HARPER’S

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

VOLUME II.

DECEMBER, 1850, TO MAY, 1851.

NEW YORK:

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,

329 & 331 PEARL STREET,

FRANKLIN SQUARE.

1851.

ADVERTISEMENT.

In bringing the Second Volume of the New Monthly Magazine to a close, the
Publishers would avail themselves of the occasion, to express their profound appreciation
of the favor with which it has been received, and their earnest wish to render
it still more deserving of the enlightened patronage of the American community.
They commenced the publication with the firm conviction that it could be made the
medium of valuable information and mental enjoyment to the great mass of readers,
and that it would accordingly be sustained by their generous and cordial support.
Nor have they been deceived in their anticipations. The Magazine has found a
wider circulation with every monthly issue. The encomiums with which it has
been welcomed by the universal voice of the press, and the verdict of intelligent
readers, are a gratifying proof that the Publishers have succeeded in their endeavor to
adapt it to the wants of the public mind. Encouraged by the experience of the first
year of this extensive literary enterprise, they are determined to spare no effort to
insure the succeeding volumes of the Magazine a still wider and more favorable
reception among all classes of readers. They intend it to be a strictly national
work. Devoted to no local interests, pledged to no religious sect or political party,
connected with no favorite movement of the day, except the diffusion of intelligence,
virtue, and patriotism, it will continue to be conducted with the impartiality and
good faith, which it is equally the duty, the inclination, and the interest of the Publishers
to maintain. In addition to the choicest productions of the English press, the
Magazine will be enriched with such original matter as in their opinion will enhance
its utility and attractiveness. The embellishments will be furnished by distinguished
artists, and selected no less for their permanent value as vehicles of agreeable instruction
than for the gratification of an æsthetic taste. With the ample literary, artistic,
and mechanical resources which the Publishers have enlisted in the New Monthly
Magazine, and their ambition to give it a character of genuine, substantial, reliable
excellence in every department, they may assure its wide circle of patrons that its
subsequent issues will more than justify the distinguished reputation which it has
attained at this early period of its existence.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

[Pg 1]

HARPER’S

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

No. VII.—DECEMBER, 1850.—Vol. II.

THE DESERTED VILLAGE.

BY OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

Oliver Goldsmith

At church with meek and unaffected grace,

His looks adorn’d the venerable place;

Truth from his lips prevail’d with double sway,

And fools who came to scoff remain’d to pray.

The service pass’d, around the pious man,

With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran;

Even children follow’d, with endearing wile,

And pluck’d his gown, to share the good man’s smile:

His ready smile a parent’s warmth express’d,

Their welfare pleas’d him, and their cares distress’d.

To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,

But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven:

As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form,

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm

Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread

Eternal sunshine settles on its head.

Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way,

With blossom’d furze unprofitably gay—

There, in his noisy mansion, skill’d to rule,

The village master taught his little school.

A man severe he was, and stern to view;

I knew him well, and every truant knew:

Well had the boding tremblers learn’d to trace

The day’s disasters in his morning face;

Full well they laugh’d with counterfeited glee

At all his jokes, for many a joke had he;

Full well the busy whisper, circling round,

Convey’d the dismal tidings when he frown’d—

Yet he was kind, or if severe in aught,

The love he bore to learning was in fault.

The village all declar’d how much he knew;

‘Twas certain he could write, and cipher too,

Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage—

And even the story ran that he could gauge.

In arguing too, the parson own’d his skill,

For even though vanquish’d he could argue still;

While words of learned length and thundering sound

Amaz’d the gazing rustics rang’d around—

And still they gaz’d, and still the wonder grew

That one small head could carry all he knew.

But pass’d is all his fame: the very spot,

Where many a time he triumph’d, is forgot.

Near yonder thorn, that lifts its head on high,

Where once the sign-post caught the passing eye,

Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspir’d.

Where gray-beard mirth and smiling toil retir’d,

Where village statesmen talk’d with looks profound.

And news much older than their ale went round.

Imagination fondly stoops to trace

The parlor splendors of that festive place:

The whitewash’d wall, the nicely sanded floor,
[Pg 5]

The varnish’d clock that click’d behind the door—

The chest contriv’d a double debt to pay,

A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day—

The pictures plac’d for ornament and use,

The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose—

The hearth, except when winter chill’d the day,

With aspen bows, and flowers, and fennel gay—

While broken tea-cups, wisely kept for show,

Rang’d o’er the chimney, glistened in a row.

Vain, transitory splendors! could not all

Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall?

Obscure it sinks; nor shall it more impart
[Pg 6]
An hour’s importance to the poor man’s heart:

Thither no more the peasant shall repair

To sweet oblivion of his daily care;

No more the farmer’s news, the barber’s tale,

No more the woodman’s ballad shall prevail;

No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear,

Relax his ponderous strength, and lean to hear;

The host himself no longer shall be found

Careful to see the mantling bliss go round;

Nor the coy maid, half willing to be press’d,

Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest.

Yes! let the rich deride, the proud disdain,

These simple blessings of the lowly train—

To me more dear, congenial to my heart,

One native charm, than all the gloss of art.

Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play,

The soul adopts, and owns their first-born sway—

Lightly they frolic o’er the vacant mind,

Unenvied, unmolested, unconfin’d;

But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade,

With all the freaks of wanton wealth array’d,

In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain,

The toiling pleasure sickens into pain—

And, even while fashion’s brightest arts decoy,

The heart distrusting asks, if this be joy.

Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen who survey

The rich man’s joys increase, the poor’s decay—

‘Tis yours to judge how wide the limits stand

Between a splendid and an happy land

Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore,

And shouting folly hails them from her shore;

Hoards even beyond the miser’s wish abound,

And rich men flock from all the world around;

Yet count our gains: this wealth is but a name

That leaves our useful product still the same.

Not so the loss. The man of wealth and pride

Takes up a space that many poor supplied—

Space for his lake, his park’s extended bounds,

Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds;

The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth

Has robbed the neighboring fields of half their growth;

His seat where solitary sports are seen,

Indignant spurns the cottage from the green;

Around the world each needful product flies,

For all the luxuries the world supplies;

While thus the land adorn’d for pleasure—all

In barren splendor feebly waits the fall.

As some fair female unadorn’d and plain,

Secure to please while youth confirms her reign

Slights every borrow’d charm that dress supplies,

Nor shares with art the triumph of her eyes—

But when those charms are pass’d, for charms are frail,

When time advances, and when lovers fail—

She then shines forth, solicitous to bless,

In all the glaring impotence of dress.

Thus fares the land, by luxury betray’d:

In nature’s simplest charms at first array’d—

But verging to decline, its splendors rise,

Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise;

While, scourg’d by famine, from the smiling land

The mournful peasant leads his humble band—

And while he sinks, without one arm to save,

The country blooms—a garden and a grave.

[Pg 10]

THE FUGITIVE KING AT BOSCOBEL; ADVENTURES OF THE MERRY MONARCH.

BY AGNES STRICKLAND.

Boscobel House, which has obtained so
much historical celebrity, in connection
with the romantic adventures of Charles II.,
after his defeat at Worcester, is situated in
Shropshire, on the borders of Staffordshire, lying
between Tong Castle and Brewood. It was
built in the reign of James I., by John Giffard,
Esq., a Roman Catholic gentleman, who, when
it was completed, having invited his neighbors
to a house-warming feast, requested his friend,
Sir Basil Brook, to give his new-built mansion
a name. Sir Basil called it “Boscobel,” from
the Italian word, boscobella, because it was
seated in the midst of many fair woods. The
founder of the house had caused various places
of concealment to be constructed, for the purpose
of affording shelter to proscribed persons
of his own religion, whom the severity of the
penal laws often compelled to play at hide and
seek, in queer corners.

The first fugitive of note who sought refuge,
in his distress, at Boscobel House, was the unfortunate
Earl of Derby, whose defeat at Bolton-le-Moors,
near Wigan, was the precursor to
that of the young king at Worcester, eight days
later. The Earl of Derby, having escaped from
his lost battle, with Colonel Roscarrock and two
servants, got into the confines of Shropshire and
Staffordshire, where he had the good luck to
encounter an old friend, Mr. Richard Snead, an
honest gentleman of that country, to whom he
told the news of his own overthrow, and inquired
if he knew of any private house, near at
hand, where he might repose himself and his
company in safety, till he could find an opportunity
of joining the king. Mr. Snead, like a
good Samaritan, conducted his noble friend to
Boscobel House, where they arrived on Friday,
August 29th, but found no one at home, except
William Penderel, the housekeeper, and his wife,
who, on their own responsibility, ventured to
receive the noble cavalier, his companion, and
servants, and kindly entertained them till the
Sunday; and then, according to the earl’s desire,
conveyed them safely to Gataker Park,
nine miles on their way to Worcester, where he
arrived in time to take his part in that engagement
which was emphatically styled by Stapylton,
the roundhead, “the setting of the young
king’s glory.”

The Earl of Derby and Colonel Roscarrock
were in close attendance on Charles’s person
during the retreat from Worcester. They all
made a stand on Kinner Heath, on the road to
Kidderminster, as the night set in, to hold a
consultation, when his majesty, being very tired,
inquired of them and Lord Wilmot, “If they
thought there was any place where he might
venture to take a few hours’ rest?” The Earl
of Derby told him, “how, in his flight from
Wigan to Worcester, he had met with that rara
avis, a perfectly honest man, and a great convenience
of concealment at Boscobel House;
which, nevertheless, he thought it his duty to
inform his majesty, was the abode of a recusant.”
At another time, some of the party might have
objected to the young sovereign going to such
quarters, but the danger being so imminent,
now it was suggested, “that these people being
accustomed to persecutions and searches, were
most likely to possess the most ingenious contrivances
to conceal him.” At all events, the
king made up his mind to proceed thither.
When this decision was made known to Lord
Talbot, he called for a young kinsman of the
recusant master of Boscobel, Mr. Charles Giffard,
who was fortunately among the sixty
cavaliers who still shared the fortunes of their
fugitive king. Lord Talbot inquired of this
gentleman, if he could conduct his majesty to
Boscobel. Charles Giffard cheerfully undertook
to do so, having with him a servant of the
name of Yates, who understood the country
perfectly.

At a house about a mile beyond Stourbridge,
the king drank a little water, and ate a crust
of bread, the house affording no better provision.
After this scanty refection, his majesty rode on,
discoursing apart with Colonel Roscarrock about
Boscobel House, and the security which he and
the Earl of Derby had enjoyed at that place.
Another privy-council was held, in the course
of the journey, between the king and his most
trusty friends, at which it was agreed, that the
secret of his destination was too important to
be confided to more than a select few of his
followers; and Charles Giffard was asked if it
were not possible to conduct him, in the first
instance, to some other house in the neighborhood,
the better to mask his design of concealing
himself at Boscobel. The young cavalier replied,
“Yes, there was another seat of the Giffards,
about half a mile from Boscobel—Whiteladies;
so called from its having been formerly
a monastery of Cistercian nuns, whose habit
was white.” On which the king, and about
forty of the party, separating themselves from
the others, proceeded thither, under his faithful
guidance. They arrived at break of day; and
Giffard, alighting from his horse, told the king
“that he trusted they were now out of immediate
danger of pursuit.” George Penderel,
who had the charge of the house, opened the
doors, and admitted the king and his noble attendants;
after which, the king’s horse was
brought into the hall, and they all entered into
an earnest consultation how to escape the fury
of their foes; but their greatest solicitude was
for the preservation of the king, who was, for
his part, both tired and hungry with his forced
march. Col. Roscarrock immediately dispatched
a boy, of the name of Bartholomew Martin,
to Boscobel, for William Penderel: Mr. Charles
Giffard sent for another of these trusty brethren,
Richard Penderel, who lived at Hobbal Grange,
hard by. Both speedily obeyed the summons,
and were brought into the parlor, where they[Pg 11]
found their old acquaintance, the Earl of Derby,
who introduced them into the inner parlor,
which formed then the presence chamber of
their throneless sovereign: the earl, reversing
the order of courtly etiquette on this occasion,
instead of presenting these two noble men, of
low degree, to their royal master, he presented
him to them; addressing himself in particular
to William Penderel, and pointing at his majesty,
he said, “This is the king; thou must
have a care of him, and preserve him, as thou
didst me.”

William, in the sincerity of an honest heart,
promised that he would do so, while Charles
Giffard was at the same time exhorting Richard
Penderel to have an especial care of his charge.

The loyal associates next endeavored to effect
a transformation in the personal appearance of
their royal master, by subjecting him to a process
very similar to that technically styled by
gipsies, “cutting a horse out of his feathers.”
In the first place, Richard Penderel trimmed off
his majesty’s flowing black ringlets in a very
blunt and irreverent fashion, using his woodman’s
bill, which he happened to have in his
girdle, instead of scissors, none being at hand,
and time being too precious to stand on ceremony.
His majesty was then advised to rub
his hands on the back of the chimney, and
with them to besmear his face, to darken his
peculiar Italian-like complexion with a more
swarthy tint. This done, he divested himself
of his blue ribbon and jeweled badge of the
Garter, and other princely decorations, his laced
ruff and buff coat, and put on a noggen coarse
shirt belonging to Edward Martin, a domestic
living in the house, and Richard Penderel’s
green suit and leathern doublet, but had not
time to be so exactly disguised as he was afterward,
for both William and Richard Penderel
warned the company to use dispatch, because
there was a troop of rebels, commanded by Col.
Ashenhurst, quartered at Cotsal, but three miles
distant, some of which troop arrived within
half an hour after the noble company was dispersed.

Richard Penderel conducted the king out
through a back door, unknown to any of his
followers, except a trusted few of the lords, who
followed him into the back premises, and as far
as an adjacent wood, belonging to the domain
of Boscobel, called Spring Coppice, about half a
mile from Whiteladies, where they took a sorrowful
farewell of him, leaving him under the
watchful care of three of the trusty Penderel
brethren—William, Humphrey, and George.
The Earl of Derby and the other gentlemen
then returned to their comrades at Whiteladies,
where, mounting in hot haste, with the intrepid
Charles Giffard for their conductor, they scoured
off on the north road; but a little beyond Newport
they were surrounded by the rebels, and
after some resistance, were made prisoners.
Charles Giffard contrived to effect his escape
from the inn at Banbury, where they halted,
but the loyal Earl of Derby, who had sacrificed
his own personal safety by resigning to his
sovereign the little city of refuge at Boscobel,
instead of occupying it himself, was subjected
to the mockery of a pretended trial by the rebels,
and beheaded, although he had only surrendered
on a solemn promise of receiving quarter—promises
which were never regarded by Cromwell
and his associates. The cool-blooded malignity
with which, in his dispatch, announcing
his triumph at Worcester, Cromwell points out
the noble captives, whom the fortunes of war
had placed in his magnanimous hands, to his
merciless tools as “objects of their justice,”
what was it but signing their death-warrants
by anticipation, before the mock trials took
place of the fore-doomed victims? and how revolting,
after that death-whoop, appears the
Pharisaical cant of his concluding sentences:

“The dimensions of this mercy are above my
thoughts—it is, for aught I know, a crowning
mercy. I am bold humbly to beg that the fatness
of these continued mercies may not occasion
pride and wantonness, as formerly the like
hath done to a chosen people.”

If Cromwell had understood the true meaning
of the Saviour’s words, “I will have mercy, and
not sacrifice,” he would probably have acted
more like a Christian and written less like a
Jew.

“But to return,” saith the quaint chronicler
of Boscobel, “to the duty of my attendance on
his majesty in Spring Coppice. By that time
Richard Penderel had conveyed him to the obscurest
part of it, it was about sun-rising on
Thursday morning, and the heavens wept bitterly
at these calamities, insomuch that the
thickest tree in the wood was not able to keep
his majesty dry, nor was there any thing for
him to sit on; wherefore Richard went to
Francis Yates’s house, a trusty neighbor, who
had married his wife’s sister, where he borrowed
a blanket, which he folded and laid on the
ground for his majesty to sit on.” A three-legged
stool would have been a luxury, at that
comfortless period, to the throneless monarch,
who claimed three realms as his rightful inheritance.

Richard Penderel, when he borrowed the
blanket of his sister-in-law, the good-wife Yates,
considerately begged her to provide a comfortable
breakfast and bring it to him, at a place
which he appointed in the wood. She presently
made ready a mess of milk, and brought it,
with bread, butter, and eggs, to the cold, wet,
and half-famished king. Charles was, at first,
a little startled at her appearance, but, perceiving
she came on a kindly errand, he frankly
appealed to her feminine compassion in these
words:

“Good woman, can you be faithful to a distressed
cavalier?”

“Yes, sir,” she replied; “I will die rather
than discover you!”

The king, well satisfied with the honest plainness
of her answer, was able to eat with a
hearty relish the simple fare she had brought[Pg 12]
him. In the course of that day, he made up
his mind to leave his woodland retreat, and
endeavor to get into Wales. Richard Penderel,
having consented to attend him in the capacity
of a guide, conducted him first to his own house,
Hobbal Grange, “where the old good-wife Penderel
had not only the honor to see his majesty,”
pursues our authority, “but to see him attended
by her son.” A greater honor far, it was for
her to feel that she was the mother of five sons,
whom all the wealth of England would not
have bribed, nor all the terrors of a death of
torture intimidated, to betray their fugitive
sovereign to those who thirsted for his blood.
Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, had less
reason to feel proud of her filial jewels, than
this rustic English matron of her brave Shropshire
lads. She had lost a sixth son, who had
been slain fighting in the cause of King Charles I.
Hobbal Grange was the paternal farm where
these six brethren, William, John, Richard,
Humphrey, Thomas, and George, were born.
Thomas, George, and John, had all enlisted in
the service of the late king, and fought for him
as long as he had an army in the field; William
was the house steward at Boscobel; Humphrey
was the miller at Whiteladies; and Richard
rented a part of his mother’s farm and house,
Hobbal Grange; he also pursued the business
of a woodman. At Hobbal Grange, the king’s
disguise was completed, and he was furnished
with a woodman’s bill, to enable him the better
to act the part of Richard Penderel’s man, and
it was agreed that he should assume the name
of Will Jones. When all these arrangements
had been made, and his homely supper ended,
his majesty set out at nine o’clock, with intent
to walk that night to Madely, in Shropshire,
about five miles from Whiteladies, within a
mile of the river Severn, which he would have
to cross, in order to get into Wales.

Charles found his clouted shoes so uneasy to
his feet on this pedestrian journey, that more
than once he was fain to walk without, as less
painful. About two miles from Madely, in
passing Evelin Mill, the king and his trusty
guide got an alarm; for Richard unwittingly
permitting the gate to clap, the miller came out
and challenged them, by asking, gruffly, “Who
was there?” Richard, to avoid him, hastily
drew the king out of the usual track, and led
him through a brook, which they were compelled
to ford, and the king’s shoes getting full of
water increased the uneasiness of his galled and
blistered feet. His majesty was afterward
wont, in recounting this adventure, to say, that
“here he was in great danger of losing his guide,
but the rustling of Richard’s calf-skin breeches
was the best direction he had to follow him in
that dark night.”

Charles was unconscious at the time how
near he was to a party of his own friends, who
had just taken refuge in Evelin Mill, and that
the honest miller who had caused him so much
alarm and distress by his challenge, was only
doing his duty by the fugitive cavaliers in keeping
guard to prevent a surprise from skulking
foes or spies.

His majesty arrived at Madely about midnight,
in weary plight; Richard conducted his
royal master to the house of a loyal gentleman
there, of the name of Woolf, on whose integrity
he knew he could rely. The family had retired
to rest, but Richard took the liberty of knocking
till Mr. Woolf’s daughter came to the door and
inquired, “Who that late comer was?” he replied,
“The king.” An announcement that
would, doubtless, have put any young lady into
a flutter at a period less disastrous to royalty
but such was the tragic romance of the epoch,
that persons of all classes were familiarized to
the most startling events and changes; the
only source of surprise to honest gentlefolks was,
the circumstance of finding their heads safe on
their own shoulders in the midst of the horrors
of military executions, which nearly decimated
that neighborhood. Miss Woolf neither questioned
the fact, nor hesitated to imperil herself
and family by receiving the proscribed fugitive
within her doors. She knew the integrity of
Richard Penderel, and appreciated the tribute
he paid to her courage and her truth, by confiding
such a trust to her. The king refreshed
and reposed himself beneath this hospitable roof
for awhile, but as the rebels kept guard upon
the passage of the Severn, and it was apprehended
that a party of them, who were expected
to pass through the town, might quarter themselves,
which frequently happened, in that house,
it was judged safer for the royal stranger to
sleep in the adjacent barn. His majesty accordingly
retired thither, attended by his trusty
guide and life-guardsman, Richard Penderel, and
remained concealed in that humble shelter the
whole of the next day.

The intelligence which Mr. Woolf procured,
meantime, was such as to convince him that it
would be too hazardous for the king to attempt
to prosecute his journey into Wales, and that
the best thing he could do would be to return
to Boscobel House, as affording facilities for his
concealment till a safer opening for his retreat
could be found. The king being of the same
opinion, it was resolved that he should retrace
his steps the next night, and meantime, his
hands not being considered sufficiently embrowned
for the character he personated, Mrs.
Woolf brought some walnut-leaves and stained
them. At eleven o’clock, he and the faithful
Richard Penderel resumed their march, but
midway between Madely and Boscobel, Charles
was so completely overcome with grief, fatigue,
and the pain he endured from his blistered feet,
in his attempts to walk in the stiff shoes, that
at last he flung himself on the ground, “declaring
life was not worth the struggle of preserving,
and that he would rather die than
endure the misery he suffered.” Richard gave
him such comfort as his kindly nature suggested,
and bidding him be of good cheer, and wait
God’s time for better fortunes, at last persuaded
him to make a successful effort to reach Boscobel.[Pg 13]
They arrived in the immediate vicinity
about three o’clock on the Sunday morning;
Richard left his majesty in the wood, while he
went to reconnoitre, not knowing whether a
party of Cromwell’s soldiers might not have
occupied the house in their absence. Fortunately,
he found no one there but William Penderel,
his wife, and the brave cavalier, Colonel
Carlis, who had been the last man to retreat
from Worcester, and, having succeeded in making
his escape, had been for some time concealed in
Boscobel Wood, and had come to ask relief of
William Penderel, his old acquaintance. Richard
informed him and William Penderel that
the king was in the wood, and they all three
went to pay their devoir, and found his majesty
sitting, like melancholy Jacques, on the root of
a tree. He was very glad to see the colonel,
and proceeded with him and the Penderels to
Boscobel House, and there did eat bread and
cheese heartily, and, as an extraordinary treat,
William’s wife, whom his majesty was pleased
to address merrily by the title of “My dame
Joan,” made a posset for him of thin milk and
small beer—no “very dainty dish,” one would
think, “to set before a king;” but doubtless, in
his present condition, more acceptable than the
most exquisite plate of dilligrout that was ever
served up by the lord of the Manor of Bardolf,
cum privilegio, at the coronation banquet of any
of his royal predecessors.

“My dame Joan” also performed another
charitable service for her luckless liege lord, by
bringing some warm water to bathe his galled
and travel-soiled feet. Colonel Carlis pulled
off his majesty’s shoes, which were full of
gravel, and his wet stockings, and there being
no other shoes that would fit the royal fugitive,
the good wife rendered these still more stiff and
uncomfortable, in her zeal to dry them, by putting
hot embers in them while the colonel was
washing his master’s feet.

When his majesty was thus refreshed, they
all united in persuading him to go back into
the wood, having great reason to apprehend
that the roundhead troopers, who were then
hunting the country round with blood-hounds,
on a keen scent for their prey, would come and
search Boscobel House. Humphrey Penderel,
the miller, had been to Shefnal the day before,
to pay some military imposts to the roundhead
Captain Broadwaye, at whose house he encountered
one of Cromwell’s colonels, who had
just been dispatched from Worcester in quest
of the king. This man, having learned that
the king had been at Whiteladies, and that
Humphrey dwelt in that immediate neighborhood,
examined him strictly, and laid before
him both the penalty of concealing the royal
fugitive “which,” he said, “was death without
mercy, and the reward for discovering him,
which should be a thousand pounds ready
money.”

Neither threats nor bribes could overcome the
loyal integrity of the stout-hearted miller, who
pleaded ignorance so successfully that he was
dismissed, and hastening, to Boscobel, brought
the alarming tidings of the vicinity of the soldiers,
and the price that had been set on his
majesty’s head.

The danger of his remaining in Boscobel
House being considered imminent, it was determined
by the faithful brothers to conceal the
king and Colonel Carlis, whose life was in no
less danger than that of his master, in a thick
spreading oak. Having made choice of one
which appeared to afford the greatest facility
for concealment, they assisted the king and
Colonel Carlis to ascend it, brought them such
provisions as they could get, and a cushion for
the king to sit on. In this unsuspected retreat
they passed the day. The king having gone
through much fatigue, and taken little or no
rest for several nights, was so completely worn
out, that having placed himself in a reclining
position, with his head resting on Colonel Carlis’s
knee, he fell asleep, and slumbered away
some hours—the colonel being careful to preserve
him from falling.

Pope’s popular, but long suppressed line,

always makes me think that he must have been
familiar with the following incident which my
father’s mother, Elizabeth Cotterel, who was
the grand-daughter of a cadet of the old loyal
family of that name, in Staffordshire, and maternally
descended from one of the honest Penderel
brothers, was accustomed to relate as a
fact, derived from family tradition, connected
with the perils and hair-breadth escapes of
Charles II., at Boscobel.

“The roundhead troopers,” she said, “having
tracked the king, first to Whiteladies, and then
to Boscobel Forest, were led, by the keen scent
of their bloodhounds, just at the twilight hour,
to the very tree in which he and Colonel Carlis
were hidden. The traitors, a sergeant and five
others of the same company, made a halt under
the Royal Oak, and began to reconnoiter it,
while their dogs came baying and barking round
about the trunk. Suddenly the leaves began to
rustle, and one of the villains cried out,

“‘Hallo! some one is surely hidden here!—look
how the branches shake.’

“‘It will be worth a thousand pounds to us
if it be the young king,’ said another.

“Then the sergeant asked ‘who would volunteer
to ascend the tree, and earn a larger
share of the reward by taking the supposed
prize alive;’ but, as no one appeared willing to
risk the chance of encountering a clapperclawing
from the royal lion, dealt from a vantage height,
he was just giving the word for them to fire a
volley into the tree, ‘when, by the grace of
God,'” the old lady would add, with impressive
solemnity, “a white owl flew out from the
thickest covert of the branches and screeched
‘fie upon them!’ as well she might; whereupon
the false traitors hooted out a curse as bitter as
that of Meroz on the poor bird, and growled to
each other ‘that it was she that had misled[Pg 14]
their dogs, and had stirred the leaves withal,
to mock themselves; howsomever, they would
have a shot at her, to teach her better manners
than to screech at the soldiers of the Lord.’
But though five of the sorry knaves banged off
their musketoons at the harmless bird, not one
of them was marksman enough to hit a feather
of her. Lastly, the sergeant took out a printed
copy of the proclamation, promising ‘the reward
of a thousand pounds for the apprehension
of the young man, Charles Stuart, eldest son of
the late King Charles,’ and fastened it on the
trunk of the royal oak where his majesty was
sitting in the branches above them, hearing all
they said, and an eye-witness of their treason.”

The breathless interest which this oral chronicle
was wont to excite among juvenile loyalists
of the third generation may be imagined, but
the old lady had another tradition, of yet more
thrilling import, engraven on the tablets of her
memory, “derived, like the first,” as she declared,
“from those who could well vouch for
its authenticity.” As it forms a curious sequel
to the other, and is really too good to be lost, I
take leave to relate it, without expecting my
readers to put the same degree of faith in my
grandmother’s traditionary lore as I have always
been dutifully accustomed to do.

“The roundhead sergeant and his comrades,
after they had retired from the vicinity of the
royal oak, proceeded to Hobbal Grange, to refresh
themselves at the expense of Richard Penderel,
where, finding his wife alone, rocking the
cradle of her infant boy, who was not well and
very fractious, they, after she had brought out
the best perry and mead the house afforded
began to cross-question her about the king’s
previous appearance at Whiteladies, and, as
they had done by her brother-in-law, Humphrey
Penderel, to ply her with alternate threats and
temptations, in order to induce her to discover
any thing she might have learned on the subject.
The amount of the reward for the apprehension
of the royal fugitive had hitherto been
concealed by Richard from his wife, probably
from the painful consciousness of her weak
point. At any rate, she heard it now with
astonished ears, and the sergeant, in confirmation
of his statement, displayed one of the
printed copies of the proclamation to that effect.
‘A thousand pounds!—a sum beyond her powers
of calculation! The price of blood!—what
then? Some one would earn it, why should
not she?’ She held parley with her besetting
sin, and her desire of ‘the accursed thing’ grew
stronger. At that moment her husband appeared,
followed by the disguised king, who,
cramped and exhausted with sitting so many
hours in the tree, was coming to her hearth to
warm and refresh himself, unconscious what
unwelcome guests were already in possession
of the Grange. The young wife hastened to
Richard Penderel, showed him the paper, and
whispered—

“‘What is the king to us? A thousand
pounds would make our fortunes.’

“‘I’ll cleave thy skull next moment, woman,
an’ thou dost,’ was Richard Penderel’s stern
rejoinder, grasping his wood-ax with a significant
gesture.

“He spoke in a tone which, though so low
as to be audible to no other ear than hers,
thrilled every vein in her body with terror.
She knew he was a man who never broke his
word, and she trembled lest the suspicions of
the sergeant and his gang should have been excited
by the emotions betrayed by her husband
and herself during their brief passionate conference.
She glanced at them, and saw they were
watching her husband and scrutinizing the disguised
king, who, yielding to the force of habit,
had forgot his assumed character of Richard’s
serving-man so far as to seat himself uninvited
on the only unoccupied stool in the room.
Luckily, the cross baby, offended at the presence
of so many strangers, set up his pipes, and began
to scream and cry most lustily; at which
Mistress Richard Penderel, affecting to be in a
violent passion, snatched him out of the cradle,
and thrusting him into the arms of the astonished
king, on whom she bestowed a sound box
on the ear at the same time, exclaimed, ‘Thou
lazy, good-for-naught fellow, wilt thou not so
much as put out thy hand to rock the cradle?
Take the boy to thee, and quiet him; he makes
such a brawling, thy betters can’t hear themselves
speak.’

“The baby, finding himself in the hands of
an unpracticed male nurse, continued to scream,
and the mother to scold, till the sergeant rose
up, with a peevish execration, implying that he
would rather hear the roar of all the cannon
that were fired at Worcester, than a chorus like
that; and giving the word to his company,
marched off in the full persuasion that Charles
was the awkwardest lout in Shropshire, and his
mistress the bitterest shrew he had seen for
many a day.”

After this alarm, it was judged better for the
king to return to Boscobel House, and betake
himself to the secret place of concealment, where
the Earl of Derby had been safely hidden before
the battle of Worcester. Dame Joan had provided
some chickens that night, and cooked
them in her best style for supper, for her royal
guest—a dainty to which he had been unaccustomed
for some time. She also put a little
pallet in the secret recess for his majesty’s use,
who was persuaded to let William Penderel
shave him, and cut his hair close with a pair
of scissors, according to the country fashion.
Colonel Carlis told the king, “Will was but a
mean barber;” his majesty replied, “That he had
never been shaved by any barber before,” and
bade William burn the hair he cut off. William,
however, carefully preserved the royal locks, as
precious memorials of this adventure, which
were afterward in great request among the noble
families of the neighborhood, who were eager
to obtain the smallest portion of those relics.

After supper, Colonel Carlis asked the king,
“What meat he would like for his Sunday’s[Pg 15]
dinner?” his majesty said, “Mutton, if it might
be had.” Now, there was none in the house,
and it was considered dangerous for William to
go to any place to purchase it; so Colonel Carlis
repaired to Mr. William Staunton’s fold,
chose the fattest sheep there, stuck it with his
dagger, and sent Will Penderel to bring it
home.[1]

On Sunday morning, Charles, finding his
dormitory none of the best, rose early, and
entering the gallery near it, was observed to
spend some time in prayer. After the fulfillment
of this duty, which was doubtless performed
with unwonted fervency, “his majesty,
coming down into the parlor, his nose fell a
bleeding, which put his poor faithful servants
in a fright,” till he reassured them, by saying
it was a circumstance of frequent occurrence.
He was very cheerful that day, and merrily assisted
in cooking some mutton-collops from the
stolen sheep provided by Colonel Carlis, on
which subject he was afterward fond of joking
with that devoted companion of his perils. The
Penderel brothers, keeping watch and ward, in
readiness to give the alarm, if any soldiers approached
the mansion, the king felt himself in a
state of security, “and spent some part of this
Lord’s-day in a pretty arbor in Boscobel Garden,
situated on a mount, with a stone table and seats
within. In this place, he passed some time in
reading, and commended it for its retiredness.”

John Penderel having, meantime, brought the
welcome intelligence that Lord Wilmot, to
whom he had acted as guide when he left
Whiteladies, had found a safe asylum at the
house of Mr. Whitgreave, of Mosely, the king
sent him back to inform those gentlemen “that
he would join them there at twelve that night.”
The distance being about five miles, John returned
to tell his majesty they would be in
readiness to meet him there.

The king not being yet recovered from the
effect of his walk to Madely and back, it was
agreed that he should ride on Humphrey’s mill-horse,
which was forthwith fetched home from
grass, and accoutred with a pitiful old saddle
and worse bridle. Before mounting, the king
bade farewell to Colonel Carlis, who could not
safely attend him, being too well known in that
neighborhood.

The night was dark and rainy, dismal as the
fortunes of the fugitive king, who, mounting
Humphrey’s mare, rode toward Mosely, attended
by an especial body-guard of the five
Penderels and their brother-in-law, Francis
Yates; each of these was armed with a bill
and pikestaff, having pistols in their pockets.
Two marched before, one on each side their
royal charge, and two came behind, a little in
the rear—all resolutely determined, in case of
danger, to have shown their valor in defending
as well as they had done their fidelity in concealing
their distressed sovereign. After some
experience of the horse’s paces, the king declared,
“It was the heaviest, dull jade he ever
bestrode.” Humphrey, who was the owner of
the beast, wittily replied—

“My liege, can you blame the mare for going
heavily when she bears the weight of three
kingdoms on her back?”

When they arrived at Penford Mill, within
two miles of Mr. Whitgreave’s house, his majesty
was recommended by his guides to dismount,
and proceed the rest of the way on foot,
being a more private path, and nearer withal.
At last, they arrived at the place appointed,
which was a little grove of trees, in a close
near Mr. Whitgreave’s house, called Lea Soughes.
There, Mr. Whitgreave and Mr. John Huddleston,
the priest, met his majesty, in order to
conduct him, by a private way, to the mansion,
Richard and John Penderel, and Francis Yates
continuing their attendance, but William,
Humphrey, and George returned to Boscobel
with the horse. Charles, not quite aware of
this arrangement, was going on without bidding
them farewell, but turning back, he apologized
to them in these words:

“My troubles make me forget myself: I thank
you all.”

And so, giving them his hand to kiss, took a
gracious leave of those true liegemen.

Mr. Whitgreave conducted the king into the
secret chamber occupied by Lord Wilmot, who
was expecting his return with great impatience,
fearing lest the king should have missed his
way, or been taken. As soon as Wilmot saw
his royal master, he knelt and embraced his
knees, and Charles, deeply moved, kissed him
on the cheek, and asked, with much solicitude:

“What has become of Buckingham, Cleveland,
and the others?”

Wilmot could only answer, doubtfully, “I
hope they are safe.” Then turning to Mr.
Whitgreave and Huddleston, to whom he had
not then confided the quality of the fugitive
cavalier for whom he had requested this asylum,
he said:

“Though I have concealed my friend’s name
all this while, I must now tell you this is my
master, your master, and the master of us all.”

Charles gave his hand to Whitgreave and
Huddleston for them to kiss, and after commending
their loyalty, and thanking them for
their fidelity to his friend, which, he assured
them, he never should forget, desired to see the
place of concealment he was to occupy. Having
seen it, and expressed his satisfaction, he returned
to Lord Wilmot’s chamber, where, his
nose beginning to bleed again, he seated himself
on the bedside, and drew forth such a
pocket-handkerchief as was never seen in royal
hands before, but it accorded with the rest of
his array. Charles was dressed, at that time,
in an old leathern doublet, a pair of green
breeches, and a peasant’s upper garment, known[Pg 16]
in this country by the name of a “jump coat,”
of the same color; a pair of his own stockings,
with the tops cut off, because they were embroidered,
a pair of stirrup stockings over them,
which had been lent him at Madely; a pair of
clouted shoes, cut and slashed, to give ease to
the royal feet, an old gray, greasy hat, without
a lining, and a noggen shirt, of the coarsest
manufacture. Mr. Huddleston, observing that
the roughness of this shirt irritated the king’s
skin so much as to deprive him of rest, brought
one of his own, made of smooth flaxen linen, to
Lord Wilmot, and asked, “If his majesty would
condescend to make use of it?” which Charles
gladly did. Mr. Huddleston then pulled off his
majesty’s wet, uncomfortable shoes and stockings,
and dried his feet, when he found that
some white paper, which had been injudiciously
put between his stockings and his skin, having
got rucked and rolled up, had served to increase,
instead of alleviating the inflammation.

Mr. Whitgreave brought up some biscuits
and a bottle of sack, for the refreshment of his
royal guest, who, after he had partaken of them,
exclaimed, with some vivacity,

“I am now ready for another march; and
if it shall please God to place me once more at
the head of eight or ten thousand good men,
of one mind, and resolved to fight, I should not
despair of driving the rogues out of my kingdom.”

Day broke, and the king, feeling in need of
repose, was conducted to the artfully concealed
hiding-place, where a pallet was placed for his
accommodation, for his host durst not put him
into a bed in one of the chambers.

After some rest taken in the hole, which was
unfortunately too close and hot to allow of
comfortable repose, Charles rose, and seeing
Mr. Whitgreave’s mother, was pleased to greet
her with great courtesy, and to honor her with
a salute. His place, during the day, was a
closet over the porch, where he could see, unseen,
every one who came up to the house.

That afternoon, a party of the roundhead
soldiers arrived, with intent to arrest Mr. Whitgreave,
having had information that he had been
at Worcester fight.

“If,” said Lord Wilmot to him, “they carry
you off, and put you to the torture, to force you
to confession, I charge you to give me up without
hesitation, which may, perhaps, satisfy them,
and save the king.”

Charles was then lying on Mr. Huddleston’s
bed, but his generous host, instead of caring for
his own danger, hurried him away into the
secret hiding place; then, setting all the chamber
doors open, went boldly down to the soldiers,
and assured them that the report of his
having been in the battle of Worcester was untrue,
for he had not been from his own home
for upward of a fortnight; to which all his
neighbors bearing witness, the soldiers not only
left him at liberty, but departed without searching
the house.

The same day, only a few hours after his
majesty had left Boscobel, two parties of the
rebels came thither in quest of him. The first,
being a company of the county militia, searched
the house with some civility, but the others,
who were Captain Broadwaye’s men, behaved in
a very ruffianly manner, searched the house
with jealous scrutiny, plundered it of every
thing portable, and after devouring all the little
stock of provisions, presented a pistol at William
Penderel, to intimidate him into giving
them some information, and much frightened
“my dame Joan,” but failed to extort any
confessions touching the royal guest who had
so recently departed. They also paid a second
visit to Whiteladies, and not only searched
every corner in it, but broke down much of the
wainscot, and finished by beating a prisoner
severely who had been frightened into informing
them that he came in company with the
king from Worcester to that place, and had left
him concealed there.

On the Tuesday, old Mrs. Whitgreave, who
did her best to amuse her royal guest, by telling
him all the news she could collect, informed
him that a countryman, who had been up to
the house that morning, had said “that he
heard that the king, on his retreat, had rallied
and beaten his enemies at Warrington Bridge,
and that three kings had come in to his assistance.”

“Surely,” rejoined Charles, with a smile,
“they must be the three kings of Cologne come
down from heaven, for I can imagine none
else.”

Looking out of his closet window, that day,
Charles saw two soldiers pass the gate, and told
Mr. Huddleston, “he knew one of them to be a
Highlander of his own regiment, who little
thought his king and colonel were so near.”

Mr. Huddleston had three young gentlemen
under his care for education, staying in the
same house—young Sir John Preston, Mr.
Thomas Patyn, and Mr. Francis Reynolds.
These he stationed at several garret windows
that commanded the road, to watch and give
notice if they saw any soldiers approaching,
pretending to be himself in danger of arrest.
The youths performed this service with diligent
care all day, and when they sat down to supper,
Sir John said merrily to his two companions,
“Come, lads, let us eat heartily, for we
have been upon the life-guard to-day.”

Lord Wilmot’s friend, Colonel Lane, of Bentley,
had, previously to the king’s arrival, offered
to pass him on to Bristol, as the escort of
his sister, Mrs. Jane Lane, who had fortunately
obtained from one of the commanders, a passport
for herself and her groom to go to Bristol,
to see her sister, who was near her confinement.
This offer Lord Wilmot had actually
accepted, when John Penderel, bringing him
word that the king was coming to Mosely, he
generously transferred that chance for escape to
his royal master. Lord Wilmot, having apprised
the colonel and fair mistress Jane of the
king’s intention to personate her groom, Colonel[Pg 17]
Lane came, by appointment, on Tuesday
night, between twelve and one, to the corner of
Mr. Whitgreave’s orchard, to meet and convey
his majesty to Bentley. The night was dark,
and cold enough to render the loan of a cloak,
which Mr. Huddleston humbly offered for his
sovereign’s use, extremely acceptable. Charles
took his leave courteously of old Mrs. Whitgreave,
whom he kissed, and gave many thanks
for his entertainment, and used warm expressions
of gratitude to her son and Mr. Huddleston,
telling them, “that he was very sensible
of the danger with which their concealing him
might be attended to themselves,” and considerately
gave them the address of a merchant
in London, who should have orders to supply
them with money, and the means of crossing
the sea, if they desired to do so, and promised,
“if ever God were pleased to restore him
to his dominions, not to be unmindful of their
services to him.” They knelt and kissed his
hand, and prayed Almighty God to bless and
preserve him, then reverentially attended him
to the orchard, where Mr. Whitgreave told
Colonel Lane “he delivered his great charge
into his hands, and besought him to take care
of his majesty.”

Charles proceeded safely to Bentley with
Colonel Lane, where, as he was to perform the
part of a menial, he was under the necessity of
taking a seat by the kitchen fire, next morning,
to prevent suspicion.

The cook, observing that he appeared an idle
hand, ordered him to “have a care that the
roast meat did not burn”—a command that
must have reminded the incognito majesty of
England of the adventure of his illustrious
ancestor, Alfred, in the herdsman’s cottage,
when he got into disgrace with the good wife
by not paying a proper degree of attention to
the baking of the cakes.

The same morning, we are told, a person
suspected of being a spy and informer, coming
into Colonel Lane’s kitchen, and casting a
scrutinizing eye on the king, observed that he
was a stranger, and began to ask a leading
question or two, when one of the servants, who
knew his royal master, and feared he would
commit himself, gave him two or three blows
with the basting ladle, and bade him “mind
his own business, which was to keep the spit
going, and not turn round to prate, or he
would get basted by the cook.”

Charles only staid at Bentley, till some
articles of Colonel Lane’s livery could be prepared
for his use, before he escorted Mrs. Jane
Lane to Bristol, she riding on a pillion behind
him, and Lord Wilmot following at a little distance.
Mistress Jane conducted herself with
great prudence and discretion to the royal
bachelor during the journey, treating him as
her master when alone, and as her servant before
strangers. When they arrived at the
house of her sister, Mrs. Norton, in Bristol, the
first person the king saw was one of his own
chaplains sitting at the door, amusing himself
with looking at some people playing at bowls.
His majesty, after performing his duty as Colonel
Lane’s servant, by taking proper care of
the horse which had carried him and his fair
charge from Bentley, left the stable, and came
into the house, feigning himself sick of the
ague, Mrs. Jane having suggested that device
as an excuse for keeping his room, which she
had caused to be prepared for him. The butler,
who had been a royalist soldier in the service
of Charles I., entering the room to bring the
sick stranger some refreshment, as soon as he
looked in his pale woe-worn face, recognized
the features of his young king, and falling on
his knees, while the tears overflowed his cheeks,
exclaimed,

“I am rejoiced to see your majesty.”

“Keep the secret from every one, even from
your master,” was the reply, and the faithful
creature rendered implicit obedience. He, and
Mrs. Jane Lane, constituted Charles’s Privy
Council at Bristol. No ship being likely to
sail from that port for a month to come, the
king considered it dangerous to remain there so
long. He therefore repaired to the residence of
Colonel Wyndham, in Dorsetshire, where he
was affectionately welcomed by that loyal cavalier
and his lady, who had been his nurse.
The venerable mother of the colonel, though
she had lost three sons and one grandchild in
his service, considered herself only too happy
to have the honor of receiving him as her
guest.

Finally, after adventures too numerous to be
recorded here, the fugitive king succeeded in
securing a passage toward the end of October,
in a little bark from Shoreham to Dieppe,
where he landed in safety, more than forty
persons, some of them in very humble circumstances,
having been instrumental to his escape,
not one of whom could be induced by the
large reward offered by the Parliament for his
apprehension, to betray him.

A certain eloquent Scotch essayist, who endeavors
to apologize for the conduct of Algernon
Sidney, and other worthies of his party, in
accepting the bribes of France by impugning
the integrity of the English character, and goes
so far as to express a doubt whether there were
an honest man to be met with at that epoch,
save Andrew Marvel, appears to have forgotten
the glorious instances of stainless honesty and
virtue afforded by the Penderel brothers, and
other noble men of all degrees, who proved
themselves superior to all temptations that
could be offered.

When England had, by general acclamation,
called home her banished king, the five Shropshire
brothers were summoned to attend him at
Whitehall, on Wednesday, the 13th of June,
1661, when his majesty was pleased to acknowledge
their faithful services, and signified
his intention of notifying his gratitude by a
suitable reward, inquiring if they had any particular
favor to ask. They only asked an exemption
from the penal laws, with liberty for[Pg 18]
themselves and their descendants to enjoy the
free exercise of their religion, being members of
the Romish church. This request was granted,
and their names, together with those of their
kinswoman Mrs. Yates, Mr. Huddleston, and Mr.
Whitgreave, were especially exempted in the statute
from the pains and penalties of recusancy.

King Charles granted a moderate pension to
them and their descendants for ever.

“The Oak,” says a contemporary, whose
pleasant little chronicle of Boscobel was published
in 1660, the year of the restoration,
“is now properly called ‘The Royal Oake of
Boscobel,’ nor will it lose that name while it
continues a tree: and since his majesty’s happy
restoration that those mysteries have been revealed,
hundreds of people for many miles
round, have flocked to see the famous Boscobel,
which, as you have heard, had once the honor
to be the palace of his sacred majesty, but
chiefly to behold the Royal Oake, which has
been deprived of all its young boughs by the
visitors of it, who keep them in memory of his
majesty’s happy preservation.”

Charles himself subsequently made a pilgrimage
to the scene of his past troubles: when
he visited the Royal Oak, he was observed to
gather a handful of the acorns. Some of these
he planted with his own hand in Saint James’s
Park. A promising young tree, which sprang
from one of these acorns, which Charles had
planted in the queen’s pleasure garden, within
sight of his bed-chamber, in Saint James’s Palace,
and was accustomed to water and tend
with great pleasure, was called the King’s
Royal Oak, and had become an object of interest
to the people as a relic of that popular sovereign;
but was destroyed by Sarah, Duchess of
Marlborough, as soon as her husband obtained
the grant of the ground on which it stood, for
the site of Marlborough House. This was regarded
as an outrage on popular feeling.

Of all our national commemorations, that of
the restoration of monarchy, on the 29th of
May, held the strongest hold on the affections
of the people; the firmness with which they
continued to observe that anniversary for a
century after the expulsion of the royal line of
Stuart, affords a remarkable proof of the constitutional
attachment of this country to the
cause of legitimacy. As long as that feeling
lasted, the grave of William Penderel, in St.
Giles’s church-yard, was duly decked with oaken
garlands by nameless loyalists of low degree, as
often as the 29th of May came round; and
men, women, and children wore oak leaves and
acorns in memory of the fact,

[From Dickens’s Household Words]

GUNPOWDER AND CHALK.

Sir Valentine Saltear was a worthy
gentleman, who had made a large fortune
by constantly exporting Irish linens and lawns
to France (from whence they came over to England
as fine French goods), for which service
to the trade of the three countries a discerning
minister had obtained him the honor of knighthood.
This fortune he had in part expended
in building for himself a great mansion on the
sea-coast of Kent, commanding a fine view of
the country from the back windows, and the
great ocean from the front. Every room on the
first and second floors was furnished with a
brass telescope, that could be screwed on to the
window-sash, or by means of a pedestal, into
the window-sill.

In the front of his house was a great field, in
which he and his visitors used to play at cricket.
It was bounded by the high, white chalk cliffs,
which descended precipitously to the sea.

The cliffs, however, were unfortunately much
undermined by natural caverns; so that every
year, and, in fact, every time there was a storm
at sea, a large portion of the chalk-rock fell
down, and in the course of six or seven years
he was obliged to rail off as “dangerous” a part
of the already reduced field in front of his house.
He could now only play at trap-ball, or battle-dore
and shuttle-cock.

Still the sea continued its encroachments,
and in a few years more the trap-ball was all
over—it was too perilous, even if they had not
continually lost the ball—and he and his sons
were reduced to a game at long-taw, and hop-scotch.

Clearly perceiving that in the course of a few
years more his field-sports would be limited to
spinning a tee-totum before his front-door, he
engaged the services of an eminent architect
and civil engineer to build him a sea-wall to
prevent the further encroachments of the enemy.
The estimate of expense was five thousand
pounds, and, as a matter of course, the
work, by the time it was finished, cost ten
thousand. This was nearly as much as Sir
Valentine Saltear had paid for the building of
his house.

But the worst part of the business was, that
the very next storm which occurred at sea, and
only a few weeks after, the waves dashed down,
and fairly carried away the whole of this protective
wall. In the morning it was clean
gone, as though no such structure had been
there, and a great additional gap was made in
the cliff, plainly showing that the watery monster
was quite bent on swallowing up Sir Valentine’s
house. He brought an action for the
recovery of the money he had paid for his wall;
but while this was pending, he saw his house
being undermined from day to day, and in sheer
despair felt himself obliged to apply to a still
more eminent civil engineer. The estimate this
gentleman made for the construction of a sea-wall—one
that would stand—was ten thousand
pounds. It might be a few pounds more or
less—probably less. But the recent experience
of Sir Valentine making him fear that it would
probably be double that amount, he hesitated
as to engaging the services of this gentleman.[Pg 19]
He even thought of sending over to Ireland for
fifty bricklayers, carpenters, and masons, and
superintending the work himself. He was sure
he could do it for six thousand pounds. It
never once occurred to him to pull down his
house, and rebuild it on high ground a quarter
of a mile farther off.

In this dangerous yet undecided state of affairs,
Sir Valentine one morning, breakfasting
at his club in Waterloo Place, read in a newspaper
a notice of the grand mining operation
and explosion that was to take place at Seaford,
the object of which was to throw down an immense
mass of chalk cliff, the broken fragments
whereof would, at a comparatively small cost,
form a sea-wall, at an elevation of about one-fifth
the height of the parent rock. Why, here
was Sir Valentine’s own case! His house was
upon a very high chalk rock, and a sea-wall of
one-fifth the height would answer every purpose.
The only difficulty was his present proximity
to the edge of the cliff. Still, he thought
he could spare thirty feet or so, without losing
his door-steps, and this width being exploded
down to the base of the cliff, would constitute,
by its fall, a very capital mound of protection
which might last for a century or more. He
therefore determined to see the explosion at
Seaford, and if it proved successful, to adopt
the very same plan.

Sir Valentine, accordingly, on the nineteenth
of September, swallowed an early cup of chocolate,
and hurried off to the Brighton railway
terminus, and took his place in the Express
train for Newhaven. It was a return-ticket,
first class, for which he paid the sum of one
pound four shillings. An Excursion train had
started at nine o’clock, the return-ticket first
class, being only eleven shillings; but Sir Valentine
fearing that it would stop at every station
on the way, and might not be in time for the
great event, had prudently chosen the Express
at Express price; namely, one pound four per
ticket. There was some confusion in the arrangements
of the terminus, apparently attributable
to extensive additions and alterations in
the buildings; but there was no difficulty in
receiving the money.

The train started; its speed, though an Express,
being nothing particular. When it arrived
at Lewes, the passengers all had to alight,
and wait for another train which was to take
them on. At last a train arrived. It was declared
to be full!

“Full!” cried Sir Valentine, “why, I have
paid for the Express!—first-class—one pound
four.”

Full, however, this long train was. Presently
a guard shouted that there was room for
three in a second-class carriage.

“I secure one!” shouted Sir Valentine, holding
up his fore-finger in a threatening manner
to the guard, and jumped in. In due time, and
by no means in a hurry, the “Express” train
arrived.

Out leaped Sir Valentine, and demanded of
the first person he met how far it was to Seaford?
The man said he didn’t know! to the
utter astonishment and contempt of the excited
knight. He asked the next person; who replied
that he hadn’t the very least idea, but they
could tell him at the “tap.” Sir Valentine
looked on all sides to see if there were any cabs,
flies, or vehicles of any kind, and descrying
several in a group at some little distance, made
toward them at long running strides—a boy who
had overheard his question as to the distance,
following at his heels, and bawling—”Two
miles as a crow flies!—four miles by the road!—two
miles as a cro-o-o-o!—four by the
ro-o-o-o!”

Arrived amidst the vehicles, the knight found
nearly all of them either engaged, or full, and
it was only as a matter of favor that he was
admitted as “one over the number,” to the
inside of a small van without springs; where,
beside the heat and crushing, he had to endure
a thorough draught and three short pipes, all
the way.

The road wound round the base of a series
of hills and other rising ground, and a line of
vehicles might be seen all along this serpentine
road, for two or three miles’ distance; while a
long unbroken line of pedestrians were descried
winding along the pathway across the fields.
After a very jolting and rumbling drive, Sir
Valentine found himself “shot out” with the
rest of the company, in front of a small “public”
knocked up for the occasion, with a load
or two of bricks and some boards, and crowded
to excess. Private carriages, flies, cabs, carts,
wagons, vans, were standing around, together
with booths and wheelbarrows, set out with
apples, nuts, bread and cheese, and ginger-beer
of a peculiarly thin stream. Sir Valentine
having breakfasted early, hastily, and lightly,
was by this time—a quarter to two—extremely
sharp set; he endeavored, therefore, to make
his way into the house to get a bottle of stout
and some ham or cold beef for luncheon. But
after ten minutes’ continuous efforts, he found
he was still between the door-posts, and the
noisy, choked-up window of the “bar,” as far
from his hopes as ever. He abandoned the attempt
in disgust—but not without addressing
himself to a seafaring man who was standing
with his hands in his pockets, looking on:

“Is this sense?” said the knight. “Do you
call this common sense? Do you think you
are acting with any more reason than a dog
possesses, to treat the public in this way?
Then, your own interest—look at it!” (pointing
to the crowd struggling in the door-way).
“If you had any foresight, or a head for the
commonest arrangements, would you not have
a barrel of ale on wheels outside here?”

The seafaring man swung round on his heel
with a smile, and Sir Valentine, having made
his way into the field, obtained six pennyworth
of gingerbread and a dozen of small apples,
with which provender he in some sort revived
his exhausted frame. He now bustled on toward[Pg 20]
the foot of a broken embankment leading
up to a lofty rising ground, the summit being
the cliffs, a large portion of which was shortly
to be detached, and thrown down by the explosion
of a mine. The part to be blown off
was marked out by broad belts of white, where
the chalk had been thrown up, which made
an imposing appearance even on the distant
heights.

The sun shone brightly. All over the fields
and fallow ground that lay between the halting-place
just described, and the foot of the
steep mount, the visitors were scattered—pedestrians,
with here and there a horseman;
sight-seers—the old and the young—men of
science from various parts of the world—infantry
soldiers, sappers and miners, ladies and
gentlemen, sailors, marines, country people,
railway laborers, policemen, boys and girls,
and—far in the rear of all, with disapproving
looks—two or three old women in spectacles.
Renovated by his gingerbread and apples, Sir
Valentine made his way manfully up the steep
grassy ascent of the hill, chalk mountain it
might be more properly termed, and, in the
course of a quarter of an hour, he found himself
at the spot where the explosion was to take
place.

It was a tolerably level surface, of some
hundred yards in diameter. Transverse belts
of excavated chalk, with several trenches and
pits half filled up, marked out the huge fragment
of the solid mass which was to be separated.
The boundary was further indicated by
small flagstaffs, and also by sentinels, who prevented
any of the visitors from trespassing on
the dangerous ground, whereon, of course, they
all had a half-delightful tingling wish to perambulate,
and to feel themselves liable to be blown
to atoms by a premature explosion.

Beneath the part marked off by the flagstaffs
and sentinels, at a great depth in the chalk
rock, were buried many thousand (the Brighton
Herald said twenty-seven thousand!) pounds
of gunpowder, distributed in different chambers
and galleries, one communicating with another
by means of a platina wire. This wire was
carried up through the rock into a little wooden
house, in which certain chemical mysteries were
being secretly carried on by engineer officers.
There was a little window in front, out of which
the mysterious officer now and then half thrust
his head, looked out, with profound gravity,
upon the belts of chalk on the space before him,
and, without appearing to see any of the crowding
visitors, withdrew from the window. Presently
another officer came, and did the same.
“Come like shadows,” muttered Sir Valentine,
“so depart!”

But wishing that they might “show his eyes”
the mysterious operations in the little wooden
house, however grievous it might be to his feelings,
our anxious knight hurried round to the
back, where, he took it for granted, there was
some means of entrance, as he had seen no
officer get in at the window. He was right.
There was a small narrow door of planks, with
a sentry standing before it, who wore a forbidding
face of much importance. And now a
gentleman in blue spectacles approached, and
nodded to the sentinel, who tapped at the door.
The door was unlocked, and the favored man of
science entered. Through the closing door, Sir
Valentine caught sight of a sort of long, shapeless
table, covered with chemical instruments
and utensils, in short, an apparatus exciting
great curiosity. The door closed, just as Sir
Valentine handed up his card to the sentinel.
The door was opened again—his card given in;
somebody took it, and it seemed to fly over a
row of small white porcelain painters’ pallets,
standing mid-deep in water, and then disappeared,
as the door was suddenly closed again.
A voice within was heard to say, impatiently,
“I really am afraid we can’t be disturbed!”

“Can’t you!” exclaimed Sir Valentine, addressing
himself to a servant girl, with a child
in her arms, who was trying to get a peep in
at the door: “can’t you, indeed! What treatment
do you call this? Do you think gentlemen
would take the trouble to come down here,
such a distance, and up here such a height, if
they did not expect to see all that could possibly
be seen? Is this your duty to the public
who pays you? Why should you conceal any
thing from me? Am I not a person of sufficient
wealth and respectability to be allowed to
know of all your doings up here! What brings
you here but the public service? Who is your
master? tell me that!”

“Edward Smith, of Seaford,” answered the
girl, with an angry face; “but I don’t know
as it’s any business of yours!”

Sir Valentine brushed past the girl with a
“Pooh, pshaw!” Observing it was announced,
by a placard on one side of the little wooden
house, that the explosion would take place at
three o’clock, he took out his watch and found
that it was already half-past two. It became
important to decide on the most advantageous
place to take up a position, in order to have
the best view of the grand explosion. Some
of the visitors—in fact, a considerable number—had
ascended to the very highest part of the
rock, which swept upward, with its green coating
of grass to a distance of a hundred and fifty
or two hundred yards beyond the dangerous spot.
Another crowd took their posts at about the
same distance below the fatal spot, each crowd
being widely scattered, the boldest in each being
nearest, the most timid the furthest off. Another
crowd—and this was the largest by far—had
descended to the beach, to see, from below,
the fall of the great mass of lofty rock. Many
had taken boats, and rowed, or sailed out, to
behold it from a more directly opposite, yet
safer position.

Now, Sir Valentine Saltear, being an enthusiast
in sight-seeing, had not the least doubt
but the way really to enjoy the thing, would be
to stand upon the portion of the cliff that was
to be thrown down; and, leaping from crack[Pg 21]
to crack, and from mass to mass, as it majestically
descended, reach by this means the sea,
into which a good dive forward would render
your escape from danger comparatively safe and
easy. On second thoughts, however, he saw
that it was precarious, because if the charge of
powder were in excess of the weight to be separated,
a great mass of fragments might fly
upward into the air, and who could say but
one of these might be the very place on which
he himself was standing? He, therefore, contented
himself with advancing to the extreme
edge of the cliff, and peering over upon the
beach below. The height was prodigious; the
crowds walking about below were of pigmy
size. The boats that were hovering about on
the sea looked no bigger than mussel shells.
Sir Valentine once thought of going out in a
boat, but immediately recollecting that by doing
so he should lose the fine effect of the trembling
of the earth, he at once abandoned the idea.
If he mounted above the scene of action he
should lose the grandeur of the descent of the
mass; if he stood on the mount at some distance
below it, he could not see the surface
crack and gape, though he might be exposed to
flying fragments. He, therefore, decided forthwith
on going down to the beach, and accordingly
he hurried along the grassy slope, and then
made his way down a precipitous zig-zag fissure
in the sand hill below, till he found his feet rattling
and limping over the stones of the beach.

Here he was amid six or seven thousand
people—many more than he had seen from
above—some walking about, some sitting in
long rows or in groups, on the damp shingles,
some standing in knots—all speculating as to
how soon it would now be before the great
explosion. A few flagstaffs were planted,
with several sentinels, to mark the line which
no one was allowed to pass; and this line was
very strongly marked besides by a dark crowd
of the most fearless of the visitors. According
to their several degrees of apprehension, the
crowds were scattered over the beach at various
distances, some of them being at least a
mile and a half off.

Sir Valentine, after an examination of all
the bearings of the case, elected to have a
place in the front row, close to the flagstaff;
but, taking into consideration the possibility
that the explosion might send up a great mass
of fragments, which might come flying over
that way, and crush numbers by their fall, he
looked round to try and secure a retreat the
instant he should see a black cloud of fragments
in the air. The front line would not be
able to retreat in time, because, being crowded,
they would, in the panic of the moment, stumble
over each other, and falling pell-mell, become
an easy prey to the descending chalk.
Sir Valentine, therefore, being not only an
enthusiast, but also a man of foresight, took
his post to the extreme right of the line, so that
he could, if he saw need, retreat into the sea;
to make sure of which, and, at the same time,
to have an unimpeded view, he now stood half
up to his knees in water.

It was three o’clock—the hour of doom for
the chalk in its contest with gunpowder. A
bugle sounded, and a movement of the sentries
on the top of the rock was discerned by the
thousands of eyes looking up from the beach.
Many, also, who were above, suddenly thought
they could better their positions by moving
further off. Below, on the beach, there was a
hush of voices; not a murmur was heard.
Every body stood in his favorite attitude of
expectation. All eyes were bent upon the
lofty projecting cliff; and nearly every mouth
was open, as if in momentary anticipation of
being filled with an avalanche of chalk. Again
a bugle sounded—and all was silence. Not a
shingle moved.

Presently there was a low, subterranean
murmur, accompanied by a trembling of the
whole sea-beach—sea and all; no burst of
explosion; but the stupendous cliff was seen to
crack, heave outward, and separate in many
places half way down; the upper part then
bowed itself forward, and almost at the same
instant, the cliff seemed to bend out and break
at one-third of the way from the base, till, like
an old giant falling upon his knees, down it
sank, pitching at the same time head foremost
upon the beach with a tremendous, dull, echoless
roar. A dense cloud of white dust and
smoke instantly rose, and obscured the whole
from sight.

Every body kept his place a moment in
silence—the front line then made a rush onward—then
abruptly stopped, bringing up all
those behind them with a jerk. Who knows
but more cliff may be coming down? In the
course of half a minute the cloud of dust had
sufficiently dispersed itself to render the fallen
mass visible. It formed a sort of double hill,
about one-fifth of the height of the rocks above,
the outer hill nearest the sea (which had been
the head and shoulders of the fallen giant)
being by far the largest. It was made up of
fragments of all sizes, from small morsels, and
lumps, up to huge blocks of chalk, many of
which were two or three feet in thickness, intermixed
with masses of the upper crust, having
grass upon the upper surface.

Toward this larger hill of broken masses of
chalk, the front rank of the cloud below, on
the beach, now rushed. But after a few yards,
they again stopped abruptly, bringing every
body behind them bump up against their backs.
Again, they moved on waveringly, when suddenly
a small piece of cracked rock detached
itself from above, and came rolling down.
Back rushed the front line—a panic took place,
and thousands retreated, till they found the
cliff was not coming after them, when they
gradually drew up, faced about, and returned to
the onset. At length it became a complete
charge: the front rank made directly for the
large broken mound, in the face of clouds of
drifting chalk-dust, and fairly carried it by[Pg 22]
assault—mounting over blocks, or picking their
way round about blocks, or between several
blocks, and through soft masses of chalk, and
so upward to the top—two soldiers, three sailors,
a boy, and Sir Valentine, being the first
who reached it. Thereupon, they set up a
shout of victory, which was echoed by thousands
from below. Fifty or sixty more were
soon up after them; and one enthusiast, who
had a very clever little brown horse, actually
contrived to lead him up to the top, and then
mounted him, amid the plaudits of the delighted
heroes who surrounded him. Every
body, horse and all, was covered with the continual
rain of chalk-dust. The heroes were all
as white as millers.

It was almost as difficult to descend as it
had been to get up. However, Sir Valentine
managed to effect this with considerable alacrity,
and made his way hastily across the field
to the little “public,” with intent to secure a
fly, or other conveyance, before they were all
occupied by the numbers he had left behind him
on the beach. Nothing could be had: all were
engaged. He walked onward hastily, and was
fortunate enough to overtake a large pleasure-cart,
into which he got, and, after suffering the
vexation of seeing every vehicle pass them, he at
length arrived at the Newhaven railway station.

THE ESCAPE OF QUEEN MARY FROM LOCHLEVEN CASTLE.

BY AGNES STRICKLAND.

The escape of Mary Queen of Scots, from
Lochleven Castle, is one of the most striking
passages in the history of female royalty.
The time, the place, the beauty and exalted
rank of the illustrious heroine, her wrongs, and
her distress, the chivalry and courage of the
gallant spirits who had undertaken to effect her
deliverance, the peril of the enterprise, and its
success, combine all the elements of a romance.
Yet the adventure creates a more powerful impression
related in the graphic simplicity of
truth, as it really befell, than when worked up
with imaginary circumstances into a tale of
fiction, even by the magic pen of Scott in the
pages of “The Abbot.”

The fatal concatenation of events, which had
the effect of entangling the royal victim in the
toils of her guileful foes, can not be developed
here. The broad outline of the outward and
visible facts is familiar to almost every reader,
but to expose the undercurrent to view by documentary
evidences, and to make manifest the
hidden workings of iniquity, requires a wider
field than these brief pages can afford. I must,
therefore, refer the public to my long-promised
“Life of Mary Stuart,” which will shortly appear
in my new series of royal female biographies,[2]
based on documentary sources, for particulars
which can scarcely fail of removing the
obloquy with which mercenary writers, the ready
tools of self-interested calumniators, have endeavored
to blacken the name of this hapless
lady.

The confederate lords into whose hands Mary,
confiding in their solemn promises to treat her
with all honor and reverence as their sovereign,
rashly surrendered herself, at Carberry-hill, not
only shamelessly violated their pact, but after
exposing her to the most cruel insults from the
very abjects of the people, incarcerated her in
the gloomy fortress of Lochleven, under the
jailorship of the mother of her illegitimate
brother, the Earl of Murray, and the wardership
of the sons that person had had by her late
husband Sir Robert Douglas, of Lochleven, for
the Lady of Lochleven was a married woman
when the Earl of Murray was born.[3]

It is scarcely possible to imagine a more
doleful abiding place for the fallen queen, in her
affliction, than that which had been thus injuriously
and by a refinement of malice, selected
for her by her perfidious foes. The castle, which
is of extreme antiquity, said indeed to have been
founded by Congal, a Pictish king, is of rude
architecture, consisting of a square donjon keep,
flanked with turrets, and encompassed with a
rampart; it is built on a small island, almost
in the centre of the wild expanse of the deep,
and oft-times stormy, waters of the loch, which
is fifteen miles in circumference. The castle
island consists of five acres, now overgrown with
trees and brushwood. In the midst of this desolation
tradition points out one ancient stem,
of fantastic growth, said to have been planted
by the royal captive as a memorial of her compulsory
residence in the castle. The boughs of
this tree, which is called “Queen Mary’s Thorn,”
are constantly broken and carried away as relics
by the visitors, whom the interest attached to
the memory of that unhappy princess attracts
to the spot, which her sufferings have rendered
an historic site of melancholy celebrity.

The events of the long dreary months which
Mary wore away in this wave-encircled prison-house,
bereft of regal state, deprived of exercise
and recreation, and secluded from every friend
save her two faithful ladies, and a little maiden
of ten years old, the voluntary companions of
her durance, as well as the occupations wherewith
she endeavored to beguile her sorrowful
hours, will be found very fully detailed in my
biography of that unfortunate queen, with many
recently-discovered facts.

Toward the end of March, George Douglas,
the youngest son of the Lady of Lochleven,
whose manly heart had been touched with generous
sympathy, or, as some assert, with a deep
and enduring passion for his fair ill-fated sovereign,
made a bold and almost successful attempt
to convey her out of the castle, in the disguise
of a laundress. The queen, however, being
identified by the whiteness and delicacy of her
hands, which she had raised to repel one of the[Pg 23]
rude boatmen, who endeavored to remove her
hood and muffler to get a sight of her face, she
was brought back, and George Douglas was
expelled from the Castle with disgrace. But
though banished from his house, he lurked concealed
in the adjacent village, where he had
friends and confederates, and, doubtless inspired
many an honest burgher and peasant with sympathy
for the wrongs of their captive sovereign,
by his description of the harsh restraint to which
she was subjected within the grim fortress of
Lochleven. At Kinross he was joined by the
faithful John Beton, and other devoted servants
of the queen, who were associated for the emancipation
of their royal mistress, and had long
been lurking, in various disguises, among the
western Lomonds, to watch for a favorable opportunity
of effecting their object.

Douglas had left, withal, an able coadjutor
within the castle, a boy of tender years, of
mysterious parentage, and humble vocation,
who was destined to act the part of the mouse
in Æsop’s beautiful fable. This unsuspected
confederate was a youth of fifteen, who waited
on the Lady of Lochleven in the capacity of
page. He is known in history by the names
of Willie Douglas, and the Little Douglas; in
the castle he was called the Lad Willie, the
Orphan Willie, and the Foundling Willie,[4] for
he was found, when a babe, at the castle gates.
Home, of Godscroft, says, “He was the natural
brother of George Douglas,”[5] a statement perfectly
reconcileable with the story of his first
introduction into the family of the late Laird
of Lochleven. Such incidents are not of unfrequent
occurrence in the daily romance of life,
and often has it happened that the appeal made
to the parental feelings of a profligate seducer,
in behalf of a guiltless child of sin and sorrow,
has awakened feelings of feminine compassion
in the bosom of the injured wife, and the forlorn
stranger has received a home and nurture through
her charity. This appears to have been the case
with regard to Little Willie and the Lady of
Lochleven; for, whether she suspected his connection
with the laird her husband or not, he
was taken in, and brought up under her auspices,
and as attendant on her person. Frail as she
had been in her youth, and cruel and vindictive
in her treatment of the lawful daughter of her
royal seducer, whom it irked her pride to consider
as her sovereign, it is nevertheless pleasant
to trace out the evidence of some good in the
harsh Lady of Lochleven.

The Foundling Willie remained in the castle,
after the death of the old laird, an orphan dependent
in the family, but his subsequent actions
prove that he had received the education
of a gentleman; for not only could he read and
write, but he understood enough of French and
other languages to be sent on secret missions to
foreign princes. To these acquirements Willie
added courage, firmness, and address, seldom
paralleled in one of his tender years.

There is not any circumstance in the course of
Mary Stuart’s career more striking than the fact
that, in this dark epoch of her life, when deprived
of all the attributes of royalty, oppressed,
calumniated, and imprisoned, two friends like
George and Willie Douglas should have been
raised up for her in the family of her deadliest
foes. The regent and his confederates, men
whose hands had been soiled with English
gold, had not calculated on the existence of the
chivalric feelings which animated those young
warm hearts with the determination of effecting
the liberation of their captive queen.

“Mary being deprived of pen and ink at this
time,” says her French biographer, Caussin,
“wrote her instructions with a piece of charcoal,
on her handkerchief, which she employed
the boy Willie Douglas to dispatch to the Lord
Seton.” John Beton, who still lay, perdue,
among the hills, was the ready bearer of this
missive, and arranged every thing for the reception
and safe conduct of his royal mistress,
in case she should be fortunate enough to reach
the shore in safety. For many nights he, with
Lord Seton, George Douglas, and others, kept
watch and ward on the promontory which commanded
a view of the castle and the lake, in
expectation of being apprised, by signal, that
the project was about to be carried into effect.

On Sunday, the second evening in May, all
things being in readiness, and the family at
supper, Willie Douglas, who was waiting on
the Lady of Lochleven, contrived, while changing
her plate, to drop a napkin over the keys
of the castle (which were always placed beside
her during meals), and having thus enveloped
them, succeeded in carrying them off unobserved.
Hastening with them to the queen, he conducted
her, by a private stair, to the postern, and so to
the water-gate of the castle, which he took care
to lock after him; and when the boat had gained
convenient distance from the shore, flung the
keys into the water. These mute memorials
of the adventure were found covered with rust
when the loch was drained, early in the present
century. They are now in the possession of
the Earl of Morton, at Dalmahoy House, where
I saw them and the rude iron chain which
formerly linked them together, but which, being
rusted through, fell to pieces when taken out of
the water. The Lochleven keys are five in
number, large and small, of antique workmanship,
and are all carefully enshrined in a casket
lined with velvet, and preserved as precious
relics by the noble representatives of the chivalric
George Douglas.

The boat which Willie the Orphan had adroitly
secured for the service of his captive sovereign,
was that belonging to the castle, and the only
medium of communication for the castellan and
his meiné with the shore. Immediate pursuit
was, therefore, almost impossible. The companions
of Queen Mary’s flight were, her faithful
attendant, Mary Seton, ever near her in the hour[Pg 24]
of peril, and a little girl of ten years old, of whose
safety her majesty appeared tenderly careful, as
she led her by the hand. The other damsel, a
French lady of the name of Quenede, gave a remarkable
proof of her personal courage and devotion
to her royal mistress; for, not being quick
enough to reach the castle gate till it was locked
behind the retreating party, she fearlessly leaped
out of the window of the queen’s apartment into
the loch, and swam after the boat till she was
received within that little ark in her dripping
garments.

Meantime, Lord Seton and his gallant associates,
who were anxiously reconnoitring from
their eyrie the progress of the little bark and its
precious freight across the lake, remained in a
state of the greatest excitement, not daring to
believe that so feeble an instrument as the orphan
Willie had succeeded in achieving an exploit
which the bravest peers in Scotland might
have been proud of having performed, and her
own royal kinsmen, the allied princes of France
and Spain, had not ventured to attempt. But
all doubts and fears were dispelled when they
recognized the stately figure of their queen,
distinguished from the other females by her
superior height, rising in the boat and giving
the telegraphic signal of her safety, as previously
agreed, by waving her vail, which was white
with a crimson border, the royal colors of Scotland.
The moment that auspicious ensign was
displayed, fifty horsemen, who had lain concealed
behind the hill, sprang to their saddles,
and, with Lord Seton at their head, galloped
down to the shore, where George Douglas and
Beton, with another party of devoted friends,
were already waiting to receive and welcome
their enfranchised sovereign, as she sprang to
the land. The fleetest palfreys that Scotland
could supply had long been provided, and concealed
by George Douglas’s trusty confederates
in the village, in anticipation of the success of
this enterprise, and were now ready caparisoned
for the queen and her ladies. Mary mounted
without delay, and, attended by the faithful
companions of her perils and escape, scoured
across the country at fiery speed, without halting,
till she reached North Queen’s Ferry, about
twenty miles from Lochleven. Embarking in
the common ferry-boat at that port, she and
her company crossed the rough waters of the
Firth, and landed, tradition says, at the ancient
wooden pier, which formerly jutted out into the
sea, just above the town of South Queen’s Ferry.
There she was met and welcomed by Lord
Claud Hamilton, and fifty cavaliers and other
loyal gentlemen, eager to renew their homage,
and burning to avenge her wrongs.

Lord Seton conducted his royal mistress to
his own castle at West Niddry, distant seven
miles from South Queen’s Ferry, where she
partook of his hospitality, and enjoyed the repose
of a few hours, after her moonlight flitting.
West Niddry now forms part of the fair domain
of the Earl of Hopeton. The roofless shell of
the stately castle, which afforded the first safe
resting-place to the fugitive sovereign is still
in existence. The changes of the last few years
have conducted the railroad line between Edinburgh
and Glasgow in close proximity to the
ruins of the feudal fortress, which gave rest and
shelter to the royal fugitive, after her escape
from Lochleven. The gray mouldering pile, in
its lonely desolation, arrests for a moment the
attention of the musing moralist or antiquarian
among the passengers in the trains that thunder
onward to their appointed goal through
solitudes that recall high and chivalric visions
of the past. But Niddry Castle should be visited
in a quiet hour by the historical pilgrim,
who would retrace in fancy the last bright
scene of Mary Stuart’s life, when, notwithstanding
the forced abdication which had transferred
the regal diadem of Scotland to the unconscious
brow of her baby-boy, she stood a
queen once more among the only true nobles
of her realm, those whom English gold had not
corrupted, nor successful traitors daunted.

One window in Niddry Castle was, within the
memory of many persons in the neighborhood,
surmounted with the royal arms of Scotland,
together with a stone entablature, which, though
broken, is still in existence, in the orchard of
the adjacent grange, inscribed in ancient letters
with the day of the month and the date of the
year, and even the age of George Lord of Seton,
at the memorable epoch of his life when the
beauteous majesty of Scotland, whom he had
so honorable a share in emancipating from her
cruel bondage, slept beneath his roof in safety.

Lord Seton had been an old and faithful servant
of his queen. He was the master of the
royal household, and had been present at her
nuptials with the beloved husband of her youth,
King Francis II., of France. On her return to
Scotland, after the death of that sovereign,
Mary offered to advance Seton to the dignity
of an earldom, but being the premier baron in
parliament, he refused to be the puisne earl,
giving humble thanks to her majesty for her
proffered grace at the same time. Mary then
wrote the following extempore distich in Latin
and also in French:

which, in plain English, may be rendered thus:

“After that unfortunate battle of Langside,
the said Lord George Seton was forced to fly to
Flanders, and was there in exile two years, and
drove a wagon with four horses for his subsistence.
His picture in that condition,” adds the
quaint, kindred biographer of the noble family
of Seton, “I have seen drawn, and lively painted,
at the north end of the long gallery in Seton,
now overlaid with timber. From Flanders, the
said Lord George went to Holland, and there
endeavored to seduce the two Scots regiments
to the Spanish service, upon a design thereby
to serve his sovereign the queen, the king of
Spain being very much her friend. Which plot[Pg 25]
of his being revealed, the states of Holland did
imprison and condemn him to ride the cannon;
but by the friendship and respect the Scotch officers
had to him, he was by them set at liberty,
notwithstanding this decision of the States.”[6]

Lord Seton outlived these troubles, he was
preserved to enjoy the reward of his integrity
after those who pursued his life had been successively
summoned to render up an account
of the manner in which they had acquired and
acquitted themselves of their usurped authority,
till all were clean swept away. It is a remarkable
fact that the most relentless of the persecutors
of their hapless sovereign, Mary Stuart,
especially those who for a brief period were the
most successful in their ambitious projects,
Murray, Lennox, Marr, Lethington, and Morton,
all by violent or untimely deaths preceded
their royal victim to the tomb.

James VI. testified a grateful sense of the
services Lord Seton had rendered to queen
Mary, by preferring him and his sons to the
most honorable offices in his gift.

Mary herself rewarded George Douglas to the
utmost of her power, in various ways, but above
all by facilitating his marriage with a young
and beautiful French heiress of high rank, to
whom he had formed an attachment, and as
his poverty was the only obstacle to this alliance,
she generously enabled him to make a
suitable settlement on his bride out of a portion
of her French estates, which she assigned to
him for this purpose by deed of gift. “Services
like his,” as she wrote to her uncle,
“ought never to be forgotten.”

A simple black marble tablet in the chancel
of Edensor Church, to the left of the altar,
marks the grave of John Beton, on which a
Latin inscription records the fact, “that he died
at Chatsworth, in his thirty-fourth year, worn
out with the fatigues and hardships he had encountered
in the service of his royal mistress,”
adding as his best and proudest epitaph, “that
he had assisted in delivering that illustrious
princess from her doleful prison in the Laga
Laguina.” (Lochleven.)

Poetry is the handmaid as well as the inspiration
of chivalry, and if ever the deeds of brave
and loyal gentlemen deserved to live in song,
surely the achievement of the loyal associates
who rescued their oppressed queen from her
cruel captivity in Lochleven Castle, ought to
be thus commemorated, and their names had in
remembrance long after “the marble that enshrines
their mortal remains has perished, and
its imagery mouldered away.”

[From Dickens’s Household Words.]

A GERMAN PICTURE OF THE SCOTCH.

A new play was recently produced at the
principal theatre of Vienna, which illustrates
the notions of Scotchmen which obtain
currency and credence among the Germans.
The scene is laid in St. Petersburgh; the real
hero is a little animal, known to dog-fanciers
as a Scotch terrier; but the nominal chief character
is a banker from Glasgow, named Sutherland.
He had failed in his native place, but in
Russia he became a great man, for he was the
favorite money-dealer of the Empress Catherine.

We all know the strength of a Scotch constitution,
but we also know the severity of a St.
Petersburgh winter: yet Mr. Sutherland presents
himself to his audience, amidst the frozen scenery
of that ice-bound city, in what is believed
abroad to be the regular everyday costume of a
citizen of Glasgow; namely, a kilt, jack-boots,
and a cocked hat, with a small grove of fine
real feathers. Mr. Sutherland, despite his scanty
nether costume, appears to be in excellent health
and spirits. He has thriven so well in the world
that, in accordance with a tolerably correct estimate
of the Caledonian national character, his
relations at home begin to pay court to him,
and to send him presents. One indulges him
with the hero of the piece: the small, ugly,
irate, snuffy quadruped before mentioned. The
banker takes it with a good-humored “Pish!”
little dreaming of the important part the little
wretch is destined to play. He had scarcely
received the gift when the Empress passes by,
sees the dog, and desires to possess it, while
the grateful Sutherland is too glad to be able to
gratify a royal caprice at so light a cost.

She, in the fervency of her gratitude, named
the dog after the donor—a great compliment.

Alas! one day, the dog, who had eaten too
plentifully of zoobrême (chicken stewed with
truffles), was seized with apoplexy and died;
though not without suspicion of having been
poisoned by the prime minister, a piece of whose
leg he had digested the day before. The Empress
sighed far more over the loss of her dog,
than she would have done for that of the minister.
The one might have been easily replaced:
she knew at least twenty waiting open-mouthed
for the vacancy. But who could replace her
four-footed friend!—she mourns him as a loss
utterly irreparable. She orders the greatest
mark of affectionate respect it is possible to
show to be performed on the dead terrier.

The scene changes; it is night. The fortunate
banker is seated at dessert, after an excellent
dinner of “mutton rosbif,” and “hot-a-meale
pour-ridges, and patatas,” indispensable
to a North Briton; his legs are crossed, his feet
rest upon a monstrous fender, which he takes care
to inform us he has received from England, as
he sits sipping his “sherri port bier,” and soliloquizing
pleasantly over the various chances of
his life. He is just about to finish his evening
with some “croc,” the English name for the
pleasant invention of Admiral Grogram; his
servant enters, to announce that the chief executioner
with a file of soldiers have just dropped
in, to say a word on a matter of business
from the Empress.

[Pg 26]

The awful functionary, on stalking into the
room, exclaimed, “I am come—”

“Well, I see you are,” replied the banker,
trying to be facetious, but feeling like a man
with a sudden attack of ague.

“By command of the Empress!”

“Long may she live!” ejaculates Sutherland,
heartily.

“It is really a very delicate affair,” says the
executioner; who, like the French Samson, is
a humane man; “and I do not know how to
break it to you.”

“Oh, pray, don’t hesitate. What would you
like to take?” asked the banker, spilling the
grog he tried to hand to the horrid functionary,
from sheer fright.

The Envoy shakes his head grimly. “It is
what we must all come to some day,” he adds,
after a short pause.

“What is? In Heaven’s name do not keep
me longer in suspense!” cries the banker, his
very visible knees knocking together with agonizing
rapidity.

“I have been sent,” answers the awful messenger;
again he stops—looks compassionately
at his destined victim.

“Well!”

“By the Empress—”

“I know!”

“To have you—”

“What?”

“Stuffed!” said the Executioner mournfully.

The banker shrieked.

“Stuffed!” repeats the man, laconically,
pointing to a bird in a glass case, to prevent
there being any mistake in Sutherland’s mind
as to the nature of the operation he is to be
called upon to undergo.

The Executioner now lays his hand significantly
on poor Sutherland’s collar, and looks
into his face, as if to inquire if he had any
particular or peculiar fancy as to the mode in
which he would like to go through the preparatory
operation of being killed.

“I have brought the straw,” he says, “and
two assistants are without. The Empress can
not wait; and we have not got your measure
for the glass case yet.”

The banker looks the very picture of abject
misery; but Britons, in foreign comedies, are
always ready to buy every thing, and the banker
had lived long enough in Russia to know the
value of a bribe. He therefore offers one so
considerable, that his grim visitor is touched,
and endeavors to lull his sense of duty to sleep
by a sophistry.

“I was told, indeed, to have you stuffed,”
he reasons, “and got ready for the Empress;
but nothing was said about time; so I don’t
mind giving you half an hour if you can satisfy
these gentlemen”—and he turns to his associates.

It is briefly done. The banker pays like a
man whose life depends on his liberality—we
suppose several millions—for the Executioner
remarks that he can not forget that a groom in
England frequently receives several thousands
sterling a year; this is a very prevalent idea
among the Frankish and Teutonic nations of
the Continent. We once heard a Spanish general
assert, in a large assembly, that the usual
pay of an English ensign was five hundred
pounds a month, an idea doubtless derived from
some Iberian dramatist; and therefore a public
functionary like the Executioner must be remunerated
proportionably higher. The enormous
pecuniary sacrifice gets for Sutherland
some half-hour’s respite; which he wisely uses
by flying to the British embassador, Sir Bifstik,
and awaits the result with great anguish.

Sir Bifstik goes to the Empress. He is admitted.
He asks if Her Majesty be aware of
the position of a British subject named Sutherland?

“Excellent man,” says Her Majesty, “No!
What is it?”

Sir Bifstik bows low at the tones of the Imperial
voice, and now begins to explain himself
with something more than diplomatic haste;
thinking, perhaps, that already the fatal straw
may be filling the banker’s members.

Imperial Catherine does not, of course, consider
the putting to death of a mere Scotch
banker, and making him in reality what some
of his brethren are sometimes called figuratively—a
man of straw—worth this fuss; and sets
the embassador down in her mind as a person
of wild republican ideas, who ought to be recalled
as soon as possible by his government,
and placed under proper surveillance; but, nevertheless,
she causes some inquiries to be made,
and learns that it is in consequence of her having
ordered “Sutherland” to be stuffed that he
is probably then undergoing that operation.

Sir Bifstik expresses such horror and consternation
at this intelligence, that the Empress
believes his mind to be disordered.

“What possible consequence can the accidental
stuffing of a Scotch banker be to you,
milor?” she saith.

“The ac-ci-den-t-al stuff-ings of a Scotcher
Bankers!” in a German idiom not generally
used by our nobility, gasps Sir Bifstik, mechanically,
with pale lips and bristling hair.

“Take him away! He is mad!” screams
the Empress, thinking that no sane person
could be concerned about such a trifling affair,
and in another moment the most sacred of international
laws would have been violated (on
the stage), and Great Britain insulted by profane
hands being laid on the person of her embassador,
when all at once a light breaks over
the mind of Her Majesty—the recalling of
something forgotten. She exclaims, with a
Russian nonchalance quite cheering to behold,
“Oh, I remember; now it is easily explained.
My poor little dog (I had forgotten him too)
died yesterday, and I wished his body to be
preserved. Cher chien! His name was the
same as that of the banker, I think. Alas
that cruel Death should take my dog!”

“But Mr. Sutherland has, perhaps, already
been murdered!” gasps the embassador. “I[Pg 27]
pray that your Majesty will lose no time in
having him released, should he be still alive!”

“Ah, true! I never thought of that,” returns
the Empress.

The order is finally issued, and Sutherland
rescued, just as the Executioner, grown angry
at his unreasonable remonstrances, resolves to
delay no longer in executing the Imperial commands.
To put the coup-de-grace on the comic
agony of the poor banker, his immense red crop
of hair has, in that half hour of frightful uncertainty,
turned white as snow!

[From Hogg’s Instructor.]

THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONISTS, MARAT, ROBESPIERRE, AND DANTON.

BY GEORGE GILFILLAN.

One obvious effect of the upheavings of a
revolution is to develop latent power, and
to deliver into light and influence cast down
and crushed giants, such as Danton. But another
result is the undue prominence given by
convulsion and anarchy to essentially small and
meagre spirits, who, like little men lifted up
from their feet, in the pressure of a crowd, are
surprised into sudden exaltation, to be trodden
down whenever their precarious propping gives
way. Revolution is a genuine leveler: “small
and great” meet on equal terms in its wide
grave; and persons, whose names would otherwise
have never met in any other document
than a directory, are coupled together continually,
divide influence, have their respective partisans,
and require the stern alembic of death
to separate them, and to settle their true positions
in the general history of the nation and
the world.

Nothing, indeed, has tended to deceive and
mystify the public mind more than the arbitrary
conjunction of names. The yoking together
of men in this manner has produced often a
lamentable confusion as to their respective intellects
and characteristics. Sometimes a mediocrist
and a man of genius are thus coupled
together; and what is lost by the one is gained
by the other, while the credit of the whole firm
is essentially impaired. Sometimes men of
equal, though most dissimilar intellect, are, in
defiance of criticism, clashed into as awkward
a pair as ever stood up together on the floor of
a country dancing-school. Sometimes, for purposes
of moral or critical condemnation, two of
quite different degrees of criminality are tied
neck and heels together, as in the dread undistinguishing
“marriages of the Loire.” Sometimes
the conjunction of unequal names is owing
to the artifice of friends, who, by perpetually
naming one favorite author along with another
of established fame, hope to convince the unwary
public that they are on a level. Sometimes
they are produced by the pride or ambition, or
by the carelessness or caprice, of the men or
authors themselves. Sometimes they are the
deliberate result of a shallow, though pretentious
criticism, which sees and specifies resemblances,
where, in reality, there are none. Sometimes
they spring from the purest accidents of common
circumstances, common cause, or common abode,
as if a crow and a thrush must be kindred because
seated on one hedge. From these, and
similar causes, have arisen such combinations
as Dryden and Pope, Voltaire and Rousseau,
Cromwell and Napoleon, Southey and Coleridge,
Rogers and Campbell, Hunt and Hazlitt, Hall
and Foster, Paine and Cobbett, Byron and
Shelley, or Robespierre and Danton.

In the first histories of the French Revolution,
the names of Marat, Robespierre, and Danton
occur continually together as a triumvirate of
terror, and the impression is left that the three
were of one order, each a curious compound of
the maniac and the monster. They walk on,
linked in chains, to common execution, although
it were as fair to tie up John Ings, Judge Jeffreys,
and Hercules Furens. A somewhat severer discrimination
has of late unloosed Marat from the
other two, and permitted Robespierre and Danton
to walk in couples, simply for the purpose
of pointing more strongly the contrast between
the strait-laced demonism of the one, and the
fierce and infuriated manhood of the other. At
least, it is for this purpose that we have ranked
their names together.

Of Marat, too, however, we are tempted to
say a single word—”Marah,” might he better
have been called, for he was a water of bitterness.
He reminds us of one of those small,
narrow, inky pools we have seen in the wilderness,
which seem fitted to the size of a suicide,
and waiting in gloomy expectation of his advent.
John Foster remarked, of some small “malignant”
or other, that he had never seen so much
of the “essence of devil in so little a compass.”
Marat was a still more compact concentration
of that essence. He was the prussic acid among
the family of poisons. His unclean face, his
tiny figure, his gibbering form, his acute but
narrow soul, were all possessed by an infernal
unity and clearness of purpose. On the great
clock of the Revolution—while Danton struck
the reverberating hours—while Robespierre crept
cautiously but surely, like the minute-hand, to
his object—Marat was the everlasting “tick-tick”
of the smaller hand, counting, like a death-watch,
the quick seconds of murder. He never
rested; he never slumbered, or walked through
his part; he fed but to refresh himself for revolutionary
action; he slept but to breathe himself
for fresh displays of revolutionary fury.
Milder mood, or lucid interval, there was none
in him. The wild beast, when full, sleeps; but
Marat was never full—the cry from the “worm
that dieth not,” within him being still, “Give,
give,” and the flame in his bosom coming from
that fire which is “never to be quenched.”

If, as Carlyle seems sometimes to insinuate,
earnestness be in itself a divine quality, then
should Marat have a high place in the gallery
of heroes; for if an earnest angel be admirable,
chiefly for his earnestness, should not an earnest
imp be admirable, too? If a tiger be respectable[Pg 28]
from his unflinching oneness of object, should
not a toad, whose sole purpose is to spit sincere
venom, crawl amid general consideration, too?
If a conflagration of infernal fire be on the whole
a useful and splendid spectacle, why not honor
one of its bluest and most lurid flames, licking,
with peculiar pertinacity, at some proud city
“sham?” But we suspect, that over Carlyle’s
imagination the quality of greatness exerts more
power than that of earnestness. A great regal-seeming
ruffian fascinates him, while the petty
scoundrel is trampled on. His soul rises to
mate with the tiger in his power, but his foot
kicks the toad before it, as it is lazily dragging
its loathsomeness through the wet garden-beds.
The devils, much admired as they stood on the
burning marl, lose caste with him when, entering
the palace of Pandemonium, they shrink into
miniatures of their former selves. Mirabeau,
with Carlyle, is a cracked angel; Marat, a lame
and limping fiend.

Some one has remarked how singular it is
that all the heroes of the French Revolution
were ugly. It seems as curious to us that they
were either very large or very little persons.
Danton was a Titan; Mirabeau, though not so
tall, was large, and carried a huge head on his
shoulders; whereas Marat and Napoleon were
both small men. But the French found their
characteristic love of extremes gratified in all
of them. Even vice and cruelty they will not
admire, unless sauced by some piquant oddity,
and served up in some extraordinary dish. A
little, lean corporal, like Napoleon, conquering
the Brobdingnagian marshals and emperors of
Europe, and issuing from his nut-like fist the
laws of nations; a grinning death’s head, like
Voltaire, frightening Christendom from its propriety,
were stimulating to intoxication. But
their talent was gigantic, though their persons
were not; whereas, Marat’s mind was as mean,
and his habits as low, as his stature was small,
and his looks disgustful. Here, then, was the
requisite French ragout in all its putrid perfection.
A scarecrow, suddenly fleshed, but with
the heart omitted—his rags fluttering, and his
arms vibrating, in a furious wind, with inflamed
noddle, and small, keen, bloodshot eyes—became,
for a season, the idol of the most refined and
enlightened capital in Europe.

Had we traced, as with a lover’s eye, the
path of some beautiful flash of lightning, passing,
in its terrible loveliness, over the still landscape,
and seen it omitting the church spire,
which seemed proudly pointing to it as it passed—sparing
the old oak, which was bending his
sacrificial head before its coming—touching not
the tall pine into a column of torch-like flame,
but darting its arrow of wrath upon the scarecrow,
in the midst of a bean-field, and, by the
one glare of grandeur, revealing its “looped and
ragged” similitude to a man, its aspiring beggary,
and contorted weakness—it would have presented
us with a fit though faint image of the beautiful
avenger, the holy homicide, the daughter
of Nemesis by Apollo—Charlotte Corday—smiting
the miserable Marat. Shaft from heaven’s
inmost quiver, why wert thou spent upon such
a work? Beautiful, broad-winged bird of Jove,
why didst thou light on such a quarry? Why
not have ranged over Europe, in search of more
potent and pernicious tyrants, or, at least, have
run thy beak into the dark heart of Robespierre?
Why did a steel, as sharp and bright as that of
Brutus, when he rose “refulgent from the stroke,”
pierce only a vile insect on the hem of a mantle,
and not at once a mantle and a man? Such
questions are vain; for not by chance, but by
decree, it came about that a death from a hand
by which a demi-god would have desired to die,
befell a demi-man, and that now this strange
birth of nature shines on us forever, in the light
of Charlotte Corday’s dagger and last triumphant
smile.

Yet, even to Marat, let us be merciful, if we
must also be just. A monster he was not, nor
even a madman; but a mannikin, of some energy
and acuteness, soured and crazed to a preternatural
degree, and whose fury was aggravated
by pure fright. He was such a man as the
apothecary in “Romeo and Juliet” would have
become in a revolution; but he, instead of dealing
out small doses of death to love-sick tailors
and world-wearied seamstresses, rose by the
force of desperation to the summit of revolutionary
power, cried out for 80,000 heads, and
died of the assaults of a lovely patriotic maiden,
as of a sun-stroke. And yet Shakspeare has a
decided penchant for the caitiff wretch he so
graphically paints, and has advertised his shop
to the ends of the earth. So let us pity the
poor vial of prussic acid dashed down so suddenly,
and by so noble a hand, whom mortals
call Marat. Nature refuses not to appropriate
to her bosom her spilt poisons, any more than
her shed blooms—appropriates, however, only
to mix them with kindlier elements, and to turn
them to nobler account. So let us, in humble
imitation, collect, and use medicinally, the scattered
drops of poor acrid Marat.

Marat was essentially of the canaille—a bad
and exaggerated specimen of the class, whom
his imperfect education only contributed to harden
and spoil. Robespierre and Danton belong,
by birth and training, by feelings and habits, to
the middle rank—Robespierre sinking, in the
end, below it, through his fanaticism, and Danton
rising above it, through his genius and power.
Both were “limbs of the law,” though the one
might be called a great toe, and the other a
huge Briarean arm; and, without specifying
other resemblances, while Marat lost his temper
and almost his reason in the mêlée of the Revolution,
both Robespierre and Danton preserved
to the last their self-possession, their courage,
and the full command of their intellectual faculties,
amidst the reelings of the wildest of revolutionary
earthquakes, and the thick darkness
of the deepest canopy of revolutionary night.

Robespierre reminds us much of one of the
old Covenanters. Let not our readers startle at
this seemingly strange assertion. We mean[Pg 29]
the worst species of the old Covenanter—a
specimen of whom is faithfully drawn by Sir
Walter in Burley, and in our illustrious clansman—the
“gifted Gilfillan.” Such beings there
did exist, and probably exist still, who united
a firm belief in certain religious dogmas to the
most woeful want of moral principle and human
feeling, and were ready to fight what they deemed
God’s cause with the weapons of the devil.
Their cruelties were cool and systematic; they
asked a blessing on their assassinations, as
though savages were to begin and end their
cannibal meals with prayer. Such men were
hopelessly steeled against every sentiment of
humanity. Mercy to their enemies seemed to
them treason against God. No adversary could
escape from them. A tiger may feed to repletion,
or be disarmed by drowsiness; but who
could hope to appease the ghost of a tiger, did
such walk? Ghosts of tigers, never slumbering,
never sleeping, cold in their eternal hunger,
pursuing relentlessly their devouring way, were
the religious fanatics—the Dalziels and Claverhouses,
as well as the Burleys and Mucklewraths,
of the seventeenth century.

To the same order of men belonged Robespierre,
modified, of course, in character and
belief, by the influences of his period. The miscalled
creed of the philosophers of France in the
eighteenth century, which, with many of themselves,
was a mere divertisement to their intellects,
or a painted screen for their vices, sunk
deep into the heart of Robespierre, and became
a conviction and a reality with him. So far it
was well; but, alas! the creed was heartless
and immoral, as well as false. Laying down
a wide object, it permitted every license of vice
or cruelty in the paths through which it was to
be gained. Robespierre became, accordingly,
the worst of all sinners—a sinner upon system—a
political Antinomian, glorying in his
shame, to whom blood itself became at last
an abstraction and a shadow; the guillotine
only a tremendous shuttle, weaving a well-ordered
political web; and the tidings of the fall
of a thousand heads agreeably indifferent, as to
the farmer the news of a cleared hay or harvest
field.

That Robespierre had at the first any appetite
for blood, is not now asserted by his bitterest
foe. That he ever even acquired such a monstrous
thirst, seems to us very unlikely. His
only thought would be, at the tidings of another
death, “Another sacrifice to my idea; another
obstacle lifted out of its way.” Nero’s wish
that his enemies had but “one neck” was, we
think, comparatively a humane wish. It showed
that he had no delight in the disgusting details,
but only in the secure result of their destruction.
He is the unnatural monster who protracts the
fierce luxury—who sips his deep cup of blood
lingeringly, that he may know the separate
flavor of every separate drop, and who, like the
Cyclops in the cave, leaves some select victim
to the last, as a bonne bouche to his sated appetite—”Noman
shall be the last to be devoured.”
Robespierre, no more than Nero, was up to such
delicately infernal cruelty.

Carlyle frequently admits Robespierre’s sincerity,
and yet rates him as little other than a
sham. We account for this as we did in the
case of Marat. He is regarded as a small sincerity;
and the sincerity of a small man contracts,
to Carlyle’s eye, something of the ludicrous
air in which a Lilliputian warrior, shouldering
his straw-sized musket, and firing his lead-drop
bullets, seemed to Gulliver. “Bravo, my little
hero!” shouts the Titan, with a loud laugh, as
he sees him, with “sky-blue breeches,” patronizing
the houseless idea of a divine being, “prop
away at the tottering heavens, with that new
nine-pin of thine; but why is there not rather
a little nice doll of an image in those showy
inexpressibles, to draw out, and complete the
conversion of thy people? and why not say,
‘These be thy gods, O toy and toad-worshiping
France!'” To bring him to respect, while he
admits, the sincerity, we would need to disprove
the smallness, of our Arras advocate. Now,
compared to truly great men, such as Cromwell—or
to extraordinary men, such as Napoleon,
Mirabeau, and Danton—Robespierre was small
enough. But surely it was no pigmy, whose
voice—calm, dispassioned, and articulate—ruled
lunatic France; who preserved an icy coolness
amid a land of lava; who mastered, though it
was only for a moment, a steed like the Revolution;
and who threw from his pedestal, though
it was by assailing in an unguarded hour, a
statue so colossal as Danton’s. Rigid, Roman-like
purpose—keen, if uninspired, vision—the
thousand eyes of an Argus, if not the head of a
Jove, or the fist of a Hercules—perseverance,
honesty, and first-rate business qualities—we
must allow to Robespierre, unless we account
for his influence by Satanic possession, and say—either
no dunce aut Diabolus. Carlyle attributes
his defeat and downfall to his pertinacious
pursuit of a shallow logic to its utmost consequences.
Probably he thus expresses, in his
own way, the view we have already sought to
indicate. Robespierre was the sincere, consistent,
unclean apostle of an unclean system—a
system of deism in theology—of libertinism in
morals—of mobocracy in politics—of a “gospel
according to Jean-Jacques”—a gospel of “liberty,
equality, fraternity”—a liberty ending in
general bondage, an equality terminating in the
despotism of unprincipled talent, a fraternity
dipping its ties in blood. With faithful, unfaltering
footstep, through good report and bad
report, he followed the genius of revolution in
all her devious, dark, dangerous, or triumphant
paths, till she at last turned round in anger,
like a dogged fiend, and rent him in pieces.

In dealing with Robespierre, we feel, more
than with Marat, that we are in contact with
an intelligent human being, not an oddity, and
mere splinter of a man. His idea led, and at
last dragged him, but did not devour nor possess
him. His cruelty was more a policy, and
less a raging passion; and his great moral error[Pg 30]
lay in permitting a theory, opposed to his original
nature, to overbear his moral sense, to drain
him of humanity, and to precipitate him to his
doom. If he had resisted the devil, he would
have fled from him.

In rising from Robespierre to Danton, we
feel like one coming up from the lower plains
of Sicily into its western coast—the country
of the Cyclopes, with their one eye and gigantic
stature; their courage, toil, ferocity, impiety,
and power. Danton did tower Titanically
above his fellows, and, with little of the divine,
was the strongest of the earth-born. He had
an “eye,” like a shield of sight, broad, piercing,
and looking straight forward. His intellect
was clear, intuitive, commanding, incapable of
the theoretical, and abhorrent of the visionary.
He was practical in mind, although passionate
in temperament, and figurative in speech. His
creed was atheism, not apparently wrought out
by personal investigation, or even sought for
as an opiate to conscience, but carelessly accepted,
as the one he found fashionable at the
time. His conduct, too, was merely the common
licentiousness of his country, taking a
larger shape from his larger constitution and
stronger passions. His political faith was less
definite and strict, but more progressive and
practical, and more accommodated to circumstances
than Robespierre’s. His patriotism was
as sincere as Robespierre’s, but hung about him
in more voluminous folds. It was a toga, not
a tunic. A sort of lazy greatness, which seemed,
at a distance, criminal indifference, characterized
him when in repose. His cupidity was
as Cyclopean as his capacity. Nothing less
than a large bribe could fill such a hand. No
common goblet could satisfy such a maw.
Greedy of money, for money’s sake, he was
not. He merely wished to live, and all Paris
knew what he meant by living. And with all
the royal sops to Cerberus, he remained Cerberus
still. Never had he made the pretensions of a
Lord Russell, or Algernon Sidney, and we know
how they were subsidized. His “poverty, but
not his will consented.” Had he lived in our
days, a public subscription—a “Danton testimonial,
all subscriptions to be handed in to the
—- office of Camille Desmoulins,” would have
saved this vast needy patriot—this “giant
worm of fire,” from the disgrace of taking supplies
from Louis, and then laughing a wild
laughter at his provider, as he gnawed on at
the foundations of his throne.

In fact, careless greatness, without principle,
was the key to Danton’s merits and faults—his
power and weakness. Well did Madame
Roland call him “Sardanapalus.” When he
found a clover field, he rolled in it. When he
had nothing to do, he did nothing; when he
saw the necessity of doing something immediately,
he could condense ages of action into a
few hours. He was like some terrible tocsin,
never rung till danger was imminent, but then
arousing cities and nations as one man. And
thus it was that he saved his country and lost
himself, repulsed Brunswick, and sunk before
Robespierre.

It had been otherwise, if his impulses had
been under the watchful direction of high religious,
or moral, or even political principle.
This would have secured unity among his passions
and powers, and led to steady and cumulative
efforts. From this conscious greatness,
and superiority to the men around him, there
sprung a fatal security and a fatal contempt.
He sat on the Mountain smiling, while his enemies
were undermining his roots; and while
he said, “He dares not imprison me,” Robespierre
was calmly muttering “I will.”

It seemed as if even revolution were not a
sufficient stimulus to, or a sufficient element
for Danton’s mighty powers. It was only
when war had reached the neighborhood of
Paris, and added its hoarse voice to the roar
of panic from within, that he found a truly
Titanic task waiting for him. And he did it
manfully. His words became “half battles.”
His actions corresponded with, and exceeded
his words. He was as calm, too, as if he had
created the chaos around him. That the city
was roused, yet concentrated—furious as Gehenna,
but firm as fate, at that awful crisis, was
all Danton’s doing. Paris seemed at the time
but a projectile in his massive hand, ready to
be hurled at the invading foe. His alleged
cruelty was the result, in a great measure, of
this habitual carelessness. Too lazy to superintend
with sufficient watchfulness the administration
of justice, it grew into the Reign of
Terror. He was, nevertheless, deeply to blame.
He ought to have cried out to the mob, “The
way to the prisoners in the Abbaye lies over
Danton’s dead body;” and not one of them
had passed on. He repented, afterward, of his
conduct, and was, in fact, the first martyr to a
milder regime. Not one of his personal enemies
perished in that massacre: hence the name
“butcher” applied to him is not correct. He
did not dabble in blood. He made but one
fierce and rapid irruption into the neighborhood
of the “red sea,” and returned sick and shuddering
therefrom.

His person and his eloquence were in keeping
with his mind and character. We figure him
always after the pattern of Bethlehem Gabor,
as Godwin describes him: his stature gigantic,
his hair a dead black, a face in which sagacity
and fury struggle for the mastery—a voice of
thunder. His mere figure might have saved
the utterance of his watchword, “We must put
our enemies in fear.” His face was itself a
“Reign of Terror.” His eloquence was not of
the intellectual, nor of the rhetorical cast. It
was not labored with care, nor moulded by art.
It was the full, gushing utterance of a mind
seeing the real merits of the case in a glare of
vision, and announcing them in a tone of absolute
assurance. He did not indulge in long
arguments or elaborate declamations. His
speeches were Cyclopean cries, at the sight of
the truth breaking, like the sun, on his mind.[Pg 31]
Each speech was a peroration. His imagination
was fertile, rugged, and grand. Terrible
truth was sheathed in terrible figure. Each
thought was twin-born with poetry—poetry of
a peculiar and most revolutionary stamp. It
leaped into light, like Minerva, armed with
bristling imagery. Danton was a true poet,
and some of his sentences are the strangest
and most characteristic utterances amid all the
wild eloquence the Revolution produced. His
curses are of the streets, not of Paris, but of
Pandemonium; his blasphemies were sublime
as those heard in the trance of Sicilian seer,
belched up from fallen giants through the smoke
of Etna, or like those which made the “burning
marl” and the “fiery gulf” quake and
recoil in fear.

Such an extraordinary being was Danton,
resembling rather the Mammoths and Megatheriums
of geology than modern productions of
nature. There was no beauty about him why
he should be desired, but there was the power
and the terrible brilliance, the rapid rise and
rapid subsidence of an Oriental tempest. Peace—the
peace of a pyramid, calm-sitting and
colossal, amid long desolations, and kindred
forms of vast and coarse sublimity—be to his
ashes!

It is lamentable to contemplate the fate of
such a man. Newly married, sobered into
strength and wisdom, in the prime of life, and
with mildness settling down upon his character,
like moonlight on the rugged features of
the Sphinx, he was snatched away. “One
feels,” says Scott of him, “as if the eagle had
been brought down by a ‘mousing owl.'”
More melancholy still to find him dying “game,”
as it is commonly called—that is, without hope
and without God in the world—caracolling and
exulting, as he plunged into the waters of what
he deemed the bottomless and the endless night;
as if a spirit so strong as his could die—as if a
spirit so stained as his could escape the judgment—the
judgment of a God as just as he is
merciful; but also—blessed be his name!—as
merciful as he is just.

[From Bentley’s Miscellany.]

RATTLIN THE REEFER’S DREAM. A TOUGH BUT TRUE YARN.

BY ONE OF RATTLIN’S OLD SHIPMATES.

It was about the middle of August, 18—,
that the Old Lucifer was cruising in the
Monar Passage, a strait about forty miles wide,
which separates the eastern end of St. Domingo
from the island of Porto Rico. I was “middy”
of the morning watch: it had been dead
calm all night, but the gentle trade-wind was
rising with the rising sun, and morning was
glorious with the magic gilding of a tropical
sky. Some time after eight bells,[7] when Ned
Rattlin, who was never very punctual or methodical
in any of his movements, came on deck
to relieve me, and I was about to hurry down
to my breakfast of warm skilligalee, or, as our
old French negro, who served as midshipmen’s
steward and maid-of-all-work, with true French
tact for murdering the king’s English, called
it, “giggeragee,” Ralph seized me by the collar
of my jacket, crying,

“Avast! Careless, my boy; you really must
not make sail for the cockpit till you have
heard the horrid dream which I had last night
or this morning, for I dreamt it twice over, and
can not get it out of my head. I must tell it
to some one, and you are the only one that I
dare tell it to; I should be so confoundedly
laughed at by the servum pocus of the cockpit;
but you and I know each other, and have some
pursuits and feelings in common. We have
our day-dreams and our night-dreams, and we
know that there are more things in heaven and
earth than are dreamt of in the philosophy of a
midshipman’s berth.”

Now, had not Ralph seized hold of me by
the lappel of my jacket, as before said, I should
certainly have cut and run; for a reefer of sixteen,
who is just relieved from the morning-watch,
which he has kept for four hours, from
four o’clock in the morning, and who has taken
a cold bath in the wash-deck tub, is not likely
to be in a humor to let his breakfast of cocoa
or skilligalee grow cold. But, with the powerful
grip of Ralph’s shoulder-of-mutton fist on
my collar, there was no chance of escape without
tearing my jacket from clue to earring,
which I felt that I could not afford to do; for,
as I have before remarked, Ralph Rattlin was
my senior by two years at least, and overtopped
me in height by a foot, or something near it.
I therefore made a virtue of necessity, and said,

“Well, Jemmy, if you’ll promise not to keep
me long, and allow me, first, to run down
below and tell old Dom to keep my burgoo[8]
warm, I’ll return and hear your wonderful dream,
though I fancy it’s all gammon, and only manufactured
to try the capacity of my swallow;
because you know that, like yourself, I have
a bit of hankering after the marvelous, and, as
the negro Methodist said of the prophet Jonah,
am ‘a tellible fellow for fish,’ though I doubt
whether, like him, I could quite swallow a
whale.”

“Well, then, make sail, you little flibbertigibbet,
and make haste back, that’s a good
fellow.”

The above elegant soubriquet he generally
favored me with, when, in Yankee parlance, I
had “riled” him and got his “dander up,” as
was always the case when he was called Jemmy
Caster; he being but too conscious that his[Pg 32]
long loose figure and shambling gait bore, at
that time, no small resemblance to those of a
waister of that name, though he afterward became
a remarkably fine, handsome man, bearing
a striking resemblance, not without sufficient
reason, to King George the Fourth.

In a few minutes I had made arrangements
with old Dominique for the safe custody of my
breakfast, and was again pacing the lee side of
the quarter-deck, by the side of my gigantic
messmate.

“And now, my dear Careless,” said he,
with unusual gravity, “if you can be serious
for a few minutes, I will relate to you this infernal
dream, which so preys upon my spirits
that I do not feel like myself this morning,
and must unburden my mind. I dreamt, then,
that I was on the second dog-watch, as you
know I shall be this evening; it was between
seven and eight bells, the night pitch-dark, with
the wind blowing fresh from the northeast, the
ship under double-reefed topsails, and foresail
close hauled on the starboard tack, running at
the rate of five knots as I had found upon heaving
the log. Suddenly the sea became like one
sheet of flame; its appearance was awfully
grand; the head of every wave, as it curled
over and broke, diffused itself in broad streaks
and flashes of blue and white flame; and I
involuntarily repeated to myself the two lines
of that singular, soul-freezing rhapsody, the
‘Ancient Mariner,’ which, though descriptive
of a very different state of the ocean from that
now presented to my imagination, I felt to be
most applicable to what I saw before me—

and then, referring to the two preceding lines
of the stanzas—

For that strangely wild and beautiful poem had
taken a powerful hold on my sleeping fancy.
I asked myself, with a shudder, can there be
‘death-fires?’ And it seemed that the question
uttered half aloud, had no sooner passed
my lips, than it received its answer in a most
strange and fearful manner; for a voice, like
no human voice that I ever yet heard, shrieked
out, in a tone of horror and distress, that made
my blood run cold, ‘Ship a-hoy—ship a-hoy!’
I turned toward the lee quarter, whence the
voice came; and, jumping on a carronade-slide,
I saw the body of a man appearing out of
the sea, from the waist upward, of gigantic size,
and of most forbidding—and at the same time
woeful—countenance. His body appeared covered
with scales, like that of a fish, which reflected
the ghastly phosphoric light of the waters
in radiating hues of green and gold, and purple
and violet. His ample jaws, which opened
from ear to ear, and which were furnished with
a triple row of saw-shaped teeth, like those of
a shark, were fringed with a thick curled beard
and mustache, of pale sea-green, which fell in
wavy masses, mingling with long elf-locks of
the same sickly hue, over his broad breast and
shoulders; his deep sunk eyes flashed out with
a strange unearthly light from beneath thick,
overhanging eyebrows of that self-same sea-green
hue, and his head was surrounded and surmounted
with a waving diadem of ‘green, and
blue and white’ flames, flashing upward, and
radiating sideways, and curling over their waving
tops, so as to ape the exact form of ostrich
feathers. Awful as the figure was, and though
it made my flesh creep, yet dreaming as I was,
I felt conscious that there was something of the
ridiculous attached to the bizarrerie of its appearance.
You know my vein, Careless, and
will give me credit for a true exposition of my
feelings, when I tell you that, though in a most
awful funk, I could not help adopting the words
of Trinculo, and asking myself, half aloud,

I had not, till that moment, noticed the quarter-master
of the watch, a fine old weather-beaten
seaman, who stood close to my side,
and was, like myself, attentively watching the
movements of the strange demon-like merman,
who continued to follow the ship within a few
fathoms of the lee quarter-gallery, with a continual
bowing or nodding motion of the head,
which caused his plumes of livid flame to flash
and corruscate, so that, to my eyes, they appeared
to assume various forms of terror, as of
‘fiery flying serpents,’ entwining his temples and
thence shooting upward, hissing and protruding
their forked tongues, and lashing the air with
their wings and tails of flame; and then, again,
they subsided as before into the form of gracefully-curling
ostrich plumes; meanwhile he kept
opening his terrific jaws, from which issued a
thin blue luminous vapor, as if in act to speak,
but uttered no audible sound, except that every
now and then he would wring his huge hands,
which appeared to be webbed to the second
joint of the fingers, like the feet of a water
fowl, and furnished with long, crooked nails
like an eagle’s claws, and utter a wailing shriek
so like the cry of a drowning man, that it nearly
drove me mad to hear it, and seemed to
freeze my very blood in my veins. Whether
old Bitts, the quarter-master, had really heard
me quote the words of Trinculo, or whether, as
all things seem to work by supernatural influences
in dreams, he had divined my question
by intuition, I know not, but he answered me
at once.

“‘No, sir; believe an old sailor, that ‘ere
critter is neither man nor fish; it is somebody
far more terrible-like, and one that few living
sailors have ever set eyes on, though, mayhap,
I may have seen him before; mayhap, d’ye see,
I can’t tell when nor where, nor whether it
were sleeping or waking; howsomedever, be
that as it will, I knows him well enough, for
sure that ‘ere’s old Davy himself—old Davy
Jones—he’s come for some poor fellow’s soul
on board this here ship; and if you wants to[Pg 33]
get rid of him, you’d better go down at once,
and call the captain up, that he may tell him
to take what he wants and be off; for, till
that’s done, he’ll keep alongside the ship, and
if he’s kept too long waiting, there’s no saying
but he may send a hurricane which may sweep
the Old Lucifer and all her officers and crew,
away down into his locker.’

“This hint was no sooner given, than I
thought I went down into the captain’s cabin,
where I found Captain Dure seated at the cabin-table,
just under the swinging lamp, as pale as
death, and trembling from head to foot like an
aspen-leaf.

“‘Please, sir,’ I said, touching my hat, as in
duty bound, ‘Davy Jones has come alongside,
and is waiting for somebody’s soul; will you
please to come on deck, and tell him to take
what he wants?’

“‘I know it,’ said the captain, who seemed
utterly unnerved with terror, while the presence
of the unearthly visitant seemed to

“‘I had a glimpse of him,’ continued he,
‘out of the quarter-gallery window, and that’s
enough for me. Let the officer of the watch,
or the first lieutenant, tell him to take what he
wants, and get rid of him.’

“Now, it seemed to me in my dream that I
was dreadfully annoyed at the conduct of the
captain in shrinking in such a dastardly manner
from his duty; for, from the moment that Bitts
had informed me who the stranger was and
what he required, I had gone down and reported
his advent to the skipper, with as much
coolness and unconcern as I should have done
the coming alongside of the admiral or any
other great personage, and all my terror seemed,
for the time, to have vanished as soon as the
strange vision became connected with matters
of routine or ship’s duty. I, therefore, addressed
the captain again, as it seemed to me, in a tone
more authoritative than respectful: ‘But, sir,
you must come on deck; for old Bill Bitts says
that Davy Jones will hearken to nobody but
the captain or commander of the ship for the
time being, and he knows Davy of old; and
says, that if you don’t come up on deck soon and
let him go, the old fellow will send a hurricane
that will blow the Old Lucifer out of the water,
and that we shall find ourselves all, men and
officers, down in Davy Jones’s locker before you
can say Jack Robinson. And I can tell you,
sir, that the sky looks very ugly to windward.’

“‘Well, Ralph, my boy!’ said the captain,
apparently quite convinced by my eloquent
speech, which seemed to go down capitally in
my dream, though I guess I should soon be
looking out for squalls at the main-top-gallant-mast
head, if I were to venture to address such
a cavalier harangue to the skipper in waking
earnest. ‘Well, Ralph, my boy! give me your
arm, and we’ll go on deck, and give old Davy
his due, since it must be so.’ And with my
assistance the captain mounted the companion-ladder,
still trembling in every limb.

“As soon as we came on deck, I led him
over to the lee side of the quarter-deck, and
begged him to mount the carronade slide, and
give his unwelcome visitor the congé d’élire, for
which he seemed waiting, still bowing his head,
waving his fiery plumes, and mopping and
mowing, and showing his treble row of teeth,
as before. At the sight of the frightful demon,
the captain seemed more dead than alive, and
ready to fall from the gun-carriage, on which
I was obliged to support him; he, however,
plucked up courage to shriek out, in a voice
that trembled with agitation, ‘Whoever, or
whatever you are, take what you want, and
begone;’ and having said so, he sank powerless
into my arms; upon which the creature uttered
one of its strange, thrilling shrieks as of a
drowning man, but which seemed mingled with
a sort of shrill, demoniac laughter, and disappeared
below the waves—the waving plumes
of his singular head-gear flashing up half-mast
high as he sank out of sight. At the same
moment, my eyes were somehow mysteriously
directed from it, and I saw Jacob Fell, the
forecastle-man, fall dead into the arms of one
of his watch-mates, he, whom we call Cadaverous
Jack, and whom you christened the Ancient
Mariner, because you said he went about
his duty looking so miserable, holding his head
down on one side, as if he always felt the
weight of the murdered albatross hanging about
his neck. Immediately a heavy squall threw
the ship on her beam-ends, and I awoke”—which
was the singular dream related to me
by my quondam friend and shipmate, with a
gravity quite unusual with him, except when
he wanted to play upon the credulity of some
of us youngsters, when he used to assume the
gravest possible countenance, though I could
always, in these cases, discern the lurking devil
in his eyes. In this case, however, I could discover
no such appearance of fun and frolic; his
looks were, on the contrary, perfectly serious,
and even allied to sadness, in spite of the bravado
with which he had assumed his usual
careless levity of manner in certain parts of
his narration. I determined, however, not to
let him have the laugh against me, and therefore
said, “Come, come, Jemmy, you should
tell that dream to the marines; the sailors
can’t bolt it; it’s rather too tough. We all of us
know that you are always dreaming, but you
can’t catch old birds with such chaff. I am
too old a sea-dog, and have sailed over too
many leagues of blue water to bite at such
gammon.” I prided myself much on being
Ralph’s senior in the service by a couple of
years or so, and felt indignant that he should
think of treating me as a youngster, because he
had about the same advantage of me in age.
He, however, affirmed, in the most solemn manner,
that it was an actual bonâ-fide dream, and[Pg 34]
that it had been reiterated on his falling asleep
again, though in broken and disjointed patches,
sometimes one part, sometimes another, of the
previous vision being presented to his sleepy
fancy; but there was always this horrible merman,
with his shark’s jaws and his flaming
tiara, and poor Jacob Fell lying dead in his
messmate’s arms. But methinks I hear some
nautical reader exclaim, “All stuff!” who ever
heard of two reefers telling their dreams, and
chattering on the sacred precincts of the quarter-deck
of one of her Majesty’s frigates, like a
guinea-pig and an embryo cadet on the quarter-deck
of a Bengal trader? Pardon, my noble
sea-hossifer, but you must remember that the
Old Lucifer was not the crack frigate—not the
Eos, six-and-thirty, but only a small frigate;
and that, although she was blessed with a real
martinet of a first-lieutenant, yet, in point of
discipline, she was like most jackass frigates
and sloops of war, et hoc genus omne, little better
than a privateer; besides, our Portuguese
supernumerary lieutenant was the officer of
the watch, and Ralph had completely got the
weather-gage of him, and could do what he
liked with the “pavior.” However, the dream
was told me by Ralph nearly in the very words
in which I have given it, though, perhaps, not
all on deck, for the subject was renewed over
our allowance of grog in the midshipmen’s
berth after dinner, for nothing could drive it
out of Rattlin’s head, and he was all that day
singularly silent and distrait on all other subjects.
That evening I had the first dog-watch;
and when Rattlin came on deck at six o’clock
to relieve me, the sun was setting in a red and
angry-looking sky, and there was every symptom
of a squally night.

“Well, Percy,” he said, “this sunset reminds
me of my dream. I really think old
Davy will be among us before my watch is
out.”

“Very well, Jemmy, I’ll come on deck at
seven bells and see,” I replied, as I ran down
the companion for an hour’s snooze, for, as my
nautical readers will be aware, I had the middle
watch. Mindful of my promise, as soon as I
heard seven bells struck, I roused myself from
the locker on which I had stretched myself, and
went on deck, and I was immediately struck
with the perfect coincidence of the weather, and
all the accessories to those described by Rattlin
in his dream. The ship had just been put
about, and was now close hauled on the starboard
tack; the night pitch dark, the breeze
freshening from the northeast, and the sea
beginning to assume that luminous appearance
so frequently observable under a dark sky and
with a fresh breeze, but which, though generally
attributed to myriads of luminous animalculæ,
has never yet been fully and satisfactorily accounted
for. I joined my friend Rattlin, and
said to him, in a low tone, “This looks, indeed,
like your dream.”

“Yes,” he answered, looking very pale and
nervous; “it does, indeed. I don’t know what
to make of it. Davy Jones will certainly lay
hold of some of us to-night.”

At this moment the first-lieutenant came on
deck, followed by the captain, whose sallow
countenance, as he stood abaft the binnacle,
and the light fell on his face, looked rather
more ghastly than usual.

“I think, Mr. Silva,” said the former, addressing
the officer of the watch, “we had better
take another reef in the topsails; it looks
very squally to windward; it’s drawing near to
eight bells, so we’ll turn the hands up at once.”

“Mr. Rattlin,” said Silva, “all hands reef
topsails.”

“Boatswain’s-mate,” bawled out Rattlin,
going forward on to the weather gangway,
“turn the hands up to reef topsails.”

“Ay, ay, sir;” and immediately his silver
call was between his lips, and after blowing a
shrill prelude, his hoarse voice was heard proclaiming,
“All hands reef topsails, ahoy,”
which was re-echoed from the main-deck by the
call and voice of the boatswain’s-mate of the
watch below, and, finally, by those of the boatswain
himself, as the men came tumbling up
the fore and main hatchways, and were soon
seen scampering up the rigging, or making the
best of their way to their various stations. In
less than five minutes the topsails were double-reefed,
and the ship again dashing the spray
from her bows. It being now so near the time
for relieving the watch, the crew, with the exception
of the idlers, all remained on deck, and
the topmen scattered in groups about the gangways
and forecastle.

All at once the sky grew blacker than before,
the breeze freshened, and the surface of the sea
became like one sheet of pale blue and white
flame.

“Now, Careless,” whispered Rattlin, actually
trembling with excitement, “my dream to the
life!”

The words had scarcely passed his lips,
when such a shriek as I never heard before or
since, seemed to come out of the very depths of
the ocean, close under the ship’s counter on the
lee quarter. Every one rushed to the lee gangway,
or jumped on the quarter-deck guns, to
look in the direction from whence the sound
came; but nothing could be seen. Once more
that doleful cry arose, and it seemed now
rather more distant from the ship, and then it
ceased forever.

“A man overboard!” cried the first lieutenant,
who seemed the first to recover his
senses, seizing a grating of the companion-hatchway,
and flinging it over the lee bulwark,
while the lieutenant of the watch did the
same with its fellow. “Down with helm, and
heave her all aback—let go the lee braces—lay
the main-topsail to the mast—square away the
after-yards, my boys—lower the jolly-boat—jump
into her, some of ye, and cast off her fastenings.”

This latter command had, however, been
obeyed ere it was issued, for the captain of the[Pg 35]
mizen-top and myself had jumped into the
boat, where we were soon joined by three other
mizen-top-men, and had her all clear for lowering.
Two other seamen stood with the boat’s
tackle-falls in their hands.

“Lower away,” cried I; and down we went.

During her descent, I had shipped the rudder,
and we were soon pulling away to leeward.
In vain we pulled about for more than an hour
in the short, tumbling sea, which scintillated as
it broke around us, and shed a ghastly hue on
our anxious countenances, while the

from the blades of our oars at every dip as
they rose again from the water. At length
the stentorian voice of the first-lieutenant
hailed us to come on board, and we gave
up our hopeless search, bringing with us nothing
but one of the gratings and the life-buoy,
which had been thrown overboard to support
the drowning man, had he been fortunate
enough to lay hold on one or the other of them.
Upon passing the word forward to inquire
whether any of the ship’s company were missing,
it was found that Jacob Fell, the forecastle-man,
had not been seen since he had laid
out with one of his watch-mates to stow the
jib, which was hauled down when the topsails
were reefed; the other man had left him out on
the jib-boom, whence he must have fallen overboard;
and it was supposed, from his thrilling
and unearthly shriek, that he had been seized
by a shark, as that part of the Carribean Sea is
peculiarly infested by those voracious creatures;
and thus was most singularly accomplished my
shipmate Rattlin’s dream.

[From Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal.]

LETTERS AND LETTER WRITING.

Neither history nor tradition tells us aught
of the first letter—who was its writer, and
on what occasion; how it was transmitted, or
in what manner answered. The Chinese, the
Hindoo, and the Scandinavian mythologies had
each tales regarding the inventors of writing,
and the rest of those that by pre-eminence may be
called human arts; but concerning the beginner
of mankind’s epistolary correspondence, neither
they nor the classic poets—who by the way,
volunteered many an ingenious story on subjects
far less important—have given us the least account.

Pope says:

The poet evidently refers to the letter-writing
art, and it may be so, for aught we can tell;
but with all submission to his superior knowledge,
banished lovers and captive maids have
rarely been the transmitters of such useful inventions.
Certainly, whoever first commenced
letter-writing, the world has been long his debtor.
It is long since the Samaritans wrote a letter
against the builders of Jerusalem to Artaxerxes,
and it may be observed that the said letter is
the earliest epistle mentioned in any history.
Older communications appear to have been
always verbal, by means of heralds and messengers.
Homer, in his account of all the news
received and sent between the Greeks and Trojans,
never refers to a single letter. The scribe’s
occupation was not altogether unknown in those
days, but it must have been brought to considerable
perfection before efforts in the epistolary
style were made. That ancient language of
picture and symbol, in which Egypt expressed
her wisdom, was undoubtedly the earliest mode
of writing; but, however, calculated to preserve
the memory of great historical events amid the
daily life, and toil, and changes of nations, it
was but poorly fitted for the purpose of correspondence.
How could compliments or insinuations
be conveyed by such an autograph? Letters
must have been brief and scanty in the
hieroglyphic times; yet doubtless not without
some representations, for the unalphabeted of
mankind have combined to hold mutual intelligence
by many a sign and emblem, especially
in those affairs designated of the heart, as they
above all others contribute to ingenuity. Hence
came the Eastern language of flowers, which,
with Oriental literature and mythology, is now
partially known over the civilized world. In
its native clime this natural alphabet is said to
be so distinctly understood, that the most minute
intimations are expressed by it; but the more
frank and practical courtship of Europe has
always preferred the pen as its channel of communication,
which, besides its greater power of
enlargement, prevents those mistakes into which
the imperfectly-initiated are apt to fall with
flowers. For instance, there is a story of a
British officer in Andalusia who, having made
a deep impression on the heart of a certain alcaide’s
daughter, in one of the small old towns
of that half-Moorish province, and receiving
from her one morning a bouquet, the significance
of which was—”My mother is in the way now,
but come to visit me in the twilight,” supposed
in his ignorance, and perhaps presumption, that
he was invited to an immediate appointment:
whereupon he hurried to the house, just in time
to meet the venerable signora, when the lady of
his heart boxed his ears with her own fair hands,
and vowed she would never again send flowers
to a stupid Englishman.

In fine contrast to this sample of misunderstanding
stands forth the dexterity with which
an Irish serving-maid contrived to signify, by
symbols of her own invention, her pleasure, on
a still more trying occasion. Poor Kitty, though
a belle in her class, could neither read nor write;
but her mistress’s grown-up daughter undertook,
as a labor of love, to carry on a correspondence
between her and a certain hedge schoolmaster
in the neighborhood, who laid siege to Kitty’s
heart and hand on account of a small deposit
in the savings’ bank, and that proverbial attraction
which learned men are said to find in
rather illiterate ladies. The schoolmaster was,[Pg 36]
however, providently desirous of fixing on the
mind of his future partner an impression of his
own superiority sufficient to outlast the wear
and tear of married life, and therefore wooed
chiefly by long and learned letters, to which
Kitty responded in her best style, leaving to
her volunteer secretary what she called “the
grammar” of her replies; besides declaring, with
many hardly-complimentary observations on the
schoolmaster’s person and manners, that she
had not the slightest interest in the affair, but
only, in her own words, “to keep up the
craythur’s heart.” Thus the courtship had
proceeded prosperously through all the usual
stages, when at length the question, par excellence,
was popped (of course on paper). Kitty
heard that epistle read with wonted disdain;
but, alas, for human confidence! there was
something in her answer with which she could
not trust the writer of so many; for after all
her scorn, Kitty intended to say, “Yes,” and
her mode of doing so merits commemoration.
In solitude that evening, beside the kitchen
hearth, she sketched on a sheet of white paper,
with the help of a burned stick, a rude representation
of a human eye, and inclosing a small
quantity of wool, dispatched it next morning to
the impatient swain by the hand of his head
scholar—those primitive tokens expressing to
Kitty’s mind the important words, “I will,”
which the teacher, strange to say, understood
in the same sense; and their wedding took place,
to the unqualified amazement of Kitty’s amanuensis.
Epistolary forms and fashions have had
their mutations like all other human things.
The old Eastern mode of securing letters was
by folding them in the shape of a roll, and
winding round them a thin cord, generally of
silk, as the luxury of letters was known only
to the rich. In the case of billets-doux—for
Eastern lovers did not always speak by flowers
when the pen was at their command—enthusiastic
ladies sometimes substituted those long
silken strings which, from time immemorial, the
Oriental women have worn in their hair—a proceeding
which was understood to indicate the
deepest shade of devotedness.

The mythic importance attached to these
hair-strings must, indeed, have been great, as
history records that a certain prince, whose
dominions were threatened by Mithridates, the
great king of Pontus—like other great men, a
troublesome neighbor in his day—sent the latter
a submissive epistle, offering homage and tribute,
and bound with the hair-strings of his nineteen
wives, to signify that he and his were entirely
at the monarch’s service. The custom
of securing letters by cords came through the
Greek empire into Europe in the middle ages;
but the use of the seal seems still earlier, as it
is mentioned in Old Testament history. Ancient
writers speak of it as an Egyptian Invention,
together with the signet-ring, so indispensable
throughout the classic world, and regarded
as the special appendage of sovereignty in the
feudal times.

Of all the letters the Egyptians wrote on their
papyrus, no specimens now remain, except perhaps
those scrolls in the hands of mummies,
referred to by early Christian authors as epistles
sent to deceased friends by those unreturning
messengers; and they, it may be presumed,
were at the best but formal letters, since no
reply was ever expected. The classic formula
for correspondence, “Augustus to Julius, greeting,”
is now preserved only in letters-patent, or
similar documents. That brief and unvarying
style has long been superseded in every language
of Europe by a graduated series of endearing
terms, rising with the temperature of attachment,
from “Dear Sir,” or “Madam,” to a limit scarcely
assignable, but it lies somewhere near “Adored
Thomas” or “Margery.”

Masters of the fine arts as they were, those
ancient nations came far short of the moderns
in that of letter-writing. The few specimens of
their correspondence that have reached us are
either on matters of public business, or dry and
dignified epistles from one great man to another,
with little life and less gossip in them. It is
probable that their practice was somewhat
limited, as the facilities of the post-office were
unknown to Greece and Rome—the entire
agency of modern communication being to the
classic world represented only by the post or
courier, who formed part of the retinue of every
wealthy family. The method of writing in the
third person, so suitable for heavy business or
ceremony, is evidently a classical bequest. It
does not appear to have been practiced in England
till about the beginning of the eighteenth
century, though it was early in use among the
continental nations. Louis XIV. used to say,
it was the only style in which a prince should
permit himself to write; and in the far East,
where it had been in still older repute, the
Chinese informed his missionaries that ever
since they had been taught manners by the
Emperor Tae Sing, no inferior would presume
to address a man of rank in any other form,
especially as a law of the said emperor had appointed
twenty blows of the bamboo for that
infraction of plebeian duty.

Of all human writings, letters have been preserved
in the smallest proportion. How few of
those which the best-informed actors in great
events or revolutions must have written, have
been copied by elder historians or biographers!
Such documents are, by their nature, at once
the least accessible and the most liable to destruction;
private interests, feelings, and fears,
keep watch against their publication; but even
when these were taken out of the way, it is to
be feared that the narrow-minded habit of overlooking
all their wisdom deemed minute, which
has made the chronicles of nations so scanty,
and many a life in two volumes such dull reading,
also induced learned compilers to neglect,
as beneath their search, the old letters bundled
up in dusty chest or corner, till they served a
succeeding generation for waste paper. Such
mistakes have occasioned heavy losses to literature.[Pg 37]
Time leaves no witnesses in the matters
of history and character equal to these. How
many a disputed tale, on which party controversy
has raged, and laborious volumes have
been written, would the preservation of one
authentic note have set at rest forever?

The practical learning of our times, in its
search after confirmation and detail, amply
recognizes the importance of old letters; and
good service has been done to both history and
moral philosophy by those who have given them
to the press from state-paper office and family
bureau. In such collections one sees the world’s
talked-of-and-storied people as they were in
private business, in social relations, and in
what might be justly designated the status of
their souls. In spite of the proverbial truisms,
that paper never refuses ink, and falsehood can
be written as well as spoken, the correspondence
of every man contains an actual portrait of the
writer’s mind, visible through a thousand disguises,
and bearing the same relation to the inward
man that a correct picture bears to the
living face; without change or motion, indeed,
but telling the beholder of both, and indicating
what direction they are likely to take.

The sayings of wits and the doing of oddities
long survive them in the memory of their generation—the
actions of public men live in history,
and the genius of authors in their works;
but in every case the individual, him or herself,
lives in letters. One who carried this idea still
farther, once called letter-writing the Daguerreotype
of mind—ever leaving on the paper its
true likeness, according to the light in which it
stands for the time; and he added, like the sun’s
painting, apt to be most correct in the less
pleasant lines and lineaments. Unluckily this
mental portraiture, after the fashion of other
matters, seems less perceptible to the most interested
parties. Many an unconcerned reader
can at this day trace in Swift’s epistles the self-care
and worship which neither Stella nor Vanessa
could have seen without a change in their
histories.

Cardinal Mazarin, however, used to say that
an ordinary gentleman might deceive in a series
of interviews, but only a complete tactician in
one of letters; “that is,” observed his eminence,
“if people don’t deceive themselves.”
The cardinal’s statement strikingly recalls, if it
does not explain, a contemporary remark, that
the most successful courtships, in the fullest
sense of that word, were carried on with the
help of secret proxies in the corresponding department.
The Count de Lauson, whose days,
even to a good old age, were equally divided
between the Bastile and the above-mentioned
pursuit, in which he must have been rather at
home—for though a poor gentleman, with little
pretensions to family, still less to fortune, and
no talents that the world gave him credit for,
he contrived in his youth to marry a princess
of the blood-royal of France, who had refused
half the kings of Europe, and been an Amazon
in the war of the Frondé; and in his age a
wealthy court belle—this Count de Lauson declared
that he could never have succeeded in
his endeavors after high matches but for a certain
professional letter-writer of Versailles, on
whose death he is said to have poured forth unfeigned
lamentations in the presence of his last
lady. Letters always appear to have been peculiarly
powerful in the count’s country. Madame
de Genlis, whose “Tales of the Castle,”
and “Knights of the Swan” delighted at least
the juveniles of a now-departing generation,
was believed to have made a complete conquest,
even before first sight, of the nobleman whose
name she bears, by a single letter, addressed to
a lady at whose house he was an admiring
visitor, when she unadvisedly showed him the
epistle. An anxiously-sought introduction and
a speedy marriage followed; but the scandal-mongers
of the period averred that their separation,
which took place some years after, was
owing, among other circumstances, to an anonymous
letter received by the baron himself.

Frederick the Great used to call the French
the first letter-writers of Europe, and it is probable
that their national turn for clever gossip
gives to their epistles a sort of general interest,
for in no other country have letters formed so
large a portion of published literature. This
was particularly true in Frederick’s own age.
Never did a death or a quarrel take place—and
the latter was not rare among the savants of
that period—but comfort or satisfaction was
sought in the immediate publication of every
scrap of correspondence, to the manifold increase
of disputes and heartburnings. Some of
the most amusing volumes extant were thus
given to the world; and Madame Dunoyer’s,
though scarcely of that description, must not be
forgotten from the tale of its origin. When
Voltaire was a young attaché to the French
embassy at the Hague, with no reputation but
that of being rather unmanageable by his family
and confessor, he was on billet-doux terms, it
seems, with madame’s daughter; but madame
found out that he was poor, or something like
it, for in no other respect was the lady scrupulous.
Her veto was therefore laid on the correspondence,
which nevertheless survived under
interdict for some time, till Voltaire left the
embassy, and it died of itself; for he wrote the
“Oedipe,” became talked of by all Paris, and
noticed by the Marquis de Vellers. Gradually
the man grew great in the eyes of his generation,
his fame as a poet and philosopher filled
all Europe, not forgetting the Hague; and when
it had reached the zenith, Madame Dunoyer
collected his letters to her daughter, which remained
in her custody, the receiver being by
this time married, and published them at her
own expense in a handsomely-bound volume.
Whether to be revenged on fortune for permitting
her to miss so notable a son-in-law, or on
him for obeying her commands, it is now impossible
to determine, but her book served to
show the world that the early billets-doux of a[Pg 38]
great genius might be just as milk-and-watery
as those of common people.

Indeed letter-publishing seems to have been
quite the rage in the eighteenth century. The
Secretary La Beaumelle stole all Madame de
Maintenon’s letters to her brother, setting forth
her difficulties in humoring Louis XIV., and
printed them at Copenhagen. Some copies
were obligingly forwarded to Versailles, but
madame assured the king they were beneath his
royal notice, which, being confirmed by his confessor,
was of course believed; but the transaction
looks like retributive justice on her well-known
practice of keeping sundry post-office
clerks in pay to furnish a copy of every letter
sent or received by the principal persons at
court, not excepting even the royal family.
Among these were copied the celebrated letters
of the Dauphiness Charlotte Elizabeth of Bavaria,
which now, in good plain print, present
to all readers of taste in that department a
complete chronicle of all the scandal, gossip,
and follies of Versailles; and that princess,
whose pride stood so high on her family quarterings,
was gravely rebuked, and obliged to ask
pardon seven years after for certain uncomplimentary
passages in her epistles regarding madame
when she first came to court as nursery
governess to the king’s children.

Dangerous approvers have old letters been
from throne to cottage. Many a specious statement,
many a fair profession, ay, and many a
promising friendship, have they shaken down.
Readers, have a care of your deposits in the
post-office; they are pledges given to time. It
is strange, though true, how few historical
characters are benefited by the publication of
their letters, surviving, as such things do, contemporary
interests and prejudices, as well as
personal influence.

There must be something of the salt that will
not lose its savor there to make them serve the
writers in the eyes of posterity. What strange
confidence the age of hoop and periwig put in
letter-writing! Divines published their volumes
of controversy or pious exhortation, made
up of epistles to imaginary friends. Mrs. Chapone’s
letters to her niece nourished the wisdom
of British belles; while Lord Chesterfield’s to
his son were the glass of fashion for their brothers;
and Madame de Sévigné’s to her daughter,
written expressly for publication, afforded models
for the wit, elegance, and sentiment of every
circle wherein her language was spoken. The
epistolary style’s inherent power of characterization
naturally recommended it in the construction
of their novels, and many a tale of
fame and fashion in its day, besides “La
Nouvelle Heloise,” and “Sir Charles Grandison,”
was ingeniously composed of presumed
correspondence.

Chinese literature is said to possess numerous
fictions in that form; but it is not to be regretted
that modern novelists, whose name is
more than legion, pass it by in favor of direct
narrative; for, under the best arrangement, a
number of letters can give but a series of views,
telling the principals’ tale in a broken, sketchy
fashion, and leaving little room for the fortunes
of second-rate people, who are not always the
lowest company in the novel. Tours and travels
tell pleasantly in letters, supposing of course
the letters to be well written; for some minds
have such a wondrous affinity for the commonplace,
that the most important event or exciting
scene sinks to the every-day level under
their pen.

Sir Andrew Mitchell, who was British embassador
to Prussia during the seven years’ war,
writes from the camp before Prague concerning
that great battle which turned the scale of
power in Germany, and served Europe to talk
of till the French Revolution, in a style, but for
quotations from the bulletin, suitable to the
election of some civic alderman; and a less
known traveler, writing to a friend of the glare
of Moscow’s burning, which he saw from a
Russian country-house, reddening the northern
night, describes it as “a very impressive circumstance,
calculated to make one guard against
fire.”

It has been remarked that, as a general rule,
poets write the best, and schoolmasters the worst
letters. That the former, in common with literary
men of any order, should be at least interesting
correspondents, seems probable; but
why the instructors of youth should be generally
stricken with deficiency in letter-writing is not
so easy of explanation.

Some one has also observed that, independent
of mental gifts and graces, characters somewhat
cold and frivolous generally write the most
finished letters, and instanced Horace Walpole,
whose published epistles even in our distant day
command a degree of attention never to be
claimed by those of his superior contemporaries—the
highly-gifted Burke, and the profound
Johnson. It may be that the court gossip in
and upon which Horace lived has done much
for the letters from Strawberry Hill, but the
vein must have been there; and the abilities
that shine in the world of action or of letters,
the conversational talents or worthiness of soul,
do not make the cleverest correspondent.

Count Stadion, prime minister to the Elector
of Mayence, according to Goethe, hit on an
easy method of making an impression by letters.
He obliged his secretary, Laroche, to
practice his handwriting, which, it appears, he
did with considerable success; and, says the
poet in his own memoirs, being “passionately
attached to a lady of rank and talent, if he
stopped in her society till late at night, his
secretary was, in the mean time, sitting at
home, and hammering out the most ardent
love-letters; the count chose one of these, and
sent it that very night to his beloved, who was
thus necessarily convinced of the inextinguishable
fire of her passionate adorer.”

“Hélas!” as Madame d’Epigny remarked,
when turning over the printed epistles of a
deceased friend, “one can never guess how little[Pg 39]
truth the post brings one;” but from the following
tradition, it would seem the less the
better. Among the old-world stories of Germany
are many regarding a fairy chief or king,
known from rustic times as Number Nip, or
Count-the-Turnips. One of his pranks was
played in an ancient inn of Heidelberg, where,
on a December night, he mixed the wine with
a certain essence distilled from the flowers of
Elfland, which had the effect of making all who
tasted it tell nothing but truth with either
tongue or pen till the morning. The series of
quarrels which took place in consequence round
the kitchen fire belong not to the present subject;
but in the red parlor there sat, all from
Vienna, a poet, a student, a merchant, and a
priest. After supper, each of these remembered
that he had a letter to write—the poet to his
mistress, the merchant to his wife, the priest to
the bishop of his diocese, and the student to his
bachelor uncle, Herr Weisser of Leopoldstadt,
who had long declared him his heir. Somehow
next morning they were all at the post-office
beseeching their letters back; but the mail had
been dispatched, and the tale records how, after
that evening’s correspondence, the poet’s liege
lady dismissed him, the merchant and his wife
were divorced, the priest never obtained preferment,
and none of the letters were answered
except the student’s, whom Herr Weisser complimented
on having turned out such a prudent,
sensible young man, but hoped he wouldn’t feel
disappointed, as himself intended to marry immediately.

The most curiously-characteristic letters now
made public property are those of Sir Walter
Raleigh to Queen Elizabeth, written from the
Tower (to which the historian of the world was
committed for wedding without her majesty’s
permission), and in the highest tone of desperation
that a banished lover could assume; the
correspondence between Frederick of Prussia
and Voltaire, then of France, after what was
called their reconciliation, beginning with the
grandest compliments, and ending with reminiscences
of quite another kind, particularly that
from the royal pen, which opens with, “You,
who from the heights of philosophy look down
on the weakness and follies of mankind,” and
concludes with the charge of appropriating
candle-ends; and the epistles of Rousseau during
his residence in England, which alternate between
discoveries of black conspiracies against
his life and fame, and threats of adjournment
to the workhouse, if his friends would not assist
him to live in a better style than most country
gentlemen of the period.

There are printed samples with whose writers
fame has been busy; but who can say what
curiosities of letter-writing daily mingle with
the mass that pours through the London Post-Office?
Can it be this continual custody and
superintendence of so large a share of their
fellow-creatures’ wisdom, fortunes, and folly,
that endows post-office functionaries in every
quarter with such an amount of proverbial
crustiness, if the word be admissible? Do they,
from the nature of their business, know too
much about the public to think them worth
civility, so that nobody has yet discovered a
very polite postmaster or man? A strange
life the latter leads in our great cities. The
truest representative of destiny seems his scarlet
coat, seen far through street and lane: at one
door he leaves the news of failure and ruin, and
at another the intelligence of a legacy. Here
his message is the death of a friend, while to
the next neighbor he brings tidings of one long
absent, or the increase of kindred; but without
care or knowledge of their import, he leaves his
letters at house after house, and goes his way
like a servant of time and fortune, as he is, to
return again, it may be, with far different news,
as their tireless wheels move on. Are there
any that have never watched for his coming?
The dwellers in palaces and garrets, large families,
and solitary lodgers, alike look out for
him with anxious hope or fear. Strange it is
for one to read over those letters so watched
and waited for, when years have passed over
since their date, and the days of the business,
the friendship, or perhaps the wooing, to which
they belong are numbered and finished!

How has the world without and within been
altered to the correspondents since they were
written? Has success or ill fortune attended
the speculations by which they set such store?
What have been their effects on outward circumstances,
and through that certain channel,
on the men? Has the love been forgotten?
Have the friends become strange or enemies?
Have some of them passed to the land whose
inhabitants send back no letters? And how
have their places been filled? Truly, if evidence
were ever wanting regarding the uncertainty of
all that rests on earth, it might be found in a
packet of old letters.

A CHAPTER ON SHAWLS.

We scarcely know a truer test of a gentlewoman’s
taste in dress than her selection
of a shawl, and her manner of wearing it: and
yet if the truth must be owned, it is the test
from which few Englishwomen come with triumph.
Generally speaking, the shawl is not
their forte, in fact they are rather afraid of it.
They acknowledge its comfort and convenience
for the open carriage, or the sea-side promenade,
but rarely recognize it for what it is, a garment
capable of appearing the most feminine and
graceful in the world. They are too often
oppressed by a heap of false notions on the
subject; have somehow an idea that a shawl is
“old” or “dowdy;” and yet have a dim comprehension
that the costly shawls which they
more frequently hear of than see, must have
some unimagined merits to prove an excuse for
their price.

The Frenchwoman, on the contrary, has
traditions about “Cashmeres,” and remembers
no blank of ignorance on the subject. She[Pg 40]
played at dressing her doll with one, you may be
sure; chronicled as an epoch in her life, her
first possession of the real thing; holds it as
precious as a diamond, and as something to
which appertains the same sort of intrinsic
value; and shrugs her shoulders with compassionate
contempt at an Englishwoman’s
ignorant indifference on this subject—just as a
lover of olives pities the coarse palate which
rejects them. Truly the taste for the shawl is
a little inherent, and a great deal acquired and
cultivated; as appreciation for the highest
attributes of every department of art ever must
be, from a relish for Canova’s chefs-d’œuvres
down to a relish for M. Soyer’s dishes.

Of course among those we are addressing,
there is a minority who do know, and duly
esteem a beautiful shawl: perhaps, from the
possession of wealth, they have long been accustomed
to be surrounded by objects of rare
and exquisite fabric, and their practiced eyes
would be quick at detecting inferiority: perhaps
without great riches or the personal possession
of valuable attire, a fine taste may have been
cultivated by circumstances: and perhaps they
are Anglo-Indians, or the relatives and near
friends of Anglo-Indians, who know well a
“Cashmere,”—measuring every other shawl in
the world by and from it—and to whom the
word conjures up a host of memories half sunshine
and half shadow.

It was not until quite the close of the last
century, that Cashmeres were prized in Europe.
Travellers’ tales had mentioned them, it is true,
but that was before the locomotive age, and
when travelers were few, and traveling unspeakably
tedious; when soldiers went to India to
hold and increase their country’s territory;
when a few traders made princely fortunes; but
when every system of interchange was narrow
and exclusive, and people were taught to be
content with clumsy common wares, instead of
raising them to excellence by the spur of competition.
It is said that in the year 1787, the
embassadors of Tippoo Saib left behind them at
Paris a few Cashmere shawls—intended as
gracious presents we presume—but which were
regarded solely as curiosities, and not even
much esteemed in that capacity, for we learn
that they were employed as dressing-gowns,
and even used for carpeting! Not till after
Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt did they become
the rage; and a solid good resulted from
that campaign in the introduction of a fabric
destined to be the model of one of the most
famous manufactures of the French.

Madame Emile Gaudin, a lady of Greek
extraction and a reigning beauty, is reputed to
have first worn a Cashmere shawl in Paris;
but if we know any thing of the “Consul’s
Wife,” or the “Empress Josephine,” she was
not very far behind, for her love of Cashmeres
was next to her love of flowers, as more than
one anecdote might be called in to testify. What
scenes this history of an inanimate object conjures
up to the mind’s eye. These leaders of
fashion when the old century went out on the
young Republic of France, whose Master was
already found—who were they? The wives of
men who were working out the destiny of
Europe, guided by a chief who, be he judged
for good or evil, looms on the page of history in
giant proportions!

As we have said, the Cashmere shawl became
the rage. The farce of pretended equality in
France was acted out, and the curtain dropped
on it in preparation for quite a different tableau;
people no longer risked their lives by dressing
elegantly, and it was not now expected that the
soubrette, the blanchisseuse, or the poissonnière
should dress precisely the same as the lady of a
general officer. There was wealth, too, in the
land, and the enormous sums demanded for
these shawls were readily forthcoming. Sums
equivalent to two or three hundred pounds of
our money were commonly paid even for soiled
worn articles, which had done duty as turbans
to Mogul soldiers, or girded a Bayadere’s waist,
or been the sacerdotal garment of an idolatrous
priest—and had very frequently been thus used
by more than one generation. It is true, the
durability of the fabric and the lasting properties
of the dyes, permitted the cleansing of these
shawls with scarcely perceptible injury or deterioration,
but still it was only the intrinsic
merit of the thing, which could have overcome
the natural repugnance which the known or
suspected history of a Cashmere must in many
instances have occasioned.

The Levant traders had now large commissions,
and the result was that new shawls were
soon more easily procurable, but still bearing
an enormous price. This is readily accounted
for, and a brief description of the manufacture
of Indian shawls will show how it is that they
never can be cheap:—The wool of the Thibet
goat is the finest in the world, and for the best
shawls only the finest even of this wool is used.
The animals are shorn once a year, and a full-grown
goat only produces about eight ounces
of wool of this first quality. There is every
reason to suppose that the climate has very
much to do with the perfection of the animal,
for attempts to naturalize it elsewhere have all
more or less failed. The loom on which a
Cashmere shawl is woven is of the rudest and
most primitive description, the warp being supported
by two sticks, and the woof entirely
worked in by the human hand. This slow
laborious process permits a neatness and exactness
of finish beyond the power of any machinery
to rival; and when we take into account a
life-long practice in the art, and—remembering
the Hindoo “castes,” which usually limit a
family to the exercise of a single craft—in most
instances the family secrets and traditions which
have been preserved, we cease to wonder at the
perfection of the work. These Asiatic weavers,
temperate in their habits and readily contented,
receive a wage of from three-halfpence to twopence
a day; but if their wants more nearly
approximated to those of an European laborer,[Pg 41]
what would an Indian Cashmere be worth, when
we are informed that from thirty to forty men have
sometimes been employed from eighteen months
to two years in the manufacture of a single
shawl! There is something very kindling to
the imagination in the thought of these swarthy
weavers, attired perhaps in our Manchester calicoes,
laboring patiently for weeks and months
to produce a fabric worthy of rank and royalty,
without other than most vague or false ideas of
the scenes in which their work will be displayed.

The borders of these shawls are made in several
pieces, sometimes as many as from ten to
twenty, and are afterward sewn together to form
the pattern; and by the border an Indian shawl
may always be recognized from a French or
Paisley one, however close an imitation the
latter may appear. Every stitch of the border
of the Indian shawl being worked by the hand
is distinct in itself, and may be pulled out—though
it is not very easily detached—without
further injury to the fabric; whereas the shawl
made on a French or British loom has the border
formed in one piece, whence a long thread may
at any time be readily drawn. Indeed there is
no surer test by which a lady may know a
veritable Cashmere, than by examining the
border; but if she have a fine eye for color this
faculty will also assist her. The preparation
of the dyes which the Hindoos use is still a secret,
of which they are very chary, removing
their operations to a distance whenever they
have reason to dread inquisitive lookers on. But
the result in their fabrics is perceived in the peculiar
richness and clearness of their hues, and at
the same time absence of glare; the reds, blues,
and greens, reminding one more of the harmonious
tints of old stained glass than any thing else.

It must not, however, be supposed that in the
progressive nineteenth century, even this Asiatic
manufacture has remained stationary. Receiving
the impetus of fashion, the shawls of Cashmere
have become, within the last dozen years,
richer and more elaborate than ever; their richness
and elaboration of pattern necessitating
even a firmer and more substantial groundwork
than heretofore, but still the method of their
manufacture remains unchanged, as might be
expected from the conservatism inseparable from
semi-barbarism. London is now one of the
chief marts for Cashmeres. It may not be generally
known that London dealers send quantities
of shawls to France, America, Russia, and even
Turkey, a convincing proof of the enterprise of
British merchants. They supply many other
foreigners, especially finding a market among
them for the gold embroidered shawls, which are
frequently worn on state occasions at foreign
courts. The duty on Indian shawls is now only
about five per cent. Twice a year there are
public sales, to which dealers are invited by catalogues
sent to Paris and other continental
cities. One of the great merits of a Cashmere
seems that it is really never out of date; and
when, comparing even the old “pine” patterns
with the large long shawls, the rich borders of
which sweep in graceful flowing lines into the
very centre, we feel that they are still “of one
family,” and hold together—if the comparison
be not too fanciful—rich and poor, in right clannish
fashion.

Some of the most modern and most costly
Indian shawls resemble in pattern that of the
long French Cashmere, simply however because
the French have copied the Indian design. The
gold and silver thread employed for the embroidery
of Cashmere shawls is usually prepared
in the following manner; and the chief seat of
the manufacture is at Boorhampoor, a city of
the Deccan. A piece of the purest ore is beaten
into a cylindrical form about the size of a thick
reed, and then beaten out in length until it will
pass through an orifice the eighth of an inch in
diameter; it is drawn through still finer perforations
until it is reduced to the proportion of a
bobbin thread. Now a different plan is pursued;
the wire already produced is wound upon
several reels which work upon pivots, the ends
of the thread being passed through still finer
holes, and then affixed to a large reel which is
set rapidly in motion and still further attenuates
the threads. It is afterward flattened on an
anvil of highly polished steel, by a practiced
and dexterous workman; and by an ingenious
process, a silk thread is afterward plated, or
sheathed as it were by this minute wire. It is
asserted that if a lump of silver be gilt in the
first instance before being drawn into wire, it
will retain the gilding through all the subsequent
hard usage of hammering, winding, and drawing
to which it is subjected, coming out to the very
last a gilded thread. It is easy to understand that
gold and silver thread of this pure description,
unlike tinsel finery, it is not liable to tarnish.

There are few of our readers who can require
telling that China crape is made entirely of silk,
and that shawls manufactured of it are generally
costly in proportion to the richness of the pattern.
The foundation or ground of the shawls is chiefly
made at Nankin, and then sent to Canton to be
embroidered. The pattern is formed by two
“needlemen,” who work together, the one passing
the silk down, and the other from beneath
passing it up, while a third workman changes
the silk for them when necessary. Thus the
apparent marvel of equal neatness on both sides
is accounted for, by the explanation of this simple
method; but we have quite failed, from examination
of the work, to detect the process of
fastening on and off; with such mysterious
ingenuity is this needful operation performed.
China crape shawls have been very fashionable
of late years, and almost defying vulgar imitation,
are little likely to fall into disrepute.

[From Tait’s Magazine.]

A NIGHT OF TERROR IN A POLISH INN.

JOURNEY TO BRCZWEZMCISL.

I had but just quitted the university, and
was a mere stripling, when I received the
appointment of judge-commissary at a little[Pg 42]
town in New East Prussia, as the part of Poland
was termed which, during the partition of that
country, had fallen to the share of Prussia.

I will not weary the reader by giving any
lengthened account of my journey; the country
was but one flat throughout, the men mere
boors, the officials uncouth, the accommodation
execrable. Yet the people all seemed happy
enough. Man and beast have each their allotted
elements. The fish perishes when out of
water—the elegance of a boudoir would prove
fatal to a Polish Jew.

Well, to make my story short, I arrived one
evening, a little before sunset, at a place called,
I believe (but should be sorry to vouch for my
accuracy), Brczwezmcisl, a pleasant little town
enough. When I say pleasant, to be sure I
own that the streets were unpaved, the houses
begrimed with soot, and the natives not over
refined either in manners or person; but a man
who works in a coal-mine is pleasant, after his
fashion, even as the pet figurante of the day
after hers.

I had pictured to myself Brczwezmcisl, the
place where I was to enter upon my functions,
as far more formidable than I in fact found it,
and perhaps on that account I was now prepared
to term it pleasant. I remember that
the first time I tried to pronounce the name of the
place I very nearly brought on lock-jaw. Hence,
no doubt, my gloomy anticipations as to its
appearance. Names certainly do influence our
ideas to a most marvelous extent. Moreover,
what mainly contributed to enhance my secret
misgivings as to the town destined to enjoy
the benefit of my talents was the fact that I
had never yet been so far from home as to lose
sight of its church steeple. I had a tolerable
idea that my way did not lead me in the vicinity
of the Cannibal Islands, or of the lands
where men’s heads “do grow beneath their shoulders;”
but I was not without some apprehension,
as I journeyed on, of receiving an occasional
pistol-shot, or feeling the cold steel of a
stiletto between my ribs.

My heart throbbed violently as I caught the
first glimpse of Brczwezmcisl. It appeared, at
a distance, a vast plain, covered with mud-heaps.
But what mattered that to one of my
imaginative powers? There was my goal,
there my entering scene in life. Not a soul
did I know there, with the exception of an old
college acquaintance, named Burkhardt, who
had been but recently appointed collector of
taxes at Brczwezmcisl. I had apprised him of
my near advent, and requested him to provide
me with temporary lodgings. The nearer I
approached the town, the keener waxed my
esteem and friendship for Burkhardt, with whom
I had never been on terms of intimacy; indeed,
my mother enjoined me always to shun his
society, seeing that his reputation for steadiness
was not of the highest. But now I was
his till death. He was my only rallying point
in this wild Polish town; he was the sole plank
to which I could cling.

I am not of a superstitious character, but I
own to a certain belief in omens; and I had
settled in my mind that it would be a lucky
sign if the first person we met coming out of
the town gates should prove a young woman,
and the reverse if one of the other sex. As we
were about to enter the town a girl, to all appearance
comely and well-made, issued from
the gate. Damsel of happy augury! Fain
could I have quitted the cumbrous vehicle, and
cast my travel-worn frame prostrate at your
feet. I wiped my eye-glass that I might not
lose one of her features, but grave them for
ever in the tablets of my memory.

As she came nearer, I discovered to my dismay
that my Brczwezmcisl Venus was a thought
hideous. Slim she was, good sooth, but it was
the slimness of one wasted by disease! shape
and figure had she none. Her face was a perfect
surface, for some untoward accident had
deprived her of her nose; and had it not been
for the merest apology for lips, her head might
have been taken for the skull of a skeleton. As
we came yet nearer, I remarked that the fair
Pole was a warm patriot; for she put out her
tongue at me in derision of her nation’s oppressors,
whose countryman I was.

Under these happy auspices we entered the
town, and halted at the Post-office, newly decorated
with the Prussian eagle, which would
have shown to much greater advantage, in all
the glories of fresh paint, had not some patriotic
little street blackguards adorned it with a thick
coating of mud.

THE OLD STAROSTY.[9]

I asked the postmaster very politely where I
could find Mr. Tax-collector Burkhardt. In
order, I suppose, to convince me that even in
that remote corner of the globe officials were
true to those habits of courtesy and attention
for which they are so eminently distinguished,
he suffered me to repeat my question six times
ere he vouchsafed to inquire, in his gruffest
tones, what I wanted; a seventh time did I
reiterate my inquiry, and that, I flatter myself
with a degree of politeness that would have
done honor to the most finished courtier.

“In the old Starosty,” he growled out.

“Might I be permitted most respectfully to
inquire whereabout this same old Starosty may
be located?”

“I have no time. Peter show this person
the way.”

And away went Peter and I, while the postmaster,
who had no time to answer me, lolled
out of the window, with his pipe in his mouth,
watching us. Aha, my fine fellow, thought
I, just let me catch you in the hands of justice—whose
unworthy representative I have here
the honor to be—and I’ll make you rue the
day you dared sport your churlishness upon me.

Peter, the Polish tatterdemalion, who escorted[Pg 43]
me, understood and spoke so little German,
that our conversation was extremely limited.
His sallow face and sharp features rendered
him particularly unprepossessing.

“Tell me, my worthy friend,” I asked, as we
waded side by side through the mud, “do you
know Mr. Tax-collector Burkhardt?”

“The old Starosty.”

“Good; but what can I do in your old
Starosty?”

“Die!”

“God forbid! that does not at all chime in
with my arrangements.”

“Stone-dead; die!”

“Why, what have I done?”

“Prussian—no Pole.”

“I am a Prussian, certainly.”

“Know that.”

“What do you mean by dying then?”

“So, and so, and so;” and the fellow thrust
the air as though he clenched a dagger. He
then pointed to his heart, groaned, and rolled
his eyes in a manner awful to behold. I began
to feel rather uncomfortable, for Peter had
by no means the look of one beside himself;
besides, the understrappers at the post-office
are seldom recruited from a lunatic asylum.

“I think we are at cross purposes, my excellent
friend,” I at length resumed. “What do
you mean by die?”

“Kill!” and he gave me a wild sidelong
glance.

“How, kill?”

“When night comes.”

“When night comes—this very night? Your
wits are wool-gathering, sirrah!”

“Pole, yes; but no Prussian.”

I shook my head, and desisted from any further
attempt at conversation. We evidently
could not make each other out. And yet there
was fearful meaning in the scoundrel’s words.
I was well aware of the inveterate hatred felt
by the Poles toward the Prussians, and how it
had already led to fatal collisions between them.
What if the dunder-headed fellow had meant to
convey a warning to me? or perhaps he had
involuntarily betrayed the secret of a plot for
the general massacre of every Prussian. I mentally
resolved to divulge the whole to my friend
and fellow-countryman Burkhardt, as we arrived
at the so-termed Starosty. It was constructed
of stone, evidently of some antiquity,
and situate in a dull remote street. Ere we
reached it I observed how each passer-by cast a
sly furtive glance up at its time-worn walls.
My guide did the same; and pointing to the
door, he shuffled off without word or gesture of
salutation.

It must be owned that my arrival and reception
at Brczwezmcisl were none of the most
flattering. The discourteous damsel at the gate,
the surly New East Prussian postmaster, and
the Pole, with his unintelligible jargon, had put
me on the very worst terms with my new place
of sojourn and office of judge-commissary. How
I congratulated myself to think that I was about
to meet one who had, at least, breathed the
same air as myself! To be sure, Mr. Burkhardt
was not held in the best repute at home; but a
man’s character varies according to the circumstances
of his position, even were he still the
same as of old. Better far a jovial tippler than
a sickly skeleton with her projected tongue;
better far a hare-brained gambler than the postmaster
with his studied coarseness; ay, better
the company of a vaporing hector than that of
a Polish malcontent. The latter phase in Burkhardt’s
character even served to elevate him in
my eyes; for, between ourselves be it observed,
my gentleness and love of quiet, my steadiness
and reserve, so oft the theme of praise with
mamma, would stand me but in sorry stead
should any rising of the people take place. Some
virtues become vices in certain positions.

As I entered the old Starosty I was puzzled
to know where to find my dear and long-cherished
friend Burkhardt. The house was very spacious.
The creaking of the rusty door-hinges
resounded through the whole building, yet without
bringing any one to ascertain who might
be there.

I discovered an apartment on my left, and
knocked gently at the door. As my signal was
unanswered by any friendly “Come in,” I
knocked more loudly than before: still no answer.
My knocks re-echoed through the house.
I waxed impatient, and yearned to clasp Burkhardt,
the friend of my soul, to my heart. I
opened the door and went in. In the middle
of the room was a coffin.

If I be always polite to the living, still more
so am I to the dead. I was about to retire
as gently as I could, when a parting glance at
the coffin showed me that its hapless occupant
was no other than the tax-collector, Burkhardt,
who had been called on, poor fellow, in his turn,
to discharge that great tax so peremptorily demanded
of us by that grim collector Death.
There he lay regardless alike of flagon or dice
box, calm and composed as though he had
never shared in the joys or cares of this life.

Indescribably shocked, I rushed from the
chamber of death, and sought relief in the long
gloomy corridor. What on earth was to become
of me now? Here I was, hundreds of
miles from my native home and the maternal
mansion, in a town whose very name I never
had heard until I was sent to un-Pole-ify it as
judge-commissary! My sole acquaintance, the
friend of my heart, had shuffled off this mortal
coil. What was I to do, where lay my head,
or how find the lodgings engaged for me by the
dear departed?

My gloomy reflections were here disturbed by
the creaking of the door on its rusty hinges,
whose harsh grating jarred strangely on my
nerves.

A pert, flippant-looking livery-servant rushed
up the stairs, contemplated me with a broad
stare of astonishment, and at length addressed
me. My knees shook beneath me. I suffered
the fellow to talk to me to his heart’s delight,[Pg 44]
but for the first few moments fright deprived
me of all power of reply; and even had my
state of mind permitted me to speak, it would
have amounted to much the same thing, seeing
that the man was speaking Polish.

Perceiving that he remained without reply,
he proceeded to address me in German, which
he spoke very fluently. I at length mustered up
sufficient courage to tell him my whole story,
and the various adventures I had met with
since my arrival at the accursed town whose
name it still dislocated my jaws to pronounce.
As he heard my name he assumed a more respectful
mien, took off his hat, and proceeded to
give me the following details, which, for the
reader’s benefit, I have compressed into the
smallest possible space.

He informed me, to begin with, that his
name was Lebrecht; that he had served as interpreter
and most faithful of domestics to Mr.
Tax-collector, of pious memory, until the preceding
night, when it had pleased Heaven to
remove the excellent and ever to be lamented
tax-collector to another and a better world.
The manner of his death was perfectly in keeping
with the tenor of his life. He had been
passing the evening at wine and cards with
some Polish gentlemen. The fumes of the wine
aroused the Prussian pride of my friend, while
it kindled to a yet fiercer pitch the old Sarmatian
patriotism of his companions. Words
grew high, blows were exchanged, and one of
the party dealt my late friend three or four
blows with a knife, any one of which was of itself
sufficient to have extinguished life. In
order to avoid incurring the penalties of New
East Prussian justice, the guilty parties had
taken themselves off—whither none could tell.
My ever-to-be-regretted friend had, shortly before
his death, made all the requisite arrangements
for me, and hired a very experienced
German cook, who would wait upon me at a
moment’s notice. In the course of his narrative,
Lebrecht led me to infer, from several
hints that he gave me, how the Poles were
sworn foes to the Prussians, and how I must
expect to meet with such delicate attentions as
those lavished on me by the damsel at the gate.
He explained to me moreover, that my friend
Peter was a muddle-headed jackass, and that
his pantomimic gestures referred, in all probability,
to the fate of my hapless friend. He
warned me to be constantly on my guard, as
the infuriated Poles were evidently hatching
some plot; as for himself, he was fully determined
to quit the town immediately after the
funeral of his late master.

This narrative terminated, he conducted me
up the broad stone staircase to the apartments
provided for me. Passing through a suite of
lofty rooms, very spacious, but very dreary to
behold, we came to an apartment of large dimensions,
wherein was a press bedstead, with
curtains of faded yellow damask, an old table,
whose feet had once been gilded, and half a
dozen dusty chairs. Suspended to the wall was
an enormous looking-glass, almost bereft of its
reflecting powers, in a quaint, old-fashioned
frame, while the wall itself was garnished by
parti-colored tapestry, representing scenes from
the Old Testament. Time and the moth had
done their work upon it, for it hung in tatters,
and waved to and fro at the slightest motion.
King Solomon sat headless on his throne of
judgment, and the hands of the wicked elders
had long since mouldered away. I felt by no
means at my ease in this my lonely dwelling;
far rather would I have taken up my quarters
at the inn, and, oh that I had done so! But I
kept my own counsel, partly from sheer nervousness,
and partly because I did not wish to
appear at all daunted at being in such immediate
vicinity with a corpse. Moreover, I entertained
no doubt but that Lebrecht and the experienced
cook would bear me company during
the night. The former lost no time in lighting
the two candles that stood on the table, for it
was fast getting dusk, and then took his departure
for the purpose of procuring me the means
of subsistence, and such like, to fetch my luggage,
and to apprise the aforesaid experienced
cook that the time had arrived for her to enter
upon her functions. My luggage arrived in
due time, likewise every requisite for my meal;
but no sooner had I re-imbursed Lebrecht
the money he had laid out for me than he
wished me good-night, and went his way forthwith.

I misdoubted the fellow at once, for the moment
he had swept up his money he was off. I
was on the point of rushing after him, to entreat
him not to leave me, but I held back for
very shame. Why should I make the wretch
the confidant of my timidity? I had no doubt
but that he would spend the night in some
room or other, to keep watch over the body of
his slaughtered master. The sound of the
banging-to of the street-door undeceived me at
once; and that sound thrilled through my very
marrow. I hurried to the window, and beheld
him scampering across the street, as though the
foul fiend were at his heels. He was soon out
of sight, leaving myself and the corpse sole tenants
of the old Starosty.

THE SENTRY.

I do not believe in ghosts, but yet at night-time
I own to being somewhat apprehensive of
their appearance. This may seem to involve a
paradox, but I only state the fact. The death-like
stillness of all around, the time-worn tapestry
that clung in fluttering shreds around that
dreary chamber, the consciousness of the body
of a murdered man in the room above, the
deadly feud between the Prussian and the Pole,
all conspired to fill my soul with awe and apprehension.
I hungered, but could not eat. I
wearied for repose, but could find none. I examined
the window, to ascertain if it could afford
me egress in case of need, for I should have
been utterly lost in the labyrinth of chambers
and corridors necessary to traverse ere I could[Pg 45]
gain the door. To my dismay strong iron bars
forbade all hope of escape in that quarter.

Suddenly the old Starosty seemed awakening
to life. I heard doors open and close, steps at
some little distance, and the sound of voices in
animated conversation. I was at a loss how to
account for this rapid change in the state of affairs,
but I felt that it boded me but little good.
It seemed as though I heard a warning voice
saying, “‘Tis thou they seek! Did not that
blundering Peter betray the secret of the intended
massacre? Save thyself ere it be too late.”
I shuddered in every limb. Methought I saw
the murderous band, how they thirsted for my
blood, and were concerting the method of my
death. I heard their footsteps approaching
nearer and more near. Already had they
reached the ante-chamber leading to my apartment.
They were muttering together in low
whispers. I sprang up, and bolted and barred
the door, and, as I did so, became aware that
some one was endeavoring to open it on the
other side. I scarce dared breathe, lest my
very breath should betray me. I heard by their
voices that they were Poles. As my unlucky
stars would have it, I must needs study a little
Polish, by way of qualifying myself for my official
duties; and I could detect the words
“blood,” “death,” and “Prussians.” My
knees quaked, cold drops started to my brow.
Again was the attempt to open the door repeated,
but it seemed as though the intruders wished
to avoid confusion, for I heard them depart, or
rather glide, from thence.

Whether it were that the Poles had aimed at
my life, or my property, or whether they had
determined upon another mode of attack, I resolved
to extinguish my candles, in order that
their light might not betray me from without.
How could I tell but that one of the ruffians
might not fancy taking a shot at me through
the windows?

Night is friend to no man, and man has an
instinctive dread of darkness, else whence the
terror of children, even before they have been
scared by the tale of goblin grim and spectre
dire? No sooner was I in utter obscurity than
all manner of horrors, possible and impossible,
crowded upon me. I flung myself upon my
bed, in the hopes of sleeping, but the clothes
seemed tainted with the foul odor of dead men’s
graves. If I sat up it was worse; for ever and
anon a rustling sound, as of some one near me,
caused me to shudder afresh. The form of the
murdered man, with his livid brow and half-glazed
eye, seemed to stalk before me. What
prospects would I not have sacrificed but to be
once more free! And now the bells tolled the

Each stroke vibrated upon my soul. In vain I
called myself a superstitious fool, a faint-hearted
dastard: it availed me nothing. Unable at
length to bear up any longer, and nerved either
by daring or despair, I sprang from my seat,
groped my way to the door, unbolted and unbarred
it, and resolved, albeit at the risk of my
life, to gain the street.

Merciful heavens! what did I behold as I
opened the door! I started and staggered back.
Little had I looked for such a grisly sentinel.

THE DEATH-THROES.

By the dim flickering of an old lamp placed
on a side-table, I saw before me the murdered
Tax-collector, lying in his bier, even as I had
seen him in the room above. But now I could
perceive how his shirt, which had previously
been concealed by a pall, was dyed with the
big black gouttes of blood. I strove to rally my
senses, to persuade myself that the whole was
the mere phantom of my over-heated imagination;
but as I stirred the coffin with my foot,
till the corpse seemed as though about to move
and unclose its eyes, I could no longer doubt
the fearful reality of the spectacle before me.
Almost paralyzed by fear, I rushed to my room,
and fell backward on my bed.

And now a confused noise proceeded from the
bier. Was the dead alive? for the sound that
I heard was of one raising himself with difficulty.
A low and suppressed moan thrilled in my ears,
and I saw before me the form of the murdered
one; it strode through the door, entered my
room, then stalked awhile to and fro, and disappeared.
As I again summoned up my reason
to my aid, the spectre, or the corpse, or the
living dead, gave my reason the lie by depositing
its long, lank, livid length upon my bed
and across my body, its icy shoulders resting
upon my neck, and nearly depriving me of
breath.

How I escaped with life I can not explain to
this present hour. Mortal dread was upon me,
and I must have remained a long while in a
state of unconsciousness; for as I heard from
beneath my grisly burden the clock sound, instead
of its striking one—the signal for spirits
to vanish—it was striking two.

I leave the horrors of my situation to the
reader’s imagination. The smell of the charnel-house
in my nostrils, and a yet warm corpse
struggling for breath, as though the death-rattle
were upon him; while I was benumbed by terror,
and the hellish weight of the burden I bore.
The scenes in Dante’s Hell fall far short of anguish
such as was then mine. I was too weak
or terror-stricken to disengage myself from the
corpse, which seemed as if expiring a second
time; for I conjectured that, while senseless
from loss of blood, the wretched man had been
taken for dead, and thrust forthwith, Polish
fashion, into a coffin, and now lay dying in
good earnest. He seemed powerless alike for life
and death, and I was doomed to be the couch
whereon the fearful struggle would terminate.

I strove to fancy that all my adventures in
Brczwezmcisl were but a dream, and that I was
laboring under an attack of nightmare, but circumstances
and surrounding objects were too
strong to admit of any such conclusion; still, I
verily believe I should have finally succeeded in[Pg 46]
convincing myself that it was all a vision, and
nothing but a vision, had not an incident more
striking than any that hitherto preceded, established,
beyond the shadow of a doubt, the
fact of my being broad awake.

THE LIGHT OF DAY.

It was day-break; not that I could perceive
the light of heaven, for the shoulders of my expiring
friend impeded my view, but I inferred so
from the bustle in the street below. I heard
the footsteps and voices of men in the room; I
could not make out the subject of their conversation,
as they talked in Polish, but I remarked
that they were busy about the coffin. Now,
beyond a doubt, thought I, they are looking for
the dead man, and my deliverance is at hand;
and so it proved, although it happened after a
fashion for which I was but little prepared.

One of the exploring party smote so lustily
with a stout bamboo upon the extended form of
the dead or dying, that he started up, and stood
erect. Some of the blows lighted upon my
hapless person with such effect as to make me
yell out most vigorously, and take up a position
directly in the rear of the defunct. This old
Polish and New East Prussian method of restoring
the dead to life proved, certainly, so efficacious
in the present instance, that I doubt
whether the impassibility of death were not
preferable to the acute perceptions of the living.

I now perceived that the room was filled by
men, for the most part Poles. The timely castigation
had been administered by a police-officer
appointed to superintend the funeral.
The Tax-collector still slept the sleep of death in
his coffin, which stood in the ante-chamber,
whither it had been transported by the drunken
Poles, who had been ordered to convey it to
what had been formerly the porter’s lodge.
They had, however, been pleased to select my
ante-chamber as a fitting resting-place for their
charge, whom they confided to the watch of one
of their besotted comrades, who had slumbered
at his post, and, awakened probably by my
entrance, had groped his way, with all the
instinct of one far gone in liquor, to my bed,
and there slept off the fumes of his potations.