving that, even if redoubled
efforts were required, they should be
made to hasten the hour when he might be
able to efface from his daughter’s mind the impression
which Walter Hume had made, by removing
her to a sphere he considered more suited
to her and her improving fortunes. Again he
began to repine that wealth was so slow of attainment,
and again he felt that he would willingly
encounter any toil, any trial, ay, even
any danger, to secure to his children—especially
his Kate—riches and consideration.

With these feelings acting as a fresh incentive
to exertion, Tryon started on another expedition
into Kafirland. He had gained the territories
of the chief Kuru, and was bartering
with him some snuff for ivory; when, in the
midst of the discussion that attends every mercantile
transaction with the avaricious Kafirs,
the chief turned pettishly away, exclaiming,

“You want too much for the brown powder;
I will not give it; but I will give you ten times
as much for black.”

He stopped abruptly, and fixed his bright
dark, searching eye on Tryon, as though eager
to discover if his meaning was understood, and
how the proposition was received.

The trader turned aside as if he heard it not.
Nevertheless, it was both heard and comprehended.
So the quick-witted Kafir suspected,
and he resumed:

“Yes, I would give much ivory, white as the
clouds in yonder sky, many skins, many horns,
to him who will bring me the black powder and
the fire-sticks. His wagons will be so heavy
his oxen will scarce be able to draw them away,
and he will never need to cross the rivers any[Pg 344]
more, but may sit in the sun before his kraal,
and make his women hoe his corn.”

Still Tryon answered not, but the Kafir’s
words struck a wild chord in his heart. Could
he but bring himself to do the chief’s bidding,
the gold over whose tardy coming he had so
lately sighed would at once be his; his children
would no longer be buried on a frontier farm,
and his daughter would go where Walter Hume
would be forgotten. But he shrunk from the
means by which all these objects, which he had
so much at heart, must be obtained; for, by
carrying powder and arms across the border—save
for self-defense—he would infringe the
laws of the land wherein he had prospered far
more than he had ever hoped when he landed
on its shores. Tryon had been eager in his
pursuit of riches; he had bought cheap and
sold dear, and he had exacted from every one
to the uttermost; but he had broken no law
save that of leniency, and now he shrank from
doing so, and bade the temptation stand off
from him: but it would not. The spirit of
Gain, that he had so long cherished, entered
into this new form, and haunted him day and
night, filling his waking thoughts, and shedding
a golden hue over his slumbering visions.

When Tryon next entered his home at Willow
Dell, the first object that presented itself
was the smiling, happy face of Kate, the next
the almost detested one of him who had drawn
him from the depths of the Fish River. It required
little penetration to perceive that Walter
Hume was now the declared lover of Kate; and
as soon as might be Walter confirmed Tryon’s
suspicions by entreating his sanction to the already
given consent of Kate.

The father was silent for a few moments.
But it was only to consider how he might best
reject the man to whom he owed so much, and
what effect that rejection would have on the
happiness of Kate; but on this latter point he
soon satisfied himself that once removed to other
scenes, this ill-placed (for so he considered it)
prepossession would soon pass away, and Kate
be a far happier and more prosperous woman
than if he had yielded to what he knew were
her present feelings. Then, rising from his seat
he turned to the anxious suitor, and spoke kindly
but firmly.

“I owe you much, Hume, very much, even a
life, and believe me I do not underrate the service,
nor the risk at which it was rendered; and had
you asked me almost any other gift, it had been
given with pleasure; but I can not put my own
life in comparison with my daughter’s welfare.”

“Whatever may be your decision, Mr. Tryon,”
said Walter, proudly, though he turned deadly
pale with apprehension, “and I much fear it is
against me, I do not wish an act of common
humanity due from one man to another to be
remembered, far less looked on as a claim. But
your daughter has given me her heart,” he added,
earnestly; “and if you will trust her to me,
it shall be the study of my life that she never
repents the gift.”

“Her heart!” said Tryon, lightly. “Pooh!—she
is scarce of an age to know she has one.
But I have other hopes for her,” he continued,
seriously; “higher hopes—far higher:” and the
once poverty-stricken man drew himself up
proudly, as he thought on the wealth his children
would possess.

Hume felt that those words and that manner
sealed his lips to farther entreaty, near as was
the object to his heart; and, simply expressing
a hope that Kate might be happier in the future
her father designed for her, than he could have
made her, he bowed, and left the house with a
crushed and embittered heart.

But however great might be Walter’s sorrow,
it did not exceed that of Kate, when she learned
her father’s unlooked-for decision regarding one
toward whom she felt so much both of affection
and gratitude. But all her tears, and the yet
more touching eloquence of her pale cheeks and
faded smiles were unavailing, and it seemed as
if naught could shake Tryon’s resolution.

And yet the father’s heart was only less sad
than those of the lovers. For Robert Tryon
loved his daughter too fondly to look on her
grief with indifference; and it was but the hopes
of a proud future, when Walter Hume’s name
should have lost all interest for Kate, that enabled
him to remain steadfast to his resolves.

Meanwhile he was occupied with preparations
for another journey into Kafirland. At length
the day came for his departure.

“Let me see more rosy cheeks on my return,
child,” he said, fondly, as he took leave of her.
“Don’t you know I mean to make my Kate a
lady?”

“I have no wish to be a lady, father,” said
Kate, with a subdued smile; “if I can only do
my duty in the state to which I am called, it
will suffice for me.”

“Tush, girl, you know not of what you talk,”
replied Tryon, hastily; “ere long my beautiful
Kate will be rich and happy.”

Kate sighed, as though she had no such gladdening
dreams; but her father heard her not—he
was already watching the departure of his
wagons, for whose safety he had never before
appeared so solicitous. Little did those around
him suspect they contained a secret whose discovery
would prove their owner’s ruin; whose
safe-keeping and success he hoped would well-nigh
complete the building-up of his fortunes.
It might have been that Tryon had withstood
the temptation longer, nay, perhaps, even overcome
it altogether, had it not been for the attachment
of Hume, and his anxiety to remove
Kate from Willow Dell, where of course her recollection
of him would be strongest.

Thus the voice of ambition spoke loudly within
Tryon’s heart, overpowering all others, and
he no longer hesitated to avail himself of the
opportunity fortune cast in his path; but at
once applied himself to making the needful preparations
for complying with the wish of Kuru.

“Oh, Kate, Kate,” he thought, as he rode
into Kafirland after his wagons, whose chief[Pg 345]
contents were contraband, “while you are weakly
mourning over your girlish disappointment,
you little know the risk your father is running
for your advantage; but you will yet have
cause to thank him for it.”

The speculation turned out even better than
Tryon had ventured to hope. The guns and
powder arrived unsuspected at the kraal of Kuru,
and in the joy of his heart at obtaining such
treasures, the chief was liberal beyond what the
trader had anticipated. The finest ivory and
the most valuable skins were given almost without
limit, and Robert Tryon departed from the
kraal a far richer man than he had entered it.

“Oh, Robert Tryon, Robert Tryon!” he murmured,
as he mounted his horse, “you are now
a happy and an enviable man, for you have
lived to gain all your ends!” and in his exultation
he recked not to obtain them he had offended
against the law, and placed deadly weapons
in the hands of savages.

In the same spirit of self-gratulation he entered
his home. There the sight of Kate’s dark
mournful eyes, checked his gladness for a moment;
but he rallied quickly, and gayly reproached
her with being so sad when there was
such cause for rejoicing, and then he told them
his journey had been most successful, without
confiding more.

“The greatest blessing in life, father, is happiness,
and that we may enjoy without riches,”
said Kate, sadly. Poor girl! she felt that but
for this vaunted wealth, the current of her love
had been allowed to flow on unchecked.

How, then, could she rejoice in the announcement
that gave such pleasure to all the rest?
Gold might gild their lot, but it had cast a chill
upon hers, and blighted it: and while they surveyed
with pleasure the transfer of the rich
lading of the wagons to the house, Kate Tryon
wept bitterly in her little chamber, with the
sound of light laughter from without ringing in
her ears. They laughed, and she wept—and
both from the same cause.

And now Tryon had resolved on relinquishing
the trade by which he had reaped so rich a
harvest, and removing himself and family to
some place where their former humble station
would be unknown; but ere that could be done,
he must dispose of the immense quantity of
Kafir produce in his house; and with that view
he again left Willow Dell for Graham’s Town.

He was on his return, and again he was
proud-hearted and glad, as he was wont to be
of late, for again he had prospered in his dealings.
How different he was from the Robert
Tryon who had landed on the South African
shores a few years ago, poor, sad, and desponding.
Now he was joyful and elated, not only
with hope, but with success; and as he rode
along his thoughts wandered afar into the future,
where he saw no harder toil awaiting his children
than to gather flowers in the world’s bright
sunshine, and the fairest were gathered by his
Kate, his beautiful and then his joyous one.
At length he started. Absorbed in those bright
visions, he had not heeded whither he went, and
had strayed far from the right road. Farther
on, however, was a path that led from another
direction to Willow Dell.

The sun was sinking low in the heavens as
he cantered over the flat beyond whose farther
edge lay the Dell; and in the coolness of coming
evening all the inhabitants of the wilds seemed
arousing themselves to activity and joy. The
birds were darting among the trees, the insects
were floating in the sunshine, and the antelopes
springing high into the air, and playfully chasing
each other over the plain. There are few
hearts that had not responded to such a scene,
and Tryon’s was now attuned to all that spoke
of gladness; and beneath its influence the only
dark spot in his sky—his Kate’s sorrow—seemed
to grow lighter; and he was again wandering
through his dreamland, and seeing Kate the beloved
and loving bride of some one he deemed
well worthy, when he approached the edge of
the declivity, and the Dell lay before him. He
stopped abruptly, and gazed down as one lost
in wonder, raised his hand, and passed it quickly
across his brow, as though to clear his vision,
then, uttering one loud cry of agony as the
truth burst upon him, rushed rapidly down the
hill.

The cottage, around whose dear inmates he
had but now been raising such fairy structures,
was no longer visible, and where it so late had
stood a column of gray smoke was slowly curling
upward, telling a dark tale of ruin, but to
what extent as yet he knew not; though he
was gazing on the site of his vanished home,
and standing beside the spot that was once his
hearth; for there was none by to tell him if the
beloved ones by whom it had been shared had
escaped, or if he now looked on their funeral
pyre. He gazed eagerly and anxiously around.
A person riding rapidly down the hill met his
eye, and he sprang toward him.

It was Walter Hume. He was ashy pale—paler
yet than when he last had passed from
Tryon’s presence; and even the latter could
perceive that his hand trembled as he gave it to
him in silence.

“My wife—my children?” murmured Tryon,
in a broken voice.

Still Hume was silent, but he drew away his
hand, and covering his face with both, sunk
upon the grass in anguish he could no longer
repress.

“My darlings! my precious ones! and is it
come to this!” exclaimed the bereaved man,
wringing his hands in agony. “And are you
all taken from me—you for whom I toiled with
so much pleasure—you for whom I even sinned?
Tell me, Hume, tell me all my sorrow, all my
misery!”

And Hume did tell him, gently and tenderly,
the tale that his having lost his way alone prevented
him from hearing earlier, as of the two
servants who had escaped, one had gone along
the Graham’s Town road in quest of him, while
the other had hurried off to Hume’s farm, to[Pg 346]
tell of how the Kafirs had burst upon them at
dead of night, and how they two had fled in the
darkness, and under cover of the trees had witnessed
the fierce assailants deal death to all
around, and even seen the noble-hearted Kate
shot by a tall savage, in a vain attempt to
shield her mother. And then the trader’s vast
stores of ivory and skins were rifled, and his
cattle swept away; and, finally, firing the house
of death, the murderers departed, carrying their
plunder across the border.

“Who! who!” exclaimed Tryon, breathlessly,
“who was the Kafir that has so bereft
me?”

“I know not; I never thought of asking,”
replied Walter. “But here is something that
perhaps may tell,” and he lifted a new rifle
from among the long grass where it had lain
concealed.

“It is—it is my sin that has overtaken me!”
cried the wretched man, throwing up his clasped
hands. “It is one of the guns I sold to Kuru.
Oh, I am well punished!” he continued, pacing
to and fro distractedly. “I pined for wealth to
aggrandize my children, and I sold arms to the
Kafirs that I might do it more quickly: those
arms they have turned against me, and have
left me childless. My children, it is your father
who is your murderer!”

Hitherto, amid all his own grief, Hume had
appeared to feel deeply for the bereaved father;
but now he started from his side with a look of
horror and detestation; and wild were the words
of reproach and indignation that burst from his
lips as he realized the truth, that the being he
had so deeply loved—whom still he loved, though
now there was between them the barrier of a
fearful death—had fallen a victim to Tryon’s
ambition—that it was no evil chance that had
caused Willow Dell to be the scene of such a
tragedy, but the deliberate resolve of the Kafir
to regain possession of the valuable ivory and
skins Tryon had received as his recompense—when
he remembered that had not that fatal
passion filled Tryon’s heart, Kate and himself
might have been among earth’s happiest; and
that now he stood well nigh broken-hearted
beside the smoking ruin that was her grave.
And in the anguish of those thoughts he forgot
that Tryon was yet more unhappy than himself,
for he had no self-reproach; and he poured
forth upon him a flood of bitter accusations,
which the miserable man’s conscience echoed to
the uttermost; nay, even more, for he mourned
for all his children and the wife of his youth, for
whom he had procured a violent death.

But the violence of these self-upbraidings
could not last; and ere the sun again shone on
the grave-ruin, Tryon, unconscious of all things,
was writhing in the agony of a brain fever.
Walter Hume attended him as though he were
his son; for he saw in him for the time but the
father of the gentle girl to whom his love had
proved so terrible. But when that was once
over (for Tryon did recover, as those to whom
life is a burden often will), Walter shrunk from
him again, as one whose hand had fired the
mine that overthrew his happiness.

Nor did Tryon seek his companionship, but
wandered away none knew whither, a sad and
solitary man, leaving his name and his story to
haunt the once fair spot which his evil passions
blighted.

THE WOODSTREAM.

A FRAGMENT FROM THE GERMAN.

The pine had finished his story, uttering his
last words in a low and melancholy tone.
A deep silence lay over the whole forest; the
babble of the Woodstream was the only sound
which interrupted the solemnity, as it touched
the stones and the roots with continued strokes—the
eternal time-piece of the forest; and as
it prattled, the pictures which its surface reflected
sometimes clearly glittered in the sunshine,
sometimes sadly wandered through the shadows
of the trees and the clouds, while the monotonous
sounds began to assume the form of rational
discourse.

Though the little flowers and trees appeared
to wait anxiously for the Woodstream to tell his
story, the solemn stillness continued yet awhile.
Ah, that silence of the forest! Who does not
know it? To whom has it not appeared as a
holy Sabbath for the young flowers that dwell
there? Even the stag breathes more gently,
and the sportsman himself, overwhelmed with a
holy, loving awe, falls on the grass in the calm
recesses of the wood. That is the time when
the stream tells old stories; and thus he began.
Do you know my origin? That of the meadow-stream
is well known. He comes clearly out
over some stone or little mound—a small but
bright spring; and then he grows larger and
larger, so that his short, grassy dress is no longer
sufficient, however tall, for love of him it tries
to make itself. He puts on at last a short boddice
of rushes with loose, flowing feathers. The
course of the mountain-stream is also known.
Snow lies on the heights—that is the everlasting
cap of the forests—dyed only by the rising and
setting sun, and adorned by the clouds as they
pass and repass with vails of unrivaled beauty.
Notwithstanding its unchangeable appearance,
gay life reigns within. There are little springs
bubbling through the clefts, and drops of water
playing eternal hide-and-seek. The all-powerful
sun kisses these mountain-tops, and even this
ice-cold heart is melted by his eternal love.