HARPER’S
NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
No. X.—MARCH, 1851.—Vol. II.
SPRING.
BY JAMES THOMSON.
ome, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come;
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, vail’d in a shower
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.
O Hertford, fitted or to shine in courts
With unaffected grace, or walk the plain
With innocence and meditation join’d
In soft assemblage, listen to my song,
Which thy own season paints; when Nature all
Is blooming and benevolent, like thee.
And see where surly winter passes off
Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts:
His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill,
The shatter’d forest, and the ravag’d vale;
While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch,
Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost,
The mountains lift their green heads to the sky.
As yet the trembling year is unconfirm’d,
And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze,
Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets
Deform the day delightless; so that scarce
To shake the sounding marsh; or, from the shore
The plovers when to scatter o’er the heath,
And sing their wild notes to the listening waste.
At last from Aries rolls the bounteous sun,
And the bright Bull receives him. Then no more
The expansive atmosphere is cramp’d with cold;
But, full of life and vivifying soul,
Lifts the light clouds sublime, and spreads them thin,
Fleecy, and white, o’er all surrounding heaven.
Forth fly the tepid airs; and unconfin’d,
Unbinding earth, the moving softness strays.
Joyous, the impatient husbandman perceives
Relenting nature, and his lusty steers
Drives from their stalls to where the well-us’d plow
Lies in the furrow, loosen’d from the frost.
There, unrefusing, to the harness’d yoke
They lend their shoulder, and begin their toil,
Cheer’d by the simple song and soaring lark.
Meanwhile, incumbent o’er the shining share
The master leans, removes the obstructing clay,
Winds the whole work, and sidelong lays the glebe.
While, through the neighboring fields the sower stalks
With measur’d step; and, liberal, throws the grain
Into the faithful bosom of the ground:
The harrow follows harsh, and shuts the scene.
Be gracious, Heaven! for now laborious man
Has done his part. Ye fostering breezes, blow!
Ye softening dews, ye tender showers, descend!
And temper all, thou world-reviving sun,
Into the perfect year! Nor ye who live
In luxury and ease, in pomp and pride,
Think these lost themes unworthy of your ear:
Such themes as these the rural Maro sung
To wide-imperial Rome, in the full height
Of elegance and taste, by Greece refin’d.
In ancient times, the sacred plow employ’d
The kings and awful fathers of mankind;
And some, with whom compar’d your insect tribes
Are but the beings of a summer’s day,
Have held the scale of empire, rul’d the storm
Of mighty war, then with victorious hand,
Disdaining little delicacies, seiz’d
The plow, and greatly independent scorn’d
All the vile stores corruption can bestow.
Ye generous Britons, venerate the plow!
And o’er your hills and long withdrawing vales
Let Autumn spread his treasures to the sun,
Luxuriant and unbounded! As the sea,
Far through his azure turbulent domain,
Your empire owns, and from a thousand shores
So with superior boon may your rich soil,
Exuberant, Nature’s better blessings pour
O’er every land, the naked nations clothe,
And be the exhaustless granary of a world!
Nor only through the lenient air this change,
Delicious, breathes: the penetrative sun,
His force deep-darting to the dark retreat
Of vegetation, sets the steaming power
At large, to wander o’er the verdant earth,
In various hues; but chiefly thee, gay green!
Thou smiling Nature’s universal robe!
United light and shade! where the sight dwells
With growing strength, and ever-new delight.
Led by the breeze, the vivid verdure runs;
And swells, and deepens, to the cherish’d eye.
The hawthorn whitens; and the juicy groves
Put forth their buds, unfolding by degrees,
Till the whole leafy forest stands display’d,
In full luxuriance, to the sighing gales;
Where the deer rustle through the twining brake,
And the birds sing conceal’d. At once, array’d
In all the colors of the flushing year
By Nature’s swift and secret-working hand,
The garden glows, and fills the liberal air
With lavish fragrance; while the promis’d fruit
Lies yet a little embryo, unperceiv’d,
Within its crimson folds. Now from the town,
Buried in smoke, and sleep, and noisome damps,
Oft let me wander o’er the dewy fields,
Where freshness breathes, and dash the trembling drops
From the bent bush, as through the verdant maze
Of sweetbrier hedges I pursue my walk;
Or taste the smell of dairy; or ascend
Some eminence, Augusta, in thy plains,
And see the country, far diffus’d around,
One boundless blush, one white-empurpled shower
Of mingled blossoms: where the raptur’d eye
Hurries from joy to joy; and, hid beneath
The fair profusion, yellow Autumn spies.
If, brush’d from Russian wilds, a cutting gale
Rise not, and scatter from his humid wings
The clammy mildew; or, dry-blowing, breathe
Untimely frost—before whose baleful blast
The full-blown Spring through all her foliage shrinks,
Joyless and dead, a wide-dejected waste.
For oft, engender’d by the hazy north,
Myriads on myriads, insect armies waft
Keen in the poison’d breeze; and wasteful eat,
Through buds and bark, into the blacken’d core
Their eager way. A feeble race! yet oft
The sacred sons of vengeance! on whose course
Corrosive famine waits, and kills the year.
[Pg 436]
To check this plague, the skillful farmer chaff
And blazing straw before his orchard burns—
Till, all involv’d in smoke, the latent foe
From every cranny suffocated falls;
Or scatters o’er the blooms the pungent dust
Of pepper, fatal to the frosty tribe;
Or, when the envenom’d leaf begins to curl,
With sprinkled water drowns them in their nest:
Nor, while they pick them up with busy bill,
The little trooping birds unwisely scares.
Blow not in vain. Far hence they keep, repress’d,
Those deepening clouds on clouds, surcharg’d with rain,
That o’er the vast Atlantic hither borne,
In endless train, would quench the summer blaze,
And, cheerless, drown the crude unripen’d year.
The northeast spends his rage, and now shut up
Within his iron caves—the effusive south
Warms the wide air, and o’er the void of heaven
Breathes the big clouds with vernal showers distent.
At first a dusky wreath they seem to rise,
Scarce staining ether; but by fast degrees,
In heaps on heaps, the doubling vapor sails
Along the loaded sky, and mingling deep,
Sits on the horizon round a settled gloom:
Not such as wintry storms on mortals shed,
Oppressing life; but lovely, gentle, kind,
And full of every hope and every joy,
The wish of Nature. Gradual sinks the breeze
Into a perfect calm; that not a breath
Is heard to quiver through the closing woods,
Or rustling turn the many-twinkling leaves
Of aspen tall. The uncurling floods, diffus’d
In glassy breadth, seem through delusive lapse
Forgetful of their course. ‘Tis silence all,
And pleasing expectation. Herds and flocks
Drop the dry sprig, and, mute-imploring, eye
The falling verdure. Hush’d in short suspense,
The plumy people streak their wings with oil,
To throw the lucid moisture trickling off;
And wait the approaching sign to strike, at once,
Into the general choir. Even mountains, vales,
And forests seem, impatient, to demand
The promis’d sweetness. Man superior walks
Amid the glad creation, musing praise,
And looking lively gratitude. At last,
The clouds consign their treasures to the fields,
And, softly shaking on the dimpled pool
Prelusive drops, let all their moisture flow,
In large effusion, o’er the freshen’d world.
The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard
By such as wander through the forest walks,
Beneath the umbrageous multitude of leaves.
But who can hold the shade, while Heaven descends
In universal bounty, shedding herbs,
And fruits, and flowers, on Nature’s ample lap?
Swift fancy fir’d anticipates their growth;
And, while the milky nutriment distills,
Beholds the kindling country color round.
Indulge their genial stores, and well-shower’d earth
Is deep-enrich’d with vegetable life;
Till, in the western sky, the downward sun
Looks out, effulgent, from amid the flush
Of broken clouds, gay-shifting to his beam.
The rapid radiance instantaneous strikes
The illumin’d mountain; through the forest streams;
Shakes on the floods; and in a yellow mist,
Far smoking o’er the interminable plain,
In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems.
Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around
Full swell the woods; their every music wakes,
Mix’d in wild concert, with the warbling brooks
Increas’d, the distant bleatings of the hills,
The hollow lows responsive from the vales,
Whence blending all the sweeten’d zephyr springs
Meantime, refracted from yon eastern cloud,
Bestriding earth, the grand ethereal bow
Shoots up immense; and every hue unfolds,
In fair proportion running from the red
To where the violet fades into the sky.
Here, awful Newton, the dissolving clouds
Form, fronting on the sun, thy showery prism;
[Pg 437]
And to the sage-instructed eye unfold
The various twine of light, by thee disclos’d
From the white mingling maze. Not so the swain:
He wondering views the bright enchantment bend,
Delightful, o’er the radiant fields, and runs
To catch the falling glory; but amaz’d
Beholds the amusive arch before him fly,
Then vanish quite away. Still night succeeds,
A soften’d shade; and saturated earth
Awaits the morning beam, to give to light,
Rais’d through ten thousand different plastic tubes,
The balmy treasures of the former day.
Then spring the living herbs, profusely wild,
O’er all the deep-green earth, beyond the power
Of botanist to number up their tribes:
Whether he steals along the lonely dale,
In silent search; or through the forest, rank
With what the dull incurious weeds account,
Bursts his blind way; or climbs the mountain rock,
Fir’d by the nodding verdure of its brow.
With such a liberal hand has Nature flung
Their seeds abroad, blown them about in winds,
Innumerous mix’d them with the nursing mould
The moistening current, and prolific rain.
But who their virtues can declare? who pierce,
With vision pure, into these secret stores
Of health, and life, and joy? the food of man,
While yet he liv’d in innocence, and told
A length of golden years, unflesh’d in blood;
A stranger to the savage arts of life,
Death, rapine, carnage, surfeit, and disease—
The lord, and not the tyrant, of the world.
The first fresh dawn then wak’d the gladdened race
Of uncorrupted man, nor blushed to see
The sluggard sleep beneath its sacred beam;
For their light slumbers gently fum’d away,
And up they rose as vigorous as the sun.
Or to the culture of the willing glebe,
Or to the cheerful tendance of the flock.
Meantime the song went round; and dance and sport,
Wisdom and friendly talk successive stole
Their hours away; while in the rosy vale
Love breath’d his infant sighs, from anguish free,
And full replete with bliss; save the sweet pain
That, inly thrilling, but exalts it more
Nor yet injurious act, nor surly deed,
Was known among these happy sons of heaven;
For reason and benevolence were law.
Harmonious Nature, too, look’d smiling on.
Clear shone the skies, cool’d with eternal gales,
Shot his best rays, and still the gracious clouds
Dropp’d fatness down; as, o’er the swelling mead,
The herds and flocks, commixing, play’d secure.
This when, emergent from the gloomy wood,
The glaring lion saw, his horrid heart
Was meeken’d, and he join’d his sullen joy;
For music held the whole in perfect peace:
Soft sigh’d the flute; the tender voice was heard,
Warbling the varied heart; the woodlands round
Applied their choir; and winds and waters flow’d
In consonance. Such were those prime of days.
But now those white unblemish’d minutes, whence
The fabling poets took their golden age,
Are found no more amid these iron times,
These dregs of life! Now the distemper’d mind
Has lost that concord of harmonious powers,
Which forms the soul of happiness; and all
Is off the poise within: the passions all
Have burst their bounds; and reason half-extinct,
Or impotent, or else approving, sees
The foul disorder. Senseless and deform’d,
Convulsive anger storms at large; or, pale
And silent, settles into fell revenge.
Base envy withers at another’s joy,
And hates that excellence it can not reach.
Desponding fear, of feeble fancies full,
Weak and unmanly, loosens every power.
Even love itself is bitterness of soul,
A pensive anguish pining at the heart;
Or, sunk to sordid interest, feels no more
That noble wish, that never-cloy’d desire,
Which, selfish joy disdaining, seeks alone
To bless the dearer object of its flame.
Hope sickens with extravagance; and grief,
Of life impatient, into madness swells,
Or in dead silence wastes the weeping hours.
These, and a thousand mix’d emotions more,
From ever changing views of good and ill,
Form’d infinitely various, vex the mind
With endless storm; whence, deeply rankling, grows
The partial thought, a listless unconcern,
Cold, and averting from our neighbor’s good;
Then dark disgust, and hatred, winding wiles
Coward deceit, and ruffian violence.
At last, extinct each social feeling, fell
And joyless inhumanity pervades
And petrifies the heart. Nature disturb’d
Is deem’d, vindictive, to have chang’d her course.
Hence, in old dusky time, a deluge came:
When the deep-cleft disparting orb, that arch’d
The central waters round, impetuous rush’d,
With universal burst, into the gulf,
And o’er the high-pil’d hills of fractur’d earth
Wide-dash’d the waves, in undulation vast;
Till, from the centre to the streaming clouds,
A shoreless ocean tumbled round the globe.
The Seasons since have, with severer sway,
Oppress’d a broken world: the Winter keen
Shook forth his waste of snows; and Summer shot
His pestilential heats. Great Spring, before,
Green’d all the year; and fruits and blossoms blush’d,
In social sweetness, on the self-same bough.
Pure was the temperate air; an even calm
Perpetual reign’d, save what the zephyrs bland
Breath’d o’er the blue expanse: for then nor storms
Were taught to blow, nor hurricanes to rage;
Sound slept the waters; no sulphureous glooms
Swell’d in the sky, and sent the lightning forth;
While sickly damps, and cold autumnal fogs,
Hung not, relaxing, on the springs of life.
But now, of turbid elements the sport,
From clear to cloudy toss’d, from hot to cold,
And dry to moist, with inward-eating change,
Our drooping days are dwindled down to naught,
Their period finish’d ere ’tis well begun.
And yet the wholesome herb neglected dies,
Though with the pure exhilarating soul
Of nutriment, and health, and vital powers,
Beyond the search of art, ’tis copious blest.
For, with hot ravin fir’d, ensanguin’d man
Is now become the lion of the plain,
And worse. The wolf, who from the nightly fold
Fierce drags the bleating prey, ne’er drank her milk,
Nor wore her warming fleece; nor has the steer,
At whose strong chest the deadly tiger hangs,
E’er plow’d for him. They too are temper’d high,
With hunger stung and wild necessity;
Nor lodges pity in their shaggy breast.
But man, whom Nature form’d of milder clay,
With every kind emotion in his heart,
And taught alone to weep—while from her lap
She pours ten thousand delicacies, herbs,
And fruits, as numerous as the drops of rain
Or beams that gave them birth—shall he, fair form!
Who wears sweet smiles, and looks erect on heaven,
E’er stoop to mingle with the prowling herd,
And dip his tongue in gore? The beast of prey,
Blood-stain’d deserves to bleed; but you, ye flocks,
What have you done? ye peaceful people, what,
To merit death? you, who have given us milk
In luscious streams, and lent us your own coat
Against the Winter’s cold? And the plain ox,
That harmless, honest, guileless animal,
In what has he offended? he, whose toil,
Patient and ever ready, clothes the land
With all the pomp of harvest?—shall he bleed,
And struggling groan beneath the cruel hands
Even of the clowns he feeds? and that, perhaps,
To swell the riot of the autumnal feast,
Won by his labor? This the feeling heart
Would tenderly suggest; but ’tis enough,
In this late age, adventurous, to have touch’d
Light on the numbers of the Samian sage.
High Heaven forbids the bold presumptuous strain,
Whose wisest will has fixed us in a state
That must not yet to pure perfection rise:
Beside, who knows, how rais’d to higher life,
From stage to stage, the vital scale ascends?
Now, when the first foul torrent of the brooks,
Swell’d with the vernal rains, is ebb’d away—
And, whitening, down their mossy-tinctur’d stream
Descends the billowy foam—now is the time,
While yet the dark-brown water aids the guile,
To tempt the trout. The well dissembled fly,
The rod fine-tapering with elastic spring,
Snatch’d from the hoary steed the floating line,
And all thy slender watery stores, prepare.
But let not on thy hook the tortur’d worm,
Convulsive, twist in agonizing folds;
Which, by rapacious hunger swallow’d deep,
Gives, as you tear it from the bleeding breast
Of the weak, helpless, uncomplaining wretch,
Harsh pain and horror to the tender hand.
When, with his lively ray, the potent sun
Has pierc’d the streams, and rous’d the finny race
Then, issuing cheerful, to thy sport repair;
Chief should the western breezes curling play,
And light o’er ether bear the shadowy clouds,
High to their fount, this day, amid the hills,
And woodlands warbling round, trace up the brooks,
The next, pursue their rocky-channel’d maze,
Down to the river, in whose ample wave
[Pg 439]
Their little naiads love to sport at large.
Just in the dubious point where with the pool,
Is mix’d the trembling stream, or where it boils
Around the stone, or from the hollow’d bank
Reverted plays in undulating flow,
There throw nice-judging, the delusive fly;
And, as you lead it round in artful curve,
With eye attentive mark the springing game.
Straight as above the surface of the flood
They wanton rise, or urg’d by hunger leap,
Then fix, with gentle twitch, the barbed hook;
Some lightly tossing to the grassy bank,
And to the shelving shore slow-dragging some,
With various hand proportion’d to their force.
If yet too young, and easily deceived,
A worthless prey scarce bends your pliant rod,
Him, piteous of his youth, and the short space
He has enjoy’d the vital light of heaven,
Soft disengage, and back into the stream
The speckled infant throw. But should you lure
Of pendent trees, the monarch of the brook,
Behooves you then to ply your finest art.
Long time he, followed cautious, scans the fly,
And oft attempts to seize it, but as oft
The dimpled water speaks his jealous fear.
At last, while haply o’er the shaded sun
Passes a cloud, he desperate takes the death,
With sullen plunge. At once he darts along,
Deep-struck, and runs out all the lengthen’d line
Then seeks the farthest ooze, the sheltering weed,
The cavern’d bank, his old secure abode;
And flies aloft, and flounces round the pool,
Indignant of the guile. With yielding hand,
That feels him still, yet to his furious course
Gives way, you, now retiring, following now
Across the stream, exhaust his idle rage;
Till floating broad upon his breathless side,
And to his fate abandon’d, to the shore
You gayly drag your unresisting prize.
Thus pass the temperate hours: but when the sun
Shakes from his noonday throne the scattering clouds,
Even shooting listless languor through the deeps,
Then seek the bank where flowering elders crowd,
Where scatter’d wild the lily of the vale
Its balmy essence breathes, where cowslips hang
The dewy head, where purple violets lurk,
With all the lowly children of the shade;
Or lie reclin’d beneath yon spreading ash
Hung o’er the steep, whence borne on liquid wing
The sounding culver shoots; or where the hawk
High in the beetling cliff his eyry builds.
There let the classic page thy fancy lead
Through rural scenes, such as the Mantuan swain
[Pg 440]
Paints in the matchless harmony of song;
Or catch thyself the landscape, gliding swift
Athwart imagination’s vivid eye;
Or, by the vocal woods and waters lull’d,
And lost in lonely musing, in a dream,
Confus’d, of careless solitude, where mix
Ten thousand wandering images of things,
Soothe every gust of passion into peace—
All but the swellings of the soften’d heart,
That waken, not disturb, the tranquil mind.
Behold, yon breathing prospect bids the muse
Throw all her beauty forth. But who can paint
Like Nature? Can imagination boast,
Amid its gay creation, hues like hers?
Or can it mix them with that matchless skill,
And lose them in each other, as appears
In every bud that blows? If fancy, then,
Unequal fails beneath the pleasing task,
Ah, what shall language do? ah, where find words
Ting’d with so many colors; and whose power,
To life approaching, may perfume my lays
With that fine oil, those aromatic gales,
That inexhaustive flow continual round?
Yet, though successless, will the toil delight.
Come then, ye virgins and ye youths whose hearts
Have felt the raptures of refining love;
And thou, Amanda, come, pride of my song!
Form’d by the Graces, loveliness itself!
Come with those downcast eyes, sedate and sweet,
Those looks demure, that deeply pierce the soul—
Where, with the light of thoughtful reason mix’d.
Shines lively fancy, and the feeling heart:
Oh come! and while the rosy-footed May
Steals blushing on, together let us tread
The morning dews, and gather in their prime
Fresh-blooming flowers, to grace thy braided hair
And thy lov’d bosom that improves their sweets.
See, where the winding vale its lavish stores,
Irriguous, spreads. See, how the lily drinks
The latent rill, scarce oozing through the grass,
Of growth luxuriant; or the humid bank,
In fair profusion, decks. Long let us walk,
Where the breeze blows from yon extended field,
Of blossom’d beans. Arabia can not boast
Breathes through the sense, and takes the ravish’d soul.
Nor is the mead unworthy of thy foot,
Full of fresh verdure, and unnumber’d flowers,
The negligence of Nature, wide and wild;
Where, undisguis’d by mimic art, she spreads
Unbounded beauty to the roving eye.
Here their delicious task the fervent bees,
In swarming millions, tend: around, athwart,
Through the soft air the busy nations fly,
Cling to the bud, and with inserted tube
Suck its pure essence, its ethereal soul;
And oft, with bolder wing, they soaring dare
The purple heath, or where the wild-thyme grows,
And yellow load them with the luscious spoil.
Its vistas opens, and its alleys green.
Snatch’d through the verdant maze, the hurried eye
Distracted wanders: now the bowery walk
Of covert close, where scarce a speck of day
Falls on the lengthen’d gloom, protracted sweeps;
Now meets the bending sky; the river now
Dimpling along, the breezy-ruffled lake,
The forest darkening round, the glittering spire,
The ethereal mountain, and the distant main.
But why so far excursive? when at hand,
Along these blushing borders, bright with dew,
And in yon mingled wilderness of flowers,
Fair-handed Spring unbosoms every grace:
Throws out the snow-drop and the crocus first;
The daisy, primrose, violet darkly blue,
And polyanthus of unnumber’d dyes;
The yellow wallflower, stain’d with iron-brown;
And lavish stock, that scents the garden round;
From the soft wing of vernal breezes shed,
Anemonies; auriculas, enrich’d
With shining meal o’er all their velvet leaves:
And full ranunculus, of glowing red.
Then comes the tulip-race, where beauty plays
Her idle freaks: from family diffus’d
To family, as flies the father-dust,
The varied colors run; and, while they break
On the charm’d eye, the exulting florist marks,
With secret pride, the wonders of his hand.
No gradual bloom is wanting; from the bud,
First-born of Spring, to Summer’s musky tribes:
Nor hyacinths, of purest virgin-white,
Low-bent, and blushing inward; nor jonquils,
Of potent fragrance; nor narcissus fair,
As o’er the fabled fountain hanging still;
Nor broad carnations; nor gay-spotted pinks;
Nor, shower’d from every bush, the damask-rose.
Infinite numbers, delicacies, smells,
With hues on hues expression can not paint,
The breath of Nature, and her endless bloom.
Hail, Source of Beings! Universal Soul
Of heaven and earth! Essential Presence, hail!
To thee I bend the knee; to thee my thoughts,
Continual, climb; who, with a master-hand,
Hast the great whole into perfection touch’d.
By thee the various vegetative tribes,
Wrapp’d in a filmy net, and clad with leaves,
Draw the live ether, and imbibe the dew.
By thee dispos’d into congenial soils,
Stands each attractive plant, and sucks, and swells
The juicy tide; a twining mass of tubes.
At thy command the vernal sun awakes
The torpid sap, detruded to the root
By wintry winds, that now in fluent dance,
And lively fermentation, mounting, spreads.
All this innumerous-color’d scene of things.
As rising from the vegetable world
My theme ascends, with equal wing ascend,
My panting muse; and hark, how loud the woods
Invite you forth in all your gayest trim.
Lend me your song, ye nightingales! oh, pour
The mazy-running soul of melody
Into my varied verse! while I deduce,
From the first note the hollow cuckoo sings,
The symphony of Spring, and touch a theme
Unknown to fame—the passion of the groves.
When first the soul of love is sent abroad,
Warm through the vital air, and on the heart
Harmonious seizes, the gay troops begin,
In gallant thought, to plume the painted wing;
And try again the long forgotten strain,
At first faint-warbled. But no sooner grows
The soft infusion prevalent, and wide,
Than, all alive, at once their joy o’erflows
In music unconfin’d. Up springs the lark,
Shrill-voic’d and loud, the messenger of morn:
Ere yet the shadows fly, he mounted sings
Amid the dawning clouds, and from their haunts
Calls up the tuneful nations. Every copse
Deep-tangled, tree irregular, and bush
Bending with dewy moisture, o’er the heads
Of the coy quiristers that lodge within,
Are prodigal of harmony. The thrush
And woodlark, o’er the kind contending throng
Superior heard, run through the sweetest length
Of notes; when listening Philomela deigns
To let them joy, and purposes, in thought
Elate, to make her night excel their day.
The blackbird whistles from the thorny brake;
The mellow bullfinch answers from the grove;
Nor are the linnets, o’er the flowering furze
Pour’d out profusely, silent: join’d to these
Innumerous songsters, in the freshening shade
Of new-sprung leaves, their modulations mix
Mellifluous. The jay, the rook, the daw,
And each harsh pipe, discordant heard alone,
Aid the full concert; while the stockdove breathes
A melancholy murmur through the whole.
‘Tis love creates their melody, and all
This waste of music is the voice of love;
That even to birds and beasts the tender arts
Of pleasing teaches. Hence the glossy kind
Try every winning way inventive love
Can dictate, and in courtship to their mates
Pour forth their little souls. First, wide around,
With distant awe, in airy rings they rove,
Endeavoring by a thousand tricks to catch
The cunning, conscious, half-averted glance
Of their regardless charmer. Should she seem,
Softening, the least approvance to bestow,
Their colors burnish, and, by hope inspir’d,
They brisk advance; then, on a sudden struck,
Retire disorder’d; then again approach;
In fond rotation spread the spotted wing,
And shiver every feather with desire.
Connubial leagues agreed, to the deep woods
They haste away, all as their fancy leads,
Pleasure, or food, or secret safety prompts;
That Nature’s great command may be obey’d:
Nor all the sweet sensations they perceive
Indulg’d in vain. Some to the holly-hedge
Nestling repair, and to the thicket some;
Some to the rude protection of the thorn
Commit their feeble offspring. The cleft tree
Offers its kind concealment to a few,
Their food its insects, and its moss their nests.
Others, apart, far in the grassy dale,
Or roughening waste, their humble texture weave
But most in woodland solitudes delight,
In unfrequented glooms, or shaggy banks,
Steep, and divided by a babbling brook.
[Pg 442]
Whose murmurs soothe them all the livelong day,
When by kind duty fix’d. Among the roots
Of hazel, pendent o’er the plaintive stream,
They frame the first foundation of their domes;
Dry sprigs of trees, in artful fabric laid,
And bound with clay together. Now ’tis naught
But restless hurry through the busy air,
Beat by unnumber’d wings. The swallow sweeps
The slimy pool, to build his hanging house
Intent. And often, from the careless back
Of herds and flocks, a thousand tugging bills
Pluck hair and wool; and oft, when unobserv’d,
Steal from the barn a straw: till soft and warm,
Clean and complete, their habitation grows.
Not to be tempted from her tender task,
Or by sharp hunger, or by smooth delight,
Though the whole loosen’d Spring around her blows
Her sympathizing lover takes his stand
High on the opponent bank, and ceaseless sings
The tedious time away; or else supplies
Her place a moment, while she sudden flits
To pick the scanty meal. The appointed time
With pious toil fulfill’d, the callow young,
Warm’d and expanded into perfect life,
Their brittle bondage break, and come to light
A helpless family, demanding food
With constant clamor. Oh, what passions then,
What melting sentiments of kindly care,
On the new parents seize! Away they fly.
Affectionate, and undesiring bear
The most delicious morsel to their young
Which equally distributed, again
The search begins. Even so a gentle pair,
By fortune sunk, but form’d of generous mould,
And charm’d with cares beyond the vulgar breast,
In some lone cot amid the distant woods,
Sustained alone by providential Heaven,
Oft, as they weeping eye their infant train,
Check their own appetites and give them all.
Nor toil alone they scorn: exalting love,
By the great Father of the Spring inspir’d
Gives instant courage to the fearful race,
And to the simple, art. With stealthy wing,
Should some rude foot their woody haunts molest,
Amid a neighboring bush they silent drop,
And whirring thence, as if alarm’d, deceive
The unfeeling schoolboy. Hence, around the head
Of wandering swain, the white-winged plover wheels
In long excursion skims the level lawn,
To tempt him from her nest. The wild-duck, hence,
O’er the rough moss, and o’er the trackless waste
The heath-hen flutters, pious fraud! to lead
The hot-pursuing spaniel far astray.
Be not the muse asham’d here to bemoan
Her brothers of the grove, by tyrant man
Inhuman caught, and in the narrow cage
From liberty confin’d, and boundless air.
Dull are the pretty slaves, their plumage dull,
Ragged, and all its brightening lustre lost;
Nor is that sprightly wildness in their notes,
Which, clear and vigorous, warbles from the beech.
Oh, then, ye friends of love and love-taught song,
Spare the soft tribes, this barbarous art forbear!
If on your bosom innocence can win,
Music engage, or piety persuade.
But let not chief the nightingale lament
Her ruin’d care, too delicately fram’d
To brook the harsh confinement of the cage.
Oft when, returning with her loaded bill,
The astonish’d mother finds a vacant nest,
By the hard hand of unrelenting clowns
Robb’d, to the ground the vain provision falls
Her pinions ruffle, and, low-drooping, scarce
Can bear the mourner to the poplar shade.
Where all abandon’d to despair she sings
Her sorrows through the night; and, on the bough
Sole-sitting, still at every dying fall
Takes up again her lamentable strain
Of winding woe, till wide around the woods
Sigh to her song, and with her wail resound.
But now the feather’d youth their former bounds,
Ardent, disdain; and, weighing oft their wings,
Demand the free possession of the sky.
This one glad office more, and then dissolves
Parental love at once, now needless grown:
Unlavish Wisdom never works in vain.
‘Tis on some evening, sunny, grateful, mild,
When naught but balm is breathing through the woods.
With yellow lustre bright, that the new tribes
Visit the spacious heavens, and look abroad
On Nature’s common, far as they can see,
Or wing their range and pasture. O’er the boughs
Dancing about, still at the giddy verge
Their resolution fails—their pinions still,
In loose liberation stretch’d, to trust the void
Trembling refuse—till down before them fly
The parent guides, and chide, exhort, command,
Or push them off. The surging air receives
The plumy burden; and their self-taught wings
Winnow the waving element. On ground
Alighted, bolder up again they lead,
Farther and farther on, the lengthening flight,
Till, vanish’d every fear, and every power
Rous’d into life and action, light in air
The acquitted parents see their soaring race,
And, once rejoicing, never know them more.
High from the summit of a craggy cliff,
Hung o’er the deep, such as amazing frowns
On utmost Kilda’s shore, whose lonely race
Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds,
The royal eagle draws his vigorous young;
Strong-pounc’d, and ardent with paternal fire.
Now fit to raise a kingdom of their own,
He drives them from his fort, the towering seat,
For ages, of his empire; which, in peace,
Unstain’d he holds, while many a league to sea
He wings his course, and preys in distant isles.
Should I my steps turn to the rural seat,
Whose lofty elms and venerable oaks
Invite the rook, who high amid the boughs,
In early Spring, his airy city builds,
And ceaseless caws amusive—there, well pleas’d,
I might the various polity survey
Of the mix’d household-kind. The careful hen
Calls all her chirping family around,
Fed and defended by the fearless cock;
Whose breast with ardor flames, as on he walks
Graceful, and crows defiance. In the pond,
The finely checker’d duck before her train
Rows garrulous. The stately-sailing swan
Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale;
And, arching proud his neck, with oary feet
Bears forward fierce, and guards his osier-isle,
Protective of his young. The turkey nigh,
Loud-threatening, reddens; while the peacock spreads
His every-color’d glory to the sun,
And swims in radiant majesty along.
O’er the whole homely scene, the cooing dove
Flies thick in amorous chase, and wanton rolls
The glancing eye, and turns the changeful neck.
While thus the gentle tenants of the shade
Indulge their purer loves, the rougher world
Of brutes, below, rush furious into flame
And fierce desire. Through all his lusty veins
The bull, deep-scorch’d, the raging passion feels.
Of pasture sick, and negligent of food,
Scarce seen, he wades among the yellow broom,
While o’er his ample sides the rambling sprays
Luxuriant shoot; or through the mazy wood
Dejected wanders, nor the enticing bud
Crops, though it presses on his careless sense.
And oft, in jealous maddening fancy wrapt,
He seeks the fight; and, idly butting, feigns
His rival gor’d in every knotty trunk.
Him should he meet, the bellowing war begins:
Their eyes flash fury; to the hollow’d earth,
Whence the sand flies, they mutter bloody deeds,
And groaning deep the impetuous battle mix;
While the fair heifer, balmy-breathing, near,
Stands kindling up their rage. The trembling steed,
[Pg 444]
With this hot impulse seiz’d in every nerve,
Nor heeds the rein, nor hears the sounding thong;
Blows are not felt; but, tossing high his head,
And by the well-known joy to distant plains
Attracted strong, all wild he bursts away;
O’er rocks, and woods, and craggy mountains flies;
And, neighing, on the aerial summit takes
The exciting gale; then, steep-descending, cleaves
The headlong torrents foaming down the hills,
Even where the madness of the straiten’d stream
Turns in black eddies round—such is the force
With which his frantic heart and sinews swell.
Are the broad monsters of the foaming deep:
From the deep ooze and gelid caverns rous’d,
They flounce and tumble in unwieldy joy.
Dire were the strain, and dissonant, to sing
The cruel raptures of the savage kind;
How, by this flame their native wrath sublim’d,
They roam, amid the fury of their heart,
The far-resounding waste in fiercer bands,
And growl their horrid loves. But this, the theme
I sing, enraptur’d, to the British fair,
Forbids; and leads me to the mountain brow,
Where sits the shepherd on the grassy turf,
Inhaling, healthful, the descending sun.
Around him feeds his many-bleating flock,
Of various cadence; and his sportive lambs,
This way and that convolv’d, in friskful glee,
Their frolics play. And now the sprightly race
Invites them forth; when swift, the signal given,
They start away, and sweep the massy mound
That runs around the hill; the rampart once
Of iron war, in ancient barbarous times,
When disunited Britain ever bled,
Lost in eternal broil: ere yet she grew
To this deep-laid indissoluble state,
Where wealth and commerce lift the golden head;
And, o’er our labors, liberty and law
Impartial watch—the wonder of a world!
What is this mighty breath, ye curious, say,
That, in a powerful language, felt not heard,
Instructs the fowls of heaven; and through their breast
These arts of love diffuses? What, but God?
Inspiring God! who, boundless spirit all,
And unremitting energy, pervades,
Adjusts, sustains, and agitates the whole.
He ceaseless works alone, and yet alone
Seems not to work; with such perfection fram’d
Is this complex stupendous scheme of things.
But, though conceal’d, to every purer eye
The informing Author in his works appears:
Chief, lovely Spring, in thee, and thy soft scenes,
The smiling God is seen; while water, earth,
And air attest his bounty—which exalts
The brute creation to this finer thought,
And annual melts their undesigning hearts
Profusely thus in tenderness and joy.
Still let my song a nobler note assume,
And sing the infusive force of Spring on man,
When heaven and earth, as if contending, vie
To raise his being, and serene his soul,
Can he forbear to join the general smile
Of Nature? can fierce passions vex his breast,
While every gale is peace, and every grove
Is melody? Hence! from the bounteous walks
Of flowing Spring, ye sordid sons of earth,
Hard, and unfeeling of another’s woe,
Or only lavish to yourselves; away!
But come, ye generous minds, in whose wide thought;
Of all his works, creative bounty burns
With warmest beam; and on your open front
And liberal eye sits, from his dark retreat
Inviting modest want. Nor till invok’d
Can restless goodness wait: your active search
Leaves no cold wintry corner unexplor’d;
Like silent-working Heaven, surprising oft
The lonely heart with unexpected good.
For you the roving spirit of the wind
Blows Spring abroad; for you the teeming clouds
Descend in gladsome plenty o’er the world;
And the sun sheds his kindest rays for you.
Ye flower of human race! In these green days,
Reviving sickness lifts her languid head;
Life flows afresh; and young-ey’d health exalts
The whole creation round. Contentment walks
The sunny glade, and feels an inward bliss
Spring o’er his mind, beyond the power of kings
To purchase. Pure serenity apace
Induces thought, and contemplation still.
By swift degrees the love of Nature works,
And warms the bosom; till at last, sublim’d
To rapture and enthusiastic heat,
We feel the present Deity, and taste
The joy of God to see a happy world!
Thy heart inform’d by reason’s purer ray,
[Pg 445]
O Lyttelton, the friend! thy passions thus
And meditations vary, as at large,
Courting the muse, through Hagley Park you stray;
Thy British Tempè! There along the dale,
With woods o’erhung, and shagg’d with mossy rocks,
Whence on each hand the gushing waters play.
And down the rough cascade white-dashing fall,
Or gleam in lengthen’d vista through the trees,
You silent steal; or sit beneath the shade
Of solemn oaks, that tuft the swelling mounts
Thrown graceful round by Nature’s careless hand,
And pensive listen to the various voice
Of rural peace: the herds, the flocks, the birds,
The hollow-whispering breeze, the plaint of rills,
That, purling down amid the twisted roots
Which creep around, their dewy murmurs shake
On the sooth’d ear. From these abstracted oft,
You wander through the philosophic world;
Where in bright train continual wonders rise,
Or to the curious or the pious eye.
And oft, conducted by historic truth,
You tread the long extent of backward time:
Planning, with warm benevolence of mind,
And honest zeal unwarp’d by party rage,
Britannia’s weal; how from the venal gulf
To raise her virtue, and her arts revive.
Or, turning thence thy view, these graver thoughts
The muses charm; while, with sure taste refin’d,
You draw the inspiring breath of ancient song,
Till nobly rises, emulous, thy own.
Perhaps thy lov’d Lucinda shares thy walk,
With soul to thine attun’d. Then Nature all
Wears to the lover’s eye a look of love;
And all the tumult of a guilty world,
Toss’d by ungenerous passions, sinks away.
The tender heart is animated peace;
And as it pours its copious treasures forth,
In varied converse, softening every theme,
You, frequent-pausing, turn, and from her eyes,
Where meeken’d sense, and amiable grace,
And lively sweetness dwell, enraptur’d drink
That nameless spirit of ethereal joy,
Inimitable happiness! which love
Alone bestows, and on a favor’d few.
Meantime you gain the height, from whose fair brow
The bursting prospect spreads immense around;
And snatch’d o’er hill and dale, and wood and lawn,
And verdant field, and darkening heath between,
And villages embosom’d soft in trees,
And spiry towns by surging columns mark’d
Of household smoke, your eye excursive roams;
Wide-stretching from the hall, in whose kind haunt
The hospitable genius lingers still,
To where the broken landscape, by degrees
Ascending, roughens into rigid hills—
O’er which the Cambrian mountains, like far clouds
That skirt the blue horizon, dusky rise.
Flush’d by the spirit of the genial year,
Now from the virgin’s cheek a fresher bloom
Shoots, less and less, the live carnation round;
Her lips blush deeper sweets; she breathes of youth:
The shining moisture swells into her eyes
In brighter flow; her wishing bosom heaves
With palpitations wild; kind tumults seize
Her veins, and all her yielding soul is love.
From the keen gaze her lover turns away,
Full of the dear ecstatic power, and sick
With sighing languishment. Ah, then, ye fair!
Be greatly cautious of your sliding hearts:
Dare not the infectious sigh; the pleading look,
Downcast and low, in meek submission dress’d,
But full of guile. Let not the fervent tongue,
Prompt to deceive, with adulation smooth,
Gain on your purpos’d will. Nor in the bower,
Where woodbines flaunt and roses shed a couch,
While evening draws her crimson curtains round,
Trust your soft minutes with betraying man.
And let the aspiring youth beware of love,
Of the smooth glance beware; for ’tis too late,
When on his heart the torrent-softness pours.
Then wisdom prostrate lies, and fading fame
Dissolves in air away; while the fond soul,
Wrapp’d in gay visions of unreal bliss,
Still paints the illusive form, the kindling grace,
The enticing smile, the modest-seeming eye,
Beneath whose beauteous beams, belying heaven
Lurk searchless cunning, cruelty, and death;
And still, false warbling in his cheated ear,
Her siren voice, enchanting, draws him on
[Pg 446]
To guileful shores, and meads of fatal joy.
Even present, in the very lap of love
Inglorious laid—while music flows around,
Perfumes, and oils, and wine, and wanton hours—
Amid the roses, fierce repentance rears
Her snaky crest: a quick-returning pang
Shoots through the conscious heart; where honor still,
And great design, against the oppressive load
Of luxury, by fits, impatient heave.
But absent, what fantastic woes, arous’d,
Rage in each thought, by restless musing fed,
Chill the warm cheek, and blast the bloom of life!
Neglected fortune flies; and, sliding swift,
Prone into ruin fall his scorn’d affairs
‘Tis naught but gloom around. The darken’d sun
Loses his light. The rosy-bosom’d Spring
To weeping fancy pines; and yon bright arch,
Contracted, bends into a dusky vault.
All nature fades extinct; and she alone
Heard, felt, and seen, possesses every thought,
Fills every sense, and pants in every vein.
Books are but formal dullness, tedious friends;
And sad amid the social band he sits,
Lonely and unattentive. From the tongue
The unfinish’d period falls: while, borne away
On swelling thought, his wafted spirit flies
To the vain bosom of his distant fair;
And leaves the semblance of a lover, fixed
In melancholy site, with head declined,
And love-dejected eyes. Sudden he starts,
Shook from his tender trance, and restless runs
To glimmering shades and sympathetic glooms,
Where the dun umbrage o’er the falling stream,
Romantic, hangs; there through the pensive dusk
Strays, in heart-thrilling meditation lost,
Indulging all to love; or on the bank
Thrown, amid drooping lilies, swells the breeze
With sighs unceasing, and the brook with tears.
Thus in soft anguish he consumes the day;
Nor quits his deep retirement, till the moon
Peeps through the chambers of the fleecy east,
Enlighten’d by degrees, and in her train
Leads on the gentle hours; then forth he walks,
Beneath the trembling languish of her beam,
With softened soul, and woos the bird of eve
To mingle woes with his; or, while the world
And all the sons of care lie hush’d in sleep,
Associates with the midnight shadows drear;
And, sighing to the lonely taper, pours
His idly tortur’d heart into the page
Where rapture burns on rapture, every line
With rising frenzy fir’d. But if on bed
Delirious flung, sleep from his pillow flies.
All night he tosses, nor the balmy power
In any posture finds; till the gray morn
Lifts her pale lustre on the paler wretch,
Exanimate by love: and then perhaps
Exhausted nature sinks awhile to rest,
Still interrupted by distracted dreams,
That o’er the sick imagination rise
And in black colors paint the mimic scene.
Oft with the enchantress of his soul he talks;
Sometimes in crowds distress’d, or if retir’d
To secret-winding flower-enwoven bowers,
Far from the dull impertinence of man,
Just as he, credulous, his endless cares
Begins to lose in blind oblivious love,
Snatch’d from her yielded hand, he knows not how,
Through forests huge, and long untravel’d heaths
With desolation brown, he wanders waste,
In night and tempest wrapp’d; or shrinks, aghast,
Back from the bending precipice; or wades
The turbid stream below, and strives to reach
The farther shore, where succorless and sad
She with extended arms his aid implores,
But strives in vain: borne by the outrageous flood
To distance down, he rides the ridgy wave,
Or whelm’d beneath the boiling eddy sinks.
These are the charming agonies of love,
Whose misery delights. But through the heart
Should jealousy its venom once diffuse,
‘Tis then delightful misery no more,
But agony unmix’d, incessant gall,
Corroding every thought, and blasting all
Love’s paradise. Ye fairy prospects, then,
Ye beds of roses, and ye bowers of joy,
Farewell. Ye gleamings of departed peace,
Shine out your last! the yellow-tinging plague
Internal vision taints, and in a night
Of livid gloom imagination wraps.
Ah! then, instead of love-enliven’d cheeks,
Of sunny features, and of ardent eyes
With flowing rapture bright, dark looks succeed,
Suffus’d and glaring with untender fire;
A clouded aspect, and a burning cheek,
Where the whole poison’d soul malignant sits,
And frightens love away. Ten thousand fears
Invented wild, ten thousand frantic views
Of horrid rivals, hanging on the charms
For which he melts in fondness, eat him up
With fervent anguish, and consuming rage.
In vain reproaches lend their idle aid,
Deceitful pride, and resolution frail,
Giving false peace a moment. Fancy pours,
Afresh, her beauties on his busy thought;
Her first endearments, twining round the soul
With all the witchcraft of ensnaring love.
Straight the fierce storm involves his mind anew;
Flames through the nerves, and boils along the veins;
While anxious doubt distracts the tortur’d heart:
For even the sad assurance of his fears
Were peace to what he feels. Thus the warm youth,
Whom love deludes into his thorny wilds,
Through flowery-tempting paths, or leads a life
Of fever’d rapture, or of cruel care;
His brightest aims extinguish’d all, and all
His lively moments running down to waste.
But happy they! the happiest of their kind!
Whom gentler stars unite, and in one fate
Their hearts, their fortunes, and their beings blend,
‘Tis not the coarser tie of human laws,
Unnatural oft, and foreign to the mind,
That binds their peace, but harmony itself,
Attuning all their passions into love;
Where friendship full-exerts her softest power,
Perfect esteem enliven’d by desire
Ineffable, and sympathy of soul;
Thought meeting thought, and will preventing will
With boundless confidence: for naught but love
Can answer love, and render bliss secure.
Let him, ungenerous, who, alone intent
To bless himself from sordid parents buys
The loathing virgin, in eternal care,
Well-merited, consume his nights and days;
Let barbarous nations whose inhuman love
Is wild desire, fierce as the suns they feel;
Let eastern tyrants, from the light of heaven
Seclude their bosom-slaves, meanly possess’d
Of a mere lifeless, violated form:
While those whom love cements in holy faith,
And equal transport, free as Nature live,
Disdaining fear. What is the world to them,
Its pomp, its pleasure, and its nonsense all!
Who in each other clasp whatever fair
[Pg 448]
High fancy forms, and lavish hearts can wish;
Something than beauty dearer, should they look
Or on the mind, or mind-illumin’d face—
Truth, goodness, honor, harmony, and love,
The richest bounty of indulgent Heaven.
Meantime a smiling offspring rises round,
And mingles both their graces. By degrees,
The human blossom blows; and every day,
Soft as it rolls along, shows some new charm,
The father’s lustre and the mother’s bloom.
Then infant reason grows apace, and calls
For the kind hand of an assiduous care.
Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot,
To pour the fresh instruction o’er the mind,
To breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix
The generous purpose in the glowing breast.
Surprises often, while you look around,
And nothing strikes your eye but sights of bliss,
All various nature pressing on the heart;
An elegant sufficiency, content,
Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books,
Ease and alternate labor, useful life,
Progressive virtue, and approving Heaven.
These are the matchless joys of virtuous love;
And thus their moments fly. The Seasons thus,
As ceaseless round a jarring world they roll,
Still find them happy; and consenting Spring
Sheds her own rosy garland on their heads:
Till evening comes at last, serene and mild;
When after the long vernal day of life,
Enamor’d more, as more remembrance swells
With many a proof of recollected love,
Together down they sink in social sleep;
Together freed, their gentle spirits fly
To scenes where love and bliss immortal reign.
[Pg 449]
[From Dickens’s Household Words.]
THE HEART OF JOHN MIDDLETON; OR, THE POWER OF LOVE.
I was born at Sawley, where the shadow of
Pendle Hill falls at sunrise. I suppose Sawley
sprang up into a village in the time of
the monks, who had an abbey there. Many
of the cottages are strange old places; others
again are built of the abbey stones, mixed up
with the shale from the neighboring quarries;
and you may see many a quaint bit of carving
worked into the walls, or forming the lintels of
the doors. There is a row of houses, built still
more recently, where one Mr. Peel came to live
for the sake of the water-power, and gave the
place a fillip into something like life, though a
different kind of life, as I take it, from the grand
slow ways folks had when the monks were about.
Now, it was six o’clock—ring the bell,
throng to the factory; sharp home at twelve;
and even at night, when work was done, we
hardly knew how to walk slowly, we had been
so bustled all day long. I can’t recollect the
time when I did not go to the factory. My
father used to drag me there when I was quite
a little fellow, in order to wind reels for him.
I never remember my mother. I should have
been a better man than I have been, if I had
only had a notion of the sound of her voice, or
the look on her face.
My father and I lodged in the house of a
man, who also worked in the factory. We
were sadly thronged in Sawley, so many people
came from different parts of the country to earn
a livelihood at the new work; and it was some
time before the row of cottages I have spoken
of could be built. While they were building,
my father was turned out of his lodgings for
drinking and being disorderly, and he and I
slept in the brick-kiln—that is to say, when
we did sleep o’ nights; but, often and often we
went poaching; and many a hare and pheasant
have I rolled up in clay, and roasted in the embers
of the kiln. Then, as followed to reason,
I was drowsy next day over my work; but
father had no mercy on me for sleeping, for all
he knew the cause of it, but kicked me where
I lay, a heavy lump on the factory-floor, and
cursed and swore at me till I got up for very
fear, and to my winding again. But when his
back was turned I paid him off with heavier
curses than he had given me, and longed to be
a man that I might be revenged on him. The
words I then spoke I would not now dare to
repeat; and worse than hating words, a hating
heart went with them. I forget the time when I
did not know how to hate. When I first came
to read, and learnt about Ishmael, I thought I
must be of his doomed race, for my hand was
against every man, and every man’s against
me. But I was seventeen or more before I
cared for my book enough to learn to read.
After the row of works was finished, father
took one, and set up for himself, in letting
lodgings. I can’t say much for the furnishing;
but there was plenty of straw, and we kept up
good fires; and there is a set of people who
value warmth above every thing. The worst
lot about the place lodged with us. We used
to have a supper in the middle of the night;
there was game enough, or if there was not
game, there was poultry to be had for the stealing.
By day we all made a show of working
in the factory; by night we feasted and drank.
Now, this web of my life was black enough
and coarse enough; but by-and-by, a little golden
filmy thread began to be woven in; the
dawn of God’s mercy was at hand.
One blowy October morning, as I sauntered
lazily along to the mill, I came to the little
wooden bridge over a brook that falls into the
Bribble. On the plank there stood a child,
balancing the pitcher on her head, with which
she had been to fetch water. She was so light
on her feet that, had it not been for the weight
of the pitcher, I almost believe the wind would
have taken her up, and wafted her away, as it
carries off a blow-ball in seed-time; her blue
cotton dress was blown before her, as if she
were spreading her wings for a flight; she turned
her face round, as if to ask me for something,
but when she saw who it was, she hesitated,
for I had a bad name in the village, and I doubt
not she had been warned against me. But her
heart was too innocent to be distrustful; so she
said to me, timidly:
“Please, John Middleton, will you carry me
this heavy jug just over the bridge?”
It was the very first time I had ever been
spoken to gently. I was ordered here and there
by my father and his rough companions; I was
abused and cursed by them if I failed in doing
what they wished; if I succeeded, there came
no expression of thanks or gratitude. I was
informed of facts necessary for me to know.
But the gentle words of request or entreaty
were aforetime unknown to me, and now their
tones fell on my ear soft and sweet as a distant
peal of bells. I wished that I knew how to
speak properly in reply; but though we were
of the same standing, as regarded worldly circumstances,
there was some mighty difference
between us, which made me unable to speak
in her language of soft words and modest entreaty.
There was nothing for me but to take
up the pitcher in a kind of gruff, shy silence,
and carry it over the bridge as she had asked
me. When I gave it her back again, she thanked
me, and tripped away, leaving me, wordless,
gazing after her, like an awkward lout, as
I was. I knew well enough who she was. She
was grandchild to Eleanor Hadfield, an aged
woman, who was reputed as a witch by my
father and his set, for no other reason, that I
can make out, than her scorn, dignity, and fearlessness
of rancor. It was true we often met
her in the gray dawn of the morning when we
returned from poaching, and my father used to
curse her, under his breath, for a witch, such
as were burnt, long ago, on Pendle Hill top;
but I had heard that Eleanor was a skillful
sick-nurse, and ever ready to give her services to[Pg 450]
those who were ill; and I believe that she had
been sitting up through the night (the night
that we had been spending under the wild
heavens, in deeds as wild), with those who were
appointed to die. Nelly was her orphan grand-daughter;
her little hand-maiden; her treasure;
her one ewe-lamb. Many and many a day
have I watched by the brook-side, hoping that
some happy gust of wind, coming with opportune
bluster down the hollow of the dale, might
make me necessary once more to her. I longed
to hear her speak to me again. I said the
words she had used to myself, trying to catch
her tone; but the chance never came again. I
do not know that she ever knew how I watched
for her there. I found out that she went to
school, and nothing would serve me but that I
must go too. My father scoffed at me; I did
not care. I knew naught of what reading was,
nor that it was likely that I should be laughed
at; I, a great hulking lad of seventeen or upward,
for going to learn my A, B, C, in the
midst of a crowd of little ones. I stood just
this way in my mind: Nelly was at school; it
was the best place for seeing her, and hearing
her voice again. Therefore I would go too. My
father talked, and swore, and threatened, but
I stood to it. He said I should leave school
weary of it in a month. I swore a deeper oath
than I like to remember, that I would stay a
year, and come out a reader and a writer. My
father hated the notion of folks learning to read,
and said it took all the spirit out of them; besides,
he thought he had a right to every penny
of my wages; and though, when he was in good
humor, he might have given me many a jug of
ale, he grudged my two-pence a week for schooling.
However, to school I went. It was a different
place to what I had thought it before I
went inside. The girls sat on one side, and
the boys on the other; so I was not near Nelly.
She, too, was in the first class; I was put with
the little toddling things that could hardly run
alone. The master sat in the middle, and kept
pretty strict watch over us. But I could see
Nelly, and hear her read her chapter; and even
when it was one with a long list of hard names,
such as the master was very fond of giving her,
to show how well she could hit them off without
spelling, I thought I had never heard a
prettier music. Now and then she read other
things. I did not know what they were, true
or false; but I listened because she read; and,
by-and-by, I began to wonder. I remember the
first word I ever spoke to her was to ask her
(as we were coming out of school) who was the
father of whom she had been reading; for when
she said the words “Our Father,” her voice
dropped into a soft, holy kind of low sound,
which struck me more than any loud reading,
it seemed so loving and tender. When I asked
her this, she looked at me with her great blue
wondering eyes, at first shocked; and then, as
it were, melted down into pity and sorrow, she
said in the same way, below her breath, in
which she read the words “Our Father,”
“Don’t you know? It is God.”
“God?”
“Yes; the God that grandmother tells me
about.”
“Tell me what she says, will you?” So we
sat down on the hedge-bank, she a little above
me, while I looked up into her face, and she
told me all the holy texts her grandmother had
taught her, as explaining all that could be explained
of the Almighty. I listened in silence,
for indeed I was overwhelmed with astonishment.
Her knowledge was principally rote-knowledge;
she was too young for much more;
but we, in Lancashire, speak a rough kind of
Bible language, and the texts seemed very clear
to me. I rose up, dazed and overpowered. I
was going away in silence, when I bethought
me of my manners, and turned back, and said,
“Thank you,” for the first time I ever remember
saying it in my life. That was a great day
for me, in more ways than one.
I was always one who could keep very steady
to an object when once I had set it before me.
My object was to know Nelly. I was conscious
of nothing more. But it made me regardless
of all other things. The master might scold,
the little ones might laugh; I bore it all without
giving it a second thought. I kept to my
year, and came out a reader and writer; more,
however, to stand well in Nelly’s good opinion,
than because of my oath. About this time, my
father committed some bad, cruel deed, and had
to fly the country. I was glad he went; for I
had never loved or cared for him, and wanted to
shake myself clear of his set. But it was no
easy matter. Honest folk stood aloof; only bad
men held out their arms to me with a welcome.
Even Nelly seemed to have a mixture of fear
now with her kind ways toward me. I was the
son of John Middleton, who, if he were caught,
would be hung at Lancaster Castle. I thought
she looked at me sometimes with a sort of sorrowful
horror. Others were not forbearing enough
to keep their expression of feeling confined to
looks. The son of the overlooker at the mill
never ceased twitting me with my father’s
crime; he now brought up his poaching against
him, though I knew very well how many a good
supper he himself had made on game which had
been given him to make him and his father
wink at late hours in the morning. And how
were such as my father to come honestly by
game?
This lad, Dick Jackson, was the bane of my
life. He was a year or two older than I was,
and had much power over the men who worked
at the mill, as he could report to his father
what he chose. I could not always hold my
peace when he “threaped” me with my father’s
sins, but gave it him back sometimes in a storm
of passion. It did me no good; only threw me
farther from the company of better men, who
looked aghast and shocked at the oaths I poured
out—blasphemous words learned in my childhood,
which I could not forget now that I would
fain have purified myself of them; while all the[Pg 451]
time Dick Jackson stood by, with a mocking
smile of intelligence; and when I had ended,
breathless and weary with spent passion, he
would turn to those whose respect I longed to
earn, and ask if I were not a worthy son of my
father, and likely to tread in his steps. But
this smiling indifference of his to my miserable
vehemence was not all, though it was the worst
part of his conduct, for it made the rankling
hatred grow up in my heart, and overshadow
it like the great gourd-tree of the Prophet Jonah.
But his was a merciful shade, keeping out the
burning sun; mine blighted what it fell upon.
What Dick Jackson did besides, was this, his
father was a skillful overlooker, and a good man;
Mr. Peel valued him so much, that he was kept
on, although his health was failing; and when
he was unable, through illness, to come to the
mill, he deputed his son to watch over and report
the men. It was too much power for one
so young—I speak it calmly now. Whatever
Dick Jackson became, he had strong temptations
when he was young, which will be allowed
for hereafter. But at the time of which I am
telling, my hate raged like a fire. I believed
that he was the one sole obstacle to my being
received as fit to mix with good and honest
men. I was sick of crime and disorder, and
would fain have come over to a different kind
of life, and have been industrious, sober, honest,
and right-spoken (I had no idea of higher virtue
then), and at every turn Dick Jackson met me
with his sneers. I have walked the night
through, in the old abbey field, planning how I
could out-wit him, and win men’s respect in
spite of him. The first time I ever prayed, was
underneath the silent stars, kneeling by the old
abbey walls, throwing up my arms, and asking
God for the power of revenge upon him.
I had heard that if I prayed earnestly, God
would give me what I asked for, and I looked
upon it as a kind of chance for the fulfillment
of my wishes. If earnestness would have won
the boon for me, never were wicked words so
earnestly spoken. And oh, later on, my prayer
was heard, and my wish granted! All this
time I saw little of Nelly. Her grandmother
was failing, and she had much to do in-doors.
Besides, I believed I had read her looks aright,
when I took them to speak of aversion; and I
planned to hide myself from her sight, as it
were, until I could stand upright before men,
with fearless eyes, dreading no face of accusation.
It was possible to acquire a good character;
I would do it—I did it: but no one
brought up among respectable, untempted people,
can tell the unspeakable hardness of the
task. In the evenings I would not go forth among
the village throng; for the acquaintances that
claimed me were my father’s old associates,
who would have been glad enough to enlist a
strong young man like me in their projects;
and the men who would have shunned me and
kept me aloof, were the steady and orderly.
So I staid in-doors, and practiced myself in
reading. You will say, I should have found it
easier to earn a good character away from
Sawley, at some place where neither I nor my
father was known. So I should; but it would
not have been the same thing to my mind.
Besides, representing all good men, all goodness
to me, in Sawley Nelly lived. In her
sight I would work out my life, and fight my
way upward to men’s respect. Two years
passed on. Every day I strove fiercely; every
day my struggles were made fruitless by the
son of the overlooker; and I seemed but where
I was—but where I must ever be esteemed by
all who knew me—but as the son of the criminal—wild,
reckless, ripe for crime myself. Where
was the use of my reading and writing. These
acquirements were disregarded and scouted by
those among whom I was thrust back to take
my portion. I could have read any chapter in
the Bible now; and Nelly seemed as though
she would never know it. I was driven in
upon my books; and few enough of them I
had. The peddlers brought them round in their
packs, and I bought what I could. I had the
“Seven Champions,” and the “Pilgrim’s Progress;”
and both seemed to me equally wonderful,
and equally founded on fact. I got
Byron’s “Narrative,” and Milton’s “Paradise
Lost;” but I lacked the knowledge which
would give a clew to all. Still they afforded
me pleasure, because they took me out of myself,
and made me forget my miserable position,
and made me unconscious (for the time at least)
of my one great passion of hatred against Dick
Jackson.
When Nelly was about seventeen her grandmother
died. I stood aloof in the church-yard,
behind the great yew tree, and watched the
funeral. It was the first religious service that
ever I heard; and, to my shame, as I thought,
it affected me to tears. The words seemed so
peaceful and holy that I longed to go to church,
but I durst not, because I had never been.
The parish church was at Bolton, far enough
away to serve as an excuse for all who did not
care to go. I heard Nelly’s sobs filling up
every pause in the clergyman’s voice; and
every sob of hers went to my heart. She passed
me on her way out of the church-yard; she
was so near I might have touched her; but
her head was hanging down, and I durst not
speak to her. Then the question arose, what
was to become of her? She must earn her
living; was it to be as a farm-servant, or by
working at the mill? I knew enough of both
kinds of life to make me tremble for her. My
wages were such as to enable me to marry, if I
chose; and I never thought of woman, for my
wife, but Nelly. Still, I would not have married
her now, if I could; for, as yet, I had not
risen up to the character which I had determined
it was fit that Nelly’s husband should
have. When I was rich in good report, I would
come forward, and take my chance; but until
then, I would hold my peace. I had faith in
the power of my long-continued, dogged, breasting
of opinion. Sooner or later it must, it[Pg 452]
should yield, and I be received among the ranks
of good men. But, meanwhile, what was to become
of Nelly? I reckoned up my wages; I
went to inquire what the board of a girl would
be, who should help her in her household work,
and live with her as her daughter, at the house
of one of the most decent women of the place;
she looked at me suspiciously. I kept down
my temper, and told her I would never come
near the place; that I would keep away from
that end of the village; and that the girl
for whom I made the inquiry should never
know but what the parish paid for her keep.
It would not do; she suspected me; but I
know I had power over myself to have kept to
my word; and besides, I would not for worlds
have had Nelly put under any obligation to me,
which should speck the purity of her love, or
dim it by a mixture of gratitude—the love that
I craved to earn, not for my money, not for my
kindness, but for myself. I heard that Nelly
had met with a place in Bolland; and I could
see no reason why I might not speak to her
once before she left our neighborhood. I meant
it to be a quiet, friendly telling her of my sympathy
in her sorrow. I felt I could command
myself. So, on the Sunday before she was to
leave Sawley, I waited near the wood-path, by
which I knew that she would return from afternoon
church. The birds made such a melodious
warble, such a busy sound among the
leaves, that I did not hear approaching footsteps,
till they were close at hand; and then
there were sounds of two persons’ voices. The
wood was near that part of Sawley where Nelly
was staying with friends; the path through it
led to their house, and theirs only, so I knew
it must be she, for I had watched her setting
out to church alone.
But who was the other?
The blood went to my heart and head, as if
I were shot, when I saw that it was Dick Jackson.
Was this the end of it all? In the steps
of sin which my father had trode, I would rush
to my death and to my doom. Even where I
stood I longed for a weapon to slay him. How
dared he come near my Nelly? She too—I
thought her faithless, and forgot how little I
had ever been to her in outward action; how
few words, and those how uncouth, I had ever
spoken to her; and I hated her for a traitoress.
These feelings passed through me before I could
see, my eyes and head were so dizzy and blind.
When I looked I saw Dick Jackson holding her
hand, and speaking quick, and low, and thick,
as a man speaks in great vehemence. She
seemed white and dismayed; but all at once,
at some word of his (and what it was she never
would tell me), she looked as though she defied
a fiend, and wrenched herself out of his grasp.
He caught hold of her again, and began once
more the thick whisper that I loathed. I could
bear it no longer, nor did I see why I should.
I stepped out from behind the tree where I had
been lying. When she saw me, she lost her
look of one strung up to desperation, and came
and clung to me; and I felt like a giant in
strength and might. I held her with one arm,
but I did not take my eyes off him; I felt as
if they blazed down into his soul, and scorched
him up. He never spoke, but tried to look as
though he defied me; at last his eyes fell before
mine. I dared not speak; for the old horrid
oaths thronged up to my mouth; and I
dreaded giving them way, and terrifying my
poor trembling Nelly.
At last he made to go past me; I drew her
out of the pathway. By instinct she wrapped
her garments round her, as if to avoid his accidental
touch; and he was stung by this I suppose—I
believe—to the mad, miserable revenge
he took. As my back was turned to him, in
an endeavor to speak some words to Nelly that
might soothe her into calmness, she, who was
looking after him, like one fascinated with terror,
saw him take a sharp shaley stone, and
aim it at me. Poor darling! she clung round
me as a shield, making her sweet body into
a defense for mine. It hit her, and she spoke
no word, kept back her cry of pain, but fell at
my feet in a swoon. He—the coward! ran off
as soon as he saw what he had done. I was
with Nelly alone in the green gloom of the
wood. The quivering and leaf-tinted light made
her look as if she were dead. I carried her, not
knowing if I bore a corpse or not, to her friend’s
house. I did not stay to explain, but ran madly
for the doctor.
Well! I can not bear to recur to that time
again. Five weeks I lived in the agony of suspense;
from which my only relief was in laying
savage plans for revenge. If I hated him before,
what think ye I did now? It seemed as
if earth could not hold us twain, but that one
of us must go down to Gehenna. I could have
killed him; and would have done it without a
scruple, but that seemed too poor and bold a
revenge. At length—oh! the weary waiting
oh! the sickening of my heart—Nelly grew better—as
well as she was ever to grow. The
bright color had left her cheek; the mouth
quivered with repressed pain, the eyes were dim
with tears that agony had forced into them,
and I loved her a thousand times better and
more than when she was bright and blooming!
What was best of all, I began to perceive that
she cared for me. I know her grandmother’s
friends warned her against me, and told her I
came of a bad stock; but she had passed the
point where remonstrance from bystanders can
take effect—she loved me as I was, a strange
mixture of bad and good, all unworthy of her.
We spoke together now, as those do whose lives
are bound up in each other. I told her I would
marry her as soon as she had recovered her
health. Her friends shook their heads; but
they saw she would be unfit for farm-service or
heavy work, and they perhaps thought, as many
a one does, that a bad husband was better than
none at all. Anyhow we were married; and I
learned to bless God for my happiness, so far
I beyond my deserts. I kept her like a lady. I[Pg 453]
was a skillful workman, and earned good wages;
and every want she had I tried to gratify. Her
wishes were few and simple enough, poor Nelly!
If they had been ever so fanciful, I should have
had my reward in the new feeling of the holiness
of home. She could lead me as a little
child, with the charm of her gentle voice, and
her ever-kind words. She would plead for all
when I was full of anger and passion; only
Dick Jackson’s name passed never between our
lips during all that time. In the evenings she
lay back in her bee-hive chair, and read to me.
I think I see her now, pale and weak, with her
sweet young face, lighted by her holy, earnest
eyes, telling me of the Saviour’s life and death,
till they were filled with tears. I longed to
have been there, to have avenged him on the
wicked Jews. I liked Peter the best of all the
disciples. But I got the Bible myself, and read
the mighty acts of God’s vengeance in the Old
Testament, with a kind of triumphant faith,
that, sooner or later, He would take my cause
in hand, and revenge me on mine enemy.
In a year or so, Nelly had a baby—a little
girl, with eyes just like hers, that looked with
a grave openness right into yours. Nelly recovered
but slowly. It was just before winter,
the cotton-crop had failed, and master had to
turn off many hands. I thought I was sure of
being kept on, for I had earned a steady character,
and did my work well; but once again
it was permitted that Dick Jackson should do
me wrong. He induced his father to dismiss
me among the first in my branch of the business;
and there was I, just before winter set
in, with a wife and new-born child, and a
small enough store of money to keep body and
soul together, till I could get to work again.
All my savings had gone by Christmas Eve,
and we sat in the house foodless for the morrow’s
festival. Nelly looked pinched and worn;
the baby cried for a larger supply of milk than
its poor starving mother could give it. My
right hand had not forgot its cunning; and I
went out once more to my poaching. I knew
where the gang met; and I knew what a welcome
back I should have—a far warmer and
more hearty welcome than good men had given
me when I tried to enter their ranks. On the
road to the meeting-place I fell in with an old
man—one who had been a companion to my
father in his early days.
“What, lad!” said he, “art thou turning
back to the old trade? It’s the better business
now, that cotton has failed.”
“Ay,” said I, “cotton is starving us outright.
A man may bear a deal himself, but
he’ll do aught bad and sinful to save his wife
and child.”
“Nay, lad,” said he, “poaching is not sinful;
it goes against man’s laws, but not against
God’s.”
I was too weak to argue or talk much. I
had not tasted food for two days. But I murmured,
“At any rate, I trusted to have been
clear of it for the rest of my days. It led my
father wrong at first. I have tried and I have
striven. Now I give all up. Right or wrong
shall be the same to me. Some are fore-doomed;
and so am I.” And as I spoke, some
notion of the futurity that would separate Nelly,
the pure and holy, from me, the reckless and
desperate one, came over me with an irrepressible
burst of anguish. Just then the bells of
Bolton-in-Bolland struck up a glad peal, which
came over the woods, in the solemn midnight
air, like the sons of the morning shouting for
joy—they seemed so clear and jubilant. It was
Christmas Day; and I felt like an outcast from
the gladness and the salvation. Old Jonah
spoke out:
“Yon’s the Christmas bells. I say, Johnny,
my lad, I’ve no notion of taking such a spiritless
chap as thou into the thick of it, with thy
rights and thy wrongs. We don’t trouble ourselves
with such fine lawyer’s stuff, and we
bring down the ‘varmint’ all the better. Now,
I’ll not have thee in our gang, for thou art not
up to the fun, and thou’d hang fire when the
time came to be doing. But I’ve a shrewd
guess that plaguy wife and child of thine are
at the bottom of thy half-and-half joining.
Now, I was thy father’s friend afore he took to
them helter-skelter ways; and I’ve five shillings
and a neck of mutton at thy service. I’ll
not list a fasting man; but if thou’lt come to
us with a full stomach, and say, ‘I like your
life, my lads, and I’ll make one of you with
pleasure, the first shiny night,’ why, we’ll give
you a welcome and a half; but to-night, make
no more ado but turn back with me for the mutton
and the money.”
I was not proud; nay, I was most thankful.
I took the meat, and boiled some broth for my
poor Nelly. She was in a sleep, or a faint, I
know not which; but I roused her, and held
her up in bed, and fed her with a teaspoon, and
the light came back to her eyes, and the faint
moonlight smile to her lips; and when she had
ended, she said her innocent grace, and fell
asleep with her baby on her breast. I sat over
the fire, and listened to the bells, as they swept
past my cottage on the gusts of the wind. I
longed and yearned for the second coming of
Christ, of which Nelly had told me. The world
seemed cruel, and hard, and strong, too strong
for me; and I prayed to cling to the hem of his
garment, and be borne over the rough places
when I fainted and bled, and found no man to
pity or help me, but poor old Jonah the publican
and sinner. All this time my own woes
and my own self were uppermost in my mind,
as they are in the minds of most who have
been hardly used. As I thought of my wrongs
and my sufferings, my heart burned against
Dick Jackson; and as the bells rose and fell,
so my hopes waxed and waned, that in those
mysterious days of which they were both the
remembrance and the prophecy, he would be
purged from off the earth. I took Nelly’s Bible,
and turned, not to the gracious story of the
Saviour’s birth, but to the records of the former[Pg 454]
days when the Jews took such wild revenge upon
all their opponents. I was a Jew—a leader
among the people. Dick Jackson was as Pharaoh,
as the King Agag, who walked delicately,
thinking the bitterness of death was past—in
short, he was the conquered enemy over whom
I gloated, with my Bible in my hand—that
Bible which contained our Saviour’s words on
the Cross. As yet, those words seemed faint
and meaningless to me, like a tract of country
seen in the starlight haze; while the histories
of the Old Testament were grand and distinct
in the blood-red color of sunset. By-and-by
that night passed into day; and little piping
voices came round, carol-singing. They wakened
Nelly. I went to her as soon as I heard her
stirring.
“Nelly,” said I, “there’s money and food in
the house; I will be off to Padiham seeking
work, while thou hast something to go upon.”
“Not to-day,” said she; “stay to-day with
me. If thou wouldst only go to church with
me this once”—for you see I had never been
inside a church but when we were married, and
she was often praying me to go; and now she
looked at me, with a sigh just creeping forth
from her lips, as she expected a refusal. But
I did not refuse. I had been kept away from
church before because I dared not go; and now
I was desperate and dared do any thing. If I
did look like a heathen in the face of all men,
why, I was a heathen in my heart; for I was
falling back into all my evil ways. I had resolved,
if my search of work at Padiham should
fail, I would follow my father’s footsteps, and
take with my own right hand and by my strength
of arm, what it was denied me to obtain honestly.
I had resolved to leave Sawley, where
a curse seemed to hang over me; so what did
it matter if I went to church, all unbeknowing
what strange ceremonies were there performed?
I walked thither as a sinful man—sinful in my
heart. Nelly hung on my arm, but even she
could not get me to speak. I went in; she
found my places, and pointed to the words, and
looked up into my eyes with hers, so full of
faith and joy. But I saw nothing but Richard
Jackson—I heard nothing but his loud nasal
voice, making response, and desecrating all the
holy words. He was in broadcloth of the best—I
in my fustian jacket. He was prosperous
and glad—I was starving and desperate. Nelly
grew pale as she saw the expression in my
eyes; and she prayed ever and ever more fervently
as the thought of me tempted by the
Devil, even at that very moment, came more
fully before her.
By-and-by she forgot even me, and laid her
soul bare before God, in a long silent weeping
prayer, before we left the church. Nearly all
had gone—and I stood by her, unwilling to disturb
her, unable to join her. At last she rose
up, heavenly calm. She took my arm, and we
went home through the woods, where all the
birds seemed tame and familiar. Nelly said
she thought all living creatures knew it was
Christmas Day, and rejoiced, and were loving
together. I believed it was the frost that had
tamed them; and I felt the hatred that was in
me, and knew that whatever else was loving, I
was full of malice and uncharitableness, nor did
I wish to be otherwise. That afternoon I bade
Nelly and our child farewell, and tramped to
Padiham. I got work—how I hardly know;
for stronger and stronger came the force of the
temptation to lead a wild, free life of sin;
legions seemed whispering evil thoughts to me,
and only my gentle, pleading Nelly to pull me
back from the great gulf. However, as I said
before, I got work, and set off homeward to
move my wife and child to that neighborhood.
I hated Sawley, and yet I was fiercely indignant
to leave it; with my purposes unaccomplished.
I was still an outcast from the more
respectable, who stood afar off from such as I;
and mine enemy lived and flourished in their
regard. Padiham, however, was not so far
away, for me to despair—to relinquish my fixed
determination. It was on the eastern side of
the great Pendle Hill; ten miles away, maybe.
Hate will overleap a greater obstacle.
I took a cottage on the Fell, high up on the
side of the hill. We saw a long bleak moorland
slope before us, and then the gray stone
houses of Padiham, over which a black cloud
hung; different from the blue wood or turf
smoke about Sawley. The wild winds came
down, and whistled round our house many a
day when all was still below. But I was
happy then. I rose in men’s esteem. I had
work in plenty. Our child lived and throve.
But I forgot not our country proverb: “Keep a
stone in thy pocket for seven years: turn it,
and keep it seven years more; but have it ever
ready to cast at thine enemy when the time
comes.”
One day a fellow workman asked me to go to
a hill-side preaching. Now I never cared to go
to church; but there was something newer and
freer in the notion of praying to God right
under His great dome; and the open air had
had a charm to me ever since my wild boyhood.
Besides, they said these ranters had strange
ways with them, and I thought it would be fun
to see their way of setting about it; and this
ranter of all others had made himself a name in
our parts. Accordingly we went; it was a fine
summer’s evening, after work was done. When
we got to the place we saw such a crowd as I
never saw before, men, women, and children;
all ages were gathered together, and sat on the
hill-side. They were care-worn, diseased, sorrowful,
criminal; all that was told on their
faces, which were hard, and strongly marked.
In the midst, standing in a cart, was the ranter.
When I first saw him, I said to my companion,
“Lord! What a little man to make all this
pother! I could trip him up with one of my
fingers;” and then I sat down, and looked
about me a bit. All eyes were fixed on the
preacher; and I turned mine upon him too.
He began to speak; it was in no fine-drawn[Pg 455]
language, but in words such as we heard every
day of our lives, and about things we did every
day of our lives. He did not call our short-comings,
pride or worldliness or pleasure-seeking,
which would have given us no clear notion
of what he meant, but he just told us outright
what we did, and then he gave it a name, and
said that it was accursed—and that we were
lost if we went on so doing.
By this time the tears and sweat were
running down his face; he was wrestling for
our souls. We wondered how he knew our
innermost lives as he did, for each one of us
saw his sin set before him in plain-spoken
words. Then he cried out to us to repent; and
spoke first to us, and then to God, in a way
that would have shocked many—but it did not
shock me. I liked strong things; and I liked
the bare full truth: and I felt brought nearer to
God in that hour—the summer darkness creeping
over us, and one after one the stars coming
out above us, like the eyes of the angels watching
us—than I had ever done in my life before.
When he had brought us to our tears and sighs,
he stopped his loud voice of upbraiding, and
there was a hush, only broken by sobs and
quivering moans, in which I heard through the
gloom the voices of strong men in anguish and
supplication, as well as the shriller tones of
women. Suddenly he was heard again; by this
time we could not see him; but his voice was
now tender as the voice of an angel, and he
told us of Christ, and implored us to come to
Him. I never heard such passionate entreaty.
He spoke as if he saw Satan hovering near us
in the dark dense night, and as if our only
safety lay in a very present coming to the Cross;
I believe he did see Satan; we know he haunts
the desolate old hills, awaiting his time, and
now or never it was, with many a soul. At
length there was a sudden silence; and by the
cries of those nearest to the preacher, we heard
that he had fainted. We had all crowded
round him, as if he were our safety and our
guide; and he was overcome by the heat and
the fatigue, for we were the fifth set of people
whom he had addressed that day. I left the
crowd who were leading him down, and took a
lonely path myself.
Here was the earnestness I needed. To this
weak and weary, fainting man, religion was a
life and a passion. I look back now, and wonder
at my blindness as to what was the root of
all my Nelly’s patience and long-suffering; for
I thought, now I had found out what religion
was, and that hitherto, it had been all an unknown
thing to me.
Henceforward, my life was changed. I was
zealous and fanatical. Beyond the set to whom
I had affiliated myself I had no sympathy. I
would have persecuted all who differed from
me, if I had only had the power. I became an
ascetic in all bodily enjoyments. And, strange
and inexplicable mystery, I had some thoughts
that by every act of self-denial I was attaining
to my unholy end, and that, when I had fasted
and prayed long enough, God would place my
vengeance in my hands. I have knelt by
Nelly’s bedside, and vowed to live a self-denying
life, as regarded all outward things, if so
that God would grant my prayer. I left it in
His hands. I felt sure He would trace out the
token and the word; and Nelly would listen to
my passionate words, and lie awake sorrowful
and heart-sore through the night; and I would
get up and make her tea, and re-arrange her
pillows, with a strange and willful blindness
that my bitter words and blasphemous prayers
had cost her miserable, sleepless nights. My
Nelly was suffering yet from that blow. How
or where the stone had hurt her I never understood;
but in consequence of that one moment’s
action, her limbs became numb and dead, and,
by slow degrees, she took to her bed, from
whence she was never carried alive. There she
lay, propped up by pillows, her meek face ever
bright, and smiling forth a greeting; her white
pale hands ever busy with some kind of work;
and our little Grace was as the power of motion
to her. Fierce as I was away from her, I never
could speak to her but in my gentlest tones.
She seemed to me as if she had never wrestled
for salvation as I had; and when away from
her, I resolved, many a time and oft, that I
would rouse her up to her state of danger when
I returned home that evening—even if strong
reproach were required I would rouse her up to
her soul’s need. But I came in and heard her
voice singing softly some holy word of patience,
some psalm which, maybe, had comforted the
martyrs, and when I saw her face, like the face
of an angel, full of patience and happy faith, I
put off my awakening speeches till another
time.
One night, long ago, when I was yet young
and strong, although my years were past forty,
I sat alone in my house-place. Nelly was
always in bed, as I have told you, and Grace
lay in a cot by her side. I believed them to be
both asleep; though how they could sleep I
could not conceive, so wild and terrible was the
night. The wind came sweeping down from
the hill-top in great beats, like the pulses of
Heaven; and, during the pauses, while I listened
for the coming roar, I felt the earth shiver
beneath me. The rain beat against windows
and doors, and sobbed for entrance. I thought
the Prince of the Air was abroad; and I heard,
or fancied I heard, shrieks come on the blast,
like the cries of sinful souls given over to his
power.
The sounds came nearer and nearer. I got
up and saw to the fastenings of the door, for
though I cared not for mortal man, I did care
for what I believed was surrounding the house,
in evil might and power. But the door shook
as though it, too, were in deadly terror, and I
thought the fastenings would give way. I stood
facing the entrance, lashing my heart up to defy
the spiritual enemy that I looked to see, every
instant, in bodily presence; and the door did
burst open; and before me stood—what was[Pg 456]
it? man or demon? a gray-haired man, with
poor worn clothes all wringing wet, and he
himself battered and piteous to look upon, from
the storm he had passed through.
“Let me in!” he said. “Give me shelter.
I am poor, or I would reward you. And I am
friendless too,” he said, looking up in my face,
like one seeking what he can not find. In that
look, strangely changed, I knew that God had
heard me; for it was the old cowardly look of
my life’s enemy. Had he been a stranger I
might not have welcomed him, but as he was
mine enemy, I gave him welcome in a lordly
dish. I sat opposite to him. “Whence do
you come?” said I. “It is a strange night to
be out on the fells.”
He looked up at me sharp: but in general he
held his head down like a beast or hound.
“You won’t betray me. I’ll not trouble you
long. As soon as the storm abates, I’ll go.”
“Friend!” said I, “what have I to betray?”
and I trembled lest he should keep himself out
of my power and not tell me. “You come for
shelter, and I give you of my best. Why do you
suspect me?”
“Because,” said he, in his abject bitterness,
“all the world is against me. I never met with
goodness or kindness; and now I am hunted like
a wild beast. I’ll tell you—I am a convict returned
before my time. I was a Sawley man,”
(as if I, of all men did not know it!) “and I
went back like a fool to the old place. They’ve
hunted me out where I would fain have lived
rightly and quietly, and they’ll send me back to
that hell upon earth, if they catch me. I did
not know it would be such a night. Only let
me rest and get warm once more, and I’ll go
away. Good kind man! have pity upon me.”
I smiled all his doubts away; I promised him a
bed on the floor, and I thought of Jael and Sisera.
My heart leaped up like a war-horse at
the sound of the trumpet, and said, “Ha, ha,
the Lord hath heard my prayer and supplication; I
shall have vengeance at last!”
He did not dream who I was. He was
changed; so that I, who had learned his features
with all the diligence of hatred, did not at
first recognize him; and he thought not of me,
only of his own woe and affright. He looked
into the fire with the dreamy gaze of one whose
strength of character, if he had any, is beaten out
of him; and can not return at any emergency
whatsoever. He sighed and pitied himself, yet
could not decide on what to do. I went softly
about my business, which was to make him up
a bed on the floor; and, when he was lulled to
sleep and security, to make the best of my way
to Padiham, and summon the constable, into
whose hands I would give him up to be taken
back to his “hell upon earth.” I went into
Nelly’s room. She was awake and anxious. I
saw she had been listening to the voices.
“Who is there?” said she. “John, tell me—it
sounded like a voice I knew. For God’s
sake, speak.”
I smiled a quiet smile. “It is a poor man
who has lost his way. Go to sleep my dear—I
shall make him up on the floor. I may not
come for some time. Go to sleep;” and I kissed
her. I thought she was soothed, but not fully
satisfied. However, I hastened away before
there was any further time for questioning. I
made up the bed; and Richard Jackson, tired
out, lay down and fell asleep. My contempt for
him almost equaled my hate. If I were avoiding
return to a place which I thought to be a
hell upon earth, think you I would have taken a
quiet sleep under any man’s roof, till somehow
or another I was secure? Now comes this man,
and with incontinence of tongue, blabs out the
very thing he most should conceal, and then lies
down to a good, quiet, snoring sleep. I looked
again. His face was old, and worn, and miserable.
So should mine enemy look. And yet it
was sad to gaze upon him, poor hunted creature!
I would gaze no more, lest I grew weak and
pitiful. Thus I took my hat and softly opened
the door. The wind blew in, but did not disturb
him, he was so utterly weary. I was out in the
open air of night. The storm was ceasing, and
instead of the black sky of doom, that I had seen
when I last looked forth, the moon was come
out, wan and pale, as if wearied with the fight
in the heavens; and her white light fell ghostly
and calm on many a well-known object. Now
and then a dark torn cloud was blown across her
home in the sky, but they grew fewer and fewer,
and at last she shone out steady and clear, I could
see Padiham down before me. I heard the noise
of the water-courses down the hill-side. My
mind was full of one thought, and strained upon
that one thought, and yet my senses were most
acute and observant. When I came to the
brook, it was swollen to a rapid, tossing river;
and the little bridge, with its hand-rail was utterly
swept away. It was like the bridge at
Sawley, where I had first seen Nelly; and I remembered
that day even then in the midst of
my vexation at having to go round. I turned
away from the brook, and there stood a little
figure facing me. No spirit from the dead could
have affrighted me as it did; for I saw it was
Grace, whom I had left in bed by her mother’s
side.
She came to me, and took my hand. Her
bare feet glittered white in the moonshine; and
sprinkled the light upward, as they plashed
through the pool.
“Father,” said she, “Mother bade me say
this.” Then pausing to gather breath and
memory, she repeated these words, like a lesson
of which she feared to forget a syllable.
“Mother says, ‘There is a God in Heaven;
and in His house are many mansions. If you
hope to meet her there, you will come back and
speak to her; if you are to be separate forever
and ever, you will go on; and may God have
mercy on her and on you!’ Father, I have said
it right—every word.”
I was silent. At last I said,
“What made mother say this? How came
she to send you out?”
“I was asleep, Father, and I heard her cry.
I wakened up, and I think you had but just left
the house, and that she was calling for you.
Then she prayed, with the tears rolling down
her cheeks, and kept saying—’Oh, that I could
walk!—Oh, that for one hour I could run and
walk!’ So I said, ‘Mother, I can run and walk.
Where must I go?’ And she clutched at my
arm; and bade God bless me; and told me not
to fear, for that he would compass me about;
and taught me my message; and now, Father,
dear Father, you will meet mother in Heaven,
won’t you—and not be separate forever and
ever?” She clung to my knees and pleaded
once more in her mother’s words. I took her up
in my arms and turned homeward.
“Is yon man there, on the kitchen floor?”
asked I.
“Yes!” she answered. At any rate, my vengeance
was not out of my power yet.
When we got home I passed him, dead
asleep!
In our room, to which my child guided me,
was Nelly. She sat up in bed, a most unusual
attitude for her, and one of which I thought she
had been incapable of attaining to without help.
She had her hands clasped, and her face wrapt
as if in prayer; and when she saw me, she lay
back with a sweet, ineffable smile. She could
not speak at first; but when I came near, she
took my hand and kissed it, and then she called
Grace to her, and made her take off her cloak
and her wet things, and, dressed in her short
scanty night-gown, she slipped into her mother’s
warm side, and all this time my Nelly never
told me why she summoned me; it seemed
enough that she should hold my hand, and feel
that I was there. I believed she had read my
heart; and yet I durst not speak to ask her.
At last she looked up. “My husband,” said she,
“God has saved you and me from a great sorrow
this night.” I would not understand, and
I felt her look die away into disappointment.
“That poor wanderer in the house-place is
Richard Jackson, is it not?”
I made no answer. Her face grew white and
wan.
“Oh,” said she, “this is hard to bear. Speak
what is in your mind, I beg of you. I will not
thwart you harshly; dearest John, only speak
to me.”
“Why need I speak? You seem to know
all.”
“I do know that his is a voice I can never
forget; and I do know the awful prayers you
have prayed; and I know how I have lain awake,
to pray that your words might never be heard;
and I am a powerless cripple. I put my cause
in God’s hands. You shall not do the man any
harm. What you have it in your thoughts to
do I can not tell. But I know that you can not
do it. My eyes are dim with a strange mist,
but some voice tells me that you will forgive
even Richard Jackson. Dear husband—dearest
John, it is so dark I can not see you; but
speak once to me.”
I moved the candle—but when I saw her face,
I saw what was drawing the mist over those
loving eyes—how strange and woeful that she
could die! Her little girl lying by her side looked
in my face, and then at her; and the wild
knowledge of death shot through her young heart
and she screamed aloud.
Nelly opened her eyes once more. They fell
upon the gaunt, sorrow-worn man who was the
cause of all. He roused him from his sleep, at
that child’s piercing cry, and stood at the doorway
looking in. He knew Nelly and understood
where the storm had driven him to shelter. He
came toward her:
“Oh, woman—dying woman—you have
haunted me in the loneliness of the Bush far
away—you have been in my dreams forever—the
hunting of men has not been so terrible as
the hunting of your spirit—that stone—that
stone!” he fell down by her bedside in an agony—above
which her saint-like face looked on us
all, for the last time, glorious with the coming
light of heaven. She spoke once again:
“It was a moment of passion—I never bore
you malice for it. I forgive you—and so does
John, I trust.”
Could I keep my purpose there? It faded into
nothing. But above my choking tears, I strove
to speak clear and distinct, for her dying ear to
hear, and her sinking heart to be gladdened.
“I forgive you, Richard; I will befriend you
in your trouble.”
She could not see; but instead of the dim
shadow of death stealing over her face, a quiet
light came over it, which we knew was the look
of a soul at rest.
That night I listened to his tale for her sake;
and I learnt that it is better to be sinned against
than to sin. In the storm of the night mine
enemy came to me; in the calm of the gray
morning, I let him forth, and bade him “God
speed.” And a woe had come upon me, but
the burning burden of a sinful, angry heart was
taken off. I am old now, and my daughter is
married. I try to go about preaching and teaching
in my rough, rude way; and what I teach is
how Christ lived and died, and what was Nelly’s
faith of love.
[From Fraser’s Magazine.]
PHANTOMS AND REALITIES.—AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
PART THE FIRST—MORNING.
I.
The sapling, green and tender, yields readily
to wind and sun and the hand of the trainer;
the grown tree resists the storm, and ’tis well
with it if it be not torn up by the roots; the
aged trunk, dried to the core, spreads out its
branches and perishes. This is human life.
At first, all wonder and curiosity, we are
moulded by surrounding circumstances, which
often affect our after lives, as colors laid at the
root of bulbous plants are said to transmit their
tints to the blossom; next comes the age of
knowledge, when reason struggles with passion,[Pg 458]
and is not always the victor; lastly, the decay,
when passion is extinct, and we live on a little
longer on our memories, and then drop into
dust.
When I formed the resolution to set down the
events that have agitated my life, and marked
it out with a strange difference from the lives
of other men, I did not see the difficulties that
beset my confession on the very threshold. They
grew upon me by degrees. The more I reflected
on it, the more reluctance I felt at the thought
of writing about things which no man would
believe. Looking back upon them from the
verge of the grave, which can not now be long
untenanted, they seem, even to me, more like
fantastic dreams or wild allegories than real
occurrences. How then can I expect others to
accept as true a narration which contradicts
their experience and convictions, and which I
can not elucidate myself? I can explain nothing;
I can only relate what has happened to
me, careful not to deviate a hair’s breadth into
exaggeration. It would be little to the purpose
to say that truth is stranger than fiction, an
axiom which every body admits as a loose generality,
but which nobody will consent to apply
in the instances by which it is illustrated. I
can attest, out of my own knowledge, that truth
often presents inexplicable phenomena, and is
sometimes irreconcilable with the laws of nature.
But who will credit me, I said, when I
narrate such things?
Again and again I approached the subject,
and as often recoiled from the execution of my
design. It was only by repeated efforts that I
summoned up sufficient moral courage to overcome
the fear and shame that overwhelmed me,
from the apprehension that I should be regarded
as one who had been himself deceived, or who
was practicing a deception on others. A patient
examination of the motives upon which my resolution
was founded, determined me, however,
to brave all such risks, in the assurance that
they who, exercising their literal judgment, as
they have a right to do, might see reason for
doubting my veracity, could not fail, upon the
whole, to draw a practical moral from my revelations.
For the rest, I must appease my own
scruples by declaring that I have herein written
nothing that is not strictly true, and related exactly
as it occurred.
II.
My earliest recollections of my father do not
extend to his form or lineaments. I remember
nothing of him except his voice, the tone of
which lingers as distinctly in my ear to this
hour as if I had heard it yesterday. It was low
and tremulous, and seemed to have a thrill in it
of suffering, or anger, I know not which. The
only parent I knew was my mother, with whom
I lived in a solitude that I can not contemplate
at this distance of time without shuddering.
Our house was situated on a lonely moor in
the north of England, close upon the bleak border—a
dismal neighborhood, savage, cold, and
desolate. It was built so far back as the reign
of Richard II., and with its flanking walls,
crumbling on all sides into ruin, and its paved
court-yards, covered a considerable area. Most
of the apartments were large and gloomy, and
hung with arras of so great an age, that the
colors had grown dim, and the thread in many
places appeared to be dropping into powder.
Long corridors and smaller rooms ran round the
quadrangle; and as the uses for which this huge
pile was designed by its founders had long since
passed away with the bands of retainers and
extravagant pomp that distinguished the days
of feudal hospitality and royal progresses, only
a small part of it was kept up in an inhabitable
condition by my mother. Unfortunately for my
after life, the part so preserved lay in the very
centre of the mansion, approachable only by
dark passages, utterly obscure at night, and
barely lighted in the day-time by narrow latticed
windows, such as we see indented in the thick
walls of old cloisters. To reach the inhabited
rooms it was necessary to make many windings,
to twine up a short spiral stair that led from
the outer court, and to traverse two sides of the
quadrangle.
This was always a fearful thing to me, which
use by no means deprived of its terrors. There
were many legends whispered from one to
another in the winter nights of revolting crimes
which had taken place there in former times,
and which rose re-embodied before me as I
cowered past the spots where they were said to
have been enacted. The aspect of the dreary
building, within and without, by day and night,
made it all real. If the moon shone brightly
into the passages, strange shadows were discernible
flitting across the floor or creeping up
the walls; and as I involuntarily glanced through
shattered doors and inner casements, remnants
of armor hanging about, and fragments of tapestry
fluttering against the windows, and other
relics of a ‘sheeted ancestry,’ would seem to
glide out of the darkness, and fill the open
spaces with forms swaying and undulating before
my eyes. I remember how my limbs used to
totter under me as I tried not to see these
sights, and crept on, stifling the fear that was
distilling drops of agony over my body by the
greater fear of uttering a cry, lest the slightest
noise might bring worse horrors round me. I
am speaking of my childhood—and children will
understand me.
Let no man scoff at these terrors. The wisest
and bravest have quailed under them. Skepticism
may laugh, but it would be more profitably
employed in endeavoring to solve the problems
which concern the connection between the
material and the spiritual universe. Why is it
that adults, as well as children, are impressed
with a certain uneasiness in the dark? Not a
fear of ghosts, or robbers, or accidents, or of
any thing upon which the mind can reason, or
of which the senses are cognizant; but a vague
consciousness of invisible influences. In the
daylight we have no such sensations; they belong
exclusively to silence and darkness.
As a child, I grew up in the awe of these influences,
fostered by loneliness and the moody
companionship of a wayward woman, who held
little intercourse with the outer world, and shut
herself up in dreams and superstitions. An incident
which occurred at this period helped to
give a supernatural turn to many circumstances
that were, no doubt, capable of a simple solution.
Toward the extremity of a court to the south
of the old pile, there was a chasm in the ground,
partly filled up with loose stones and brambles.
The whole place was over-run with grass and
weeds, and the walls and outbuildings that surrounded
it were in ruins. I had heard that
this spot, which gaped so grimly through the
tall, lank bushes and accumulated rubbish, was
formerly the entrance to a series of subterranean
galleries, that had been excavated below the
foundations for the purpose of concealing troops,
or stowing away prisoners, in times of trouble;
and that they had been used in that way during
the Civil War, when the mansion stood out
a long siege against some of Fairfax’s generals.
An irresistible curiosity to explore these galleries
seized upon me. I was fascinated by the
very fear with which the stories related about
them had inspired me. I never could pass that
yawning chasm, which, now nearly choked up,
was hardly wide enough to admit of the descent
of a grown person, without longing to plunge
into its depths. I often lingered there in the
twilight, when the shadows were falling about,
enhancing the terror and the temptation; and
one evening in the autumn I took courage, and,
clearing away the brambles with trembling
hands, I forced myself down, bringing with me
a torrent of stones and earth.
Finding my feet at the bottom, and rubbing
my eyes, I tried to grope my way onward. At
first there was a dim light at a great distance
above me, in a slanting direction, but in an instant
afterward I was in total darkness. My
first impulse was to laugh at the exploit I had
achieved; but as I pattered along, plashing
sometimes in pools of water, and sometimes
knocking my head against the rough stones
that jutted out on each side, my mirth deserted
me. When I became accustomed to the darkness,
I fancied I could discern shapeless figures
rising up and vanishing in the gloom—the walls
seemed to move out of their places, and heave
to and fro like wrecks in a storm—then they
would open, and collapse, and disappear: all
was in motion, black and tumultuous, and a
surging sound, as of winds and waters lashing
and wailing in a confined space, moaned dismally
in my ears. Even when I closed my
eyes, and pressed my fingers upon them to shut
out these sights, they were still before me.
This was, of course, the work of mere fright;
but what followed can not be so easily accounted
for.
While I stood hesitating how I should proceed,
for I had lost my track, and knew not
whether I ought to go backward or forward, I
heard a distinct rushing sound, quite close to
me. It swept past, and all was silent again.
It was like a rush of silk or satin, or some
fabric that, suddenly crushed, gives out a crackling
noise. All the blood in my body gathered
into my head; my eyes emitted fire, as if they
had been struck by a cord. A stifling sensation
bubbled up to my throat, and I involuntarily
uttered a cry, which was echoed from a
hundred recesses, and continued at intervals,
reverberating like a succession of shots in the
distance. I panted with horror, as I grasped
the wall and listened. My fear was too great
to suffer me to cry out for help. The apprehension
of again invoking these dreadful echoes
appalled me; I hardly breathed, and stood still
to listen, I know not how long. A death-like
silence pervaded the darkness. The soughing
of the winds had ceased, or I fancied so, the
stillness was so heavy. It may be that my
faculties were intent upon that palpable sound
I had heard, and could distinguish nothing
else.
At last I began to move, treading softly, and
stopping at intervals to watch and listen. I
had scarcely proceeded in this way a dozen
paces, when I felt as plainly as if I saw the
object in the broad glare of the sun, a quick
motion at my side in a nook or crevice of the
wall. It was like the effort of a person to
shrink down and escape from me. In an excess
of fright and desperation I clutched at it
with my hands, and caught it—I say caught it,
for a substance resembling a thick silk filled
the palms of both my hands. I held it with
the grasp of one who was struggling for life,
and tried to speak, but my tongue was dry;
and I could not articulate a word: and while I
held it, I was conscious that the object was
moving away—it moved away, and still I
thought I held it. I had not the power to
loosen my fingers, which I had a strong impulse
to do—and then the silk glided out of
them, although they were coiled in it—and the
next moment a grasp of muscles, cold and
sharp, was on my neck, and pressed into my
flesh. I was distraught with terror, and my
senses forsook me.
When I recovered, I found myself lying on a
couch in the great room, my mother sitting at
a distance, and an ancient female servant watching
over me.
This woman was the oldest domestic in the
house. She had lived all her life in the family,
and had seen two generations into the grave.
It was from her lips I had learned most of the
traditions that filled my head with such alarm
and curiosity; it was from her I had acquired
a knowledge of those subterranean passages in
which I had encountered this singular adventure;
and as soon as my mother left the room
I related the whole story to her. She heard it
to the end with a dark expression of anger on
her face, which I interpreted into a reproof on
my willfulness and folly in venturing into such
places; and then she questioned me severely[Pg 460]
as to what I heard and saw, and what I thought
it could have been. Finding that I could give
her no satisfactory answers to these questions,
she enjoined me to hold my tongue about it,
and above all things not to speak of it to my
mother. She rated me soundly for saying that
I firmly believed I had caught something like a
woman’s dress in my hands; and she made me
feel her old stuff gown, that I might assure
myself it was no such texture as that. “How
could I be so silly as to suppose that a woman,
or even a man, would hide in vaults and passages
that had not been opened for hundreds of
years? What could I imagine they were doing
there? It was more likely that rats, and toads,
and bats were to be found there than human
beings.” And a great deal more to the like
effect, as if she wanted to impress upon me
that it was altogether the fancy of a distempered
brain, and no reality.
Yet, in spite of every thing she said, my conviction
remained unaltered. I could not be
deceived in a fact so clearly attested by my
own sensations. But the mystery was never
cleared up; and I brooded over it in secret so
perversely, that it exercised a blighting influence
for a long time upon my imagination.
Many years afterward a suspicion crossed my
mind, that this woman knew more about the
matter than she cared to acknowledge. It was
she who carried me into the house, having discovered
me, as she stated, lying insensible in
the court-yard; but I had no recollection of
having found my way out into the air—a circumstance
which at the time did not present itself
to me in the light in which I am disposed
to regard it now. Nor should I, perhaps, have
been led to suspect her of duplicity, had she
not acted with ingratitude at a time when sorrow
and misfortune had fallen upon the house
that had nurtured her from infancy.
III.
My mother had no companion. Even the
servants lived apart, and performed their allotted
offices at hours when she was not present;
so that our table was laid and our wants supplied,
for the most part by unseen hands. Such
was my mother’s way of life. Solitude and
early griefs had fallen heavily upon her spirits,
and fretted her temper. She rarely exchanged
words with the servants, and never except upon
unavoidable occasions. A spoken language was
almost interdicted among us, and in its place
the language of books was substituted. We
dwelt in a world of our own, in which the unreal
was invested with a living interest. Conversation
wearied her; she had no sympathy
with the actual life around her, and had long
closed her heart against it. But the charm of
books was ever fresh and inexhaustible. She
possessed in a higher degree than any person I
ever knew the power of realizing their contents.
Portraits stepped out of them, and became as
familiar to her as if they had moved about her
bodily in the flesh. This daily intercourse with
the creations of the brain fed her morbid desire
for seclusion, and was cultivated with an earnestness
that proved fatal at last.
Her taste lay entirely in one direction; the
marvelous and extravagant alone interested
her. She prohibited all works that treated of
real life, and sought for the excitement she
loved in the region of wonder and romance.
Her library (a room of which I will speak more
particularly presently) was filled with histories
of sorcery and enchantment—of miraculous
escapes and perils—providential interpositions—dreams,
omens, and spectral appearances—astrology
and witchcraft—church-yard legends,
and the superstitions which ascribe a mysterious
power to spells, charms, and incantations—traditions
of giants and monsters—feats of
the genii and evil spirits, and narratives that
embraced the whole round of that curious lore
which relates to the alchemists and diviners.
These books were the delight and occupation
of her life; and when her eyes latterly began
to grow dim with age, it was my task to read
them aloud to her. At first, I revolted from
this labor; it hung drearily upon me, and sickened
me. Youth is naturally mutinous under
confinement, and yearns for activity and freedom.
But it was surprising how soon I fell
into her tastes, and found myself kindling, as
she used to do, over the horrors these terrible
books unfolded. And now they took possession
of me, I began to believe in them as she
did; and with belief, or the awe which is so
closely allied to it, my eagerness to penetrate
further and further grew into an irresistible
passion. Many a time in the bleak autumn
nights, when the sharp winds snapped the
leaves from the trees, and drifted their crisp
spoils against the windows, have I sat gasping
over some hideous tale, to which, by an involuntary
association of ideas, the desolation of
the season imparted additional terrors. I was
wrought upon by that sort of fascination which
resides in the eyes of the snake, when it fixes
its gaze upon the face of a child.
Children who have been brought up in a
healthy collision with the world know nothing
of the state of fear and mental slavery I am
describing. A little judicious counsel would
have dispelled these delusions; a little timely
explanation would have shown me their absurdity.
But where was I to seek it? In my
isolation I had not a single adviser. I took all
I read for granted. The book could not dissipate
the chaos of doubts and importunities of
struggling reason it generated; it was dumb,
and could not answer my questions. If I appealed
to my mother, she was chafed at the
interruption and the heresy, and commanded
me to read on. At last I doubted no longer.
Wonder after wonder swept away my feeble
judgment. I believed in a spiritual kingdom—in
the return of the dead to the earth—in the
power of prophecy and the agency of demons—in
second sight and the elixir vitæ—in amulets
and miraculous invocations; the crystal mirror
of Cornelius Agrippa, the witches of the Brocken,[Pg 461]
the Flying Dutchman, the Wandering Jew, were
all realities to me. The ignorant alone believe
in such things; but in this ignorance consisted
all the knowledge that was thrown open to me.
The library was at some distance from the
inhabited part of the house. It was an oblong
room, with deep recesses, in which stood the
old oak book-cases. If we had had the power
of selecting a theatre for the performance of the
legends which were read aloud here every night,
we could not have found one better adapted to
the purpose. The apartment was large and
gloomy; and the tapestried walls, the ponderous
draperies, the polished floor, the painted
ceiling, the high-backed chairs, and the vast
fire-place, with its carved mantle-shelf, supplied
the very style of scene and furniture best adapted
to give a striking effect to tales of crime and
enchantment. Except close to the fire, and
round the table on which we placed our lights,
the library, from its height and extent, was
buried in deep shadow; so that there was nothing
wanted to help the imagination to a fitting
locality for all kinds of mysteries.
I shall never forget my mother’s sensations
on one occasion when I read to her in this room
an account of some man who kept watch
through a whole night in a haunted chamber,
and was never heard of afterward. She fancied
that the tapestry moved, and called upon me
to observe it. I did so, and fancied I saw it
too. Twice she grasped my arm, and bade me
cease; and looking shudderingly round, she
twice desired me to listen, and tell her if I did
not hear a foot-fall passing the extremity of the
apartment in the dark with solemn regularity.
I heard something—it was like the slow tread
of a sentinel.
It was in that room, which cast its gloom
over every page, blotting out its lines of sunshine
wherever any happened to fall, that I read
the Decameron. The groups in the garden—radiant,
joyous, and in rapt attitudes of expectation
and attention—were distinctly present to
me, but darkened by immediate associations.
Sorrow and anguish seemed to sit in their faces;
there was no flush of emotion, no lightening in
the eyes, no intensity in the cleft lips, no
streaming hair, or burning cheeks, or startled
gestures. All was cold, as if it were cut in
marble. That pallid circle of listeners, disposed
in such picturesque forms, seemed to me
to be lying in a trance, so completely did the
miserable influence of that room kill the gayety
of all objects, and leave nothing but the skeleton
behind.
We were never at a loss for excitement of
this kind, which appeared, indeed, the only
thing for which we lived. Our pursuits were
interrupted for a time by the serious illness of
my mother; but her irritable temperament rendered
her impatient of sickness, and before the
signs of the malady had passed out from her
stricken frame she insisted upon returning to
her nightly vigils.
Night after night she continued at her dangerous
indulgence, while her eyes were visibly
contracting a dull film, her cheeks wasting and
falling in, and her pulse growing fainter and
fainter. It was not a sight for a son to look
upon, and tend with idle fancies and the levities
of fable. I felt this and remonstrated,
and the agonizing reality before me awakened
me for a moment to the vanities of books. But
she persisted in her demand and still preserved her
listening posture, although the sense of hearing
and the faculty of attention were sinking rapidly.
Some weeks had been consumed in this way,
when one winter night she desired me to read
a certain history from a favorite volume of old
legends. The history she selected was that of
a supernatural appearance that was alleged to
have followed a gentleman of Verona with the
fidelity of a shadow. The history set forth the
arts and devices by which he endeavored to
perplex and evade it—how he went into dark
and lonely places, and how still his spectral
companion stood at his side—how he rushed
into crowded scenes, forcing his way violently
through the mass, in the hope that he would
thus escape; but no matter how dense the multitude,
or by what stratagems and confederacy
the gentleman sought to bury himself out of
sight, the apparition in its human shape was
ever standing or moving close beside him. The
strangest thing was that it bore an unnatural
likeness to him, not only in its face and form,
but in its actions, which were always so faithfully
and so instantaneously copied after him,
that they resembled a reflection in a mirror. He
tried the most painful and unexpected contortions,
only to see them reproduced with a rapidity
that mocked his despair.
The history went on to say how he invented
various schemes, and underwent many fearful
trials of sorcery, in the hope of banishing or
subduing his horrid familiar, but all in vain,
for the fiend baffled all his efforts, and was still
found at his side, day and night, whether he
rode or walked, or threw himself on his couch
for repose—how he summoned courage to speak
to it at last, and was answered by the echoes
of his own voice—how he swam floods with
the ghastly thing floating along with him on
the surge—how he climbed the highest hills
and fled into savage caverns, the familiar still
toiling or groveling beside him—how, in a fit
of madness, he tried to grapple it on the edge
of a precipice with the desperate intent of dragging
it down with him into the abyss below,
and how the shape wrought in the struggle, impalpable
to the touch, but visible to the sight,
like painted air—how, after enduring horrible
tortures, the man wasted away, and became a
mere shadow, the spirit waning and fading in
like manner—and how the priests of a holy order,
in the solitudes of the Apennines, hearing
of these strange events, bethought them of
shriving the man, and expelling the incarnate
devil that had worked such inexplicable misery
upon him.
The history next went on to relate how the[Pg 462]
monks found the man so weak and emaciated
that he could scarcely take food or answer their
questions—and how they had him conveyed to
their chapel at midnight, amid the glare of
torches and the chants of the holy brotherhood,
the imperishable fiend lying stretched by his
side in the litter, in open spite of the holy water
with which they had sprinkled it, and of the
care with which they had caused it to be made
so small that it was thought impossible for him
to find room upon it—and how, when the wretched
man was brought to the altar, they placed
him upright before it, and began to pray, the
fiend all the while being in his usual place next
to his mortal fellow—and how, as the prayers
proceeded and the voices of the assembled priests,
of whom numbers had collected from distant
places to witness the scene, ascended to the roof,
filling the sanctuary with solemn and blessed
music, the man turned a look of deathly fear,
and gazed into the eyes of the spirit, the spirit
giving back the look with the same thrilling
and awful expression—and how the sufferer,
when the venerable abbot came to the benediction,
and offered to place his hands upon his
head, sank gradually down, the fiend sinking
with him—and how, as the last word was uttered,
they vanished together into the earth,
and on the instant the torches were extinguished,
as by a sudden gust of wind.
When I came to this point of the story, I
lifted my eyes to look upon my mother. She
sat upon her great chair opposite to me, looking
straight at me with a glassy and vacant stare.
Her limbs were rigid, and a spasm sat upon her
features.
“Mother!” I exclaimed; “mother!” I could
not speak more. I was choking for utterance,
my hair coiled out like living fibres, the room
seemed to swim round and round. I stretched
out my arms and seized her hands—they were
cold, cold and clammy. Let me not dwell on
it—in that spectral chamber I was alone with
the dead!
IV.
For many days afterward the house was like
a tomb. My mother was laid out in the state-room,
which, never having been used in our
time, had a dank, earthy smell, and was wretchedly
bleak and naked. She lay upon the old
square bed, whose hangings, swept up into a
ring over head, were once a bright orange damask,
but now an undistinguishable tawny mass,
from which tracery and color had long disappeared.
There was no other article of furniture
in the apartment, which bore dreary evidence
of the neglect into which it had fallen.
The fire-place was closed up with a screen; and
the fragments of arras that hung from the walls
were eaten into shreds by the damp. Desolate
was the pomp of the poor corpse that lay freezing
under its stately coverlid, in the icy air of
that room.
The old woman, of whom I have already spoken,
undertook the melancholy office of watching
the dead. She suffered nobody else to approach
the body. The house felt as if it were empty.
Wherever a foot trod in the passage it gave out
a hollow sound; and the servants, scared by
undefined terror, immured themselves in their
rooms, where they remained cooped and huddled
together till the last rites were over.
Then went forth a scanty procession of ashy
faces, winding down the black hills to the church-yard;
and when she was laid in the grave, a
shudder passed among them, and they whispered
one to another, and then their eyes rested
upon me. The action was significant of the
feeling with which they regarded my situation.
I was the last of my race, and my inheritance
was little more than the mausoleum of my ancestors.
The old woman had done well to monopolize
the tending of the dead, and the management
of the funeral. She knew my unfitness, from
grief and ignorance of the world, to enter upon
such details; and she took them all off my hands,
with a most careful watchfulness of my ease—and
her own interest. During that brief interval
of sorrow—when the whole household had
withdrawn into retirement—she collected all the
plate, valuables, and moneys, she could find in
the house; and when the grave was closed, and
the servants had returned home, she was nowhere
to be found. She had, in short, made
ample provision for the rest of her life out of
such spoils as she could secure; for which, I
afterward discovered, she had been making industrious
preparations long before. Some attempts
were made to trace her, but they were
fruitless.
This was my first experience of the heartlessness
of the world; and, although it is an incident
of every-day occurrence in all civilized
communities, it was new to me at that time,
and stung me to the soul.
After months of seclusion through the biting
winter and spring, summer came round again,
and I thought I would venture abroad, in hope
that the air and a little activity and change of
scene would recruit my health; for I was shattered
and nervous, and conscious of a prostration
of mind almost amounting to disease. The
country round about was abrupt and wild, covered
with heather for the most part, broken up
and picturesque, and studded here and there
with patches of bright verdure, invaded by
clumps of forest trees. In some places it took
a mountainous character, and brawling streams
rushing through deep gorges and rocky glens
assimilated the scenery to the general tone of
the region that lies still farther to the north.
The neighborhood was lonely and unfrequented;
it resembled the hilly solitudes of Arran and
Bute; there were few homesteads in the distant
landscape to send up cheerful volumes of
smoke among the trees: and you might ride a
whole morning without meeting a wayfarer.
I was on horseback one day, passing leisurely
in an idle mood out of the mouth of a ravine
that led to an open valley, when I saw a lady,
in a riding-habit, mounted at no great distance[Pg 463]
from me. Her horse was apparently picking
his way slowly through the hillocks that dotted
the surface of the sward. The appearance of a
lady alone loitering in so unfrequented a spot
surprised me. Had I seen an apparition I could
not have been more astonished.
As she moved past toward the opposite side
she turned her head, and her clear, pensive eyes,
fell full upon my face with an expression of
ineffable sweetness.
Where had I seen those features before?
They seemed quite familiar to me. The dress,
the action of her arm as she reined up her horse,
and, above all, the sad beauty of her eyes, I
could have protested I had seen a hundred
times. Yet an instant’s reflection would have
sufficed to convince me that I was under a
mistake, for visitors or friends like her there
were none in our lonely house.
Her brief, quiet glance, had something in it
of a look of recognition. I felt as if there was
a recognition on both sides. I felt, too, or
imagined, that she was slightly agitated by it.
I knew that my own heart fluttered wildly.
My solitary life had rendered me nervous, and
the dangerous lore with which my head was
filled gave to the incident an immediate coloring
of romance. A new sensation had taken
possession of me, a new world was opening to
me; the solitude and remoteness of the place,
and the unexpectedness of that vision rising up
among the wild flowers and the dark green
heather, acted like a charm upon me, and
awakened me to a sense of bewildering delight
I had never experienced before.
There is always an awkwardness in country
places at rencounters between people who are unaccustomed
to strangers. I hardly knew whether
I should advance or retreat, and suffering my
horse to take his own course, he carried me a
little circuit behind a patch of trees that intervened
between us. When I looked again she
was gone. Scarcely a moment had elapsed,
and she had vanished like a sunbow. I could
hardly believe in a disappearance so miraculous,
and rubbed my eyes, and gazed again and again
over the vacant space before me. But she was
nowhere to be seen. My curiosity was highly
excited, and, dashing at full speed over the very
spot she had so recently occupied, I traversed
every outlet, but without success. It was
broad noon. I knew all the bridle-tracks in and
out of the valley, and it was impossible she
could have taken any of them, and escaped my
vigilant search in so short a time. What, then,
was this form I had beheld? I had heard of
Second Sight, and other visual deceptions—was
this one of them? Had she melted into
air? Had she come there only to mock me?
Was I the victim of a self-delusion? The
tortures of Tantalus were slight in comparison
with the misery I felt as I rode round and round
that sequestered dell, hoping in vain that she
would return. But it was unlike any misery
that had ever preyed upon me before. There
was a strange thrill of expectation and uncertainty
in it, and it pointed to an object in the
future which, from that hour, gave me a novel
interest in life. A total change had passed
over me, and any change was welcome.
Every day I renewed my visit to the same
place, but the nymph of my pilgrimage never
returned to the spot where I had first beheld
her. Under this disappointment fancy liberally
supplied a picture which sustained and heightened
my desire to gaze once more on the reality.
By a mental process, of which I can give no
further account than that it is very well known
to all readers of romance who are endowed with
faith and imagination, I culled the most lovable
and fascinating qualities of a hundred
heroines—the tenderness and devotion, gentleness
and grace, of all the Amandas, Isidoras,
and Ethelindas, my brain had become intimately
acquainted with—and compiled out of them a
suitable Ideal for the worship of my perturbed
affections. Nor was I satisfied with creating
this imaginary enchantress by a sweeping contribution
from the special charms of all the fine
heroines I had read of, but I must needs put
her into every possible emergency that could
show off her beauty and her virtues to advantage.
I believe I made her run the gauntlet of
more perilous adventures and extraordinary trials
than ever befell any single heroine in the whole
library of fiction.
I could not for an instant dismiss her from
my thoughts; and that one look that had
enthralled me was ever present to me. Even
in sleep I was haunted by its disturbing influence,
and the tantalizing scene in the valley
was re-enacted, with sundry alterations and additions,
over and over again in my dreams. As
it had then become the sole occupation of my
life to think of her, and to explore the country
every day in search of her, it was not very
wonderful that her image should have resolved
itself into a settled illusion, possessing me so
entirely that, in the image conjured up by my
distempered imagination, I should at last believe
that I actually saw before me that which
I so cordially desired to see, and the seeing
which was the object that engrossed me to the
exclusion of all other pursuits. When one idea
thus tyrannically absorbs the mind, the very
monotony of its pressure is apt to overlay the
reasoning faculties and coerce them into delusions.
People mourning to excess over the
dead have sometimes supposed that they saw
them again “in their habit as they lived.”
Under the influence of great excitement, profound
grief has done the work of fever; and
assuredly there is a fever of the mind as well as
of the body.
Thus it was that, laboring under this constant
agony of desire, I saw that abstraction of all
conceivable loveliness once more. She was
seated in the library—in the very chair in
which my mother died. I then little suspected
that I was entranced by a phantom of my own
making, and that the exquisite appearance that
sat in my presence was of no more substance[Pg 464]
than a beam of light, into which outlines and
colors of immortal beauty were infused by my
heated fancy. I spoke to her—she turned aside,
and raised her hand with a motion, as I thought,
of surprise. Again I addressed her, and she
rose, and passed noiselessly toward the door.
I confess that, anxious as I was to detain her,
and procure some explanation from her, my
courage gave way at this movement, and I
spoke no more; but I followed her with my
eyes, trying to read the feeling that seemed to
flit in hers. It was clear to me, ambiguous as
its expression was, and difficult as it is to explain
it. The melancholy smile that played
over her features contained a history. There
was love (of course, having created her, it was
natural I should make her return my passion),
intense love, darkened by some great sorrow, as
if insuperable obstacles stood in its way, and
turned it to despair. She retired to the door-way,
and stood there for a moment in the attitude
of leave-taking. She was not, I thought,
to be lost thus, and perhaps forever—one effort,
and I might yet preserve her. I advanced hastily
to grasp her hand, but as I stretched out
mine to touch it, a chill, not of fear, but awe,
came upon me, and I stood looking helplessly
upon the inexplicable magic of her departure.
She did not leave me in the manner of one who
fled from my approach, but rather as if she left
me reluctantly and by constraint, slowly and
lingeringly dissolving from my sight—like a
bright cloud fainting from twilight into darkness.
A long illness followed this visitation. During
the fever that supervened, I was reunited in
a delicious rapture to her who had so mysteriously
fascinated me. Alone with her in weird
solitudes, I gazed into the deep light of her
eyes, fearing to speak lest at the sound of my
voice she might again vanish from me. Silence
appeared to be understood between us as the
condition of our intercourse, so unconsciously
did my imagination adapt itself to the spiritual
nature of the delusion. At length the fever
passed away, but although the body was delivered
from the raging fires that had consumed
its strength, the mind was still devoured by the
same insatiable longing to discover the object of
my inextinguishable passion. I was shattered
in health and spirits; incapable of much exertion;
and harassed by disappointments. I
tried to shake off the despair that was rapidly
gaining an ascendency over me; but the bleakness
and loneliness of my life only helped to
encourage it; and I finally resolved to leave the
country, and seek relief and oblivion in new
scenes and excitements. And so I forsook the
old mansion with a heavy heart, and directed
my course to London.
V.
It was my first experiment in the world. I
had no friends or acquaintances in the great
metropolis. I was a stranger in its thronged
thoroughfares, which are more desolate to a
stranger than a howling wilderness.
At first I was distracted out of myself by the
whirl of the vortex in which I found myself engulfed.
The eternal din, the countless multitudes,
the occupation that was legibly written
in every man’s face, gave me something to think
of, and forced me into a sort of blind activity.
But the novelty of this uproar and bustle, in
which my own sympathies or interests were in
no way engaged, soon palled upon me, and
threw me back upon the morbid humors which
the sudden change had only temporarily lulled.
I panted again for quiet, and sought it in the
depth of the town.
At that time the church, of St. Martin-in-the-Fields
was buried in a mass of dingy buildings,
which, clustering up about it on all sides, blotted
it out from the sun. These buildings were intersected
by numerous dark courts and passages,
and in one of them there was a retired tavern
frequented by a few persons, mostly of an intellectual
caste—artists, musicians, authors;
men of high aspirations, but whom fortune
never seemed weary of persecuting, and who
met here of an evening to compare notes, and
vent their complaints against the world. This
was exactly the sort of company that fell in
with my tastes. It was a satisfaction to me to
herd with disappointed men, and hear them rail
at the prosperity which refused to crown their
merits. Their failures in life had given a peculiar
turn to their minds, and tinged their conversation
with a spirit of fatalism. They were
one and all clearly convinced that it was in
vain to struggle against destiny—that no genius,
however original or lofty, could secure its legitimate
rewards by legitimate means—and that,
in short, the only individuals really deserving
of success were those who, by a perverse dispensation
of laurels, never could attain it. This
view of the wrongs and injustice they suffered
from society stirred up much pride and bitterness
among them, and led them into many abstract
disquisitions, which were rendered attractive to
me, no less by the nature of the topics they selected,
than by the piquancy and boldness with which
they dissected them.
The most remarkable person in this little knot
was a young man of the name of Forrester.
Like myself, he was of no profession, and appeared
to be drawn into the circle by much the
same motives. He was tall and pale, and generally
reserved in speech; but subject to singular
fluctuations—sometimes all sunshine, breaking
out into fits of wild enthusiasm, and sometimes
overwhelmed with despondency. These
vicissitudes of mood and temperament, which
indicated a troubled experience beyond his
years, interested my sympathies. The more
intimate I became with him, the more reason I
had to suspect that his life, like my own, was
the depository of some heavy secret; but I did
not venture to question him on this point, from
an apprehension which his bearing toward me
led me to entertain that a similar suspicion
lurked in his mind respecting me. I confess
that I dreaded any allusion to my own history,
and carefully avoided all subjects likely to lead[Pg 465]
to it; for I should have been ashamed to acknowledge
the sufferings I underwent from a
cause which most men would have treated with
ridicule and skepticism. I was quite aware
that it was vulnerable to attacks of that sort,
and the terror of having the deception, if it
were one, which I had cherished with such fervor,
rudely assailed and beaten down by common
sense, made me preserve a strict silence in every
thing relating to myself—a precaution that probably
gave a keener zest to the curiosity I desired
to baffle.
A strong friendship grew up between me and
Forrester. We were both idlers, and we discovered
that, by a happy coincidence, our literary
tastes—if an industrious prosecution of desultory
and unprofitable reading may be dignified by
such a term—lay in the same channels. He
was as deeply learned in the literature of the
marvelous as I was myself; and during the
summer evenings we used to take long walks
into the country, beguiling the way by discussions
upon a variety of wonderful matters which
we turned up out of our old stores. The exercise
at least was healthy, and the very disputations
upon the evidence and likelihood of these
things strengthened my faculties, and cleared
off some clouds of credulity. This collision
with another mind was a novelty to me, and,
for a time, diverted me from other thoughts.
At our tavern Forrester and I enjoyed distinguished
popularity. Every body listened to our
opinions with attention, not so much because
they were remarkable for their soundness, as
because they were generally opposed to established
notions, and were urged with earnestness.
We always spoke like men who speak out of
their convictions, while most of the others argued
merely for argument’s sake, and were ready to
take any side of a question for the pleasure of
getting up a controversy, and showing off their
ingenuity.
One evening the conversation turned upon
the possibility of the dead revisiting the earth,
and the theory of manifest warnings before dissolution.
The debate, which began in levity,
soon took a more serious tone, and we had been
arguing a full hour before I discovered that Forrester
and I had engrossed the discussion to ourselves,
the rest of the company maintaining a
profound silence, and listening to our observations
with undisguised wonder and astonishment.
This discovery abashed me a little, for I never
meant to make such a display, and I looked
across at Forrester for the purpose of drawing
his attention to the circumstance. I perceived,
then, for the first time, that his face had undergone
an extraordinary change. The natural
pallor had taken an almost livid hue. The ordinary
placidity of his features had given place
to an expression of severe pain and alarm.
“What is the matter?” I inquired. “Are
you ill?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“You look dreadfully pale.” He only smiled
at this remark—but it was a ghastly smile.
“I know that something is the matter,” I
cried. “What is it, Forrester?”
“Nothing. What can be the matter? Are
we not all living men talking upon equal terms,
and in the best possible humor, about the dead?
Why should that affect me more than any body
else?”
“I know not why it should,” I replied, “but
I feel it does.”
“Are you quite sure,” he returned, in a low
voice, “that it does not affect you as deeply?”
He looked at me as if he knew my whole life,
which he could not have known; and, in spite
of a violent effort to suppress my feelings, I
was conscious that I betrayed the agitation
into which I was thrown by that searching
look.
“Come, come,” he exclaimed, rallying wildly,
“we have both looked death in the face before
now; and although use can not make it familiar,
still a sight often repeated must lose some of its
horrors.”
“No, you are wrong. I have not seen death
often.”
“Once—only once,” he replied, in the same
hollow voice; “but you have seen many deaths
in one.”
“How do you know that?” I demanded; “or
assume to know it?”
“One day you shall learn,” he answered,
calmly.
“You amaze me. Speak openly to me, Forrester,
and not in these dark enigmas. I can
bear to hear.”
“Can you bear to suffer?” he asked.
“I can—I think I can,” I replied, shrinking
at my heart from the ordeal I invited. “I have
suffered that which I should once have thought
utterly fabulous, and beyond human endurance.”
“I know it. But endurance has its limits.
The earthly can bear only that which is of the
earth—test them with sufferings that look out
beyond this world into the darkness of eternity,
and they perish. The trial is not in those
things that are dated, bounded, and finite: it is
where speculation can not reach nor reason avail
us, where human knowledge and human strength
are blind and idle, that the trial of that suffering
begins, which is akin to the penalties of immortal
spirits—a beginning without an end.”
“I do not understand you,” I answered.
“You will understand me, however, when the
hour arrives.” Then stopping short, he whispered,
“they are observing us; this is not the
place for such a theme. We shall meet again,
when you shall be satisfied.”
“When?”
“Soon—I fear too soon. No matter—we
shall meet, and you shall be satisfied.”
He rose and left the room.
I was restrained from following him only by
the consideration that I should expose myself
to the criticisms of our companions, who, I had
observed, were fond of making merry at the expense
of their absent friends; and as I was
beginning to feel very sensitive to ridicule, I[Pg 466]
determined not to give them an opportunity of
exercising their wit upon me.
When Forrester was gone, they immediately
took him to pieces. His character, habits, life,
and opinions, furnished them with abundant
materials for commentary, which they were all
the less scrupulous in dealing freely with because
they really knew little or nothing about
him. One said that there was a mysterious
something about Forrester that he couldn’t make
out—it might be all right, but, for his part, he
liked people to be candid with you and above-board;
another remarked, that a man who lived
nobody knew exactly how, and who disappeared
every night at pretty much the same hour, and
was so very incommunicative about his pursuits,
laid himself open to suspicion, at all events; a
third suggested that, probably, he had experienced
some blight, which had spoiled him for
company—perhaps he had been crossed in love
(here there was a general laugh, and a rapid
succession of puns); while a fourth, who made
it a rule never to form a judgment on any man’s
character without knowing him thoroughly,
could not help observing that Mr. Forrester certainly
held some rather extraordinary doctrines
about ghosts and other nonsense of that sort,
which, to be sure, was no imputation on his
character, but—here the speaker stopped short,
and shook his head in a very significant manner.
These opinions, delivered off-hand, puzzled
me exceedingly, for I could not arrive at their
meaning. It was evident that Forrester was
an object of mystery to our friends—and so he
was to me. But neither they nor I could get
any farther in the matter. They, however, dismissed
him from their minds with the drain of
their glasses, while I lay restlessly all night
ruminating on what had occurred.
I was passing through a state of transition
from the seclusion in which my faculties had
been kept dormant into a section of society
which was eminently calculated to awaken and
sharpen them for use. I was already getting
into a habit of reasoning with myself, of trying
to trace effects to causes, and examining with
suspicion many things which I had hitherto
taken upon trust. At first I committed numerous
blunders, and fell into all sorts of mistakes,
in my eagerness to emulate the cleverness of
the experienced individuals with whom I was
in the habit of associating. And I could not
have dropped upon a clique better qualified or
disposed to ride roughshod over the whole region
of romance. They were generally practical men
and some of them were worldly men; for although
not one of them was able to do any
thing for himself, they were all adepts in the
knowledge of what other people ought to do.
They looked with supreme contempt upon sentimental
people, and took infinite pleasure in
running them down. They were not the sort
of men to be tricked by appearances or clap-trap.
They despised finery, and ostentation,
and outside manners. They loved to look at
things as they were, and to call them by their
proper names; never, by any accident, over-rating
an excellence, but very frequently exaggerating
a defect, which they considered as an
error on the right side. In this severe school
I acquired a few harsh practical views of life,
and was beginning to feel its realities growing
up about me; but in the progress from the
visionary to the real there were many shapes
of darkness yet to be struggled with.
A few nights afterward I met Forrester on
his way to the rendezvous. There was the
same unaccountable reserve in his manner which
he betrayed at our last abrupt parting; but my
anxiety, awakened more by his looks than his
words, would not brook delay. I resolved to
get an explanation on the spot.
“Forrester,” I said, “you have inflicted a
pain upon me which no man has a right to inflict
upon another, without giving him at the
same time his full confidence. You have made
use of strange allusions and hints, which you
are bound to explain. You seem to know more
about me than I have myself ever confided to
you, or than you could have known through any
channels with which I am acquainted. I ask
you to satisfy me at once whether it is so, or
not?”
“It is so,” he replied. “You see I am as
frank as you are curious.”
“But that does not satisfy me. You say
you know more about me than I have thought
it necessary or desirable to impart to you. What
is it that you know?”
“Little,” he returned with a singularly disagreeable
smile.
“Then it will be the sooner told. What is
that little?” and I uttered the last word with
rather a bitter and satirical emphasis.
Forrester drew up gravely at this, and replied
to me slowly,
“That little is all. All that has ever happened
to you, and the whole may be expressed
in a single word. Your life has scarcely had
enough of action in it to stir the surface; it has
been a life of inward strife.”
“You have described it truly. My world
has not been like that of other men.”
“Nor mine; but I have come out of the
mist, and you are in it still.”
“You speak riddles, and involve me in deeper
obscurity than ever. But I am resolved to
be satisfied, and will be trifled with no longer.
What is that which you said, nay, pledged
yourself I should soon learn?”
“You must not be impatient. Do not fear
that I will not keep my pledge. If you knew
all, you would understand that I dare not break
it. To-morrow night, at this hour precisely,
meet me on this spot, and you shall be made
wiser; happier, I will not promise. Better it
should never be, than that it should be too late.
This is dark to you now, it will soon be clear
enough.”
We shook hands after the promise of meeting
on the following night, and so parted. Neither[Pg 467]
of us was in a condition to join the cynics at
the tavern.
After a night of feverish suspense I rose early
the next morning, my brain full of the prospect,
clouded as it was, of the interview with Forrester.
The day was passed in a ferment of agitation;
I could not remain at home; I wandered
abroad, forgot to dine, and was racked
with a presentiment that my fate, for good or
evil, hung upon the issue of the night.
VI.
At last the appointed hour arrived. Forrester
was punctual to the moment. He was
evidently affected by some strong emotion, which
he made fearful efforts to control. I was too
much touched by his condition, and had too
much dread about what was coming, to venture
upon any questions, particularly as he seemed
to desire silence. He locked his arm in mine
violently, and, without uttering a word, we
traversed several streets till we reached a part
of the town with which I was unacquainted.
As we went forward Forrester’s agitation sensibly
increased; and when we entered a small
square, in the centre of which there was a stunted
plantation, with a mutilated fountain in the
midst, he suddenly stopped, and turning, looked
me full in the face.
“Have you courage?” he demanded.
“Mortal courage,” I replied, “no more.”
“Well, well, we are fools,” he continued;
“very worms, to think that we can cope with
that which even to endure in ignorance is a
task that sublimes our nature. Suffering is
retributive and purifying. This is my last
agony.”
He then advanced hastily to a house, the
door of which was screened by a low porch,
tastefully covered with creepers. In his attitude
at this instant there was a grandeur that
made a deep impression upon me; it was derived
from the triumph of his manly spirit over
the anguish that was laboring at his heart. He
knocked, and the door was hurriedly opened by
a servant in mourning.
I should here remark that I had never been
at his house before, although I had known him
many months; nor was I even then aware that
the house we were entering was his.
Motioning me to follow him up the stairs,
which he ascended stealthily, I crept up after
him with a very uneasy mind. When he
reached the drawing-room door he paused for a
moment, then turning the handle slowly and
noiselessly, he entered the room. One glance
at the apartment gave me a general idea of its
character. It was small and fashionably furnished,
but had an air of neglect and disorder
which indicated that its tenant had been long
confined by illness. At the opposite side was
a sofa, which, for convenience, had been moved
near the fire. A lady, apparently in a very
delicate state of health (I could only judge by
the languor of her position, for I could not see
her face), lay resting upon it. Forrester stole
quietly to her side, and took her hand.
“Gertrude, how do you feel this evening?”
A sigh, from the depths of her heart, answered
him.
“Don’t be alarmed; I am not alone; we
have come to—”
“Who?” she demanded, suddenly raising herself
from the sofa. “Who is come? Come!—come!—you!—Henry—and—”
She looked at me; I stood in the full light
of the fire; our eyes met; every vein and artery
in my body seemed to beat audibly; she uttered
an hysterical cry, and fell back upon the
sofa. I rushed to catch her, sobbed, gasped,
tried to speak, flung myself upon my knees before
her, and madly clasped the drooping hand,
the living hand, of her who had so long enthralled
my soul, and who, until this hour, had
appeared to me more like a spirit of another
world than a being of the earth like myself.
During this short and agitated scene, Forrester
stood looking at us with a mixed expression
of grief and satisfaction. His mind was
evidently relieved of some weight that had oppressed
it, but there still remained a heavy
pang behind. His fortitude was admirable.
“It is accomplished!” he exclaimed, flinging
himself into a chair; “and if there be a hope of
repose left, perhaps I may live to look back upon
this night with tranquillity.”
The excitement of the moment affected the
invalid so much that her strength sank under
it, and she fainted in my arms. I did not perceive
this until Forrester, whose watchfulness
respecting her was unceasing, gently directed
my attention to it, at the same time moving
her to an easier position. I was too much bewildered
to have sufficient self-possession to
know what to do, but, trivial as this accident
was, it instantly awoke me to the full consciousness
that she lived and breathed before
me; she who had hitherto been to me like the
invisible spirit that accompanied the knight of
old, uttering sweet sounds in the air, until his
heart was consumed by the love of that Voice
which poured its faithful music into his ears.
It was a new life to know that she lived, and
that the happiness I had so hopelessly yearned
for was now within my reach.
“Enough,” cried Forrester, “for the present.
Let us leave her. She will be tended by more
skillful leeches than we should prove.”
A servant entered the room just as we retired,
and after one long gaze, in which all past
delusions seemed to expire, I followed him hastily
into the street.
I stopped at the first retired place we reached.
The explanation could no longer be delayed,
but my impatience was so great that I interrupted
it by a flood of questions. My mind
was full of wonder, and I broke forth into a
series of interrogatories, for the purpose of getting
the information I wanted in the order of
my own thoughts.
“Resolve me, Forrester,” I concluded,—”resolve
me on all these points, for I begin to fear
that my life has hithertofore been but a dream,[Pg 468]
and that even the reality which I have just
looked upon will perish like the rest.”
“Patience, patience!” he returned; “my
thoughts are as confused as yours. I have as
many scattered recollections to gather up as
you have questions to put, and I know not if
either of us can be satisfied in the end. But I
am worn out. This new demand on my spirits
has exhausted me. Let us go forward to a
seat.”
We advanced into the shrubbery, and in one
of the recesses we found a seat. After a pause,
Forrester began his revelations.
(To be continued.)
MAURICE TIERNAY, THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.
(Continued from Page 372.)
CHAPTER XXIII. “THE TOWN-MAJOR OF CASTLEBAR.”
I am at a loss to know whether or not I owe
an apology to my reader for turning away
from the more immediate object of this memoir
of a life, to speak of events which have assumed
an historical reputation. It may be thought ill-becoming
in one who occupied the subordinate
station that I did, to express himself on subjects
so very far above both his experience and acquaintance;
but I would premise, that in the
opinions I may have formed, and the words of
praise or censure dropped, I have been but retailing
the sentiments of those older and wiser
than myself, and by whose guidance I was
mainly led to entertain not only the convictions,
but the prejudices, of my early years.
Let the reader bear in mind, too, that I was
very early in life thrown into the society of men—left
self-dependent, in a great measure, and
obliged to decide for myself on subjects which
usually are determined by older and more mature
heads. So much of excuse, then, if I seem
presumptuous in saying that I began to conceive
a very low opinion generally of popular
attempts at independence, and a very high one
of the powers of military skill and discipline.
A mob, in my estimation, was the very lowest,
and an army about the very highest, object I
could well conceive. My short residence at
Castlebar did not tend to controvert these impressions.
The safety of the town and its inhabitants
was entirely owing to the handful of
French who held it, and who, wearied with
guards, pickets, and outpost duty, were a mere
fraction of the small force that had landed a
few days before.
Our “allies” were now our most difficult
charge. Abandoning the hopeless task of drilling
and disciplining them, we confined ourselves
to the more practical office of restraining pillage
and repressing violence—a measure, be it said,
that was not without peril, and of a very serious
kind. I remember one incident, which, if
not followed by grave consequences, yet appeared
at the time of a very serious character.
By the accidental mis-spelling of a name, a
man named Dowall, a notorious ruffian and
demagogue, was appointed “Commandant-de-Place,”
or Town-Major, instead of a most respectable
shopkeeper named Downes, and who,
although soon made aware of the mistake, from
natural timidity, took no steps to undeceive the
General. Dowall was haranguing a mob of
half-drunken vagabonds, when his commission
was put into his hands; and accepting the post
as an evidence of the fears the French entertained
of his personal influence, became more
overbearing and insolent than ever. We had a
very gallant officer, the second major of the
12th Regiment of the Line, killed in the attack
on Castlebar, and this Dowall at once took possession
of poor Delactre’s horse, arms, and equipment.
His coat and chako, his very boots and
gloves, the scoundrel appropriated; and, as if
in mockery of us and our poor friend, assumed
a habit that he had, when riding fast, to place
his sabre between his leg and the saddle, to prevent
its striking the horse on the flanks.
I need scarcely say that thoroughly disgusted
by the unsightly exhibition, our incessant
cares, and the endless round of duty we were
engaged in, as well as the critical position we
occupied, left us no time to notice the fellow’s
conduct by any other than a passing sign of
anger or contempt—provocations that he certainly
gave us back as insolently as we offered
them. I do not believe that the General ever
saw him, but I know that incessant complaints
were daily made to him about the man’s rapacity
and tyranny, and scarcely a morning passed
without a dozen remonstrances being preferred
against his overbearing conduct.
Determined to have his own countrymen on
his side, he issued the most absurd orders for
the billeting of the rabble, the rations and allowances
of all kinds. He seized upon one of
the best houses for his own quarters, and three
fine saddle-horses for his personal use, besides
a number of inferior ones for the ruffian following
he called his staff!
It was, indeed, enough to excite laughter, had
not indignation been the more powerful emotion,
to see this fellow ride forth of a morning—a
tawdry scarf of green, with deep gold fringe,
thrown over his shoulder, and a saddle-cloth of
the same color, profusely studded with gold
shamrocks, on his horse; a drawn sword in his
hand, and his head erect, followed by an indiscriminate
rabble on foot or horseback—some
with muskets, some pikes, some with sword-blades,
bayonets, or even knives fastened on
sticks, but all alike ferocious-looking and savage.
They affected to march in order, and, with a
rude imitation of soldiery, carried something
like a knapsack on their shoulders, surmounted
by a kettle, or tin-cup, or sometimes an iron-pot—a
grotesque parody on the trim-cooking
equipment of the French soldier. It was evident,
from their step and bearing, that they
thought themselves in the very height of discipline;
and this very assumption was far more[Pg 469]
insulting to the real soldier than all the licentious
irregularity of the marauder. If to us
they were objects of ridicule and derision, to
the townspeople they were images of terror and
dismay. The miserable shopkeeper who housed
one of them lived in continual fear; he knew
nothing to be his own, and felt that his property
and family were every moment at the dictate
of a ruffian gang, who acknowledged no law,
nor any rule save their own will and convenience.
Dowall’s squad were indeed as great
a terror in that little town as I had seen the
great name of Robespierre in the proud city of
Paris.
In my temporary position on General Serazin’s
staff, I came to hear much of this fellow’s
conduct. The most grievous stories were told
me every day of his rapacity and cruelty; but
harassed and overworked, as the General was,
with duties that would have been over-much
for three or four men, I forbore to trouble him
with recitals, which could only fret and distress
him, without affording the slightest chance of
relief to others. Perhaps this impunity had
rendered him more daring; or, perhaps, the immense
number of armed Irish, in comparison
with the small force of disciplined soldiers, emboldened
the fellow; but certainly he grew, day
by day, more presumptuous and insolent, and
at last so far forgot himself as to countermand
one of General Serazin’s orders, by which a
guard was stationed at the Protestant church
to prevent its being molested or injured by the
populace.
General Humbert had already refused the
Roman Catholic priest his permission to celebrate
mass in that building; but Dowall had
determined otherwise, and that, too, by a written
order under his own hand. The French
sergeant who commanded the guard of course
paid little attention to this warrant; and when
Father Hennisy wanted to carry the matter
with a high hand, he coolly tore up the paper,
and threw the fragments at him. Dowall was
soon informed of the slight offered to his mandate.
He was at supper at the time, entertaining
a party of his friends, who all heard the
priest’s story, and of course, loudly sympathized
with his sorrows, and invoked the powerful leader’s
aid and protection. Affecting to believe
that the sergeant had merely acted in ignorance,
and from not being able to read English, Dowall
dispatched a fellow, whom he called his
aid-de-camp, a schoolmaster named Lowrie, and
who spoke a little bad French, to interpret his
command, and to desire the sergeant to withdraw
his men, and give up the guard to a party
of “the squad.”
Great was the surprise of the supper party,
when, after the lapse of half an hour, a country
fellow came in to say that he had seen
Lowrie led off to prison between two French
soldiers. By this time Dowall had drunk himself
into a state of utter recklessness; while
encouraged by his friend’s praises, and the arguments
of his own passions, he fancied that
he might dispute ascendency with General Humbert
himself. He at once ordered out his horse,
and gave a command to assemble the “squad.”
As they were all billeted in his immediate vicinity,
this was speedily effected, and their
numbers swelled by a vast mass of idle and curious,
who were eager to see how the matter
would end; the whole street was crowded, and
when Dowall mounted, his followers amounted
to above a thousand people.
If our sergeant, an old soldier of the “Sambre
et Meuse,” had not already enjoyed some experience
of our allies, it is more than likely
that, seeing their hostile advance, he would
have fallen back upon the main guard, then
stationed in the market-square. As it was, he
simply retired his party within the church, the
door of which had already been pierced for the
use of musketry. This done, and one of his
men being dispatched to head-quarters for advice
and orders, he waited patiently for the attack.
I happened that night to make one of General
Serazin’s dinner party, and we were sitting
over our wine, when the officer of the guard entered
hastily with the tidings of what was going
on in the town.
“Is it the Commandant-de-Place himself is
at the head?” exclaimed Serazin, in amazement,
such a thought being a direct shock to
all his ideas of military discipline.
“Yes, sir,” said the officer; “the soldier
knows his appearance well, and can vouch for
its being him.”
“As I know something of him, General,”
said I, “I may as well mention that nothing is
more likely.”
“Who is he—what is he?” asked Serazin
hastily.
A very brief account—I need not say not a
flattering one—told all that I knew or had ever
heard of our worthy “Town Major.” Many
of the officers around corroborating, as I went
on, all that I said, and interpolating little details
of their own about his robberies and exactions.
“And yet I have heard nothing of all this
before,” said the General, looking sternly around
him on every side.
None ventured on a reply, and what might
have followed there is no guessing, when the
sharp rattle of musketry cut short all discussion.
“That fire was not given by soldiers,” said
Serazin. “Go, Tiernay, and bring this fellow
before me at once.”
I bowed, and was leaving the room, when
an officer, having whispered a few words in
Serazin’s ear, the General called me back, saying,
“You are not to incur any risk, Tiernay; I
want no struggle, still less a rescue. You understand
me.”
“Perfectly, General; the matter will, I trust,
be easy enough!”
And so I left the room, my heart, shall I
avow it, bumping and throbbing in a fashion[Pg 470]
that gave a very poor corroboration to my
words. There were always three or four horses
ready saddled for duty at each general’s quarters,
and taking one of them, I ordered a corporal
of dragoons to follow me, and set out. It
was a fine night of autumn; the last faint sunlight
was yet struggling with the coming darkness,
as I rode at a brisk trot down the main
street toward the scene of action.
I had not proceeded far when the crowds
compelled me to slacken my pace to a walk,
and finding that the people pressed in upon me
in such a way as to prevent any thing like a
defense if attacked, still more, any chance of
an escape by flight, I sent the corporal forward
to clear a passage, and announce my coming to
the redoubted “Commandant.” It was curious
to see how the old dragoon’s tactics effected his
object, and with what speed the crowd opened
and fell back, as with a flank movement of his
horse he “passaged” up the street, prancing,
bounding, and back-leaping, yet all the while
perfectly obedient to the hand, and never deviating
from the straight line in the very middle
of the thoroughfare.
I could catch from the voices around me that
the mob had fired a volley at the church-door,
but that our men had never returned the fire,
and now a great commotion of the crowd, and
that swaying, surging motion of the mass, which
is so peculiarly indicative of a coming event,
told that something more was in preparation;
and such was it; for already numbers were
hurrying forward with straw-fagots, broken furniture,
and other combustible material, which,
in the midst of the wildest cries and shouts of
triumph, were now being heaped up against the
door. Another moment, and I should have
been too late—as it was, my loud summons to
“halt,” and a bold command for the mob to
fall back, only came at the very last minute.
“Where’s the Commandant?” said I, in an
imperious tone. “Who wants him?” responded
a deep husky voice, which I well knew to be
Dowall’s.
“The general in command of the town,” said
I, firmly; “General Serazin.”
“Maybe I’m as good a general as himself,”
was the answer. “I never called him my
superior yet! Did I, boys?”
“Never—devil a bit—why would you?” and
such like, were shouted by the mob around us,
in every accent of drunken defiance.
“You’ll not refuse General Serazin’s invitation
to confer with your Commandant, I hope?”
said I, affecting a tone of respectful civility,
while I gradually drew nearer and nearer to
him, contriving, at the same, by a dexterous
plunging of my horse, to force back the bystanders,
and thus isolate my friend Dowall.
“Tell him I’ve work to do here,” said he,
“and can’t come; but if he’s fond of a bonfire
he may as well step down this far and see one.”
By this time, at a gesture of command from
me, the corporal had placed himself on the opposite
side of Dowall’s horse, and by a movement
similar to my own, completely drove back
the dense mob, so that we had him completely
in our power, and could have sabred or shot him
at any moment.
“General Serazin only wishes to see you on
duty, Commandant,” said I, speaking in a voice
that could be heard over the entire assemblage;
and then, dropping it to a whisper, only audible
to himself, I added,
“Come along, quietly, sir, and without a
word. If you speak, if you mutter, or if you
lift a finger, I’ll run my sabre through your
body.”
“Forward, way, there,” shouted I aloud, and
the corporal, holding Dowall’s bridle, pricked
the horse with the point of his sword, and right
through the crowd we went at a pace that defied
following, had any the daring to think of it.
So sudden was the act and so imminent the
peril, for I held the point of my weapon within
a few inches of his back, and would have kept
my word most assuredly too, that the fellow
never spoke a syllable as we went, nor ventured
on even a word of remonstrance till we descended
at the General’s door. Then, with a voice
tremulous with restrained passion, he said,
“If ye think I’ll forgive ye this thrick, my
fine boy, may the flames and fire be my portion!
and if I hav’n’t my revenge on ye yet, my name
isn’t Mick Dowall.”
With a dogged, sulky resolution he mounted
the stairs, but as he neared the room where the
General was, and from which his voice could
even now be heard, his courage seemed to fail
him, and he looked back as though to see if no
chance of escape remained. The attempt would
have been hopeless, and he saw it.
“This is the man, General,” said I, half pushing
him forward into the middle of the room,
where he stood with his hat on, and in attitude
of mingled defiance and terror.
“Tell him to uncover,” said Serazin; but one
of the aids-de-camp, more zealous than courteous,
stepped forward and knocked the hat off with
his hand. Dowall never budged an inch, nor
moved a muscle, at this insult; to look at him
you could not have said that he was conscious
of it.
“Ask him if it was by his orders that the
guard was assailed?” said the General.
I put the question in about as many words
but he made no reply.
“Does the man know where he is? Does he
know who I am?” repeated Serazin, passionately.
“He knows both well enough, sir,” said I;
“this silence is a mere defiance of us.”
“Parbleu!” cried an officer, “that is the
‘coquin’ took poor Delactre’s equipments; the
very uniform he has on was his.”
“The fellow was never a soldier,” said another.
“I know him well,” interposed a third, “he
is the very terror of the townsfolk.”
“Who gave him his commission?—who appointed
him?” asked Serazin.
Apparently the fellow could follow some words
of French, for as the General asked this he drew
from his pocket a crumpled and soiled paper,
which he threw heedlessly upon the table before
us.
“Why this is not his name, sir,” said I:
“this appointment is made out in the name of
Nicholas Downes, and our friend here is called
Dowall.”
“Who knows him? who can identify him?”
asked Serazin.
“I can say that his name is Dowall, and that
he worked as a porter on the quay in this town
when I was a boy,” said a young Irishman who
was copying letters and papers at a side-table.
“Yes, Dowall,” said the youth, confronting the
look which the other gave him, “I am neither
afraid nor ashamed to tell you to your face that
I know you well, and who you are, and what
you are.”
“I’m an officer in the Irish Independent Army
now,” said Dowall, resolutely. “To the divil I
fling the French commission and all that belongs
to it. ‘Tisn’t troops that run and guns that
burst we want. Let them go back again the
way they came, we’re able for the work ourselves.”
Before I could translate this rude speech an
officer broke into the room, with tidings that the
streets had been cleared, and the rioters dispersed;
a few prisoners of the squad, too, were
taken, whose muskets bore trace of being recently
discharged.
“They fired upon our pickets, General,” said
the officer, whose excited look and voice betrayed
how deeply he felt the outrage.
The men were introduced; three ragged, ill-looking
wretches, apparently only roused from
intoxication by the terror of their situation, for
each was guarded by a soldier with a drawn
bayonet in his hand.
“We only obeyed ordhers my lord; we only
did what the Captain tould us;” cried they in a
miserable, whining tone, for the sight of their
leader in captivity had sapped all their courage.
“What am I here for? Who has any business
with me?” said Dowall, assuming before
his followers, an attempt at his former tone of
bully.
“Tell him,” said Serazin, “that wherever a
French general stands in full command he will
neither brook insolence nor insubordination. Let
those fellows be turned out of the town, and
warned never to approach the quarters of the
army under any pretense whatever. As for this
scoundrel we’ll make an example of him. Order
a peloton into the yard and shoot him.”
I rendered this speech into English as the
General spoke it, and never shall I forget the
wild scream of the wretch as he heard the sentence.
“I’m an officer in the army of Ireland. I
don’t belong to ye at all. You’ve no power over
me. Oh, Captain, darlin’; oh, gentlemen, speak
for me! General, dear; General, honey, don’t
sintince me! don’t for the love of God!” and
in groveling terror the miserable creature threw
himself on his knees to beg for mercy.
“Tear off his epaulettes,” cried Serazin,
“never let a French uniform be so disgraced.”
The soldiers wrenched off the epaulettes at
the command, and not satisfied with this they
even tore away the lace from the cuffs of the
uniform, which now hung in ragged fragments
over his trembling hands.
“Oh, sir, oh, General! oh, gentlemen, have
marcy!”
“Away with him,” said Serazin contemptuously;
“it is only the cruel can be such cowards.
Give the fellow his fusillade with blank cartridge,
and the chances are fear will kill outright.”
The scene that ensued is too shocking, too full
of abasement to record; there was nothing that
fear of death, nothing that abject terror could
suggest, that this miserable wretch did not attempt
to save his life; he wept—he begged in
accents that were unworthy of all manhood—he
kissed the very ground at the General’s feet in
his abject sorrow; and when at last he was
dragged from the room his screams were the
most terrific and piercing.
Although all my compassion was changed into
contempt, I felt that I could never have given
the word to fire upon him, had such been my
orders; his fears had placed him below all manhood,
but they still formed a barrier of defense
around him. I accordingly whispered a few
words to the sergeant as we passed down the
stairs, and then affecting to have forgotten something,
I stepped back toward the room, where the
General and his staff were sitting. The scuffling
sound of feet, mingled with the crash of fire-arms,
almost drowned the cries of the still struggling
wretch; his voice, however, burst forth
into a wild cry, and then there came a pause—a
pause that at last became insupportable to my
anxiety, and I was about to rush down stairs,
when a loud yell, a savage howl of derision and
hate burst forth from the street; and on looking
out I saw a vast crowd before the door, who
were shouting after a man, whose speed soon
carried him out of reach. This was Dowall, who
thus suffered to escape, was told to fly from the
town, and never to return to it.
“Thank heaven,” muttered I, “we’ve seen
the last of him.”
The rejoicing, was, however, premature.
CHAPTER XXIV. “THE MISSION TO THE NORTH.”
I have never yet been able to discover whether
General Humbert really did feel the confidence
that he assumed at this period, or that he merely
affected it, the better to sustain the spirits of
those around him. If our success at Castlebar
was undeniable, our loss was also great, and far
more than proportionate to all the advantages
we had acquired. Six officers and two hundred
and forty men were either killed or badly wounded,
and as our small force had really acquired no
reinforcement worth the name, it was evident[Pg 472]
that another such costly victory would be our
ruin.
Not one gentleman of rank or influence had yet
joined us, few of the priesthood, and, even among
the farmers and peasantry, it was easy to see
that our recruits comprised those whose accession
could never have conferred honor or profit
on any cause.
Our situation was any thing but promising.
The rumors that reached us, and we had no other
or more accurate information than rumors, told
that an army of thirty thousand men under the
command of Lord Cornwallis, was in march
against us; that all the insurrectionary movements
of the south were completely repressed;
that the spirit of the rebels was crushed, and
their confidence broken, either by defeat or internal
treachery. In a word that the expedition
had already failed, and the sooner we had the
means of leaving the land of our disasters the
better.
Such were the universal feelings of all my
comrades; but Humbert, who often had told us
that we were only here to “éclairer la route” for
another and more formidable mission, now pretended
to think that we were progressing most
favorably toward a perfect success. Perhaps he
firmly believed all this, or perhaps he thought
that the pretense would give more dignity to the
finale of an exploit, which he already saw was
nearly played out! I know not which is the
true explanation, and am half disposed to think
that he was actuated as much by one impulse
as the other.
“The army of the North” was the talisman,
which we now heard of for the first time, to
repair all our disasters, and insure complete
victory. “The Army of the North,” whose
strength varied from twenty to twenty-five, and
sometimes reached even thirty thousand men,
and was commanded by a distinguished Irish
general, was now the centre to which all our
hopes turned. Whether it had already landed,
and where, of what it consisted, and how
officered, not one of us knew any thing; but by
dint of daily repetition and discussion we had
come to believe in its existence as certainly as
though we had seen it under arms.
The credulous lent their convictions without
any trouble to themselves whatever; the more
skeptical studied the map, and fancied twenty
different places in which they might have disembarked;
and thus the “Army of the North”
grew to be a substance and reality, as undoubted
as the scenes before our eyes.
Never was such a ready solution of all difficulties
discovered as this same “Army of the
North.” Were we to be beaten by Cornwallis
it was only a momentary check, for the Army
of the North would come up within a few days
and turn the whole tide of war. If our Irish
allies grew insubordinate or disorderly, a little
patience, and the Army of the North would
settle all that. Every movement projected was
fancied to be in concert with this redoubted
corps, and at last every trooper that rode in
from Killala or Ballina was questioned as to
whether his dispatches did not come from the
Army of the North.
Frenchmen will believe any thing you like for
twenty-four hours. They can be flattered into
a credulity of two days, and, by dint of great
artifice and much persuasion, will occasionally
reach a third; but there, faith has its limit;
and if nothing palpable, tangible, and real intervene,
skepticism ensues; and what with native
sarcasm, ridicule, and irony, they will demolish
the card edifice of credit far more rapidly than
ever they raised it. For two whole days the
“Army of the North” occupied every man
among us. We toasted it over our wine; we
discussed it at our quarters; we debated upon
its whereabouts, its strength, and its probable
destination; but on the third morning a terrible
shock was given to our feelings by a volatile
young Lieutenant of Hussars exclaiming—
“Ma foi! I wish I could see this same
‘Army of the North!'”
Now, although nothing was more reasonable
than this wish, nor was there any one of us who
had not felt a similar desire, this sudden expression
of it struck us all most forcibly, and a
shrinking sense of doubt spread over every face,
and men looked at each other, as though to say,
“Is the fellow capable of supposing that such
an army does not exist?” It was a very
dreadful moment—a terrible interval of struggle
between the broad day-light of belief and the
black darkness of incredulity; and we turned
glances of actual dislike at the man who had so
unwarrantably shaken our settled convictions.
“I only said I should like to see them under
arms,” stammered he, in the confusion of one
who saw himself exposed to public obloquy.
This half apology came too late, the mischief
was done! and we shunned each other like
men who were afraid to read the accusation of
even a shrewd glance. As for myself, I can
compare my feelings only to those of the worthy
alderman, who broke out into a paroxysm of
grief on hearing that “Robinson Crusoe” was a
fiction. I believe, on that sudden revulsion of
feeling, I could have discredited any and every
thing. If there was no Army of the North,
was I quite sure that there was any expedition
at all? Were the generals mere freebooters,
the chiefs of a marauding venture? Were the
patriots any thing but a disorderly rabble, eager
for robbery and bloodshed? Was Irish Independence
a mere phantom? Such were among
the shocking terrors that came across my mind
as I sat in my quarters, far too dispirited and
depressed to mix among my comrades.
It had been a day of fatiguing duty, and I
was not sorry, as night fell, that I might betake
myself to bed, to forget, if it might be, the
torturing doubts that troubled me. Suddenly I
heard a heavy foot upon the stair, and an
orderly entered with a command for me to
repair to the head-quarters of the General at
once. Never did the call of duty summon me
less willing, never found me so totally disinclined[Pg 473]
to obey. I was weary and fatigued; but
worse than this, I was out of temper with myself,
the service, and the whole world. Had I
heard that the Royal forces were approaching, I
was exactly in the humor to have dashed into
the thick of them, and sold my life as dearly as
I could, out of desperation.
Discipline is a powerful antagonist to a man’s
caprices, for with all my irritability and discontent,
I arose, and resuming my uniform, set
out for General Humbert’s quarters. I followed
“the orderly,” as he led the way through many
a dark street and crooked alley, till we reached
the square. There, too, all was in darkness,
save at the mainguard, where, as usual, the five
windows of the first story were a blaze of light,
and the sounds of mirth and revelry, the nightly
orgies of our officers, were ringing out in the
stillness of the quiet hour. The wild chorus of
a soldier-song, with its “ran-tan-plan” accompaniment
of knuckles on the table, echoed
through the square, and smote upon my ear with
any thing but a congenial sense of pleasure.
In my heart I thought them a senseless, soulless
crew, that could give themselves to dissipation
and excess on the very eve, as it were, of
our defeat, and with hasty steps I turned away
into the side street, where a large lamp, the
only light to be seen, proclaimed General Humbert’s
quarters.
A bustle and stir, very unusual at this late
hour, pervaded the passages and the stairs, and
it was some time before I could find one of the
staff to announce my arrival, which at last was
done somewhat unceremoniously, as an officer
hurried me through a large chamber crowded
with the staff, into an inner room, where, on a
small field-bed, lay General Humbert, without
coat or boots, a much-worn scarlet cloak thrown
half over him, and a black handkerchief tied
round his head. I had scarcely seen him since
our landing, and I could with difficulty recognize
the burly high-complexioned soldier of a
few days back in the worn and haggard features
of the sick man before me. An attack of ague,
which he had originally contracted in Holland,
had relapsed upon him, and he was now suffering
all the lassitude and sickness of that most
depressing of all maladies.
Maps, books, plans, and sketches of various
kinds scattered the bed, the table, and even the
floor around him; but his attitude as I entered
betrayed the exhaustion of one who could labor
no longer, and whose worn-out faculties demanded
rest. He lay flat on his back, his arms
straight down beside him, and, with half closed
eyes, seemed as though falling off to sleep.
His first aid-de-camp, Merochamp, was standing
with his back to a small turf fire, and made
a sign to us to be still, and make no noise as
we came in.
“He’s sleeping,” said he, “it’s the first time
he has closed his eyes for ten days.”
We stood for a moment uncertain, and were
about to retrace our steps, when Humbert said,
in a low, weak voice,
“No! I’m not asleep, come in.”
The officer who presented me now retired,
and I advanced toward the bed-side.
“This is Tiernay, General,” said Merochamp,
stooping down and speaking low, “you wished
to see him.”
“Yes, I wanted him. Ha! Tiernay, you see
me a good deal altered since we parted last;
however, I shall be all right in a day or two;
it’s a mere attack of ague, and will leave when
the good weather comes. I wished to ask you
about your family, Tiernay; was not your father
Irish?”
“No, sir; we were Irish two or three generations
back, but since that we have belonged
either to Austria or to France.”
“Then where were you born?”
“In Paris; sir, I believe, but certainly in
France.”
“There, I said so, Merochamp; I knew that
the boy was French.”
“Still I don’t think the precaution worthless,”
replied Merochamp; “Teeling and the
others advise it.”
“I know they do,” said Humbert, peevishly,
“and for themselves it may be needful, but this
lad’s case will be injured not bettered by it.
He is not an Irishman; he never was at any
time a British subject. Have you any certificate
of birth or baptism, Tiernay?”
“None, sir, but I have my ‘livret’ for the
school of Saumur, which sets forth my being a
Frenchman by birth.”
“Quite sufficient, boy, let me have it.”
It was a document which I always carried
about with me since I landed, to enable me any
moment, if made prisoner, to prove myself an
alien, and thus escape the inculpation of fighting
against the flag of my country. Perhaps
there was something of reluctance in my manner
as I relinquished it, for the General said,
“I’ll take good care of it, Tiernay, you shall
not fare the worse because it is in my keeping.
I may as well tell you that some of our Irish
officers have received threatening letters. It is
needless to say they are without name, stating
that if matters go unfortunately with us in
this campaign, they will meet the fate of men
taken in open treason; and that their condition
of officers in our service will avail them
nothing. I do not believe this. I can not believe
that they will be treated in any respect
differently from the rest of us. However, it is
only just that I should tell you, that your
name figures among those so denounced; for
this reason I have sent for you now. You, at
least, have nothing to apprehend on this score.
You are as much a Frenchman as myself. I
know Merochamp thinks differently from me,
and that your Irish descent and name will be
quite enough to involve you in the fate of
others.”
A gesture, half of assent but half of impatience,
from the aid-de-camp, here arrested the
speaker.
“Why not tell him frankly how he stands?”[Pg 474]
said Humbert, eagerly. “I see no advantage
in any concealment.”
Then addressing me, he went on. “I purpose,
Tiernay, to give you the same option I
gave the others, but which they have declined
to accept. It is this: we are daily expecting
to hear of the arrival of a force in the north,
under the command of Generals Tandy and
Rey.”
“The Army of the North?” asked I, in some
anxiety.
“Precisely; the Army of the North. Now
I desire to open a communication with them,
and at the same time to do so through the
means of such officers as, in the event of any
disaster here, may have the escape to France
open to them; which this army will have, and
which, I need not say, we have no longer. Our
Irish friends have declined this mission, as being
more likely to compromise them if taken; and
also as diminishing and not increasing their
chance of escape. In my belief that you were
placed similarly, I have sent for you here this
evening, and at the same time desire to impress
upon you that your acceptance or refusal is
purely a matter at your own volition.”
“Am I to regard the matter simply as one
of duty, sir? or as an opportunity of consulting
my personal safety?”
“What shall I say to this Merochamp?”
asked Humbert, bluntly.
“That you are running to the full as many
risks of being hanged for going as by staying;
such is my opinion,” said the aid-de-camp.
“Here as a rebel, there as a spy.”
“I confess, then,” said I smiling at the cool
brevity of the speech, “the choice is somewhat
embarrassing! May I ask what you advise me
to do, General?”
“I should say go, Tiernay.”
“Go, by all means, lad,” broke in the aid-de-camp,
who throughout assumed a tone of
dictation and familiarity most remarkable. “If
a stand is to be made in this miserable country,
it will be with Rey’s force; here the game
will not last much longer. There lies the only
man capable of conducting such an expedition,
and his health can not stand up against its
trials!”
“Not so, Merochamp; I’ll be on horseback
to-morrow or the day after at furthest; and
if I never were to take the field again, there
are others, yourself among the number, well
able to supply my place: but to Tiernay—what
says he?”
“Make it duty, sir, and I shall go, or remain
here with an easy conscience,” said I.
“Then duty be it, boy,” said he; “and
Merochamp will tell you every thing, for all this
discussion has wearied me much, and I can not
endure more talking.”
“Sit down here,” said the aid-de-camp,
pointing to a seat at his side, “and five minutes
will suffice.”
He opened a large map of Ireland before us
on the table, and running his finger along the
coast-line of the western side, stopped abruptly
at the bay of Lough Swilly.
“There,” said he, “that is the spot. There,
too, should have been our own landing! The
whole population of the North will be with
them—not such allies as these fellows, but
men accustomed to the use of arms, able and
willing to take the field. They say that five
thousand men could hold the passes of those
mountains against thirty.”
“Who says this?” said I, for I own it, that
I had grown marvelously skeptical as to testimony.
“Napper Tandy, who is a general of division,
and one of the leaders of this force;” and he
went on: “The utmost we can do will be to
hold these towns to the westward till they join
us. We may stretch away thus far,” and he
moved his finger toward the direction of Leitrim,
but no further. “You will have to communicate
with them; to explain what we have
done, where we are, and how we are. Conceal
nothing—let them hear fairly, that this patriot
force is worth nothing, and that even to garrison
the towns we take they are useless. Tell
them, too, the sad mistake we made by attempting
to organize what never can be disciplined,
and let them not arm a population, as
we have done, to commit rapine and plunder.”
Two letters were already written—one addressed
to Rey, the other to Napper Tandy.
These I was ordered to destroy if I should happen
to become a prisoner; and with the map
of Ireland, pen-marked in various directions, by
which I might trace my route, and a few lines
to Colonel Charost, whom I was to see on passing
at Killala, I was dismissed. When I approached
the bed-side to take leave of the General,
he was sound asleep. The excitement
of talking having passed away, he was pale
as death, and his lips totally colorless. Poor
fellow, he was exhausted-looking and weary,
and I could not help thinking, as I looked on
him, that he was no bad emblem of the cause
he had embarked in!
I was to take my troop-horse as far as Killala,
after which I was to proceed either on foot, or
by such modes of conveyance as I could find,
keeping as nigh the coast as possible, and acquainting
myself, so far as I might do, with
the temper and disposition of the people as I
went. It was a great aid to my sinking courage
to know that there really was an “Army
of the North,” and to feel myself accredited to
hold intercourse with the generals commanding
it.
Such was my exultation at this happy discovery,
that I was dying to burst in among my
comrades with the tidings, and proclaim at the
same time my own high mission. Merochamp
had strictly enjoined my speedy departure without
the slightest intimation to any whither I
was going, or with what object.
A very small cloak-bag held all my effects,
and with this slung at my saddle, I rode out of
the town just as the church clock was striking[Pg 475]
twelve. It was a calm, starlight night, and
once a short distance from the town, as noiseless
and still as possible; a gossoon, one of the
numerous scouts we employed in conveying letters
or bringing intelligence, trotted along on
foot beside me to show the way, for there was
a rumor that some of the Royalist cavalry still
loitered about the passes to capture our dispatch-bearers,
or make prisoners of any stragglers from
the army.
These “gossoons,” picked up by chance, and
selected for no other qualification than because
they were keen-eyed and swift of foot, were the
most faithful and most worthy creatures we met
with. In no instance were they ever known
to desert to the enemy, and stranger still, they
were never seen to mix in the debauchery and
excesses so common to all the volunteers of the
rebel camp. Their intelligence was considerable,
and to such a pitch had emulation stimulated
them in the service, that there was no
danger they would not incur in their peculiar
duties.
My companion on the present occasion was a
little fellow of about thirteen years of age, and
small and slight even for that; we knew him
as “Peter,” but whether he had any other
name, or what, I was ignorant. He was
wounded by a sabre cut across the hand, which
nearly severed the fingers from it, at the bridge
of Castlebar, but with a strip of linen bound
round it now, he trotted along as happy and
careless as if nothing ailed him.
I questioned him as we went, and learned that
his father had been a herd in the service of a certain
Sir Roger Palmer, and his mother a dairy-maid
in the same house; but as the patriots
had sacked and burned the “Castle,” of course
they were now upon the world. He was a good
deal shocked at my asking what part his father
took on the occasion of the attack, but for a
very different reason than that which I suspected.
“For the cause, of course!” replied he, almost
indignantly, “why wouldn’t he stand up
for ould Ireland!”
“And your mother—what did she do?”
He hung down his head, and made no answer
till I repeated the question.
“Faix,” said he, slowly and sadly, “she
went and towld the young ladies what was
goin’ to be done, and if it hadn’t been that the
‘boys’ caught Tim Hynes, the groom, going off
to Foxford with a letter, we’d have had the
dragoons down upon us in no time! They
hanged Tim, but they let the young ladies
away, and my mother with them, and off they
all went to Dublin.”
“And where’s your father now?” I asked.
“He was drowned in the bay of Killala four
days ago. He went with a party of others to
take oatmeal from a sloop that was wrecked in
the bay, and an English cruiser came in at the
time and fired on them; at the second discharge
the wreck and all upon it went down!”
He told all these things without any touch
of sorrow in voice or manner. They seemed to
be the ordinary chances of war, and so he took
them. He had three brothers and a sister; of
the former, two were missing, the third was a
scout; and the girl—she was but nine years
old—was waiting on a canteen, and mighty
handy, he said, for she knew a little French
already, and understood the soldiers when they
asked for a “goutte,” or wanted “du feu” for
their pipes.
Such, then, was the credit side of the account
with Fortune, and, strange enough, the boy
seemed satisfied with it; and although a few
days had made him an orphan and houseless,
he appeared to feel that the great things in
store for his country were an ample recompense
for all. Was this, then, patriotism? Was it
possible that one, untaught and unlettered as he
was, could think national freedom cheap at such
a cost? If I thought so for a moment, a very
little further inquiry undeceived me. Religious
rancor, party feuds, the hate of the Saxon—a
blind, ill-directed, unthinking hate—were the
motives which actuated him. A terrible retribution
for something upon somebody, an awful
wiping out of old scores, a reversal of the lot of
rich and poor, were the main incentives to his
actions, and he was satisfied to stand by at the
drawing of this great lottery, even without holding
a ticket in it!
It was almost the first moment of calm reflective
thought I had enjoyed, as I rode along
thus in the quiet stillness of the night, and I
own that my heart began to misgive me as to
the great benefits of our expedition. I will not
conceal the fact, that I had been disappointed
in every expectation I had formed of Ireland.
The bleak and barren hills of Mayo, the dreary
tracts of mountain and morass, were about as
unworthy representatives of the boasted beauty
and fertility, as were the half-clad wretches who
flocked around us of that warlike people of whom
we had heard so much. Where were the chivalrous
chieftains with their clans behind them?
Where the thousands gathering around a national
standard? Where that high-souled patriotism,
content to risk fortune, station—all, in the
conflict for national independence? A rabble
led on by a few reckless debauchees, and two
or three disreputable or degraded priests, were
our only allies; and even these refused to be
guided by our counsels, or swayed by our authority.
I half-suspected Serazin was right when
he said, “Let the Directory send thirty thousand
men, and make it a French province; but
let us not fight an enemy to give the victory to
the ‘sans culottes.'”
As we neared the pass of Burnageeragh, I
turned one last look on the town of Castlebar,
around which, at little intervals of space, the
watch-fires of our pickets were blazing; all the
rest of the place was in darkness.
It was a strange and a thrilling thought to
think that there, hundreds of miles from their
home, without one link that could connect them
to it, lay a little army in the midst of an enemy’s[Pg 476]
country, calm, self-possessed, and determined.
How many, thought I, are destined to
leave it? How many will bring back to our dear
France the memory of this unhappy struggle?
CHAPTER XXV. A PASSING VISIT TO KILLALA.
I found a very pleasant party assembled
around the Bishop’s breakfast-table at Killala.
The Bishop and his family were all there, with
Charost and his staff, and some three or four
other officers from Ballina. Nothing could be
less constrained, more easy, or more agreeable,
than the tone of intimacy which in a few days
had grown up between them. A cordial good
feeling seemed to prevail on every subject, and
even the reserve, which might be thought natural
on the momentous events then happening,
was exchanged for a most candid and frank discussion
of all that was going forward, which I
must own astonished as much as it gratified me.
The march on Castlebar, the choice of the
mountain-road, which led past the position occupied
by the Royalists, the attack and capture
of the artillery, had all to be related by me for
the edification of such as were not conversant
with French; and I could observe that however
discomfited by the conduct of the militia, they
fully relied on the regiments of the line and
the artillery. It was amusing, too, to see with
what pleasure they listened to all our disparagement
of the Irish volunteers.
Every instance we gave of insubordination
or disobedience delighted them, while our own
blundering attempts to manage the people, the
absurd mistakes we fell into, and the endless
misconceptions of their character and habits,
actually convulsed them with laughter.
“Of course,” said the Bishop to us, “you
are prepared to hear that there is no love lost
between you, and that they are to the full as
dissatisfied with you as you are dissatisfied with
them.”
“Why, what can they complain of?” asked
Charost, smiling; “we gave them the place of
honor in the very last engagement!”
“Very true, you did so, and they reaped all
the profit of the situation. Monsieur Tiernay
has just told the havoc that grape and round-shot
scattered among the poor creatures. However,
it is not of this they complain—it is their
miserable fare, the raw potatoes, their beds in
open fields and highways, while the French,
they say, eat of the best and sleep in blankets;
they do not understand this inequality, and perhaps
it is somewhat hard to comprehend.”
“Patriotism ought to be proud of such little
sacrifices,” said Charost, with an easy laugh;
“besides, it is only a passing endurance, a
month hence, less, perhaps, will see us dividing
the spoils, and reveling in the conquest of Irish
independence.”
“You think so, Colonel?” asked the Bishop,
half slyly.
“Parbleu! to be sure I do, and you?”
“I’m just as sanguine,” said the Bishop,
“and fancy that about a month hence we shall
be talking of all these things as matters of history;
and while sorrowing over some of the unavoidable
calamities of the event, preserving a
grateful memory of some who came as enemies,
but left us warm friends.”
“If such is to be the turn of fortune,” said
Charost, with more seriousness than before, “I
can only say that the kindly feelings will not
be one-sided.”
And now the conversation became an animated
discussion on the chances of success or
failure. Each party supported his opinion ably
and eagerly, and with a degree of freedom that
was not a little singular to the by-standers.
At last, when Charost was fairly answered by
the Bishop on every point, he asked:
“But what say you to the Army of the
North?”
“Simply, that I do not believe in such a
force,” rejoined the Bishop.
“Not believe it—not believe on what General
Humbert relies at this moment, and to which
that officer yonder is an accredited messenger!
When I tell you that a most distinguished Irishman,
Napper Tandy—”
“Napper Tandy!” repeated the Bishop, with
a good-humored smile; “the name is quite
enough to relieve one of any fears, if they ever
felt them. I am not sufficiently acquainted
with your language to give him the epithet he
deserves; but if you can conceive an empty,
conceited man, as ignorant of war as of politics,
rushing into a revolution for the sake of a green
uniform, and ready to convulse a kingdom that
he may be called a major-general; only enthusiastic
in his personal vanity, and wanting even
in that heroic daring which occasionally dignifies
weak capacities—such is Napper Tandy.”
“What in soldier-phrase we call a ‘Blaque,'”
said Charost, laughing. “I’m sorry for it.”
What turn the conversation was about to
take I can not guess, when it was suddenly interrupted
by one of the Bishop’s servants rushing
into the room, with a face bloodless from terror.
He made his way up to where the Bishop
sat, and whispered a few words in his ear.
“And how is the wind blowing, Andrew?”
asked the Bishop, in a voice that all his self-command
could not completely steady.
“From the north, or the northwest, and
mighty strong, too, my Lord,” said the man,
who trembled in every limb.
The affrighted aspect of the messenger, the
excited expression of the Bishop’s face, and the
question as to the “wind,” at once suggested
to me the idea that a French fleet had arrived
in the bay, and that the awful tidings were
neither more nor less than the announcement
of our reinforcement.
“From the northwest,” repeated the Bishop;
“then, with God’s blessing, we may be spared.”
And so saying, he arose from the table, and
with an effort that showed that the strength to
do so had only just returned to him. “Colonel[Pg 477]
Charost, a word with you!” said he, leading
the way into an adjoining room.
“What is it?—what has happened?—what
can it be?” was asked by each in turn. And
now groups gathered at the windows, which all
looked into the court of the building, which was
now crowded with people, soldiers, servants,
and country-folk, gazing earnestly toward the
roof of the castle.
“What’s the matter, Terry?” asked one of
the Bishop’s sons, as he threw open the window.
“‘Tis the chimbley on fire, Master Robert,”
said the man; “the kitchen chimbly, wid those
divils of Frinch!”
I can not describe the burst of laughter that
followed the explanation!
So much terror for so small a catastrophe was
inconceivable; and whether we thought of
Andrew’s horrified face, or the worthy Bishop’s
pious thanksgiving as to the direction of the
wind, we could scarcely refrain from another
outbreak of mirth. Colonel Charost made his
appearance at the instant, and although his
step was hurried, and his look severe, there was
nothing of agitation or alarm on his features.
“Turn out the guard, Truchet, without arms,”
said he. “Come with me, Tiernay—an awkward
business enough,” whispered he, as he
led me along. “These fellows have set fire to
the kitchen chimney, and we have three hundred
barrels of gunpowder in the cave!” Nothing
could be more easy and unaffected than the way
he spoke this; and I actually stared at him, to
see if his coldness was a mere pretense; but
far from it—every gesture and every word
showed the most perfect self-possession, with a
prompt readiness for action.
When we reached the court, the bustle and
confusion had reached its highest; for, as the
wind lulled, large masses of inky smoke hung,
like a canopy, over head, through which a forked
flame darted at intervals, with that peculiar
furnace-like roar that accompanies a jet of fire
in confined places. At times, too, as the soot
ignited, great showers of bright sparks floated
upward, and afterward fell, like a fiery rain, on
every side. The country people, who had flocked
in from the neighborhood, were entirely occupied
with these signs, and only intent upon
saving the remainder of the house, which they
believed in great peril, totally unaware of the
greater and more imminent danger close beside
them.
Already they had placed ladders against the
walls, and, with ropes and buckets, were preparing
to ascend, when Truchet marched in with
his company, in fatigue-jackets, twenty sappers
with shovels accompanying them.
“Clear the court-yard, now,” said Charost,
“and leave this matter to us.”
The order was obeyed somewhat reluctantly,
it is true, and at last we stood the sole occupants
of the spot, the Bishop being the only civilian
present, he having refused to quit the spot, unless
compelled by force.
The powder was stored in a long shed adjoining
the stables, and originally used as a
shelter for farming tools and utensils. A few
tarpaulins we had carried with us from the ships
were spread over the barrels, and on this now
some sparks of fire had fallen, as the burning
soot had been carried in by an eddy of wind.
The first order was, to deluge the tarpaulins
with water; and while this was being done, the
sappers were ordered to dig trenches in the garden,
to receive the barrels. Every man knew
the terrible peril so near him; each felt that at
any instant a frightful death might overtake
him, and yet every detail of the duty was carried
on with the coldest unconcern; and when
at last the time came to carry away the barrels,
on a species of handbarrow, the fellows stepped
in time, as if on the march, and moved in
measure, a degree of indifference, which, to
judge from the good Bishop’s countenance, evidently
inspired as many anxieties for their
spiritual welfare, as it suggested astonishment
and admiration for their courage. He himself,
it must be owned, displayed no sign of trepidation;
and in the few words he spoke, or the
hints he dropped, exhibited every quality of a
brave man.
At moments the peril seemed very imminent
indeed. Some timber having caught fire, slender
fragments of burning wood fell in masses,
covering the men as they went, and falling on
the barrels, whence the soldiers brushed them
off with cool indifference. The dense, thick
smoke, too, obscuring every object a few paces
distant, added to the confusion, and occasionally
bringing the going and returning parties into
collision, a loud shout, or cry, would ensue;
and it is difficult to conceive how such a sound
thrilled through the heart at such a time. I own
that more than once I felt a choking fullness in
the throat, as I heard a sudden yell, it seemed
so like a signal for destruction. In removing
one of the last barrels from the hand-barrow, it
slipped, and falling to the ground, the hoops
gave way, it burst open, and the powder fell
out on every side. The moment was critical,
for the wind was baffling, now wafting the
sparks clear away, now whirling them in eddies
around us. It was then that an old sergeant
of Grenadiers threw off his upper coat and
spread it over the broken cask, while, with all
the composure of a man about to rest himself,
he lay down on it, while his comrades went to
fetch water. Of course his peril was no greater
than that of every one around him; but there
was an air of quick determination in his act
which showed the training of an old soldier.
At length the labor was ended, the last barrel
was committed to the earth, and the men, formed
into line, were ordered to wheel and march.
Never shall I forget the Bishop’s face as they
moved past. The undersized and youthful look
of our soldiers had acquired for them a kind of
depreciating estimate in comparison with the
more mature and manly stature of the British
soldier, to whom, indeed, they offered a strong
contrast on parade; but now, as they were seen[Pg 478]
in a moment of arduous duty, surrounded by
danger, the steadiness and courage, the prompt
obedience to every command, the alacrity of
their movements, and the fearless intrepidity
with which they performed every act, impressed
the worthy Bishop so forcibly, that he muttered
half aloud, “Thank heaven there are but few of
them!”
Colonel Charost resisted steadily the Bishop’s
proffer to afford the men some refreshment; he
would not even admit of an extra allowance of
brandy to their messes. “If we become too
liberal for slight services, we shall never be able
to reward real ones,” was his answer; and the
Bishop was reduced to the expedient of commemorating
what he could not reward. This,
indeed, he did with the most unqualified praise,
relating in the drawing-room all that he had
witnessed, and lauding French valor and heroism
to the very highest.
The better to conceal my route, and to avoid
the chances of being tracked, I sailed that
evening in a fishing-boat for Killybegs, a small
harbor on the coast of Donegal, having previously
exchanged my uniform for the dress of a sailor,
so that if apprehended I should pretend to be an
Ostend or Antwerp seaman, washed overboard
in a gale at sea. Fortunately for me I was not
called on to perform this part, for as my nautical
experiences were of the very slightest, I should
have made a deplorable attempt at the impersonation.
Assuredly the fishermen of the smack
would not have been among the number of the
“imposed upon,” for a more sea-sick wretch
never masqueraded in a blue jacket than I was.
My only clew, when I touched land, was a
certain Father Doogan, who lived at the foot of
the Bluerock Mountains, about fifteen miles from
the coast, and to whom I brought a few lines
from one of the Irish officers, a certain Bourke
of Ballina. The road led in this direction, and
so little intercourse had the shore folk with the
interior, that it was with difficulty any one
could be found to act as a guide thither. At
last an old fellow was discovered, who used to
travel these mountains formerly with smuggled
tobacco and tea; and although, from the discontinuance
of the smuggling trade, and increased
age, he had for some years abandoned
the line of business, a liberal offer of payment
induced him to accompany me as guide.
It was not without great misgivings that I
looked at the very old and almost decrepit creature,
who was to be my companion through a
solitary mountain region.
The few stairs he had to mount in the little inn
where I put up seemed a sore trial to his strength
and chest; but he assured me that once out of
the smoke of the town, and with his foot on the
“short grass of the sheep-patch,” he’d be like a
four-year-old; and his neighbor having corroborated
the assertion, I was fain to believe him.
Determined, however, to make his excursion
subservient to profit in his old vocation, he provided
himself with some pounds of tobacco and
a little parcel of silk handkerchiefs, to dispose
of among the country people, with which, and a
little bag of meal slung at his back, and a walking-stick
in his hand, he presented himself at my
door just as day was breaking.
“We’ll have a wet day, I fear, Jerry.” said
I, looking out.
“Not a bit of it,” replied he. “‘Tis the
spring tides makes it cloudy there beyant; but
when the sun gets up it will be a fine mornin’;
but I’m thinkin’ ye’r strange in them parts;”
and this he said with a keen sharp glance under
his eyes.
“Donegal is new to me, I confess,” said I
guardedly.
“Yes, and the rest of Ireland, too,” said he,
with a roguish leer. “But come along, we’ve
a good step before us;” and with these words he
led the way down the stairs, holding the balustrade
as he went, and exhibiting every sign of
age and weakness. Once in the street however
he stepped out more freely, and before we got
clear of the town, walked at a fair pace, and,
to all seeming, with perfect ease.
(To be continued.)
THE DEATH OF A GOBLIN.
There is a by-street, called the Pallant, in
an old cathedral city—a narrow carriage-way,
which leads to half a dozen antique mansions.
A great number of years ago, when I
began to shave, the presence of a very fascinating
girl induced me to make frequent calls upon
an old friend of our family who lived in one of
the oldest of these houses, a plain, large building
of red brick. The father, and the grandfather,
and a series of great-great-great and
other grandfathers of the then occupant, Sir
Francis Holyoke, had lived and died beneath
its roof. So much I knew; and I had inkling
of a legend in connection with the place, a very
horrible affair. How and when I heard the
story fully told, I have good reason to remember.
We were in the great dark wainscoted parlor
one December evening; papa was out. I sat
with Margaret by the fire-side, and saw in the
embers visions of what might come to pass, but
never did. Ellen was playing at her harpsichord
in a dark corner of the room, singing a quaint
and cheerful duet out of Grétry’s Cœur de Lion
with my old school-fellow, Paul Owen, a sentimental
youth, who became afterward a martyr
to the gout, and broke his neck at a great
steeple-chase. “The God of Love a bandeau
wears,” those two were singing. Truly, they
had their own eyes filleted. The fire-light glow,
when it occasionally flickered on the cheek over
which Paul was bending, could not raise the
semblance of young health upon its shining
whiteness. That beautiful white hand was
fallen into dust before Paul Owen had half earned
the wedding-ring that should encircle it.
“Thanks to you, sister—thanks, too, to Grétry
for a pleasant ditty. Now, don’t let us have
candles. Shall we have ghost stories?”
“What! in a haunted house?”
“The very thing,” cried Paul; “let us have[Pg 479]
all the story of the Ghost of Holyoke. I never
heard it properly.”
Ellen was busy at her harpsichord again, with
fragments from a Stabat Mater. Not Rossini’s
luscious lamentation, but the deep pathos of
that Italian, who in days past “mœrebat et
dolebat,” who moved the people with his master-piece,
and was stabbed to death by a rival
at the cathedral door.
“Why, Ellen, you look as if you feared the
ghosts.”
“No, no,” she said; “we know it is an idle
tale. Go to the fire, Paul, and I will keep you
solemn with the harpsichord, in order that you
may not laugh while Margaret is telling it.”
“Well, then,” began Margaret, “of course
this story is all nonsense.”
“Of course it is,” said I.
“Of course it is,” said Paul.
Ellen continued playing.
“I mean,” said Margaret, “that really and
truly no part of it can possibly be any thing but
fiction. Papa, you know, is a great genealogist,
and he says that our ancestor, Godfrey of Holyoke,
died in the Holy Land, and had two sons,
but never had a daughter. Some old nurse
made the tale that he died here, in the house,
and had a daughter Ellen. This daughter
Ellen, says the tale, was sought in marriage
by a young knight who won her good-will, but
could not get her father’s. That Ellen—very
much unlike our gentle, timid sister in the
corner there—was proud and willful. She and
her father quarreled. His health failed, because,
the story hints mysteriously, she put a
slow and subtle poison into his after-supper cup
night after night. One evening they quarreled
violently, and the next morning Sir Godfrey was
gone. His daughter said that he had left the
house in anger with her. The tale, determined
to be horrible, says that she poisoned him outright,
and with her own hands buried him in an
old cellar under this room. That cellar-door is
fastened with a padlock, to which there is no
key remaining. Not being wanted, it has not
been opened probably for scores of years.”
“Well!”
“Well—in a year or two the daughter married,
and in time had children scampering about
this house. But her health failed. The children
fell ill, and, excepting one or two, all died.
One night—”
“Yes.”
“One night she lay awake through care; and
in the middle of the night a figure like her father
came into the room, holding a cup like that from
which he used to drink after his supper. It
moved inaudibly to where she lay, placed the
cup to her lips; a chill came over her. The
figure passed away, but in a few minutes she
heard the shutting of the cellar-door. After
that she was often kept awake by dread, and
often saw that she was visited. She heard the
cellar-door creak on its hinge, and knew it was
her father coming. Once she watched all night
by the sick-bed of her eldest child; the goblin
came, and put the cup to her child’s lips; she
knew then that her children who were dead, and
she herself who was dying, and that child of
hers, had tasted of her father’s poison. She
died young. And ever since that time, the
legend says, Sir Godfrey walks at night, and
puts his fatal goblet to the lips of his descendants,
of the children and children’s children of
his cruel child. It is quite true that sickliness
and death occur more frequently among those
who inhabit this house than is to be easily accounted
for. So story-tellers have accounted for
it, as you see. But it is certain that Sir Godfrey
fell in Palestine, and had no daughter.”
Ellen continued playing with her face bowed
down over the harpsichord. Margaret, a healthy
cheerful girl, had lived generally with an old
aunt in the south of England. But the two
girls wore mourning. In the flower of her years
their mother had departed from them, after long
lingering in broken health. The bandeau seemed
to have been unrolled from poor Paul’s eyes, for,
after a long pause, which had been filled by
Ellen’s music, he said:
“Ellen, did you ever see Sir Godfrey?”
She left her harpsichord and came to him, and
leaning down over his shoulder, kissed him.
Was she thinking of the sorrow that would
come upon him soon?
The sudden closing of a heavy door startled
us all. But a loud jovial voice restored our
spirits. Sir Francis had come in from his afternoon
walk and gossip, and was clamoring for
tea.
“Why, boys and girls, all in the dark! What
mischief are you after?”
“Laughing at the Holyoke Ghost, papa,” said
Margaret.
“Laughing, indeed; you look as if you had
been drinking with him. Silly tale! silly tale!
Look at me, I’m hale and hearty. Why don’t
Sir Godfrey tackle me? I’d like a draught out
of his flagon.”
A door below us creaked upon its hinges.
Ellen shrank back visibly alarmed.
“You silly butterfly,” Sir Francis cried, “it’s
Thomas coming up out of the kitchen with the
candles you left me to order. Tea, girls, tea!”
Sir Francis, a stout, warm-faced, and warm-hearted
gentleman, kept us amused through the
remainder of that evening. My business the
next day called me to London, from whence I
sailed in a few days for Valparaiso. While
abroad, I heard of Ellen’s death. On my return
to England, I went immediately to the old
cathedral city, where I had many friends.
There I was shocked to hear that Sir Francis
himself had died of apoplexy, and that Margaret,
the sole heir and survivor, had gone back, with
her health injured, to live with her aunt in the
south of England. The dear old house, ghost
and all, had been To Let, and had been taken
by a school-mistress. It was now “Holyoke
House Seminary for Young Ladies.”
The school had succeeded through the talent
of its mistress; but although she was not a lady[Pg 480]
of the stocks and backboard school, the sickliness
among her pupils had been very noticeable.
Scarlet fever, too, had got among them, of which
three had died. The school had become in consequence
almost deserted, and the lady who had
occupied the house was on the point of quitting.
Surely, I thought, if this be Sir Godfrey’s work,
he is as relentless an old goblin as can be
imagined.
For private reasons of my own, I traveled
south. Margaret bloomed again; as for her
aunt, she was a peony in fullest flower. She
had a breezy house by the sea-side, abominated
dirt and spiders, and, before we had been five
minutes together, abused me for having lavender-water
upon my handkerchief. She hated smells,
it seemed; she carried her antipathy so far as
to throw a bouquet out of the window which I
had been putting together with great patience
and pains for Margaret.
We talked of the old house at ——.
“I tell you what it is, Peggy,” she said, “if
ever you marry, ghost or no ghost, you’re the
heir of the Holyokes, and in the old house you
shall live. As soon as Miss Williams has quitted,
I’ll put on my bonnet and run across with you
into the north.”
And so she did. We stalked together into the
desolate old house. It echoed our tread dismally.
“Peggy,” said aunt Anne with her eyes quite
fixed, “Peggy, I smell a smell. Let’s go down
stairs.” We went into the kitchen.
“Peggy,” the old lady said, “it’s very bad.
I think it’s Sir Godfrey.”
“O aunt!” said Margaret, laughing; “he
died in Palestine, and is dust long ago.”
“I’m sure it’s Sir Godfrey,” said aunt Anne.
“You fellow,” to me, “just take the bar belonging
to that window-shutter, and come along
with me. Peggy, show us Sir Godfrey’s cellar.”
Margaret changed color. “What,” said the
old lady, “flinch at a ghost you don’t believe in!
I’m not afraid, see; yet I’m sure Sir Godfrey’s
in the cellar. Come along.”
We came and stood before the mysterious door
with its enormous padlock. “I smell the ghost
distinctly,” said aunt Anne.
Margaret did not know ghosts had a smell.
“Break the door open, you chap.” I battered
with the bar, the oaken planks were rotten and
soon fell apart—some fell into the cellar with a
plash. There was a foul smell. A dark cellar
had a very little daylight let into it—we could
just see the floor covered with filth, in which
some of the planks had sunk and disappeared.
“There,” said the old lady, “there’s the stuff
your ghost had in his cup. There’s your Sir
Godfrey who poisons sleepers, and cuts off your
children and your girls. Bah! We’ll set to
work, Peggy; it’s clear your ancestors knew or
cared nothing about drainage. We’ll have the
house drained properly, and that will be the
death of the goblin.”
So it was, as our six children can testify.
A REMINISCENCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
The following sketch of his life was given to
me by the subject of it, while living as M.
Hippolyte in a retired quarter of Paris, and procuring
a subsistence by following the profession
of a baker:
“My name is Palamede de Tour la Roche.
I was the third son of the Duc de Tour la Roche,
who, with his wife, eldest son, and daughter,
perished in the Revolution in ’93. The earliest
thing I remember was living in the Hôtel Tour
la Roche in great luxury and splendor—’the
curled darling’ of my beautiful mother, and the
spoiled pet and plaything of all the house and
all the company who came to it. My youth
took no heed of passing events; but one evening
our hôtel was attacked, and from that day
to this I saw no more of my father and brothers—but
my mother and sister continued to live
as before, only they were now continually weeping,
clasping me to their bosoms in passionate
fondness, and never going out of the great gates.
Every thing was changed: we had no longer
any servants except an old woman, her daughter,
and a lame son, with whom I played in the
garden, undisturbed by the cries which reached
us there, because I attached no ideas that I can
remember to them, and I was told not to be
frightened, for it was only wicked, drunken people
shouting. When I inquired after my papa,
and Henri, and Philippe—they were called unexpectedly
to England, and would be back again
one of these days, was the answer, which contented
me. Although full eleven years old, my
mind had been kept so much under, and I had
lived so entirely in the perfumed atmosphere of
the drawing-room—where, being little of my
age, people forgot it, and made a plaything of
me—that many a boy of seven or eight knew
more of the world than I did.
“One night, after being some time in bed, I
was awakened by a terrible noise in the house,
and loud voices, and lights glancing in the court.
I felt greatly frightened, but did not dare to
move; in a little time it ceased entirely, and,
childlike, I again sunk to slumber. I lay awake
long next morning. I remember singing to myself,
and wondering why old Marotte did not, as
usual, come to dress me; so at last I got up
and went into my mother’s room. Every thing
there was in disorder, and neither mother, sister,
nor servant to be seen. I cried bitterly, and
ran from room to room, searching in every corner
in vain. All was silent. My passionate
cries of ‘Maman! Maman! Louise! Louise!’
remained unanswered; and the doors were fastened
or locked, all but the one which led out of
a small chamber into the garden, that had probably
been overlooked. At last they opened, and
such a rabble came pouring in, that I was frightened
to death, and could scarcely make use of
my trembling limbs to convey me to the garden,
where I crept into a very thick bush, and remained
happily unseen. There I sat, I suppose,[Pg 481]
for hours: I heard sounds of revelry, of quarreling,
and breaking, and gun-firing; saw furniture
thrown out of the windows—furniture I knew
so well! and people with bloody hands and
faces standing at them. I think I must have
fainted. When I recovered my senses, however,
it was getting quite dusk; so, when the coast
was pretty clear, I stole out into the street, and
wandering away toward the Champs Elysées,
lay down under a tree, and slept—forgetting
grief, terror, hunger, and cold, in the dreamless
sleep of innocent childhood—the last I was ever
to know—for the scenes that I witnessed the
day following ‘my early bloom of heart destroyed.’
When I stood up, and saw where I
was, and the events of the preceding evening
crowded to my confused mind, a sort of madness,
I suppose, seized me; I thought I was in
my little gilded bed in my own alcove at home,
and was dreaming a frightful dream, not uncommon
to children who have been indulging
in pastry or rich dishes. I therefore quietly
turned my steps toward the hôtel, expecting
there to find things as usual. I can scarcely
tell what images passed through my brain, but
the full horror of my helpless situation did not
break upon me until I found myself before the
well-known porte cochère, which was shut. Then
I knew it was no dream, and that all was real;
and from that hour to this I have never entered
my father’s house—never even seen him, my
brothers, my sister: my mother I saw once
more—on the scaffold!”
Here the poor old man, whose voice had faltered
two or three times, stopped and sobbed
audibly.
“Pray,” said I, “do not go on, my dear
Monsieur de Tour la Roche.”
“Do not call me by that dear name: I can
not bear it. No; I called myself Hippolyte
after one of our footmen: I could not bear to
hear the name my darling mother addressed me
by profaned by the lips that surrounded me afterward.
But to proceed—”
“Oh no; pray spare yourself.”
“On the contrary, it is a relief to my long-pent-up
grief: I had for some time lived in the
streets, subsisting upon chance; and I was
standing on a heap of rubbish, just where the
corner-house on the left-hand side of the Rue
Royale now stands, looking at the guillotine
doing its dreadful work. A man, a woman
mounted, and their heads fell; two other women,
coarsely attired, stood waiting; one turned—Oh
God! it was my mother!—my gentle, timid,
kind, darling mother! Timid and gentle no
longer, she looked calm and cold, moved resolutely,
looking for one moment up to Heaven,
and said words I would now give my life-blood
to hear. My blood curdled, my heart stopped,
as I heard the rattle and clap of the descending
guillotine. ‘Maman! maman!’ I shrieked. It
was over! ‘Encore une autre!’ shouted a
fierce man beside me. ‘Maman! maman!’
‘Wring the neck of that little aristocrat!’ cried
the mob. The man advanced, as I hoped, to
kill me at once, but he only grasped me fast,
saying, ‘No, I shall take him home, pour le
tuer à mon aise.’ Death I wished for; but torture!—I
fainted; and when I came to myself
I was in an unfrequented street, still tightly
held by the man. ‘Don’t be afraid, my
child—I shan’t hurt you; but never, as you
value your life, whisper your name; if you do—here
he swore a terrific oath—I will kill you
cruelly. Now come with me. You shall sleep
with mon petit Pierre: call yourself Achille,
Hercule, Hippolyte—what you please, if not
your own name.’ Hippolyte, then, and Hippolyte
I have been ever since—Jean Hippolyte,
when I signed my name. The house he carried
me to was wretched, dark, and dirty; the food
given coarse, but plentiful; and here I groveled,
moody, and nearly mad, for more than a year,
wandering through the streets idle and in rags,
seldom speaking, unless forced, lest I should inadvertently
betray myself. At last this man,
whose name was Jean Leroux, told me he had
obtained employment for both Pierre and me
in a boulangerie. We were clothed somewhat
more decently, and sent about with bread to
different parts of the neighborhood, and employed
in various little ways at first, sweeping
out the shop, ovens, &c.; but by degrees we
made progress. As I could both read and write,
which Pierre could not do, and he was also
naturally a slow, indolent boy, I was preferred
before him; but he was not ill-natured, and bore
me no malice. I grew up healthy enough, and
tall; got forward at my trade, and soon made
money. I served also seven years under the
Emperor, and brought away, besides my laurels,
two trifling wounds. Upon my return, still
keeping my secret, which, however, there was
now no longer danger in discovering, I commenced
a search for my elder brother Philippe,
of whose death I have never heard; but without
success; although I ascertained that my father
and Henri had been guillotined, and that my
poor sister had been massacred in the streets.
I recommenced my former business, and worked
early and late to make enough to enable me to
live in peace and seclusion, waiting anxiously,
but I hope patiently, until He who in his wisdom
has thought fit to afflict me, shall take me
to those realms where all tears shall be wiped
from our eyes. I built this house back from
those which line the street: passages and kitchens
look into the courts; but I never go near
those parts except at an early hour to mass. I
live in my garden, and with my books. Monsieur
Butterini—who never assumed the title
his wife is so proud of, although he had an undoubted
right to bear it, poor man—married the
daughter of the person at whose house he lodged
before taking up his abode in mine, as a matter
of economy, for she saved him a seamstress, a
nurse, and a servant. She is vain, weak, and
vulgar, as you see, but has ever been correct in
her conduct, attentive to him while he lived, as
she now is to me, in return for my allowing her
to retain two of the rooms she before occupied,[Pg 482]
money enough to dress upon in the mean time,
and a small annuity when I die. The people
whom I occasionally entertain, and to whom I
shall leave the little wealth I possess, are the
families of Jean Leroux’s children, and those of
my first master; but I feel still, as I have ever
felt, that I am of noble birth. When my will
is read, all will then know that a De Tour la
Roche has baked their bread, but not until then.
It has been a great relief to my mind to tell all
this to you, madame; and if Philippe or his
descendants should be in England, promise that
you will seek them out, and speak to them of
me, and perhaps even yet some of my own blood
will pray over my grave!”
I was deeply impressed by this melancholy
history; and afterward spent many an hour
with the old man in his garden, where he always
welcomed me with a smile, and talked unreservedly,
sometimes even cheerfully. He lived
several years afterward, but last winter died of
bronchitis. Many know parts of this story now,
and I see no reason why I should not relate the
sad tale as he himself told it to me. Some
worldly-wise people may ask why he did not
take his own proper title, and move in his proper
sphere, when he could do so; but I can very
easily comprehend his feelings. His heart was
almost broken; he took no pleasure in this
world, nor in the things of this world, except
those by which he could “look up through
nature unto nature’s God.” What were the
vanities of life to him? Obtaining his estate
and title—the first of which would have been
difficult, if not impossible—would only have
hindered his desire of leading the life of calm,
unpretending seclusion which pleased him best;
and, besides this, he was impressed with the
idea that Philippe, who was the rightful Duc
de Tour la Roche, or his children, were in existence
somewhere. He was in no want of money,
having made by his own exertions more than
enough for his moderate requirements: no, nor
of the world’s respect. All respected him for
his integrity and charity; and his air and manner
in themselves were sufficient to impress those
who came in contact with him, even while they
knew he was but a retired tradesman. I can
understand it all perfectly. Some of those who
chance to read this paper may possibly have
seen his tomb at Père la Chaise: but they will
not find the name of Tour la Roche, for that of
course is fictitious.
THE STORY OF FINE-EAR.
Ten or twelve years ago, there was, in the
prison at Brest, a man sentenced for life to
the galleys. I do not know the exact nature of
his crime, but it was something very atrocious.
I never heard, either, what his former condition
of life had been; for even his name had
passed into oblivion, and he was recognized
only by a number. Although his features were
naturally well formed, their expression was
horrible: every dark and evil passion seemed to
have left its impress there; and his character
fully corresponded to its outward indications.
Mutinous, gloomy, and revengeful, he had often
hazarded his life in desperate attempts to escape,
which hitherto had proved abortive. Once,
during winter, he succeeded in gaining the fields,
and supported, for several days, the extremity
of cold and hunger. He was found, at length,
half frozen and insensible under a tree, and
brought back to prison, where, with difficulty,
he was restored to life. The ward-master
watched him more closely, and punished him
more severely by far, than the other prisoners,
while a double chain was added to his heavy
fetters. Several times he attempted suicide,
but failed, through the vigilance of his guards.
The only results of his experiments in this line
were an asthma, caused by a nail which he
hammered into his chest, and the loss of an
arm, which he fractured in leaping off a high
wall. After suffering amputation, and a six
months’ sojourn in the hospital, he returned to
his hopeless life-long task-work.
One day this man’s fierce humor seemed softened.
After the hours of labor, he seated himself,
with the companion in misery to whom he
was chained, in a corner of the court; and his
repulsive countenance assumed a mild expression.
Words of tenderness were uttered by the
lips which heretofore had opened only to blaspheme;
and with his head bent down, he watched
some object concealed in his bosom.
The guards looked at him with disquietude,
believing he had some weapon hidden within
his clothes; and two of them approaching him
stealthily from behind, seized him roughly, and
began to search him before he could make any
resistance. Finding himself completely in their
power, the convict exclaimed: “Oh, don’t kill
him! Pray, don’t kill him!”
As he spoke, one of the guards had gained
possession of a large rat, which the felon had
kept next his bosom.
“Don’t kill him!” he repeated. “Beat me,
chain me; do what you like with me; but don’t
hurt my poor rat! Don’t squeeze him so between
your fingers! If you will not give him
back to me, let him go free!”—And while he
spoke, for the first time, probably, since his
childhood, tears filled his eyes, and ran down
his cheeks.
Rough and hardened men as were the guards,
they could not listen to the convict, and see his
tears, without some feeling of compassion. He
who was about to strangle the rat, opened his
fingers and let it fall to the ground. The terrified
animal fled with the speed peculiar to its
species, and disappeared behind a pile of beams
and rubbish.
The felon wiped away his tears, looked anxiously
after the rat, and scarcely breathed until
he had seen it out of danger. Then he rose,
and silently, with the old savage look, followed
his companion in bonds, and lay down with
him on their iron bedstead, where a ring and
chain fastened them to a massive bar of the
same metal.
Next morning, on his way to work, the convict,
whose pale face showed that he had passed
a sleepless night, cast an anxious, troubled
glance toward the pile of wood, and gave a
low, peculiar call, to which nothing replied.
One of his comrades uttered some harmless jest
on the loss of his favorite; and the reply was a
furious blow, which felled the speaker, and drew
down on the offender a severe chastisement from
the task-master.
Arrived at the place of labor, he worked with
a sort of feverish ardor, as though trying to
give vent to his pent-up emotion; and, while
stooping over a large beam, which he and some
others were trying to raise, he felt something
gently tickle his cheek. He turned round, and
gave a shout of joy. There, on his shoulder,
was the only friend he had in the world—his
rat!—who, with marvelous instinct, had found
him out, and crept gently up to his face. He
took the animal in his hands, covered it with
kisses, placed it within his nest, and then, addressing
the head jailer, who happened to pass
by at the moment, he said:
“Sir, if you will allow me to keep this rat, I
will solemnly promise to submit to you in
every thing, and never again to incur punishment.”
The ruler gave a sign of acquiescence, and
passed on. The convict opened his shirt, to
give one more fond look at his faithful pet, and
then contentedly resumed his labor.
That which neither threats nor imprisonment,
the scourge nor the chain, could effect, was accomplished,
and rapidly, by the influence of love,
though its object was one of the most despised
among animals. From the moment when the
formidable convict was permitted to cherish his
pet night and day in his bosom, he became the
most tractable and well-conducted man in the
prison. His Herculean strength, and his moral
energy, were both employed to assist the governors
in maintaining peace and subordination.
Fine-Ear, so he called his rat, was the object
of his unceasing tenderness. He fed it before
he tasted each meal, and would rather fast entirely
than allow it to be hungry. He spent
his brief hours of respite from toil in making
various little fancy articles, which he sold, in
order to procure dainties which Fine Ear liked—gingerbread
and sugar, for example. Often,
during the period of toil, the convict would smile
with delight when his little friend, creeping
from its nestling place, would rub its soft fur
against his cheek. But when, on a fine sunshiny
day, the rat took up his position on the
ground, smoothed his coat, combed his long
mustaches with his sharp nails, and dressed
his long ears with his delicate paws, his master
would testify the utmost delight, and exchange
tender glances with the black, roguish eyes of
Master Fine-Ear.
The latter, confiding in his patron’s care and
protection, went, came, sported, or stood still,
certain that no one would injure him; for to
touch a hair of the rat’s whisker would be to
incur a terrible penalty. One day, for having
thrown a pebble at him, a prisoner was forced
to spend a week in hospital, ere he recovered
the effects of a blow bestowed on him by Fine-Ear’s
master.
The animal soon learned to know the sound
of the dinner-bell, and jumped with delight on
the convict when he heard the welcome summons.
Four years passed on in this manner, when
one day poor Fine-Ear was attacked by a cat,
which had found her way into the workshop,
and received several deep wounds before his
master, flying to the rescue, seized the feline
foe, and actually tore her to pieces.
The recovery of the rat was tedious. During
the next month the convict was occupied in
dressing his wounds. It was strange, the interest
which every one connected with the prison
took in Fine-Ear’s misfortune. Not only did
the guards and turnkeys speak of it as the topic
of the day, but the hospital nurses furnished
plasters and bandages for the wounds; and
even the surgeon condescended to prescribe for
him.
At length the animal recovered his strength
and gayety, save that one of his hind paws
dragged a little, and the cicatrice still disfigured
his shin. He was more tame and affectionate
than ever, but the sight of a cat was sufficient
to throw his master into a paroxysm of rage,
and, running after the unlucky puss, he would,
if possible, catch and destroy her.
A great pleasure was in store for the convict.
Thanks to his good conduct during the past
four years, his sentence of imprisonment for
life had been commuted into twenty years, in
which were to be included the fifteen already
spent in prison.
“Thank God!” he cried, “under His mercy
it is to Fine-Ear I owe this happiness!” and
he kissed the animal with transport. Five
years still remained to be passed in toilsome
imprisonment, but they were cut short in an
unlooked-for manner.
One day, a mutinous party of felons succeeded
in seizing a turnkey, and having shut him up
with themselves in one of the dormitories, they
threatened to put him to death if all their demands
were not instantly complied with, and a
full amnesty granted for this revolt.
Fine-Ear’s master, who had taken no part in
the uproar, stood silently behind the officials
and the soldiers, who were ready to fire on the
insurgents. Just as the attack was about to
commence, he approached the chief superintendent,
and said a few words to him in a low
voice.
“I accept your offer,” replied the governor:
“remember, you risk your life; but if you succeed,
I pledge my word that you shall be strongly
recommended to the government for unconditional
pardon, this very night.”
The convict drew forth Fine-Ear from his
bosom, kissed him several times, and then placing
him within the vest of a young fellow-prisoner[Pg 484]
with whom the rat was already familiar,
he said, in a broken voice:
“If I do not return, be kind to him, and love
him as I have loved him.”
Then, having armed himself with an enormous
bar of iron, he marched with a determined
step to the dormitory, without regarding the
missiles which the rebels hurled at his head.
With a few blows of his bar, he made the door
fly open, and darting into the room, he over-turned
those who opposed his entrance, threw
down his weapon, and seizing the turnkey, put
him, or rather flung him, out safe and sound
into the passage.
While in the act of covering the man’s escape
from the infuriated convicts, he suddenly fell to
the ground, bathed in blood. One of the wretches
had lifted the iron bar and struck down with it
his heroic comrade.
He was carried dying to the hospital, and, ere
he breathed his last, he uttered one word—it
was “Fine-Ear!”
Must I tell it? the rat appeared restless and
unhappy for a few days, but he soon forgot his
master, and began to testify the same affection
for his new owner that he had formerly shown
to him who was dead.
Fine-Ear still lives, fat, and sleek, and strong;
indeed, he no longer fears his feline enemies,
and has actually succeeded in killing a full-grown
cat and three kittens. But he no longer
remembers the dead, nor regards the sound of
his master’s number, which formerly used to
make him prick up his ears and run from one
end of the court to the other.
Does it only prove that rats, as well as men,
may be ungrateful? Or is it a little illustration
of the wise and merciful arrangement, that the
world must go on, die who will?
[From Colburn’s United Service Magazine.]
GENERAL ROSAS, AND THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC.
In the provinces of the Argentine confederation,
as well as throughout the whole of
South America, the population is divided into
two distinct families; the city and the country.
The inhabitants of the cities—issues of the
Spanish colonization—are, as it were, intimately
blended with the foreign element, which they
seem to represent; the inhabitants of the country,
on the other hand, constitute the indigenous
element, with all the customs of primitive
life. Until the accession to power of General
Rosas, who from the first had especially applied
himself to the task of incorporating these two
distinct races under one general head, by taming
down the half savage nature of the country
party, this strongly marked separation between
the two castes, had been the principal
cause of the numerous revolutions which had
hitherto distracted and laid waste the country.
This fusion, it must be allowed, was a difficult
task to perform: and though not yet perfectly
accomplished, it is, nevertheless, easily recognizable
in the province of Buenos Ayres; above
all, in that portion of it which lies round the
capital.
The inhabitant of the country, who is styled
a Gaucho, is, as it were, an isolated being on
the face of creation; for in vain do we seek his
counterpart either in the deserts of Asia, or in
the sands of Africa. The provinces of the Argentine
Confederation may almost be termed deserts;
since, over the entire face of a territory
equal in extent to the whole of France, is scattered
a population numbering but 800,000 souls.
In these vast and almost deserted plains, there
are no cities to be found, but merely estancias—a
species of solitary farms planted amid immense
solitudes. Alone, among his peons (or daily
laborers) Gauchos like himself, the estancier
lives as absolute master, without desires, without
industry, without agricultural labor. His
sole occupation consists in branding, and, when
the proper time shall come, in slaughtering
the cattle, which form his entire wealth. The
Gaucho exists on meat and water only; the use
of bread, vegetables, fruits, or spirituous liquors
being unknown to him. As for his outward
apparel, he rudely manufactures it out of the
hides of oxen, or the fleeces of the sheep; a few
sticks, and three or four ox hides, suffice for the
construction of his tent, when he sojourns for
any length of time in one spot; for ordinarily,
he sleeps in the open air, enveloped in his poncho.
His simple, but formidable arms, are reduced
to the lasso, and the bolas, and to a large
knife, which he wears stuck into his waist-belt.
The Gaucho remains for weeks and months entire,
without perceiving the face of a human
being; passing his time in wandering amid the
innumerable flocks and herds which cover the
plains.
Whenever he feels the calls of hunger, he
springs on horseback, pursues a bull, lassoes it,
slaughters it, and out of the still palpitating
flesh cuts the piece he prefers; rarely does he
take the trouble to have it cooked, but contents
himself before devouring his steak, with softening
it, by leaving it for a while under his saddle.
It may easily be understood how completely
this wild and solitary existence tends to destroy
in the breast of the Gaucho every social sentiment;
and what profound hatred he must nourish
against the inhabitant of the city, who
knows how to enjoy all the blessings of civilization,
and derive profit from the produce of his
rude and toilsome trade.
In the same ratio as the Gaucho has held
himself aloof from all social progress, has the
inhabitant of the city eagerly met it half-way.
In the dwelling of the latter, thanks to the activity
of commerce, which pours forth in profusion
all its riches into the lap of its votary, we
find not only all our European comforts, but
even our tastes, in science, literature, and the
arts. But, as we have said before, the causes
of the separation of the two races are beginning
to disappear; and taking into consideration the
ever active and increasing stride of European[Pg 485]
civilization, we may safely presume that in a
very few years, there will remain scarcely a
trace of the former strongly marked difference.
Throughout the entire province of Buenos
Ayres, the country is completely naked, a dense
grass alone covers the plains, which are watered
by numerous rivulets, that wind through the
vast prairies; the country is almost a perfect
level, and the soil of which it is composed,
though still virgin of all implements of husbandry,
of an extraordinary degree of fertility;
it is indeed with difficulty that we can discover
in the environs of the city, a few gardens where
it has been even turned.
The city of Buenos Ayres has been constructed
upon an uniform plan; it is divided into
suadres, which intersect each other at right
angles. The houses are composed simply of a
ground floor; they are painted entirely white,
and have a very neat and pleasing aspect.
Buenos Ayres is now very thickly peopled; its
inhabitants numbering more than a hundred
thousand souls; it would appear, also, to be in
a highly flourishing condition, as regards its
commerce, for in the course of last year, upward
of three hundred European ships entered
its harbor, bearing merchandise from almost
every quarter of the world.
John Manuel Ortes de Rosas, the sovereign
dictator of the republic, personifies the country
party, and is, according to his own account at
least, the descendant of an old and noble Spanish
family, which, in the time of the conquest,
emigrated to South America; what is indisputable,
is, that he is a Gaucho. At the period
when the first troubles broke out in the country,
he was proprietor of a considerable estancia;
which, by his skill and perseverance, he had
been able to render a model establishment.
Rosas had been endowed by nature with all the
talents and virtues of the most finished Gaucho;
there was not an inhabitant of the plain who
could tame a wild horse like him, or handle
with more skill and dexterity the lasso, or the
bolas; not a Gaucho was there, who possessed
his dexterity in the use of the knife; or who,
having thrown himself in the midst of danger,
could withdraw himself therefrom with more
good fortune. These physical qualities would
alone have sufficed to place him in the very
first rank among these half-savage men, who
recognize no other law than that of force; but
to these advantages, Rosas joined those of a
superior intellect, and a degree of understanding
very uncommon in a land so far removed from
every source of enlightened instruction. Appointed
at first officer of militia, it was not long
ere he became commandant of the country;
shortly after this, he entered Buenos Ayres,
drove Lavalle out of the city, and had himself
proclaimed governor.
Rosas is now a man of about fifty-eight or
sixty years of age; and though, according to
popular rumor, suffering from gout, and other
infirmities, no traces of these disorders are perceptible
upon his person. He is a man of lofty
stature; his features are regular, and announce
firmness; and his vivid and piercing eyes possess
a degree of penetration, which takes nothing
away from the austerity of his personal appearance.
When conversing with strangers, the
dignity of his mien, the gravity of his gestures,
and the choice of his expressions, would lead
one to imagine that he has constantly lived in
the society of men eminent for their learning
and talents; occasionally he affects, but without
success, a sort of natural bonhomie; but he
well knows that this little deceit is easily seen
through, and he seldom employs it, except when
in company with men whom he knows to be
his inferiors in point of intellect. When, on the
contrary, Rosas finds himself amid his old companions,
the Gauchos, his tone and manner
entirely change: it is no longer the polished
and civilized man, the man of the cabinet and
the study, that is before us, but rather the horse
and bull tamer, the lion hunter, and the wild
dweller on the prairies. His speech, perhaps a
moment before elegant and scholarly, now becomes
gross and obscene, while his gestures
assume an expression known only to the desert.
What we have just stated regarding Rosas,
will suffice to make our readers comprehend his
consummate skill; if we add to this an obstinate
and resolute character, and a will which
has never recoiled before any necessity to attain
its ends—did this necessity even involve an
assassination or a massacre—and an enormous
superiority of intellect over all the men who
surround him, the almost boundless power which
this man has succeeded in grasping and maintaining
in his country, may easily be comprehended.
What augments still further the degree
of his power, is the secret manner in which
it is exercised. Although in reality reigning as
absolute sovereign over the country whose constitution
and institutions he is daily trampling
under foot, Rosas has ever been enabled to dissemble
his power, and, nominally at least,
shelter himself behind the rampart of legality.
Thus, among the apparent rights which he
has left to the Chamber of Representatives, if it
is necessary that it should give a decision upon
any question, he demands it by a public and
official message, almost with humility: but by
a private letter addressed at the same time to
the President, he directs him as to the precise
form which is to be adopted by the Chamber in
pronouncing the resolution to be taken, as well
as the exact day and hour when the said resolution
is to be made known to him. To such
a point are these things carried, that it is in
the very cabinet of Rosas himself that the
fulsome votes of thanks periodically passed by
the different provincial assemblies of the Confederation
to the hero of the desert, the saviour of
the country, the restorer of the laws, &c., &c., &c.,
are drawn up.
Rosas attained to power uttering the war
whoop of “Death to the Unitarians,”[1] and by[Pg 486]
giving himself out as the restorer of the federal
government; and yet it is a notorious fact, that
there is not on the face of the earth a system of
government more centralizing, more despotic,
more Unitarian, if we must say the word, than
that which he has constituted; and it is this
fact alone which clearly proves the extraordinary
skill of this man. He has been enabled
to push beyond the limits of the possible the
sciences of audacity and falsehood. It is with
the assistance of the federalists that he has
been enabled to conquer; true, he has dubbed
himself federalist in name, but as far as regards
the principle of the thing, he has done his
utmost to wipe away from the institutions and
customs of the country every thing that might
bear the most remote resemblance to this form
of government, by collecting together in his own
hands more than the sum of the public power—in
fact, assuming in all things the sovereign
will of an autocratic dictator, from whose decrees
there can be no appeal.
One of the glaring defects of the Argentine
character is the thirst for power, which possesses
the inhabitants, to obtain which no obstacle
will restrain them. Previous to attaining to
the supreme power, though recognized as the
chief of the country party, Rosas was surrounded
by caudillos, whose devotion to his interests did
not appear to him to be completely absolute;
in fact, he well knew that on the very first
occasion which should present itself, each of
them, profiting by the ascendency which he
individually exercised over his partisans, would
make no scruple of disputing with him the
power he envied. It was absolutely necessary
that he should rid himself of this obnoxious
body-guard, and this step he at once resolved
upon, and forthwith put into execution. In a
very brief space of time, steel and poison had
done their work, and delivered him from all
those rivals which his ambition had to dread,
while the provinces very soon lost, under the
terror which they experienced at this wholesale
slaughter, the bare idea of resistance. There
still remained, however, the city: Buenos Ayres
had not supported Lavalle as it ought to have
done, nevertheless it inclosed within its walls a
goodly number of men who, though they had
indeed reason to manifest indifference for the
Unitarian government, were too enlightened not
to feel a bitter regret for their own culpable
weakness. It was as a fire smouldering within
the city, which sooner or later would not fail to
burst forth into a flame. Rosas comprehended
this movement, and bethought himself of the
means of stifling it in the bud. It was then
that he founded the famous popular society of
the mashorca. It has been asserted, and we
believe with reason, that this society by its
number of outrages on human life, merits in the
criminal annals of the world a renown greater
than that of the celebrated Jacobin Club, and
the revolutionary tribunal of the first French
Revolution. Recruited from among the ranks
of the savage, ignorant, and cruel men who
surrounded the new Dictator, the members of
the mashorca set to work with ardor to moralize
the country according to the will of General
Rosas. By the mere terror which this formidable
mashorca inspired, Rosas was enabled to
make the world believe, that he was at once
the elect of his fellow citizens and the depository
of their wishes and desires. It served him also
to drill the nation to the manifestation of either
enthusiasm or furious rage, of which he might,
according to circumstances, stand in need.
The people, docile as a flock of sheep, accordingly
howled or applauded in the streets,
or upon the public places, at the will of the
dictator. The means of action of the mashorqueros
upon the multitude are well known—they
consist in violence and assassination.
Although in appearance mute and devoted to
Rosas, the city of Buenos Ayres still bears
mourning for the victims which were then sacrificed
to his fury and ambition. Obedient to
the resentments of the elect of the people, the
mashorqueros, at certain days and certain hours,
would spread themselves far and wide throughout
the streets, poinard in hand, and, penetrating
into the dwellings pointed out to them,
would pitilessly immolate the Unitarian savages
which the federal pacificator had previously
marked as victims for their homicidal fury.
The precise number of these victims of the blind
rage of a sanguinary party is unknown; but it
must have been considerable, for during an entire
week the blood flowed unceasingly, and at
that period it was no uncommon sight to behold
the decapitated heads of the slain exposed in
the public market-place; at length, one day, a
cart, preceded by musicians, made the circuit
of the city, to collect the dead bodies which lay
in piles before the houses.
It is not difficult to comprehend the effect of
a similar system of government upon a population
by no means numerous, exhausted by long
civil dissensions, and which would have been
completely annihilated at the very first symptom
of any thing approaching resistance. It submitted
in silence. Rosas, now certain from
henceforth of being able to reign by terror, began
to moderate his excesses, and only from
time to time had recourse to violence, in order
to intimidate those among the population in
whose breasts there might still lurk the remnants
of some generous or patriotic sentiment.
Rosas possesses an incredible power of continuous
labor: he sleeps during the greater part
of the day, and passes the night in his cabinet.
It is not until four o’clock in the afternoon that
he quits his bedroom. During the summer,
when he is in the country, he may be seen
from this hour until six o’clock galloping through
the gardens, open to all comers, or playing in
front of the house with an enormous tigress,
which, though of the greatest ferocity with
strangers, trembles and crouches to the earth,
at his voice. At six o’clock he takes a light
repast; after which he sits down to work, and
does not leave off until five or six in the morning.[Pg 487]
It is at this hour that he dines in company
with a couple of jesters, dressed in an eccentric
manner, one of whom goes by the name
of the governor, who seek to amuse him by
their witticisms, their grotesque games, and
sometimes by fighting. It has been said that
Rosas is surrounded by guards. But this is
utterly false. His house, which is vast and
elegant, stands upon the highway, and the
doors, according to the general custom of the
country, are always wide open. So far from
it being the case that he keeps his person carefully
guarded, it is, on the contrary, frequently
a very difficult matter on entering the house to
meet with even a domestic to announce you;
and the visitor could with as much ease reach
his private cabinet or his bed-chamber as he
could the courts upon which these apartments
open. There is not even a sentry or a porter at
the principal door.
Next to Rosas, the personage who plays the
most important part in all the Confederation,
is his daughter, Manuelita. The position which
this woman has acquired for herself is unique,
like that of her father, although relatively less
important, since she is not consulted upon State
affairs. She possesses, nevertheless, with regard
to all that appertains to the second rank,
a liberty of action entirely her own. Manuelita
is, as it were, an under Secretary of State in
the cabinet of a minister in charge of a vast
administration. She has her secretaries, her
offices, her correspondence; and is well able to
attend to a vast amount of important business
without neglecting those duties toward society,
which her intellectual acquirements and natural
amiability of disposition impose upon her.
By many writers, Manuelita has been portrayed
as a species of bacchante, unceasingly exciting
her father to the commission of acts of violence,
giving herself up to all the irregularities of a
life of dissipation, and scandalizing society by
the spectacle of incessant orgies. Now nothing
can be less true, nothing more false, than this.
It is not necessary to know Manuelita, it is
sufficient to have seen her but for a few moments
to be convinced of the utter falsehood of
these mendacious travelers’ tales. Manuelita
is Rosas’ daughter, and consequently has many
prejudices to overcome, many hatreds to conquer:
yet she is esteemed and loved by all,
which, be it remarked, is no mean praise in a
country where it may be said that no one is
esteemed. This is, in our idea, the best reply
to offer to the various calumnies it has pleased
the “many-headed” to heap upon her. And
how, we may ask, can it be otherwise? If
there is a being on the earth who can soften
the rigors of Rosas’ tyrannical government, can
solicit and obtain mercy or justice, it is Manuelita.
She is the sole hope of the unfortunate,
of the oppressed, of the poor, and rarely is this
hope deceived.
Manuelita is tall and elegantly formed. Her
age has been stated to be about four-and-thirty
although she looks no more than twenty-seven
or twenty-eight. Her features are regular and
bear the Spanish impress, that is to say, that
they are strongly marked. Her large black
eyes announce great strength of mind, yet the
glances which shoot therefrom have an expression
of infinite gentleness and kindness. Her
jet black hair serves to bring out in more prominent
relief the ivory fairness of her skin. Her
entire person, in short, breathes an air of grace
and refinement to be met with only in the
Spanish women, who possess the rare art of
being able to join to the charms of beauty a
certain abandon unknown to the women of
other countries.
Manuelita possesses in a high degree the
“knowledge of the salons,” as the French would
call it; she speaks English, French, and Italian,
as her mother tongue, and whatever turn the
conversation may take, whether “grave or gay,
lively or severe,” she is equally enabled to shine
in it either by judicious observations, or brilliant
repartee. Manuelita entertains for her father
a degree of affection amounting to absolute devotion;
often has she been seen to shed tears
on learning the cruelties practiced by Rosas.
In the excess of grief which the acts of the Dictator
caused her, she has sometimes let her
indignation burst forth before her friends, but
nothing can sever the bonds of that filial love
which bind her to her father. And happy is it
for the country that this is the case, for it is
very evident that were it not for her, the fury
of Rosas would have displayed itself more fatally
than it has yet done. We have heard related
by two eye-witnesses a scene which took place
between her and her father, during the period
of the first mashorca executions, which shows
the degree of dominion which the latter exercises
over her. One evening while Manuelita was
seated at her piano-forte singing to her auditors
some Spanish romance, Rosas entered the room
holding in his hand a silver salver, upon which
was deposited a pair of human ears cut from
the head of a savage Unitarian; advancing
slowly to the instrument he placed the salver
upon the piano before the eyes of his daughter.
Manuelita started up violently from her seat
and with features almost livid with rage and
horror, she seized her piece of music and cast it
over the plate, then turning round she was about
to give free course to her indignation, when her
eyes met the fixed and terrible glance of the
general; she ceded to this power and fell fainting
to the ground.
We could relate a thousand facts of this nature,
which abundantly prove the falsity of the
many imputations directed against the character
of Manuelita.
We have just said that the two individuals
alone worthy of attention and study throughout
the whole of the Argentine Confederation, are
first of all General Rosas, and afterward, his
daughter, Manuelita. In fact it is in them, in
their will or their caprices, that are concentrated
the entire policy and administration of the
republic. The men who, below them nominally[Pg 488]
fill the higher offices of the State, are but
mutes, divested alike of either power or will.
Like the stage representatives of noble knights
and powerful monarchs, the higher functionaries
of the republic and especially the secretaries of
state hold office without filling any character.
They serve occasionally to make known the will
of the governor without being permitted in any
case to interpret it. Even the general officers
in command of the armed forces dispersed over
the territory are obliged to keep near their persons
certain subaltern agents enjoying the confidence
of the governor, whose orders and directions
they are obliged implicitly to follow.
Although nominally and apparently holding appointments
which seem to invest them with a
certain degree of authority, the state functionaries
are in this respect no better off than their
less fortunate countrymen, but are like all the
rest of the Argentines, in a state of absolute and
slavish dependence.
When General Rosas seized the reins of
government, his first and principal care was to
transform completely the Argentine society. In
place of the enlightened men whom Rivadavia
had applied himself to seek out, Rosas has raised
to the first rank, the crew of unlettered ignorant
men, stained with every crime which disgraces
human nature, who had seconded his ambitious
views. The biographies of the individuals who
formed the mashorca are well known to every
one, but such is the terror inspired by the Dictator,
that each, even the sons, brothers, and
widows of those who fell beneath their murderous
knives, eagerly hasten to show all the civility
and deference in their power for the particular
friends of the governor. Never in any
country have we had so many examples of abject
and shameful servility as in this. The
Argentine society possesses neither morality,
religion, honor, nor courage. All look forward
to the day when the country shall be delivered
from the reign of despotism and tyranny which
has so long oppressed it; but there is not a man
in all Buenos Ayres who has the courage to manifest
his feelings of disgust and repugnance for
those who aid the governor in retaining power.
And let not the reader imagine that it is only
a tacit assent which is rendered to the tyrant’s
iron rule; each after venting curses “not loud
but deep” when he is certain of not being heard,
against the Dictator and his acolytes, rushes into
the streets to take part in the public manifestations
commanded by Rosas. The savage device
that we read upon the cinta[2] is the cry which
the watchmen shout aloud every hour of the
night in the streets of the city; it is the cry
which the actors give utterance to upon the
stage on federal days, by way of prologue, previous
to the commencement of the piece; it is
the shout which the troops and militia under
arms howl forth when the governor rides down
the ranks, and as if the threat of death to the
Unitarians which it contains was not sufficient,
it is augmented according to circumstances by
similar denunciations directed against any particular
marked individual who may have rendered
himself obnoxious to the government, and
also against foreigners, as well as by vivats in
honor of the immortal warrior, of the king of
justice, of the restorer of the laws, of the great,
the magnificent, the high and mighty Rosas, in
a word.
If the thorough abasement of moral character,
the inevitable result of despotism, which we observe
in the Buenos Ayreans, did not counteract
the feelings of sympathy one is naturally disposed
to show for this population, the Argentine
society would possess great attractions for the
traveler. The men who represent the Unitarian
element are in general of polished and agreeable
manners. All the women without exception are
possessed of a remarkable degree of beauty, and
if their education is not quite so finished as it
might be, they are, like all Spanish women, endowed
with a sort of natural grace and tact
which stand them in lieu of it: they display an
extraordinary degree of luxury in their toilets,
and one might say that they outstrip the Parisian
fashions, which are with them more ephemeral
even than in the spot which has given them birth.
For luxury and lavish expenditure as regards the
adornment of the person, nothing is comparable
to the interior of the Opera-house on a crowded
night; the dazzled eye perceives at first but a
vast amphitheatre sparkling with gold, jewels,
silk and lace, so disposed as to impart fresh attractions
to the ivory shoulders and ebon locks
they deck, lending all the charms of art to the
riches of nature.
A NEW PHASE OF BEE-LIFE.
About the middle of an afternoon in July,
1848, we had landed on a low sand-bank,
which, for a short distance, skirted the right
bank of the stream, for the purpose of encamping
for the night; and right glad were we to
stretch our limbs after ten hours’ paddling.
The Indians had started in their wood-skin up
the neighboring creek, in quest of game for our
evening’s repast, and the women were clearing
a space beneath the branches for our hammocks,
and collecting fuel for the nightly fire. All
who have wandered with the pleasant Waterton
in his chivalrous Expedition on the Essequibo,
will remember his first guiltless attempt
to hook the wary cayman, before seeking more
skillful allies in the Indian settlement higher
up the river. The sand-bank in which we were
about to bivouac, was that mentioned in his
narrative, where, for four days, he had impatiently
waited for the shades of evening, and as
often turned into his hammock at day-break
with his longings ungratified.
It was, as usual, intensely hot in the sun.
To seek some relief, for the first time during
the day, I strolled—or rather straggled, for
every step through the tangled creepers had to
be gained by hacking and hewing with a cutlass—down[Pg 489]
to the cool banks of the creek, whose
overhanging branches, forming a magnificent
arcade of verdure, almost excluded (or admitted
only at distant intervals), the scorching rays.
Seating myself on the smooth gray trunk of
a tree, which lay prostrate across the sluggish
water, whose broken limbs shone bright in the
gay drapery of a scarlet-blossomed epiphyte, I
lighted my pipe, and taking a book from my
pocket, began lazily turning over the pages and
lightly gleaning the pleasant thought of a witty
and social poet. My attention now and again
drawn away by the ceaseless tappings of a yellow-headed
woodpecker on a decaying tree close
at hand, to the glittering flashes of a Karabimitas,
a Topaz-throated humming-bird—a
frequenter of dark and solitary creeks, capturing
flies among the gay petals, for his nest-keeping
partner, who, a few paces up the stream was
gently swinging with the evening breezes in
her tiny home. I had been in this position for
some time, little regarding the whizzing hum
of insects constantly passing and repassing—when,
my gaze chancing to fall a yard or more
from my resting-place, I detected a small bright-gray
bee, about the third of an inch in length,
disappearing in what seemed a solid part of the
trunk.
There was no hole or crevice perceptible to
the eye, nor did that portion of the bark feel
less smooth than that immediately adjoining.
I might be mistaken—nay, I must be. I had
just arrived at this last conclusion, when a tiny
piece of the bark was suddenly raised, and out
flew the little gentleman I had seen disappear,
or one too like him not to belong to the same
family. The mystery was solved. Some ingenious
bee-architect had devised an entrance-gate,
fitting so admirably as to defy discovery
when shut; while I was certain that I could
lay my finger almost on the precise spot, the
closest inspection failed to reveal any trace of
its outline. The bark, though polished and
even, was covered with faint interlaced streaks,
from which even the smoothest bark is never
free; and the skillful carpenter had adapted the
irregular tracings of nature to his object of concealment.
Wishing to inspect the workmanship
without injuring its delicacy, I had to wait
patiently until it should again fly open; nor
was I kept long in expectation, for it presently
popped up to permit the egress of another of
the fraternity, and a ready twig prevented its
descending. I found it designedly crooked and
jagged at the edges, with an average width of
about a quarter of an inch, and twice that in
length; its substance was little more than the
outer skin of the bark, and, being still connected
at one end, opened and closed as with a
spring. The cunning workman had no doubt
been aware that had he made it much shorter—which
the size of the passengers would have
permitted—it would have required to be thrown
farther back, when the greater tension would
soon have destroyed the elasticity of the hinge,
and, with that, its power of fitting close to the
tree. Immediately within the doorway was a
small ante-chamber, forming a sort of porter’s
lodge to the little surly gray-liveried gentleman
inside, who, without quitting his retreat, showed
his displeasure at my intrusion in a manner too
pointed to be mistaken, and certainly manifesting
neither trepidation nor alarm at the sight of
one of the “lords of the creation,” though probably
the first offered to his inspection. From
the entrance-hall, two circular tunnels conducted
into the interior of the establishment, from
whence came the confused murmurs of a numerous
and busy community. I had just allowed
the door to close, and was admiring the
exceeding neatness of the workmanship, when
another of the family returned home, signifying
his arrival, and obtaining admittance in a manner
at once novel and singular.
After darting against the entrance, and touching
it with his feet, he rose again into the air,
and taking a wide swoop round the trunk came
up on the other side, this time, flying straight
toward the “trap,” which was quickly raised,
when he was a few inches distant, and, on his
entering, as quickly closed. The office of the
pugnacious individual inside was explained; he
was actually the doorkeeper, and his returning
comrades, having, like any other modern gentleman,
politely rapped, circled out of the observation
of prying eyes, till he was prepared to admit
them. Numbers were constantly arriving, and
all went through the process I have described,
each flying away, after knocking, in a different
direction, but all allowing the same time to
elapse before returning for admission; thus,
the door was never opened save at the proper
moment.
After watching their proceedings for some
time, I discovered the reason of their not waiting
quietly at the entrance. Sneaking among
the stray leaves and rubbish in the trunk, and
in the holes and cavities of the bark, were numbers
of small insects, of the same color as the
bees, but with the addition of one or two minute
bands of black across the abdomen; their slender,
graceful forms and partially exposed ovipositors
revealed, however, the cause of their
slinking about, and stamped them the parasitic
ichneumons of the hive. I thought that, after
the habits of their tribe, they were endeavoring
to obtain an entrance, when they pouncingly
hovered over the bees as they were disappearing
in the door-way; but, as none ever succeeded,
I conjectured that they had devised and were
pursuing some other plan of introducing their
blood-thirsty progeny. Further observation
showed this to be correct. The rascals were
endeavoring to attach their eggs to the small
pellets of pollen with which each bee was laden,
and they often succeeded, in spite of the admirably
devised tactics to prevent them.
The duties of the janitor were gradually
ceasing; all the bees had returned save a few
stragglers, and even these were becoming scarce;
the last parting rays of the sun—a signal for
the twilight birds to issue from their lurking[Pg 490]
places—warned me, that in a few minutes I
should have some difficulty in penetrating
through the thick underwood, for I was in a
clime where the sun “sinks at once, and all is
night.”
I was about to retrace my steps, when the
measured stroke of paddles caught my ear, and
presently the Indian “corial,” with a brave
batch of maroudis, and some smaller birds,
turned a bend in the sinuous creek, and swiftly
glided toward me, guided through the fallen
trees and branches, which in some places almost
choked the narrow stream, by the skillful
arm of old Paley, as I had dubbed our usual
steersman. The same keen eye that kept the
frail bark clear of besetting obstacles, quickly
detected me—though it was almost dark—stretched
in the tree above him. Staying the
progress of the “wood-skin” beneath, I slipped
off my boots, and cautiously lowered myself
down.
I wouldn’t advise any one to squat with
booted heel in a flimsy “bark,” especially when—intended
for two and accommodating four—it
is skimming along with the water an inch or
so from the edge. A lurch to one side, and
over you go—pleasantly enough in shallow
water on a hot day, but any thing but that
with twenty feet of black fluid beneath, and
you not able to swim. A few weeks’ practice
had enabled me to balance myself without endangering
others; so we landed safely.
The birds, soon ready for the pot, were in a
few minutes boiling away among the “cassareep”
and peppers. We made hearty suppers
that night; and as I lay in my hammock, taking
the usual “soothing whiff” before resigning
myself to sleep, the howling of monkeys, the
bellowings of caymen, and the various cries of
goatsucker, owl, and tiger-bird, blending with
the occasional roar of the jaguar in his midnight
courtship, the soughing of the breeze
among the trees, and the murmur of the distant
falls, made as discordant and motley a “hushaby”
as one could imagine. Fortunately, all the
screeching and howling in the universe would
have failed to drive away my slumbers; so I
quietly fell asleep, with the swaying branches
brushing past my face. My latest waking
thoughts, I remember, now recalling the wandering
Waterton (he might have slept suspended
from the same branch), and his fishing for
caymen; now, the bees and their tiny trap-doors;
now, my tiger-robbed coverlet, and the
rapids we were to “shoot” in the morning;
and, lastly, blending into a confused murmur—raising
pleasant recollections of the old school-room
buzz, and of the kindly comrades and
anxious friends in my far-off home.
We were up and away down the sparkling
river at daybreak the next morning; and I had
no other opportunity of observing the economy
of the bees and their enemies; nor in my rambles
did I ever chance to meet with another
family of the same species, or with kindred
habits.
ANECDOTE OF A HAWK.
An English work on Game Birds and Wild
Fowls, recently published, contains the following
curious anecdote:
“A friend of Colonel Bonham—the late Col.
Johnson, of the Rifle Brigade—was ordered to
Canada with his battalion, in which he was
then a captain, and being very fond of falconry,
to which he had devoted much time and expense,
he took with him two of his favorite
peregrines, as his companions, across the Atlantic.
“It was his constant habit during the voyage
to allow them to fly every day, after ‘feeding
them up,’ that they might not be induced to
take off after a passing sea-gull, or wander out
of sight of the vessel. Sometimes their rambles
were very wide and protracted. At others
they would ascend to such a height as to be
almost lost to the view of the passengers, who
soon found them an effectual means of relieving
the tedium of a long sea voyage, and naturally
took a lively interest in their welfare; but as
they were in the habit of returning regularly to
the ship, no uneasiness was felt during their
occasional absence. At last, one evening, after
a longer flight than usual, one of the falcons
returned alone. The other—the prime favorite—was
missing. Day after day passed away
and, however much he may have continued to
regret his loss, Captain Johnson had at length
fully made up his mind that it was irretrievable,
and that he should never see her again.
Soon after the arrival of the regiment in America,
on casting his eyes over a Halifax newspaper,
he was struck by a paragraph announcing
that the captain of an American schooner
had at that moment in his possession a fine
hawk, which had suddenly made its appearance
on board his ship during his late passage
from Liverpool. The idea at once occurred to
Captain Johnson that this could be no other
than his much-prized falcon, so having obtained
immediate leave of absence, he set off for Halifax,
a journey of some days. On arriving there
he lost no time in waiting on the commander
of the schooner, announcing the object of his
journey, and requested that he might be allowed
to see the bird; but Jonathan had no idea
of relinquishing his prize so easily, and stoutly
refused to admit of the interview, ‘guessing’
that it was very easy for an Englisher to lay
claim to another man’s property, but ‘calculating’
that it was a ‘tarnation sight’ harder for
him to get possession of it; and concluded by
asserting, in unqualified terms, his entire disbelief
in the whole story. Captain Johnson’s
object, however, being rather to recover his
falcon than to pick a quarrel with the truculent
Yankee, he had fortunately sufficient self-command
to curb his indignation, and proposed
that his claim to the ownership of the bird
should be at once put to the test by an experiment,
which several Americans who were
present admitted to be perfectly reasonable, and[Pg 491]
in which their countryman was at last persuaded
to acquiesce. It was this. Captain
Johnson was to be admitted to an interview
with the hawk—who, by the way, had as yet
shown no partiality for any person since her
arrival in the New World; but, on the contrary,
had rather repelled all attempts at familiarity—and
if at this meeting she should not
only exhibit such unequivocal signs of attachment
and recognition as should induce the
majority of the bystanders to believe that he
really was her original master, but especially if
she should play with the buttons of his coat,
then the American was at once to waive all
claim to her. The trial was immediately made.
The Yankee went up-stairs, and shortly returned
with the falcon; but the door was
hardly opened before she darted from his fist,
and perched at once on the shoulder of her
beloved and long-lost protector, evincing, by
every means in her power, her delight and
affection, rubbing her head against his cheek,
and taking hold of the buttons of his coat and
champing them playfully between her mandibles,
one after another. This was enough. The
jury were unanimous. A verdict for the plaintiff
was pronounced; even the obdurate heart
of the sea-captain was melted, and the falcon
was at once restored to the arms of her rightful
owner.”
NOTES ON THE NILE.
BY AN AMERICAN.
“Nile Notes, by an Howadji” (the Eastern
name for traveler) is the title of a new
book, by a young American, soon to be issued
from the press of Messrs. Harper and Brothers.
It is written with great vivacity, and will compare
favorably with “Eōthen,” or the best books
of the day on the East. The following extracts
will be found attractive.
THE MUSIC OF THE EAST.
While the Hadji Hamed fluttered about the
deck, and the commander served his kara kooseh,
the crew gathered around the bow and sang.
The stillness of early evening had spelled the
river, nor was the strangeness dissolved by that
singing. The men crouched in a circle upon
the deck, and the reis, or captain, thrummed
the tarabuka, or Arab drum, made of a fish-skin
stretched upon a gourd. Raising their
hands, the crew clapped them above their heads,
in perfect time, not ringingly, but with a dead,
dull thump of the palms—moving the whole
arm to bring them together. They swung their
heads from side to side, and one clanked a
chain in unison. So did these people long before
the Ibis nestled to this bank, long before
there were Americans to listen.
For when Diana was divine, and thousands
of men and women came floating down the Nile
in barges to celebrate her festival, they sang
and clapped, played the castanets and flute,
stifling the voices of Arabian and Lybian echoes
with a wild roar of revelry. They, too, sang a
song that came to them from an unknown
antiquity, Linus, their first and only song, the
dirge of the son of the first king of Egypt.
This might have been that dirge that the
crew sang in a mournful minor. Suddenly, one
rose and led the song, in sharp, jagged sounds,
formless as lightning. “He fills me the glass
full, and gives me to drink,” sang the leader,
and the low-measured chorus throbbed after
him, “Hummeleager malooshee.” The sounds
were not a tune, but a kind of measured recitative.
It went on constantly faster and faster,
exciting them, as the Shakers excite themselves,
until a tall, gaunt Nubian rose in the moonlight
and danced in the centre of the circle, like
a gay ghoul among his fellows.
The dancing was monotonous, like the singing,
a simple jerking of the muscles. He shook
his arms from the elbows, like a Shaker, and
raised himself alternately upon both feet. Often
the leader repeated the song as a solo, then
the voices died away, the ghoul crouched again,
and the hollow throb of the tarabuka continued
as an accompaniment to the distant singing of
Nero’s crew, that came in fitful gusts through
the little grove of sharp, slim masts:
Give her my respects.”
The melancholy monotony of this singing in
unison, harmonized with the vague feelings of
that first Nile night. The simplicity of the
words became the perpetual childishness of the
men, so that it was not ludicrous. It was clearly
the music and words of a race just better
than the brutes. If a poet could translate into
sound the expression of a fine dog’s face, or that
of a meditative cow, the Howadji would fancy
that he heard Nile music. For, after all, that
placid and perfect animal expression would be
melancholy humanity. And with the crew only,
the sound was sad; they smiled, and grinned,
and shook their heads with intense satisfaction.
The evening and the scene were like a chapter of
Mungo Park. I heard the African mother sing to
him as he lay sick upon her mats, and the world
and history forgotten, those strange, sad sounds
drew me deep into the dumb mystery of Africa.
But the musical Howadji will find a fearful
void in his Eastern life. The Asiatic has no
ear, and no soul for music. Like other savages
and children, he loves a noise, and he plays on
shrill pipes—on the tarabuka, on the tár, or
tambourine, and a sharp, one-stringed fiddle, or
rabáb. Of course, in your first Oriental days,
you will decline no invitation, but you will
grow gradually deaf to all entreaties of friends,
or dragomen, to sally forth and hear music.
You will remind him that you did not come to
the East to go to Bedlam.
This want of music is not strange, for silence
is natural to the East and the tropics. When,
sitting quietly at home, in midsummer, sweeping
ever sunward in the growing heats, we at
length reach the tropics in the fixed fervor of a
July noon, the day is rapt, the birds are still,
the wind swoons, and the burning sun glares
silence on the world.
The Orient is that primeval and perpetual
noon. That very heat explains to you the
voluptuous elaboration of its architecture, the
brilliance of its costume, the picturesqueness of
its life. But no Mozart was needed to sow
Persian gardens with roses breathing love and
beauty, no Beethoven to build mighty Himmalayas,
no Rossini to sparkle and sing with the
birds and streams. Those realities are there,
of which the composers are the poets to Western
imaginations. In the East, you feel and
see music, but hear it never.
Yet, in Cairo and Damascus the poets sit at
the cafés, surrounded by the forms and colors
of their songs, and recite the romances of the
Arabian Nights, or of Aboo Zeyd, or of Antar,
with no other accompaniment than the tár, or
the rabáb, then called the “Poet’s Viol,” and in
the same monotonous strain. Sometimes the
single strain is touching, as when on our way
to Jerusalem, the too-enamored camel-driver,
leading the litter of the fair Armenian, saddened
the silence of the desert noon with a Syrian
song. The high, shrill notes trembled and rang
on the air. The words said little, but the
sound was a lyric of sorrow. The fair Armenian
listened silently as the caravan wound
slowly along, her eyes musingly fixed upon the
East, where the flower-fringed Euphrates flows
through Bagdad to the sea. The fair Armenian
had her thoughts, and the camel-driver his;
also the accompanying Howadji listened and
had theirs.
The Syrian songs of the desert are very sad.
They harmonize with the burning monotony of
the landscape in their long recitative and shrill
wail. The camel steps more willingly to that
music, but the Howadji, swaying upon his back,
is tranced in the sound, so naturally born of
silence.
Meanwhile our crew are singing, although
we have slid upon their music, and the moonlight,
far forward into the desert. But these
are the forms and feelings that their singing
suggested. While they sang I wandered over
Sahara, and was lost in the lonely Libyan hills—a
thousand simple stories, a thousand ballads
of love and woe trooped like drooping birds
through the sky-like vagueness of my mind.
Rosamond Grey, and the child of Elle passed
phantom-like with vailed faces—for love, and
sorrow, and delight, are cosmopolitan, building
bowers indiscriminately of palm-trees or of pines.
The voices died away like the Muezzins’,
whose cry is the sweetest and most striking of
all Eastern sounds. It trembles in long-rising
and falling cadences from the balcony of the
minaret, more humanly alluring than bells, and
more respectful of the warm stillness of Syrian
and Egyptian days. Heard in Jerusalem it has
especial power. You sit upon your house-top
reading the history whose profoundest significance
is simple and natural in that inspiring
clime; and as your eye wanders from the aerial
dome of Omar, beautiful enough to have been a
dome of Solomon’s Temple, and over the olives
of Gethsemane climbs the Mount of Olives—the
balmy air is suddenly filled with a murmurous
cry, like a cheek suddenly rose-suffused—a sound
near, and far, and every where, but soft and
vibrating, and alluring, until you would fain don
turban, kaftan, and slippers, and kneeling in the
shadow of a cypress on the sun-flooded marble
court of Omar, would be the mediator of those
faiths, nor feel yourself a recreant Christian.
Once I heard the Muezzin cry from a little
village on the edge of the desert, in the starlight
before the dawn: it was only a wailing
voice in the air. The spirits of the desert were
addressed in their own language—or was it
themselves lamenting, like water-spirits to the
green boughs overhanging them, that they could
never know the gladness of the green world, but
were forever demons and denizens of the desert?
But the tones trembled away, without echo or
response, into the starry solitude. Al-lá-hu Ak-bar,
Al-lá-hu Ak-bar!
So with songs and pictures, with musings,
and the dinner of a Mecca pilgrim, passed the
first evening upon the Nile.
A CHARACTER.
Verde Giovane was joyous and gay. He
had already been to the pyramids, and had slept
in a tomb, and had his pockets picked as he
wandered through their disagreeable darkness.
He had come freshly and fast from England, to
see the world, omitting Paris and Western
Europe on his way, as he embarked at Southampton
for Alexandria. Being in Cairo, he
felt himself abroad. Sternhold and Hopkins
were his Laureates, for perpetually on all kinds
of wings of mighty winds he came flying all
abroad. He lost a great deal of money at
billiards to “jolly” fellows whom he afterward
regaled with cold punch and choice cigars. He
wrangled wildly with a dragoman of very imperfect
English powers, and packed his tea for
the voyage in brown paper parcels. He was
perpetually on the point of leaving. At breakfast,
he would take a loud leave of the “jolly”
fellows, and if there were ladies in the room, he
slung his gun in a very abandoned manner over
his shoulder, and while he adjusted his shot-pouch
with careless heroism, as if the enemy
were in ambush on the stairs, as who should
say, “I’ll do their business easily enough,” he
would remark with a meaning smile, that he
should stop a day or two at Esne, probably,
and then go off humming a song from the
Favorita—or an air whose words were well
known to the jolly fellows, but would scarcely
bear female criticism.
After this departure, he had a pleasant way
of reappearing at the dinner-table, for the pale
ale was not yet aboard, or the cook was ill, or
there had been another explosion with the dragoman.
Verde Giovane found the Cairene evenings
“slow.” It was astonishing how much
execution he accomplished with those words of
very moderate calibre, “slow,” “jolly,” and
“stunning.” The universe arraying itself in
Verde Giovane’s mind, under those three heads.[Pg 493]
Presently it was easy to predicate his criticisms in
any department. He had lofty views of travel.
Verde Giovane had come forth to see the world,
and vainly might the world seek to be unseen.
He wished to push on to Sennaar and Ethiopia.
It was very slow to go only to the cataracts.
Ordinary travel, and places already beheld of
men, were not for Verde. But if there were
any Chinese wall to be scaled, or the English
standard were to be planted upon any vague
and awful Himmalayan height, or a new oasis
were to be revealed in the desert of Sahara,
here was the heaven-appointed Verde Giovane,
only awaiting his pale ale, and determined to
dally a little at Esne. After subduing the East
by travel, he proposed to enter the Caucasian
Mountains, and serve as a Russian officer.
These things were pleasant to hear, as to behold
at Christmas those terrible beheadings of giants
by Tom Thumb, for you enjoyed a sweet sense
of security and a consciousness that no harm
was done. They were wild Arabian romances,
attributable to the inspiration of the climate, in
the city he found so slow. The Cairenes were
listening elsewhere to their poets, Verde Giovane
was ours; and we knew very well that he would
go quietly up to the first cataract, and then returning
to Alexandria, would steam to Jaffa,
and thence donkey placidly to Jerusalem, moaning
in his sleep of Cheapside and St. Paul’s.
PROSPECTS OF THE EAST.
That the East will never regenerate itself,
contemporary history shows; nor has any nation
of history culminated twice. The spent summer
reblooms no more—the Indian summer is but a
memory and a delusion. The sole hope of the
East is Western inoculation. The child must
suckle the age of the parent, and even “Medea’s
wondrous alchemy” will not restore its peculiar
prime. If the East awakens, it will be no
longer in the turban and red slippers, but in hat
and boots. The West is the sea that advances
forever upon the shore, the shore can not stay it,
but becomes the bottom of the ocean. The
Western, who lives in the Orient, does not
assume the kaftan and the baggy breeches, and
those of his Muslim neighbors shrink and disappear
before his coat and pantaloons. The Turkish
army is clothed, like the armies of Europe.
The grand Turk himself, Mohammad’s vicar,
the Commander of the Faithful, has laid away
the magnificence of Haroun Alrashid, and wears
the simple red Tarboosh, and a stiff suit of military
blue. Cairo is an English station to India,
and the Howadji does not drink sherbert upon
the pyramids, but champagne. The choice
Cairo of our Eastern imagination is contaminated
with carriages. They are showing the
secrets of the streets to the sun. Their silence
is no longer murmurous, but rattling. The
“Uzbeekeeyah,” public garden of Cairo, is a tea
garden, of a Sunday afternoon crowded with
ungainly Franks, listening to bad music. Ichabod,
Ichabod! steam has towed the Mediterranean
up the Nile to Boulak, and as you move
on to Cairo, through the still surviving masquerade
of the Orient, the cry of the melon-merchant
seems the sadly significant cry of each sad-eyed
Oriental, “Consoler of the embarrassed, O Pips!”
The century has seen the failure of the Eastern
experiment, headed as it is not likely to be
headed again, by an able and wise leader.
Mohammad Alee had Egypt and Syria, and was
mounting the steps of the sultan’s throne. Then
he would have marched to Bagdad, and sat
down in Haroun Alrashid’s seat, to draw again
broader and more deeply the lines of the old
Eastern empire. But the West would not
suffer it. Even had it done so, the world of
Mohammad Alee would have crumbled to chaos
again when he died, for it existed only by his
imperial will, and not by the perception of the
people.
At this moment the East is the El Dorado
of European political hope. No single power
dares to grasp it, but at last England and
Russia will meet there, face to face, and the lion
and the polar bear will shiver the desert silence
with the roar of their struggle. It will be the
return of the children to claim the birth-place.
They may quarrel among themselves, but whoever
wins, will introduce the life of the children
and not of the parent. A possession and a
province it may be, but no more an independent
empire. Father Ishmael shall be a sheikh of
honor, but of dominion no longer, and sit turbaned
in the chimney corner, while his hatted
heirs rule the house. The children will cluster
around him, fascinated with his beautiful traditions,
and curiously compare their little black
shoes with his red slippers.
THE DANCING WOMEN OF THE EAST.
The Howadji entered the bower of the Ghazeeyah.
A damsel admitted us at the gate,
closely vailed, as if women’s faces were to be
seen no more forever. Across a clean little
court, up stone steps that once were steadier,
and we emerged upon a small, inclosed stone
terrace, the sky-vaulted ante-chamber of that
bower. Through a little door that made us
stoop to enter, we passed into the peculiar retreat
of the Ghazeeyah. It was a small, white,
oblong room, with but one window, opposite the
door, and that closed. On three sides there
were small holes to admit light, as in dungeons,
but too lofty for the eye to look through, like
the oriel windows of sacristies. Under these
openings were small glass vases holding oil, on
which floated wicks. These were the means of
illumination.
A divan of honor filled the end of the room;
on the side was another, less honorable, as is
usual in all Egyptian houses; on the floor a
carpet, partly covering it. A straw matting
extended beyond the carpet toward the door,
and between the matting and the door was a
bare space of stone floor, whereon to shed the
slippers.
Hadji Hamed, the long cook, had been ill,
but hearing of music and dancing and Ghawazee,
he had turned out for the nonce, and accompanied
us to the house, not all unmindful[Pg 494]
possibly, of the delectations of the Mecca pilgrimage.
He stood upon the stone terrace afterward,
looking in with huge delight! The
solemn, long tomb-pilgrim! The merriest lunges
of life were not lost upon him, notwithstanding.
The Howadji seated themselves orientally
upon the divan of honor. To sit as Westerns
sit is impossible upon a divan. There is some
mysterious necessity for crossing the legs; and
this Howadji never sees a tailor now in lands
civilized, but the dimness of Eastern rooms and
bazaars, the flowingness of robe, and the coiled
splendor of the turban, and a world reclining
leisurely at ease, rise distinct and dear in his
mind—like that Sicilian mirage seen on divine
days from Naples—but fleet as fair. To most
men a tailor is the most unsuggestive of mortals;
to the remembering Howadji he sits a
poet.
The chibouque and nargileh and coffee belong
to the divan, as the parts of harmony to each
other. I seized the flowing tube of a brilliant
amber-hued nargileh, such as Hafiz might have
smoked, and prayed Isis that some stray Persian
might chance along to complete our company.
The Pacha inhaled at times a more sedate nargileh,
at times the chibouque of the Commander,
who reclined upon the divan below.
A tall Egyptian female, filially related, I am
sure, to a gentle giraffe who had been indiscreet
with a hippopotamus, moved heavily about,
lighting the lamps, and looking as if her bright
eyes were feeding upon the flame, as the giraffes
might browse upon lofty autumn leaves. There
was something awful in this figure. She was
the type of those tall, angular, Chinese-eyed,
semi-smiling, wholly homely and bewitched beings
who sit in eternal profile in the sculptures
of the temples. She was mystic, like the cow-horned
Isis. I gradually feared that she had
come off the wall of a tomb, probably in Thebes
hard by, and that our Ghawazee delights would
end in a sudden embalming, and laying away
in the bowels of the hills with a perpetual prospect
of her upon the walls.
Avaunt, Spectre! The Fay approaches, and
Kushuk Arnem entered her bower. A bud no
longer, yet a flower not too fully blown. Large
laughing eyes, red pulpy lips, white teeth, arching
nose, generous-featured, lazy, carelessly self-possessed,
she came dancing in, addressing the
Howadji in Arabic—words whose honey they
would not have distilled through interpretation.
Be content with the aroma of sound, if you can
not catch the flavor of sense—and flavor can
you never have through another mouth. Smiling
and pantomime were our talking, and one choice
Italian word she knew—buono. Ah! how much
was buono that choice evening. Eyes, lips, hair,
form, dress, every thing that the strangers had
or wore, was endlessly buono. Dancing, singing,
smoking, coffee—buono, buono, buonissimo!
How much work one word will do!
The Ghazeeyah entered—not mazed in that
azure mist of gauze and muslin wherein Cerito
floats fascinating across the scene, nor in the
peacock plumage of sprightly Lucille Grahn, nor
yet in that June cloudiness of airy apparel which
Carlotta affects, nor in that sumptuous Spanishness
of dark drapery wherein Fanny is most
Fanny.
The glory of a butterfly is the starred brilliance
of its wings. There are who declare that
dress is divine—who aver that an untoileted
woman is not wholly a woman, and that you
may as well paint a saint without his halo, as
describe a woman without detailing her dress.
Therefore, while the coarser sex vails longing
eyes, will we tell the story of the Ghazeeyah’s
apparel.
Yellow morocco slippers hid her feet, rosy and
round; over these brooded a bewildering fullness
of rainbow silk—Turkish trowsers we call them,
but they are shintyan in Arabic. Like the sleeve
of a clergyman’s gown, the lower end is gathered
somewhere, and the fullness gracefully over-falls.
I say rainbow, although to the Howadji’s
little cognizant eye was the shintyan of more
than the seven orthodox colors. In the bower
of Kushuk, nargileh-clouded, coffee-scented, are
eyes to be strictly trusted?
Yet we must not be entangled in this bewildering
brilliance. A satin jacket, striped
with velvet, and of open sleeves, wherefrom
floated forth a fleecy cloud of under-sleeve, rolling
adown the rosy arms, as June clouds down
the western rosiness of the sky, inclosed the
bust. A shawl, twisted of many folds, cinctured
the waist, confining the silken shintyan.
A golden necklace of charms girdled the throat,
and the hair, much unctuated, as is the custom
of the land, was adorned with a pendent fringe
of black silk, tipped with gold, which hung upon
the neck behind.
Let us confess to a dreamy, vaporous vail,
overspreading, rather suffusing with color, the
upper part of the arms and the lower limits of
the neck. That rosiness is known as tób to the
Arabians—a mystery whereof the merely masculine
mind is not cognizant. Beneath the tób,
truth allows a beautiful bud-burstiness of bosom;
yet I swear, by John Bunyan, nothing so
aggravating as the Howadji beholds in saloons
unnamable nearer the Hudson than the Nile.
This brilliant cloud, whose spirit was Kushuk
Arnem, our gay Ghazeeyah, gathered itself upon
a divan, and she inhaled vigorously a nargileh.
A damsel in tób and shintyan exhaling azure
clouds of aromatic smoke, had not been displeasing
to that Persian poet, for whose coming
I had prayed too late.
But more welcome than he, came the still-eyed
Xenobi. She entered timidly like a bird.
The Howadji had seen doves less gracefully sitting
upon palm-boughs in the sunset, than she
nestled upon the lower divan. A very dove of
a Ghazeeyah—a quiet child, the last born of
Terpsichore. Blow it from Mount Atlas, a
modest dancing-girl. She sat near this Howadji,
and handed him, O Haroun Alrashid! the
tube of his nargileh. Its serpentine sinuosity
flowed through her fingers, as if the golden gayety[Pg 495]
of her costume were gliding from her alive.
It was an electric chain of communication, and
never until some Xenobi of a houri hands the
Howadji the nargileh of Paradise, will the
smoke of the weed of Shiraz float so lightly, or
so sweetly taste.
Xenobi was a mere bud, of most flexile and
graceful form, ripe and round as the spring fruit
of the tropics. Kushuk had the air of a woman
for whom no surprises survive; Xenobi saw in
every new day a surprise, haply in every Howadji
a lover.
She was more richly dressed than Kushuk.
There were gay gold bands and clasps upon her
jacket; various necklaces of stamped gold and
metallic charms clustered around her neck, and
upon her head a bright silken web, as if a sun-suffused
cloud were lingering there, and, dissolving,
showered down her neck in a golden
rain of pendants. Then, O Venus! more azure
still—that delicious gauziness of tób, whereof
more than to dream is delirium. Wonderful
the witchery of a tób! Nor can the Howadji
deem a maiden quite just to nature, who glides
through the world unshintyaned and untóbed.
Xenobi was perhaps sixteen years old, and a
fully developed woman; Kushuk Arnem, of
some half-dozen summers more. Kushuk was
unhennaed; but the younger, as younger maidens
may, graced herself with the genial gifts of
nature. Her delicate filbert nails were rosily
tinted on the tips with henna, and those peddler
poets meeting her in Paradise would have
felt the reason of their chant, “Odors of Paradise,
O flowers of the henna!” But she had no
kohl upon the eyelashes, nor like Fatima of Damascus,
whom the Howadji later saw, were her
eyebrows shaved and replaced by thick, black
arches of kohl. Yet fascinating are the almond-eyes
of Egyptian women, bordered black with
the kohl, whose intensity accords with the sumptuous
passion that mingles moist and languid
with their light. Eastern eyes are full of moonlight—Eastern
beauty is a dream of passionate
possibility, which the Howadji would fain
awaken by the same spell with which the prince
of Faery dissolved the enchanted sleep of the
princess. Yet kohl and henna are only beautiful
for the beautiful. In a coffee-shop at Esne,
bold-faced among the men, sat a coarse courtesan
sipping coffee and smoking a nargileh, whose
kohled eyebrows and eyelashes made her a houri
of hell.
“There is no joy but calm,” I said, as the
moments, brimmed with beauty, melted in the
starlight, and the small room became a bower
of bloom and a Persian garden of delight. We
reclined, breathing fragrant fumes, and interchanging,
through the Golden-sleeved, airy nothings.
The Howadji and the houris had little
in common but looks. Soulless as Undine, and
suddenly risen from a laughing life in watery
dells of lotus, sat the houris; and, like the mariner,
sea-driven upon the enchanted isle of Prospero,
sat the Howadji, unknowing the graceful
gossip of Faery. But there is a faery always
folded away in our souls, like a bright butterfly
chrysalized, and sailing eastward, layer after
layer of propriety, moderation, deference to public
opinion, safety of sentiment, and all the thick
crusts of compromise and convention roll away,
and bending southward up the Nile, you may
feel the faery fairly flutter her wings. And if
you pause at Esne, she will fly out, and lead
you a will-o’-the-wisp dance across all the trim
sharp hedges of accustomed proprieties, and over
the barren flats of social decencies. Dumb is
that faery, so long has she been secluded, and
can not say much to her fellows. But she feels
and sees and enjoys all the more exquisitely and
profoundly for her long sequestration.
Presently an old woman came in with a tár,
a kind of tambourine, and her husband, a grisly
old sinner, with a rabáb, or one-stringed fiddle.
Old Hecate was a gone Ghazeeyah—a rose-leaf
utterly shriveled away from rosiness. No longer
a dancer, she made music for dancing. And
the husband, who played for her in her youth,
now played with her in her age. Like two old
votaries who feel when they can no longer see,
they devoted all the force of life remaining to
the great game of pleasure, whose born thralls
they were.
There were two tarabukas and brass castanets,
and when the old pair were seated upon
the carpet near the door, they all smote their
rude instruments, and a wild clang rang through
the little chamber. Thereto they sang. Strange
sounds—such music as the angular, carved
figures upon the temples would make, had they
been conversing with us—sounds to the ear like
their gracelessness to the eye.
This was Egyptian Polyhymnia preluding
Terpsichore.
TERPSICHORE.
The boat is in the bay,
And the fair mermaid Pilot calls away—”
Kushuk Arnem quaffed a goblet of hemp
arrack. The beaker was passed to the upper
divan, and the Howadji sipping, found it to
smack of anniseed. It was strong enough for
the Pharaohs to have imbibed—even for Herod
before beholding Herodias, for these dances are
the same. This dancing is more ancient than
Aboo Simbel. In the land of the Pharaohs,
the Howadji saw the dancing they saw, as uncouth
as the temples they built. This dancing
is to the ballet of civilized lands what the gracelessness
of Egypt was to the grace of Greece.
Had the angular figures of the temple sculptures
preluded with that music, they had certainly
followed with this dancing.
Kushuk Arnem rose and loosened her shawl
girdle in such wise, that I feared she was
about to shed the frivolity of dress, as Venus
shed the sea-foam, and stood opposite the divan,
holding her brass castanets. Old Hecate beat
the tár into a thunderous roar. Old husband
drew sounds from his horrible rabáb, sharper
than the sting of remorse, and Xenobi and
the Giraffe each thrummed a tarabuka until[Pg 496]
thought the plaster would peel from the wall.
Kushuk stood motionless, while this din deepened
around her, the arrack aerializing her feet,
the Howadji hoped, and not her brain. The
sharp surges of sound swept around the room,
dashing in regular measure against her movelessness,
until suddenly the whole surface of
her frame quivered in measure with the music.
Her hands were raised, clapping the castanets,
and she slowly turned upon herself, her right
leg the pivot, marvelously convulsing all the
muscles of her body. When she had completed
the circuit of the spot on which she stood, she
advanced slowly, all the muscles jerking in time
to the music, and in solid, substantial spasms.
It was a curious and a wonderful gymnastic.
There was no graceful dancing—once only there
was the movement of dancing when she advanced,
throwing one leg before the other as
gipsies dance. But the rest was most voluptuous
motion—not the lithe wooing of languid
passion, but the soul of passion starting through
every sense, and quivering in every limb. It
was the very intensity of motion, concentrated
and constant. The music still swelled savagely
in maddened monotony of measure. Hecate
and the old husband, fascinated with the Ghazeeyah’s
fire, threw their hands and arms excitedly
above their instruments, and an occasional
cry of enthusiasm and satisfaction burst
from their lips. Suddenly stooping, still muscularly
moving, Kushuk fell upon her knees,
and writhing with body, arms and head upon
the floor, still in measure—still clanking the
castanets, and arose in the same manner. It
was profoundly dramatic. The scenery of the
dance was like that of a characteristic song.
It was a lyric of love which words can not tell—profound,
oriental, intense, and terrible. Still
she retreated, until the constantly down-slipping
shawl seemed only just clinging to her
hips, and making the same circuit upon herself,
she sat down, and after this violent and
extravagant exertion was marbly cold.
Then timid but not tremulous, the young
Xenobi arose bare-footed, and danced the same
dance, not with the finished skill of Kushuk, but
gracefully and well, and with her eyes fixed constantly
upon the elder. With the same regular
throb of the muscles she advanced and retreated,
and the Paradise-pavilioned prophet could not
have felt his heavenly harem complete, had he
sat smoking and entranced with the Howadji.
Form so perfect was never yet carved in marble;
not the Venus is so mellowly moulded. Her
outline has not the voluptuous excess which is
not too much—which is not perceptible to mere
criticism, and is more a feeling flushing along
the form, than a greater fullness of the form itself.
The Greek Venus was sea-born, but our
Egyptian is sun-born. The brown blood of the
sun burned along her veins—the soul of the
sun streamed shaded from her eyes. She was
still, almost statuesquely still. When she danced
it was only stillness intensely stirred, and followed
that of Kushuk as moonlight succeeds
sunshine. As she went on, Kushuk gradually
rose, and joining her, they danced together.
The Epicureans of Cairo indeed, the very young
priests of Venus, assemble the Ghawazee in the
most secluded adyta of their dwellings, and
there eschewing the mystery of the shintyan,
and the gauziness of the tób, they behold the
unencumbered beauty of these beautiful women.
At festivals so fair, arrack, raw brandy, and
“depraved human nature,” naturally improvise
a ballet whereupon the curtain here falls.
Suddenly, as the clarion call awakens the
long-slumbering spirit of the war-horse, old
Hecate sprang to her feet, and loosening her
girdle, seized the castanets, and, with the pure
pride of power, advanced upon the floor, and
danced incredibly. Crouching before like a wasting
old willow, that merely shakes its drooping
leaves to the tempest, she now shook her fibres
with the vigor of a nascent elm, and moved up
and down the room with a miraculous command
of her frame.
In Venice I had heard a gray gondolier,
dwindled into a ferryman, awakened in a moonlighted
midnight, as we swept by with singers
chanting Tasso, pour his swan-song of magnificent
memory into the quick ear of night.
In the Champs Elysées I had heard a rheumy-eyed
Invalide cry with the sonorous enthusiasm
of Austerlitz, “Vive Napoleon!” as a
new Napoleon rode by.
It was the Indian summer goldening the
white winter—the Zodiacal light far flashing
day into the twilight. And here was the same
in dead old Egypt—in a Ghazeeyah who had
brimmed her beaker with the threescore and
ten drops of life. Not more strange, and unreal,
and impressive in their way, the inscrutable
remains of Egypt, sand-shrouded but undecayed,
than in hers this strange spectacle of
an efficient Coryphée of seventy.
Old Hecate! thou wast pure pomegranate
also, and not banana, wonder most wonderful
of all—words which must remain hieroglyphics
upon these pages—and whose explication must
be sought in Egypt, as they must come hither
who would realize the freshness of Karnak.
Slow, sweet singing followed. The refrain
was plaintive, like those of the boat songs—soothing,
after the excitement of the dancing,
as nursery lays to children after a tired day.
“Buono,” Kushuk Arnem! last of the Arnems,
for so her name signified. Was it a remembering
refrain of Palestine, whose daughter you are?
“Taib,” dove Xenobi! Fated, shall I say, or
favored? Pledged life-long to pleasure! Who
would dare to be? Who but a child so careless
would dream that these placid ripples of
youth will rock you stormless to El Dorado?
O Allah! and who cares? Refill the amber
nargileh, Xenobi—another fingan of mellow
mocha. Yet another strain more stirring.
Hence, Hecate! shrivel into invisibility with
the thundering tár, and the old husband with
his diabolical rabáb. Waits not the one-eyed
first officer below, with a linen lantern, to pilot[Pg 497]
as to the boat? And the beak of the Ibis
points it not to Syene, Nubia, and a world unknown?
Farewell, Kushuk! Addio, still-eyed dove!
Almost thou persuadest me to pleasure. O
Wall-street, Wall-street! because you are virtuous,
shall there be no more cakes and ale?
CURRAN, THE IRISH ORATOR.[3]
The next year after the exertions of Grattan
had secured the independence of the Irish
legislature, and just as the great question of
reform began to loom up in the political horizon,
there entered parliament another man, whose
name is imperishably connected with the history
of Ireland, John Philpot Curran. Of a
slight and ungainly figure, there was nothing
about him to overawe a legislative assembly.
Grattan was the Colossus of debate. Curran,
like a skillful gladiator, played round the arena,
and sometimes thrusting himself into the lists
in the lighter armor of his wit, carried off the
victory where his giant ally would have been
less successful. But, in truth, this was not his
proper theatre. He came into the Parliament-house
in the evening, after having been all day
in court. He was then jaded in body and mind,
and chose rather to listen than to speak. As
Grattan was most at home in parliament, Curran
was most in his element at the bar. It
was in the Four Courts that he rose above all
other men; that he won the reputation of being
the most eloquent advocate that Ireland had
ever produced.
But it is on other accounts that Curran deserves
a more minute sketch in this history. He
represents, perhaps more than any of his celebrated
countrymen, the Irish character—a nature
compounded of imagination and sensibility.
Though of less kingly intellect than Grattan, he
was of a warmer temperament, and more fitted
to be a popular idol.
Curran sprang from the people. He was
born at Newmarket, an obscure town in the
county of Cork, in 1750—being thus four years
younger than Grattan. On the father’s side he
was descended from one of Cromwell’s soldiers.
Passing his childhood in the country, he was
thrown much among the people. He loved to
recall the days when he played marbles in the
street of Newmarket, or assumed the part of
Punch’s man at a country fair. He loved to
visit the peasantry in their cabins, and to listen
to their tales. There he saw the Irish character—its
wit, its humor, its sensibility to mirth and
tears. There too, in those rough natures, which
appear so sullen and savage, when brought face
to face with their oppressors, he found the finest
and tenderest affections of the human heart.
There too he found a natural poetry and eloquence.
He was a constant attendant at the
weddings and wakes of his neighborhood. It
was customary at that time to employ hired
mourners for the dead, and their wild and solemn
lamentations struck his youthful imagination.
In after-years, he acknowledged that his first
ideas of eloquence were derived from listening to
the laments of mourners at the Irish burials.
When transferred to Trinity College in Dublin,
he became distinguished chiefly for his social
powers. Full of the exuberant life of youth,
overflowing with spirits, and fond of fun and
frolic, he was always a welcome companion
among the students.
His mother had designed him for the church.
When he came out of college, his tastes took
another turn. But his mother never got over
her disappointment at his not being a preacher.
Not even his brilliant reputation at the bar and
in parliament, could satisfy her maternal heart.
She lived to see the nation hanging on the lips
of this almost inspired orator. Yet even then
she would lament over him, “O Jacky, Jacky,
what a preacher was lost in you!” Her friends
reminded her that she had lived to see her son
one of the judges of the land. “Don’t speak to
me of judges,” she would reply, “John was fit
for any thing; and had he but followed our
advice, it might hereafter be written upon my
tomb that I had died the mother of a bishop.”
But no one as yet knew that he had extraordinary
talent for eloquence. Indeed he did not
suspect it himself. In his boyhood he had a
confusion in his utterance, from which he was
called by his school-fellows “stuttering Jack
Curran.” It was not until many years after,
while studying law at the Temple, that he found
out that he could speak. After his fame was
established, a friend dining with him one day,
could not repress his admiration of Curran’s
eloquence, and remarked that it must have been
born with him. “Indeed, my dear sir,” replied
Curran, “it was not, it was born twenty-three
years and some months after me.” But when
he had made the important discovery of this
concealed power, he employed every means to
render his elocution perfect. He accustomed
himself to speak very slowly to correct his precipitate
utterance. He practiced before a glass
to make his gestures graceful. He spoke aloud
the most celebrated orations. One piece he was
never weary of repeating, the speech of Antony
over the body of Cæsar. This he recommended
to his young friends at the bar as a model of
eloquence.
And while he thus used art to smooth a
channel for his thoughts to flow in, no man’s
eloquence ever issued more freshly and spontaneously
from the heart. It was always the heart
of the man that spoke. It was because his own
emotions were so intense, that he possessed such
power over the feelings of others.
His natural sympathies were strong. Like
every truly great man, he was simple as a child.
He had all those tastes which mark a genuine
man. He loved nature. He loved children.
He sympathized with the poor. It was perhaps
from these popular sympathies that he preferred
Rousseau among the French writers, and that
his friendship was so strong with Mr. Godwin.
His nature was all sensibility. He was most
keenly alive to gay, or to mournful scenes. He
had a boyish love of fun and frolic. He entered
into sports with infinite glee. In these things
he remained a child to the end of his days;
while in sensibility to tears he had the heart of
a woman. Thus to the last hour of life he kept
his affections fresh and flowing.
He had the delicate organization of genius.
His frame vibrated to music like an Eolian harp.
He had the most exquisite relish for the beauties
of poetry. He was extravagantly fond of
works of imagination. He devoured romances.
And when in his reading he met with a passage
which gratified his taste, he was never weary of
repeating it to himself, or reading it to the
friends who came to see him.
In conversation, perhaps the most prominent
faculty of his mind was fancy—sportive, playful,
tender, and pathetic. His conversation was
a stream which never ceased to flow. His
brilliant imagination, and the warmth with
which he entered into every thing, gave it a
peculiar fascination. Byron said that Curran
had spoken more poetry than any man had ever
written. In a circle of genial friends, after dinner,
his genius was in its first action. His
countenance lighted up, and his conversation,
beginning to flow, now sparkled, now ran like
wine. Flashes of wit played round him. Mirth
gleamed from his eye and shot from his tongue.
He had an endless store of anecdote, to which
his extraordinary dramatic talent enabled him
to give the happiest effect. He told stories, and
hitting off the point of Irish character by the
most exquisite mimicry; he “set the table on a
roar,” following perhaps with some touching
tale which instantly brought tears into every
eye. “You wept,” says Phillips, “and you
laughed, and you wondered; and the wonderful
creature, who made you do all at will, never let
it appear that he was more than your equal,
and was quite willing, if you chose, to become
your auditor.”
The wit of Curran was spontaneous. It was
the creation of the moment, the electric sparks
shot from a mind overcharged with imagery and
feeling. In this it differed from the wit of
another great Irishman. Sheridan had more of
the actor about him. His brilliant sayings were
prepared beforehand. He aimed at display in
the receptions at Holland House as much as
when writing a comedy for Drury-lane.
Perhaps no foreigner, who has visited England,
has had a better opportunity of seeing
its distinguished men than Madame De Stael.
She was constantly surrounded by the most
brilliant society of London. Yet even in that
blaze of genius, she was most struck, as she
often told her friends, with the conversational
powers of Curran. This too, was in 1813,
when his health had sunk, and his spirits were
so depressed, as to make it an effort to support
his part at all in society.
From the vivacity of his conversation, one
would hardly have suspected the depth and seriousness
of his character. In talking with ladies
or with young persons, his mind was remarkable
for its constant playfulness. A gleam of sunshine
illumined his whole being. Yet those who
knew him intimately were aware that he was
subject all his life to constitutional melancholy.
Like many other men celebrated for their wit,
his gayety alternated with deep depression.
The truth was that he sympathized too intensely
with the scenes of real life, to be uniformly
gay. In his country he saw so much to
sadden him, that his feelings took a melancholy
tone. The transition was often instantaneous
from humor to pathos. His friends, who saw
him in his lighter moods, were surprised at the
sudden change of his countenance. “In grave
conversation, his voice was remarkable for a
certain plaintive sincerity of tone”—a sadness
which fascinated the listener like mournful music.
In his eloquence appeared the same transitions
of feeling and variety of talent. He could
descend to the dryest details of law or evidence.
Thomas Addis Emmet, who, though younger,
practiced at the same bar, says that Curran
possessed a logical head. From this he could
rise to the highest flights of imagination, and
it was here, and in appeals to the feelings, that
he was most at home. Sometimes his wit ran
away with him. His fancy was let off like a
display of fireworks. It flew like a thousand
rockets, darting, whizzing, buzzing, lighting up
the sky with fantastic shapes.
By turns he could use the lightest or the
heaviest weapon, as suited the object of his
attack. Where ethereal wit or playful irony
were likely to be thrown away upon some gross
and insensible subject, he could point the keenest
edge of ridicule, or the coarsest invective,
or the most withering sarcasm.
When dissecting the character of a perjured
witness, he seemed to delight in making him
feel the knife. His victim, at such a time,
appeared like an insect whom he had lanced
with a needle, and was holding up to the
laughter and scorn of the world. Thus, when
treating the evidence of O’Brien, a hired informer,
who had come on the stand to swear
away the lives of men whom the government
had determined to sacrifice, Curran apostrophized
the patriotic individual, “Dearest, sweetest,
Mr. James O’Brien,” exposing the utter
rottenness of his character in a tone of irony,
until the man, who had a forehead of brass,
was forced to slink back into the crowd, and to
escape from the court.
So in his place in parliament, when exposing
the corruption of the officers of government, he
did not spare nor have pity. A swarm of
blood-suckers had fastened on the state, who
were growing fat from draining the life of their
unhappy country. Curran proclaimed the immaculate
virtue of “those saints on the pension
list, that are like lilies of the field—they toil not,
neither do they spin, but they are arrayed like
Solomon in his glory.” The extent to which[Pg 499]
this corruption had gone was incredible. “This
polyglot of wealth,” said Curran, “this museum
of curiosities, the pension list, embraces every
link in the human chain, every description of
men, women, and children, from the exalted
excellence of a Hawke or a Rodney, to the debased
situation of the lady who humbleth herself
that she may be exalted.” The road to
advancement at that day in Ireland, to the
peerage, to the judicial bench, was to betray
the country. Curran branded those who thus
came into power by one of the strongest figures
in English eloquence. “Those foundlings of
fortune, overwhelmed in the torrent of corruption
at an early period, lay at the bottom like
drowned bodies, while soundness or sanity remained
in them; but at length becoming buoyant
by putrefaction, they rose as they rotted,
and floated to the surface of the polluted stream,
where they were drifted along, the objects of
terror, and contagion, and abomination.”
At the bar he often indulged in sallies of wit,
and thus conciliated the attention of the court.
His delicate satire, his comical turns of thought,
convulsed the court with laughter. Then suddenly
he stopped, his lip quivered, his sentences
grew slow and measured, and he poured forth
strains of the deepest pathos, as he pictured
the wrongs of his country, or lamented the
companions of other days, the illustrious departed,
“over whose ashes the most precious
tears of Ireland had been shed.” His voice
excelled in the utterance of plaintive emotions,
and the homage which had been paid to his
eloquence by mirth, was now paid in the sound
of suppressed weeping, which alone broke the
death-like stillness of the room. In pleading
for one on trial for his life, his voice subsided
toward the close and sunk away in tones of
solemnity and supplication. Thus would he
say, “Sweet is the recollection of having done
justice in that hour when the hand of death
presses on the human heart! Sweet is the
hope which it gives birth to! From you I demand
that justice for my client, your innocent
and unfortunate fellow-subject at the bar; and
may you have it for a more lasting reward than
the perishable crown we read of, which the
ancients placed on the brow of him who saved
in battle the life of a fellow-citizen!”
But the trait which appears most conspicuous
in the public efforts of Curran, and which made
him the idol of his countrymen, was his enthusiastic
love of Ireland. Says his biographer,
“Ireland was the choice of his youth, and was
from first to last regarded by him, not so much
with the feelings of a patriot, as with the romantic
idolatry of a lover.” In early life he
had learned to love the Irish peasantry, and no
lapse of time could chill his affection. No
temptation of office could seduce him from the
side of the poor and the oppressed. He knew
their noble qualities, and his bosom burned at
the wrongs which they suffered.
One of his first causes at the bar was pleading
for a Catholic priest who had been brutally
assaulted by a nobleman. Such was the fear
of incurring the displeasure of a lord, that no
one dared to undertake the prosecution, until
Curran stepped forward, then a young lawyer.
His effort was successful. Not long after, the
priest was called away from the world. He
sent for Curran to his bedside. Gold and silver
he had none. But he gave him all in his
power, the benediction of a dying man. He
caused himself to be raised up in his bed, and
stretching out his trembling hands to place
them upon the head of the defender, invoked
for him the blessing of the Almighty. Such
scenes as this, while they excited the enthusiasm
of the Catholic population throughout Ireland
for the young advocate, who had dared to
defend a priest of their proscribed religion, at
the same time strengthened his determination
to make common cause with his countrymen in
their sufferings.
It is melancholy to reflect that efforts so
great for the liberty and happiness of Ireland,
were not crowned with complete success. But
the patriotism and the courage were not less
noble because overborne by superior power. It
is the honor of Curran that he loved Ireland in
her woe, and loved her to the last. Toward
the close of life he said, “To our unhappy
country, what I had, I gave. I might have
often sold her. I could not redeem her. I
gave her the best sympathies of my heart, sometimes
in tears, sometimes in indignation, sometimes
in hope, but often in despondence.”
[From the Dublin University Magazine.]
GHOST STORIES OF CHAPELIZOD.
Take my word for it, there is no such thing
as an ancient village, especially if it has
seen better days, unillustrated by its legends of
terror. You might as well expect to find a decayed
cheese without mites, or an old house
without rats, as an antique and dilapidated town
without an authentic population of goblins.
Now, although this class of inhabitants are in
nowise amenable to the police authorities, yet
as their demeanor greatly affects the comforts
of her Majesty’s subjects, I can not but regard
it as a grave omission that the public have hitherto
been left without any statistical returns of
their numbers, activity, &c., &c. And I am
persuaded that a Commission to inquire into
and report upon the numerical strength, habits,
haunts, &c., &c., of supernatural agents resident
in Ireland, would be a great deal more innocent
and entertaining than half the Commissions for
which the country pays, and at least as instructive.
This I say more from a sense of duty, and
to deliver my mind of a grave truth than with
any hope of seeing the suggestion adopted. But,
I am sure, my readers will deplore with me that
the comprehensive powers of belief, and apparently
illimitable leisure, possessed by parliamentary
commissions of inquiry, should never
have been applied to the subject I have named,
and that the collection of that species of information
should be confided to the gratuitous and[Pg 500]
desultory labors of individuals, who, like myself,
have other occupations to attend to. This,
however, by the way.
Among the village outposts of Dublin, Chapelizod
once held a considerable, if not a foremost
rank. Without mentioning its connection with
the history of the great Kilmainham Preceptory
of the Knights of St. John, it will be enough to
remind the reader of its ancient and celebrated
castle, not one vestige of which now remains,
and of the fact that it was for, we believe, some
centuries, the summer residence of the Viceroys
of Ireland. The circumstance of its being up,
we believe, to the period at which that corps
was disbanded, the head-quarters of the Royal
Irish Artillery, gave it also a consequence of an
humbler, but not less substantial kind. With
these advantages in its favor, it is not wonderful
that the town exhibited at one time an air
of substantial and semi-aristocratic prosperity
unknown to Irish villages in modern times.
A broad street, with a well-paved foot-path,
and houses as lofty as were at that time to be
found in the fashionable streets of Dublin; a
goodly stone-fronted barrack; an ancient church,
vaulted beneath, and with a tower clothed from
its summit to its base with the richest ivy; an
humble Roman Catholic chapel; a steep bridge
spanning the Liffey, and a great old mill at the
near end of it, were the principal features of the
town. These, or at least most of them, remain,
but still the greater part in a very changed and
forlorn condition. Some of them indeed superseded,
though not obliterated by modern erections,
such as the bridge, the chapel, and the
church in part; the rest forsaken by the order
who originally raised them, and delivered up to
poverty, and in some cases to absolute decay.
The village lies in the lap of the rich and
wooded valley of the Liffey, and is overlooked
by the high grounds of the beautiful Phœnix
Park on the one side, and by the ridge of the
Palmerstown hills on the other. Its situation,
therefore is eminently picturesque; and factory
fronts and chimneys notwithstanding, it has, I
think, even in its decay, a sort of melancholy
picturesqueness of its own. Be that as it may,
I mean to relate two or three stories of that sort,
which may be read with very good effect by a
blazing fire on a shrewd winter’s night, and are
all directly connected with the altered and
somewhat melancholy little town I have named.
The first I shall relate concerns
THE VILLAGE BULLY.
About thirty years ago there lived in the
town of Chapelizod an ill-conditioned fellow
of Herculean strength, well known throughout
the neighborhood by the title of Bully Larkin.
In addition to his remarkable physical superiority,
this fellow had acquired a degree of skill as
a pugilist which alone would have made him
formidable. As it was, he was the autocrat of
the village, and carried not the sceptre in vain.
Conscious of his superiority, and perfectly secure
of impunity, he lorded it over his fellows in a
spirit of cowardly and brutal insolence, which
made him hated even more profoundly than he
was feared.
Upon more than one occasion he had deliberately
forced quarrels upon men whom he had
singled out for the exhibition of his savage prowess;
and, in every encounter his overmatched
antagonist had received an amount of “punishment”
which edified and appalled the spectators,
and in some instances left ineffaceable scars and
lasting injuries after it.
Bully Larkin’s pluck had never been fairly
tried. For, owing to his prodigious superiority
in weight, strength, and skill, his victories had
always been certain and easy; and in proportion
to the facility with which he uniformly smashed
an antagonist, his pugnacity and insolence were
inflamed. He thus became an odious nuisance
in the neighborhood, and the terror of every
mother who had a son, and of every wife who
had a husband who possessed a spirit to resent
insult, or the smallest confidence in his own pugilistic
capabilities.
Now it happened that there was a young fellow
named Ned Moran—better known by the
soubriquet of “Long Ned,” from his slender,
lathy proportions—at that time living in the
town. He was, in truth, a mere lad, nineteen
years of age, and fully twelve years younger
than the stalwart bully. This, however, as the
reader will see, secured for him no exemption
from the dastardly provocations of the ill-conditioned
pugilist. Long Ned, in an evil hour, had
thrown eyes of affection upon a certain buxom
damsel, who, notwithstanding Bully Larkin’s
amorous rivalry, inclined to reciprocate them.
I need not say how easily the spark of jealousy,
once kindled, is blown into a flame, and how
naturally, in a coarse and ungoverned nature, it
explodes in acts of violence and outrage.
“The bully” watched his opportunity, and
contrived to provoke Ned Moran, while drinking
in a public-house with a party of friends, into
an altercation, in the course of which he failed
not to put such insults upon his rival as manhood
could not tolerate. Long Ned, though a simple,
good-natured sort of fellow, was by no means
deficient in spirit, and retorted in a tone of defiance
which edified the more timid, and gave
his opponent the opportunity he secretly coveted.
Bully Larkin challenged the heroic youth,
whose pretty face he had privately consigned to
the mangling and bloody discipline he was himself
so capable of administering. The quarrel, which
he had himself contrived to get up, to a certain
degree covered the ill-blood and malignant premeditation
which inspired his proceedings, and
Long Ned, being full of generous ire and whisky
punch, accepted the gage of battle on the instant.
The whole party, accompanied by a mob
of idle men and boys, and in short, by all who
could snatch a moment from the calls of business,
proceeded in slow procession through the old
gate into the Phœnix Park, and mounting the hill
overlooking the town, selected near its summit
a level spot on which to decide the quarrel.
The combatants stripped, and a child might[Pg 501]
have seen in the contrast presented by the
slight, lank form and limbs of the lad, and the
muscular and massive build of his veteran antagonist,
how desperate was the chance of poor
Ned Moran.
“Seconds” and “bottle-holders”—selected,
of course, for their love of the game—were appointed,
and “the fight” commenced.
I will not shock my readers with a description
of the cool-blooded butchery that followed.
The result of the combat was what any body
might have predicted. At the eleventh round,
poor Ned refused to “give in;” the brawny
pugilist, unhurt, in good wind, and pale with
concentrated, and as yet, unslaked revenge, had
the gratification of seeing his opponent seated
upon his second’s knee, unable to hold up his
head, his left arm disabled; his face a bloody,
swollen, and shapeless mass; his breast scarred
and bloody, and his whole body panting and
quivering with rage and exhaustion.
“Give in Ned, my boy,” cried more than
one of the by-standers.
“Never, never,” shrieked he, with a voice
hoarse and choking.
Time being “up,” his second placed him on
his feet again. Blinded with his own blood,
panting and staggering, he presented but a
helpless mark for the blows of his stalwart opponent.
It was plain that a touch would have
been sufficient to throw him to the earth. But
Larkin had no notion of letting him off so easily.
He closed with him without striking a blow
(the effect of which, prematurely dealt, would
have been to bring him at once to the ground,
and so put an end to the combat), and getting
his battered and almost senseless head under
his arm, fast in that peculiar “fix” known to
the fancy pleasantly by the name of “chancery,”
he held him firmly, while with monotonous and
brutal strokes, he beat his fist, as it seemed,
almost into his face. A cry of “shame” broke
from the crowd, for it was plain that the beaten
man was now insensible, and supported only
by the Herculean arm of the bully. The round
and the fight ended by his hurling him upon
the ground, falling upon him at the same time,
with his knee upon his chest.
The bully rose, wiping the perspiration from
his white face with his blood-stained hands,
but Ned lay stretched and motionless upon the
grass. It was impossible to get him upon his
legs for another round. So he was carried
down, just as he was, to the pond which then
lay close to the old Park gate, and his head
and body were washed beside it. Contrary to
the belief of all, he was not dead. He was
carried home, and after some months, to a certain
extent, recovered. But he never held up
his head again, and before the year was over
he had died of consumption. Nobody could
doubt how the disease had been induced, but
there was no actual proof to connect the cause
and effect, and the ruffian Larkin escaped the
vengeance of the law. A strange retribution,
however, awaited him.
After the death of Long Ned, he became less
quarrelsome than before, but more sullen and
reserved. Some said, “he took it to heart,”
and others, that his conscience was not at ease
about it. Be this as it may, however, his
health did not suffer by reason of his presumed
agitations, nor was his worldly prosperity marred
by the blasting curses with which poor Moran’s
enraged mother pursued him; on the contrary,
he had rather risen in the world, and obtained
regular and well-remunerated employment from
the Chief-secretary’s gardener, at the other side
of the Park. He still lived in Chapelizod,
whither, on the close of his day’s work, he used
to return across the Fifteen Acres.
It was about three years after the catastrophe
we have mentioned, and late in the autumn,
when, one night, contrary to his habit, he did
not appear at the house where he lodged, neither
had he been seen any where, during the evening,
in the village. His hours of return had
been so very regular, that his absence excited
considerable surprise, though, of course, no actual
alarm; and, at the usual hour, the house
was closed for the night, and the absent lodger
consigned to the mercy of the elements, and the
care of his presiding star. Early in the morning,
however, he was found lying in a state of
utter helplessness upon the slope immediately
overlooking the Chapelizod gate. He had been
smitten with a paralytic stroke; his right side
was dead; and it was many weeks before he
had recovered his speech sufficiently to make
himself at all understood.
He then made the following relation: he
had been detained, it appeared, later than
usual, and darkness had closed in before he
commenced his homeward walk across the Park.
It was a moonlight night, but masses of ragged
clouds were slowly drifting across the heavens.
He had not encountered a human figure, and
no sounds but the softened rush of the wind
sweeping through bushes and hollows, met his
ear. These wild and monotonous sounds, and
the utter solitude which surrounded him, did
not, however, excite any of those uneasy sensations
which are ascribed to superstition, although
he said he did feel depressed, or, in his
own phraseology, “lonesome.” Just as he
crossed the brow of the hill which shelters the
town of Chapelizod, the moon shone out for
some moments with unclouded lustre, and his
eye, which happened to wander by the shadowy
inclosures which lay at the foot of the slope,
was arrested by the sight of a human figure
climbing, with all the haste of one pursued,
over the church-yard wall, and running up the
steep ascent directly toward him. Stories of
“resurrectionists” crossed his recollection, as
he observed this suspicious-looking figure. But
he began, momentarily, to be aware, with a
sort of fearful instinct which he could not explain,
that the running figure was directing
his steps, with a sinister purpose, toward himself.
The form was that of a man with a loose[Pg 502]
coat about him, which, as he ran, he disengaged,
and as well as Larkin could see, for
the moon was again wading in clouds, threw
from him. The figure thus advanced until
within some two score yards of him; it arrested
its speed, and approached, with a loose,
swaggering gait. The moon again shone out
bright and clear, and, gracious God! what was
the spectacle before him? He saw as distinctly
as if he had been presented there in the flesh,
Ned Moran, himself, stripped naked from the
waist upward, as if for pugilistic combat, and
drawing toward him in silence. Larkin would
have shouted, prayed, cursed, fled across the
Park, but he was absolutely powerless; the apparition
stopped within a few steps, and leered
on him with a ghastly mimicry of the defiant
stare with which pugilists strive to cow one
another before combat. For a time, which he
could not so much as conjecture, he was held
in the fascination of that unearthly gaze, and
at last the thing, whatever it was, on a sudden
swaggered close up to him with extended palms.
With an impulse of horror, Larkin put out his
hand to keep the figure off, and their palms
touched—at least, so he believed—for a thrill
of unspeakable agony, running through his arm,
pervaded his entire frame, and he fell senseless
to the earth.
Though Larkin lived for many years after,
his punishment was terrible. He was incurably
maimed; and being unable to work, he was
forced, for existence, to beg alms of those who
had once feared and flattered him. He suffered,
too, increasingly, under his own horrible interpretation
of the preternatural encounter which
was the beginning of all his miseries. It was
vain to endeavor to shake his faith in the reality
of the apparition, and equally vain, as some
compassionately did, to try to persuade him
that the greeting with which his vision closed,
was intended, while inflicting a temporary trial,
to signify a compensating reconciliation.
“No, no,” he used to say, “all won’t do. I
know the meaning of it well enough; it is a
challenge to meet him in the other world—in
Hell, where I am going—that’s what it means,
and nothing else.”
And so, miserable and refusing comfort, he
lived on for some years, and then died, and
was buried in the same narrow church-yard
which contains the remains of his victim.
I need hardly say how absolute was the faith
of the honest inhabitants, at the time when I
heard the story, in the reality of the preternatural
summons which, through the portals of
terror, sickness, and misery, had summoned
Bully Larkin to his long, last home, and that,
too, upon the very ground on which he had signalized
the guiltiest triumph of his violent and
vindictive career.
I recollect another story of the preternatural
sort, which made no small sensation, some five-and-thirty
years ago, among the good gossips of
the town; and, with your leave, courteous
reader, I shall relate it.
THE SEXTON’S ADVENTURE.
Those who remember Chapelizod a quarter of
a century ago, or more, may possibly recollect
the parish sexton. Bob Martin was held much
in awe by truant boys who sauntered into the
church-yard on Sundays, to read the tombstones,
or play leap-frog over them, or climb
the ivy in search of bats or sparrows’ nests, or
peep into the mysterious aperture under the
eastern window, which opened a dim perspective
of descending steps losing themselves among
profounder darkness, where lidless coffins gaped
horribly among tattered velvet, bones, and dust,
which time and mortality had strewn there.
Of such horribly curious, and otherwise enterprising
juveniles, Bob was, of course, the special
scourge and terror. But terrible as was the
official aspect of the sexton, and repugnant as
his lank form, clothed in rusty, sable vesture,
his small, frosty visage, suspicious, gray eyes,
and rusty, brown scratch-wig, might appear to
all notions of genial frailty; it was yet true,
that Bob Martin’s severe morality sometimes
nodded, and that Bacchus did not always solicit
him in vain.
Bob had a curious mind, a memory well
stored with “merry tales,” and tales of terror.
His profession familiarized him with graves and
goblins, and his tastes with weddings, wassail,
and sly frolics of all sorts. And as his personal
recollections ran back nearly three score years
into the perspective of the village history, his
fund of local anecdote was copious, accurate,
and edifying.
As his ecclesiastical revenues were by no
means considerable, he was not unfrequently
obliged, for the indulgence of his tastes, to arts
which were, at the best, undignified.
He frequently invited himself when his entertainers
had forgotten to do so; he dropped in
accidentally upon small drinking-parties of his
acquaintance in public-houses, and entertained
them with stories, queer or terrible, from his inexhaustible
reservoir, never scrupling to accept
an acknowledgment in the shape of hot whisky-punch,
or whatever else was going.
There was at that time a certain atrabilious
publican, called Philip Slaney, established in a
shop nearly opposite the old turnpike. This
man was not, when left to himself, immoderately
given to drinking; but being naturally of
a saturnine complexion, and his spirits constantly
requiring a fillip, he acquired a prodigious
liking for Bob Martin’s company. The
sexton’s society, in fact, gradually became the
solace of his existence, and he seemed to lose
his constitutional melancholy in the fascination
of his sly jokes and marvelous stories.
This intimacy did not redound to the prosperity
or reputation of the convivial allies. Bob
Martin drank a good deal more punch than was
good for his health, or consistent with the character
of an ecclesiastical functionary. Philip
Slaney, too, was drawn into similar indulgences,
for it was hard to resist the genial seductions of
his gifted companion; and as he was obliged to[Pg 503]
pay for both, his purse was believed to have
suffered even more than his head and liver.
Be this as it may, Bob Martin had the credit
of having made a drunkard of “black Phil
Slaney”—for by this cognomen was he distinguished;
and Phil Slaney had also the reputation
of having made the sexton, if possible, a
“bigger bliggard” than ever. Under these
circumstances, the accounts of the concern opposite
the turnpike became somewhat entangled;
and it came to pass one drowsy summer
morning, the weather being at once sultry and
cloudy, that Phil Slaney went into a small back
parlor, where he kept his books, and which
commanded, through its dirty window-panes, a
full view of a dead wall, and having bolted the
door, he took a loaded pistol, and clapping the
muzzle in his mouth, blew the upper part of his
skull through the ceiling.
This horrid catastrophe shocked Bob Martin
extremely; and partly on this account, and
partly because having been, on several late
occasions, found at night in a state of abstraction,
bordering on insensibility, upon the high
road, he had been threatened with dismissal;
and, as some said, partly also because of the
difficulty of finding any body to “treat” him as
poor Phil Slaney used to do, he for a time forswore
alcohol in all its combinations, and became
an eminent example of temperance and
sobriety.
Bob observed his good resolutions, greatly to
the comfort of his wife, and the edification of
the neighborhood, with tolerable punctuality.
He was seldom tipsy, and never drunk, and
was greeted by the better part of society with
all the honors of the prodigal son.
Now it happened, about a year after the
grisly event we have mentioned, that the curate
having received, by the post, due notice of a
funeral to be consummated in the church-yard
of Chapelizod, with certain instructions respecting
the site of the grave, dispatched a summons
for Bob Martin, with a view to communicate to
that functionary these official details.
It was a lowering autumn night: piles of
lurid thunder-clouds, slowly rising from the
earth, had loaded the sky with a solemn and
boding canopy of storm. The growl of the
distant thunder was heard afar off upon the
dull, still air, and all nature seemed, as it were,
hushed and cowering under the oppressive influence
of the approaching tempest.
It was past nine o’clock when Bob, putting
on his official coat of seedy black, prepared to
attend his professional superior.
“Bobby, darlin’,” said his wife, before she
delivered the hat she held in her hand to his
keeping, “sure you won’t, Bobby, darlin’—you
won’t—you know what.”
“I don’t know what,” he retorted, smartly,
grasping at his hat.
“You won’t be throwing up the little finger,
Bobby, acushla?” she said, evading his grasp.
“Arrah, why would I, woman? there, give
me my hat, will you?”
“But won’t you promise me, Bobby darlin’—won’t
you, alanna?”
“Ay, ay, to be sure I will—why not? there,
give me my hat, and let me go.”
“Ay, but you’re not promisin’, Bobby mavourneen;
you’re not promisin’ all the time.”
“Well, divil carry me if I drink a drop till I
come back again,” said the sexton, angrily;
“will that do you? And now will you give me
my hat?”
“Here it is, darlin’,” she said, “and God
send you safe back.”
And with this parting blessing she closed the
door upon his retreating figure, for it was now
quite dark, and resumed her knitting till his
return, very much relieved; for she thought he
had of late been oftener tipsy than was consistent
with his thorough reformation, and feared
the allurements of the half dozen “publics”
which he had at that time to pass on his way
to the other end of the town.
They were still open, and exhaled a delicious
reek of whisky, as Bob glided wistfully by
them; but he stuck his hands in his pockets
and looked the other way, whistling resolutely,
and filling his mind with the image of the
curate and anticipations of his coming fee.
Thus he steered his morality safely through
these rocks of offense, and reached the curate’s
lodging in safety.
He had, however, an unexpected sick call to
attend, and was not at home, so that Bob
Martin had to sit in the hall and amuse himself
with the devil’s tattoo until his return.
This, unfortunately, was very long delayed, and
it must have been fully twelve o’clock when
Bob Martin set out upon his homeward way.
By this time the storm had gathered to a pitchy
darkness, the bellowing thunder was heard among
the rocks and hollows of the Dublin mountains,
and the pale, blue lightning shone upon the
staring fronts of the houses.
By this time, too, every door was closed; but
as Bob trudged homeward, his eye mechanically
sought the public-house which had once belonged
to Phil Slaney. A faint light was
making its way through the shutters and the
glass panes over the door-way, which made a
sort of dull, foggy halo about the front of the
house.
As Bob’s eyes had become accustomed to the
obscurity by this time, the light in question was
quite sufficient to enable him to see a man in a
sort of loose riding-coat seated upon a bench
which, at that time, was fixed under the window
of the house. He wore his hat very much over
his eyes, and was smoking a long pipe. The
outline of a glass and a quart bottle were also
dimly traceable beside him; and a large horse
saddled, but faintly discernible, was patiently
awaiting his master’s leisure.
There was something odd, no doubt, in the
appearance of a traveler refreshing himself at
such an hour in the open street; but the sexton
accounted for it easily by supposing that, on the
closing of the house for the night, he had taken[Pg 504]
what remained of his refection to the place where
he was now discussing it al fresco.
At another time Bob might have saluted the
stranger, as he passed, with a friendly “good-night;”
but, somehow, he was out of humor
and in no genial mood, and was about passing
without any courtesy of the sort, when the
stranger, without taking the pipe from his
mouth, raised the bottle, and with it beckoned
him familiarly, while, with a sort of lurch of
the head and shoulders, and at the same time
shifting his seat to the end of the bench, he
pantomimically invited him to share his seat
and his cheer. There was a divine fragrance
of whisky about the spot, and Bob half-relented;
but he remembered his promise just as he
began to waver, and said,
“No, I thank you, sir, I can’t stop to-night.”
The stranger beckoned with vehement welcome,
and pointed to the vacant place on the
seat beside him.
“I thank you for your polite offer,” said Bob,
“but it’s what I’m too late as it is, and haven’t
time to spare, so I wish you a good-night.”
The traveler jingled the glass against the neck
of the bottle, as if to intimate that he might
at least swallow a dram without losing time.
Bob was mentally quite of the same opinion;
but, though his mouth watered, he remembered
his promise, and, shaking his head with incorruptible
resolution, walked on.
The stranger, pipe in mouth, rose from his
bench, the bottle in one hand, and the glass in
the other, and followed at the sexton’s heels,
his dusky horse keeping close in his wake.
There was something suspicious and unaccountable
in this importunity.
Bob quickened his pace, but the stranger followed
close. The sexton began to feel queer,
and turned about. His pursuer was behind,
and still inviting him with impatient gestures
to taste his liquor.
“I told you before,” said Bob, who was both
angry and frightened, “that I would not taste
it, and that’s enough. I don’t want to have
any thing to say to you or your bottle; and in
God’s name,” he added, more vehemently, observing
that he was approaching still closer,
“fall back, and don’t be tormenting me this
way.”
These words, as it seemed, incensed the
stranger, for he shook the bottle with violent
menace at Bob Martin; but, notwithstanding
this gesture of defiance, he suffered the distance
between them to increase. Bob, however, beheld
him dogging him still in the distance, for
his pipe shed a wonderful red glow, which duskily
illuminated his entire figure, like a lurid atmosphere
of meteor.
“I wish the devil had his own, my boy,”
muttered the excited sexton, “and I know well
enough where you’d be.”
The next time he looked over his shoulder, to
his dismay he observed the importunate stranger
as close as ever upon his track.
“Confound you,” cried the man of skulls and
shovels, almost beside himself with rage and
horror, “what is it you want of me?”
The stranger appeared more confident, and
kept wagging his head and extending both glass
and bottle toward him as he drew near, and
Bob Martin heard the horse snorting as it followed
in the dark.
“Keep it to yourself, whatever it is, for there
is neither grace nor luck about you,” cried Bob
Martin, freezing with terror; “leave me alone,
will you.”
And he fumbled in vain among the seething
confusion of his ideas for a prayer or an exorcism.
He quickened his pace almost to a run;
he was now close to his own door, under the
impending bank by the river side.
“Let me in, let me in, for God’s sake; Molly,
open the door!” he cried, as he ran to the
threshold, and leant his back against the plank.
His pursuer confronted him upon the road; the
pipe was no longer in his mouth, but the dusky
red glow still lingered round him. He uttered
some inarticulate cavernous sounds, which were
wolfish and indescribable, while he seemed employed
in pouring out a glass from the bottle.
The sexton kicked with all his force against
the door, and cried at the same time with a despairing
voice,
“In the name of God Almighty, once for all,
leave me alone!”
His pursuer furiously flung the contents of
the bottle at Bob Martin; but, instead of fluid,
it issued out in a stream of flame, which expanded
and whirled round them, and for a moment
they were both enveloped in a faint blaze;
at the same instant a sudden gust whisked off
the stranger’s hat, and the sexton beheld that
his skull was roofless. For an instant he beheld
the gaping aperture, black and shattered,
and then he fell senseless into his own doorway,
which his affrighted wife had just unbarred.
I need hardly give my reader the key to this
most intelligible and authentic narrative. The
traveler was acknowledged by all to have been
the spectre of the suicide, called up by the Evil
One to tempt the convivial sexton into a violation
of his promise, sealed, as it was, by an imprecation.
Had he succeeded, no doubt the
dusky steed, which Bob had seen saddled in
attendance, was destined to have carried back
a double burden to the place from whence he
came.
As an attestation of the reality of this visitation,
the old thorn-tree which overhung the
doorway was found in the morning to have been
blasted with the infernal fires which had issued
from the bottle, just as if a thunderbolt had
scorched it.
The moral of the above tale is upon the surface,
apparent, and, so to speak, self-acting—a
circumstance which happily obviates the necessity
of our discussing it together. Taking
our leave, therefore, of honest Bob Martin, who
now sleeps soundly in the same solemn dormitory
where, in his day, he made so many beds
for others, I come to a legend of the Royal Irish[Pg 505]
Artillery, whose head-quarters were for so long
a time in the town of Chapelizod. I don’t
mean to say that I can not tell a great many
more stories, equally authentic and marvelous,
touching this old town; but as I may possibly
have to perform a like office for other localities,
and as Anthony Poplar is known, like Atropos,
to carry a shears, wherewith to snip across all
“yarns” which exceed reasonable bounds, I
consider it, on the whole, safer to dispatch the
traditions of Chapelizod with one tale more.
Let me, however, first give it a name; for
an author can no more dispatch a tale without
a title, than an apothecary can deliver his
physic without a label. We shall, therefore,
call it,
THE SPECTRE LOVERS.
There lived some fifteen years since in a
small and ruinous house, little better than a
hovel, an old woman who was reported to have
considerably exceeded her eightieth year, and
who rejoiced in the name of Alice, or popularly,
Ally Moran. Her society was not much courted,
for she was neither rich, nor, as the reader
may suppose, beautiful. In addition to a lean
cur and a cat, she had one human companion,
her grandson, Peter Brien, whom, with laudable
good-nature, she had supported from the period
of his orphanage down to that of my story,
which finds him in his twentieth year. Peter
was a good-natured slob of a fellow, much more
addicted to wrestling, dancing, and love-making,
than to hard work, and fonder of whisky-punch
than good advice. His grandmother had
a high opinion of his accomplishments, which,
indeed, was but natural, and also of his genius,
for Peter had of late years begun to apply his
mind to politics; and as it was plain that he
had a mortal hatred of honest labor, his grandmother
predicted, like a true fortune-teller, that
he was born to marry an heiress, and Peter
himself (who had no mind to forego his freedom
even on such terms), that he was destined to
find a pot of gold. Upon one point both were
agreed, that, being unfitted by the peculiar bias
of his genius for work, he was to acquire the
immense fortune to which his merits entitled
him by means of a pure run of good luck. This
solution of Peter’s future had the double effect
of reconciling both himself and his grandmother
to his idle courses, and also of maintaining that
even flow of hilarious spirits which made him
every where welcome, and which was, in truth,
the natural result of his consciousness of approaching
affluence.
It happened one night that Peter had enjoyed
himself to a very late hour with two or three
choice spirits near Palmerstown. They had
talked politics and love, sung songs, and told
stories, and, above all, had swallowed, in the
chastened disguise of punch, at least a pint of
good whisky, every man.
It was considerably past one o’clock when
Peter bid his companions good-by, with a sigh
and a hiccough, and, lighting his pipe, set forth
on his solitary homeward way.
The bridge of Chapelizod was pretty nearly
the midway point of his night march, and from
one cause or another his progress was rather
slow, and it was past two o’clock by the time
he found himself leaning over its old battlements,
and looking up the river, over whose
winding current and wooded banks the soft
moonlight was falling.
The cold breeze that blew lightly down the
stream was grateful to him. It cooled his
throbbing head, and he drank it in at his hot
lips. The scene, too, had, without his being
well sensible of it, a secret fascination. The
village was sunk in the profoundest slumber, not
a mortal stirring, not a sound afloat, a soft
haze covered it all, and the fairy moonlight
hovered over the entire landscape.
In a state between rumination and rapture,
Peter continued to lean over the battlements of
the old bridge, and as he did so he saw, or fancied
he saw, emerging one after another along the
river bank in the little gardens and inclosures
in the rear of the street of Chapelizod, the queerest
little white-washed huts and cabins he had
ever seen there before. They had not been there
that evening when he passed the bridge on the
way to his merry tryst. But the most remarkable
thing about it was the odd way in which
these quaint little cabins showed themselves.
First he saw one or two of them just with the
corner of his eye, and when he looked full at
them, strange to say, they faded away and disappeared.
Then another and another came in
view, but all in the same coy way, just appearing
and gone again before he could well fix his
gaze upon them; in a little while, however, they
began to bear a fuller gaze, and he found, as it
seemed to himself, that he was able by an effort
of attention to fix the vision for a longer and a
longer time, and when they waxed faint and
nearly vanished, he had the power of recalling
them into light and substance, until at last their
vacillating indistinctness became less and less,
and they assumed a permanent place in the
moonlit landscape.
“Be the hokey,” said Peter, lost in amazement,
and dropping his pipe into the river unconsciously,
“them is the quarist bits iv mud
cabins I ever seen, growing up like musharoons
in the dew of an evening, and poppin’ up here
and down again there, and up again in another
place, like so many white rabbits in a warren;
and there they stand at last as firm and fast as
if they were there from the Deluge; bedad it’s
enough to make a man a’most believe in the
fairies.”
This latter was a large concession from Peter,
who was a bit of a free-thinker, and spoke contemptuously
in his ordinary conversation of that
class of agencies.
Having treated himself to a long last stare at
these mysterious fabrics, Peter prepared to pursue
his homeward way; having crossed the
bridge and passed the mill, he arrived at the
corner of the main-street of the little town, and
casting a careless look up the Dublin road, his[Pg 506]
eye was arrested by a most unexpected spectacle.
This was no other than a column of foot-soldiers,
marching with perfect regularity toward
the village, and headed by an officer on horseback.
They were at the far side of the turnpike,
which was closed; but much to his perplexity
he perceived that they marched on
through it without appearing to sustain the
least check from that barrier.
On they came at a slow march; and what
was most singular in the matter was, that they
were drawing several cannons along with them;
some held ropes, others spoked the wheels, and
others again marched in front of the guns and
behind them, with muskets shouldered, giving a
stately character of parade and regularity to
this, as it seemed to Peter, most unmilitary
procedure.
It was owing either to some temporary defect
in Peter’s vision, or to some illusion attendant
upon mist and moon-light, or perhaps to some
other cause, that the whole procession had a
certain waving and vapory character which perplexed
and tasked his eyes not a little. It was
like the pictured pageant of a phantasmagoria
reflected upon smoke. It was as if every breath
disturbed it; sometimes it was blurred, sometimes
obliterated; now here, now there. Sometimes,
while the upper part was quite distinct,
the legs of the column would nearly fade away
or vanish outright, and then again they would
come out into clear relief, marching on with
measured tread, while the cocked hats and
shoulders grew, as it were, transparent, and all
but disappeared.
Notwithstanding these strange optical fluctuations,
however, the column continued steadily
to advance. Peter crossed the street from the
corner near the old bridge, running on tip-toe,
and with his body stooped to avoid observation,
and took up a position upon the raised foot-path
in the shadow of the houses, where, as
the soldiers kept the middle of the road, he
calculated that he might, himself undetected,
see them distinctly enough as they passed.
“What the div—, what on airth,” he muttered,
checking the irreligious ejaculation with
which he was about to start, for certain queer
misgivings were hovering about his heart, notwithstanding
the factitious courage of the whisky-bottle.
“What on airth is the mainin’ of
all this? is it the French that’s landed at last
to give us a hand and help us in airnest to this
blessed repale? If it is not them, I simply
ask who the div—, I mane who on airth are
they, for such sogers as them I never seen before
in my born days?”
By this time the foremost of them were quite
near, and truth to say, they were the queerest
soldiers he had ever seen in the course of his life.
They wore long gaiters and leather breeches,
three-cornered hats, bound with silver lace, long
blue coats, with scarlet facings and linings,
which latter were shown by a fastening which
held together the two opposite corners of the
skirt behind; and in front the breasts were in
like manner connected at a single point, where,
and below which, they sloped back, disclosing
a long-flapped waistcoat of snowy whiteness;
they had very large, long cross-belts, and wore
enormous pouches of white leather hung extraordinarily
low, and on each of which a little
silver star was glittering. But what struck
him as most grotesque and outlandish in their
costume was their extraordinary display of shirt-frill
in front, and of ruffle about their wrists,
and the strange manner in which their hair
was frizzed out and powdered under their hats,
and clubbed up into great rolls behind. But
one of the party was mounted. He rode a tall
white horse, with high action and arching neck;
he had a snow-white feather in his three-cornered
hat, and his coat was shimmering all
over with a profusion of silver lace. From
these circumstances Peter concluded that he
must be the commander of the detachment, and
examined him as he passed attentively. He
was a slight, tall man, whose legs did not half
fill his leather breeches, and he appeared to be
at the wrong side of sixty. He had a shrunken,
weather-beaten, mulberry-colored face, carried
a large black patch over one eye, and turned
neither to the right nor to the left, but rode
right on at the head of his men with grim,
military inflexibility.
The countenance of these soldiers, officers as
well as men, seemed all full of trouble, and, so
to speak, scared and wild. He watched in
vain for a single contented or comely face.
They had, one and all, a melancholy and hang-dog
look; and as they passed by, Peter fancied
that the air grew cold and thrilling.
He had seated himself upon a stone bench,
from which, staring with all his might, he gazed
upon the grotesque and noiseless procession as
it filed by him. Noiseless it was; he could
neither hear the jingle of accoutrements, the
tread of feet, nor the rumble of the wheels;
and when the old colonel turned his horse a
little, and made as though he were giving the
word of command, and a trumpeter, with a
swollen blue nose and white feather fringe round
his hat, who was walking beside him, turned
about and put his bugle to his lips, still Peter
heard nothing, although it was plain the sound
had reached the soldiers, for they instantly
changed their front to three abreast.
“Botheration!” muttered Peter, “is it deaf
I’m growing?”
But that could not be, for he heard the sighing
of the breeze and the rush of the neighboring
Liffey plain enough.
“Well,” said he, in the same cautious key,
“by the piper, this bangs Banagher fairly!
It’s either the Frinch army that’s in it, come to
take the town iv Chapelizod by surprise, an’
makin’ no noise for feard iv wakenin’ the inhabitants;
or else it’s—it’s—what it’s—somethin’
else. But, tundher-an-ouns, what’s gone
wid Fitzpatrick’s shop across the way?”
The brown, dingy stone building at the opposite[Pg 507]
side of the street looked newer and cleaner
than he had been used to see it; the front door
of it stood open, and a sentry, in the same grotesque
uniform, with shouldered musket, was
pacing noiselessly to and fro before it. At the
angle of this building, in like manner, a wide
gate (of which Peter had no recollection whatever)
stood open, before which, also, a similar
sentry was gliding, and into this gateway the
whole column gradually passed, and Peter finally
lost sight of it.
“I’m not asleep; I’m not dhramin’,” said
he, rubbing his eyes, and stamping slightly on
the pavement, to assure himself that he was
wide awake. “It is a quare business, whatever
it is; an’ it’s not alone that, but every thing
about the town looks strange to me. There’s
Tresham’s house new painted, bedad, an’ them
flowers in the windies! An’ Delany’s house,
too, that had not a whole pane of glass in it
this morning, and scarce a slate on the roof of
it! It is not possible it’s what it’s dhrunk I
am. Sure there’s the big tree, and not a leaf
of it changed since I passed, and the stars overhead,
all right. I don’t think it is in my eyes
it is.”
And so looking about him, and every moment
finding or fancying new food for wonder, he
walked along the pavement, intending, without
further delay, to make his way home.
But his adventures for the night were not
concluded. He had nearly reached the angle
of the short lane that leads up to the church,
when for the first time he perceived that an
officer, in the uniform he had just seen, was
walking before, only a few yards in advance of
him.
The officer was walking along at an easy,
swinging gait, and carried his sword under his
arm, and was looking down on the pavement
with an air of reverie.
In the very fact that he seemed unconscious
of Peter’s presence, and disposed to keep his reflections
to himself, there was something reassuring.
Besides, the reader must please to remember
that our hero had a quantum sufficit of
good punch before his adventure commenced,
and was thus fortified against those qualms
and terrors under which, in a more reasonable
state of mind, he might not impossibly have
sunk.
The idea of the French invasion revived in
full power in Peter’s fuddled imagination, as he
pursued the nonchalant swagger of the officer.
“Be the powers iv Moll Kelly, I’ll ax him
what it is,” said Peter, with a sudden accession
of rashness. “He may tell me or not, as he
plases, but he can’t be offinded, anyhow.”
With this reflection having inspired himself,
Peter cleared his voice, and began,
“Captain,” said he, “I ax your pardon, captain,
an’ maybe you’d be so condescendin’ to
my ignorance as to tell me, if it’s plaisin’ to yer
honor, whether your honor is not a Frinchman,
if it’s plaisin’ to you.”
This he asked, not thinking that, had it been
as he suspected, not one word of his question, in
all probability, would have been intelligible to
the person he addressed. He was, however,
understood, for the officer answered him in English,
at the same time slackening his pace, and
moving a little to the side of the pathway, as if
to invite his interrogator to take his place beside
him.
“No; I am an Irishman,” he answered.
“I humbly thank your honor,” said Peter,
drawing nearer—for the affability and the nativity
of the officer encouraged him—”but maybe
your honor is in the sarvice of the King of
France?”
“I serve the same king as you do,” he answered,
with a sorrowful significance which
Peter did not comprehend at the time; and,
interrogating in turn, he asked, “But what
calls you forth at this hour of the day?”
“The day, your honor!—the night, you
mane.”
“It was always our way to turn night into
day, and we keep to it still,” remarked the soldier.
“But, no matter, come up here to my
house; I have a job for you, if you wish to earn
some money easily. I live here.”
As he said this, he beckoned authoritatively
to Peter, who followed almost mechanically at
his heels, and they turned up a little lane near
the old Roman Catholic chapel, at the end of
which stood, in Peter’s time, the ruins of a tall,
stone-built house.
Like every thing else in the town, it had suffered
a metamorphosis. The stained and ragged
walls were now erect, perfect, and covered
with pebble-dash; window-panes glittered coldly
in every window; the green hall-door had a
bright brass knocker on it. Peter did not know
whether to believe his previous or his present
impressions; seeing is believing, and Peter could
not dispute the reality of the scene. All the
records of his memory seemed but the images
of a tipsy dream. In a trance of astonishment
and perplexity, therefore, he submitted himself
to the chances of his adventure.
The door opened, the officer beckoned with a
melancholy air of authority to Peter, and entered.
Our hero followed into a sort of hall,
which was very dark, but he was guided by the
steps of the soldier, and in silence they ascended
the stairs. The moonlight, which shone in
at the lobbies, showed an old, dark wainscoting,
and a heavy, oak bannister. They passed by
closed doors at different landing-places, but all
was dark and silent as, indeed, became that
late hour of the night.
Now they ascended to the topmost floor. The
captain paused for a minute at the nearest door,
and, with a heavy groan, pushing it open, entered
the room. Peter remained at the threshold.
A slight female form in a sort of loose,
white robe, and with a great deal of dark hair
hanging loosely about her, was standing in the
middle of the floor, with her back toward them.
The soldier stopped short before he reached
her, and said, in a voice of great anguish, “Still[Pg 508]
the same, sweet bird—sweet bird! still the
same.” Whereupon, she turned suddenly, and
threw her arms about the neck of the officer,
with a gesture of fondness and despair, and her
frame was agitated as if by a burst of sobs.
He held her close to his breast in silence; and
honest Peter felt a strange terror creep over him,
as he witnessed these mysterious sorrows and
endearments.
“To-night, to-night—and then ten years
more—ten long years—another ten years.”
The officer and the lady seemed to speak
these words together; her voice mingled with
his in a musical and fearful wail, like a distant
summer wind, in the dead hour of night, wandering
through ruins. Then he heard the officer
say, alone, in a voice of anguish,
“Upon me be it all, forever, sweet birdie,
upon me.”
And again they seemed to mourn together in
the same soft and desolate wail, like sounds of
grief heard from a great distance.
Peter was thrilled with horror, but he was
also under a strange fascination; and an intense
and dreadful curiosity held him fast.
The moon was shining obliquely into the
room, and through the window Peter saw the
familiar slopes of the Park, sleeping mistily under
its shimmer. He could also see the furniture
of the room with tolerable distinctness—the
old balloon-backed chairs, a four-post bed in
a sort of recess, and a rack against the wall,
from which hung some military clothes and
accoutrements; and the sight of all these homely
objects reassured him somewhat, and he could
not help feeling unspeakably curious to see the
face of the girl whose long hair was streaming
over the officer’s epaulet.
Peter, accordingly, coughed, at first slightly,
and afterward more loudly, to recall her from
her reverie of grief; and, apparently, he succeeded;
for she turned round, as did her companion,
and both, standing hand-in-hand, looked
upon him fixedly. He thought he had never
seen such large, strange eyes in all his life; and
their gaze seemed to chill the very air around
him, and arrest the pulses of his heart. An
eternity of misery and remorse was in the shadowy
faces that looked upon him.
If Peter had taken less whisky by a single
thimbleful, it is probable that he would have
lost heart altogether before these figures, which
seemed every moment to assume a more marked
and fearful, though hardly definable contrast to
ordinary human shapes.
“What is it you want with me?” he stammered.
“To bring my lost treasure to the church-yard,”
replied the lady, in a silvery voice of
more than mortal desolation.
The word “treasure” revived the resolution
of Peter, although a cold sweat was covering
him, and his hair was bristling with horror; he
believed, however, that he was on the brink of
fortune, if he could but command nerve to brave
the interview to its close.
“And where,” he gasped, “is it hid—where
will I find it?”
They both pointed to the sill of the window,
through which the moon was shining at the far
end of the room, and the soldier said:
“Under that stone.”
Peter drew a long breath, and wiped the cold
dew from his face, preparatory to passing to the
window, where he expected to secure the reward
of his protracted terrors. But looking steadfastly
at the window, he saw the faint image of a new-born
child sitting upon the sill in the moonlight
with its little arms stretched toward him, and
a smile so heavenly as he never beheld before.
At sight of this, strange to say, his heart entirely
failed him, he looked on the figures that
stood near, and beheld them gazing on the infantine
form with a smile so guilty and distorted,
that he felt as if he were entering alive among
the scenery of hell, and shuddering, he cried in
an irrepressible agony of horror:
“I’ll have nothing to say with you, and
nothing to do with you; I don’t know what
yez are or what yez want iv me, but let me go
this minute, every one of yez, in the name of
God.”
With these words there came a strange rumbling
and sighing about Peter’s ears; he lost
sight of every thing, and felt that peculiar and
not unpleasant sensation of falling softly, that
sometimes supervenes in sleep, ending in a dull
shock. After that he had neither dream nor
consciousness till he wakened, chill and stiff,
stretched between two piles of old rubbish,
among the black and roofless walls of the ruined
house.
We need hardly mention that the village had
put on its wonted air of neglect and decay, or
that Peter looked around him in vain for traces
of those novelties which had so puzzled and
distracted him upon the previous night.
“Ay, ay,” said his old mother, removing her
pipe, as he ended his description of the view from
the bridge, “sure enough I remember myself,
when I was a slip of a girl, these little white
cabins among the gardens by the river side.
The artillery sogers that was married, or had
not room in the barracks, used to be in them,
but they’re all gone long ago.”
“The Lord be marciful to us!” she resumed,
when he had described the military procession,
“it’s often I seen the regiment marchin’ into
the town, jist as you saw it last night, acushla.
Oh, voch, but it makes my heart sore to think
iv them days; they were pleasant times, sure
enough; but is not it terrible, avick, to think it’s
what it was, the ghost of the rigiment you seen?
The Lord betune us an’ harm, for it was nothing
else, as sure as I’m sittin’ here.”
When he mentioned the peculiar physiognomy
and figure of the old officer who rode at the head
of the regiment—
“That,” said the old crone, dogmatically,
“was ould Colonel Grimshaw, the Lord presarve
us! he’s buried in the church-yard iv
Chapelizod, and well I remember him, when I[Pg 509]
was a young thing, an’ a cross ould floggin’
fellow he was wid the men, an’ a devil’s boy
among the girls—rest his soul!”
“Amen!” said Peter; “it’s often I read his
tombstone myself; but he’s a long time dead.”
“Sure, I tell you he died when I was no more
nor a slip iv a girl—the Lord betune us and
harm!”
“I’m afeard it is what I’m not long for this
world myself, afther seeing such a sight as that,”
said Peter, fearfully.
“Nonsinse, avourneen,” retorted his grandmother,
indignantly, though she had herself
misgivings on the subject; “sure there was
Phil Doolan, the ferryman, that seen black
Ann Scanlan in his own boat, and what harm
ever kem of it?”
Peter proceeded with his narrative, but when
he came to the description of the house, in which
his adventure had had so sinister a conclusion,
the old woman was at fault.
“I know the house and the ould walls well,
an’ I can remember the time there was a
roof on it, and the doors an’ windows in it, but
it had a bad name about being haunted, but by
who, or for what, I forget intirely.”
“Did you ever hear was there gold or silver
there?” he inquired.
“No, no, avick, don’t be thinking about the
likes; take a fool’s advice, and never go next
or near them ugly black walls again the longest
day you have to live; an’ I’d take my davy, it’s
what it’s the same word the priest himself ‘ud
be afther sayin’ to you if you wor to ax his
riverence consarnin’ it, for it’s plain to be seen
it was nothing good you seen there, and there’s
neither luck nor grace about it.”
Peter’s adventure made no little noise in the
neighborhood, as the reader may well suppose;
and a few evenings after it, being on an errand
to old Major Vandeleur, who lived in a snug
old-fashioned house, close by the river, under a
perfect bower of ancient trees, he was called on
to relate the story in the parlor.
The major was, as I have said, an old man;
he was small, lean, and upright, with a mahogany
complexion, and a wooden inflexibility of
face; he was a man, besides, of few words, and
if he was old, it follows plainly that his mother
was older still. Nobody could guess or tell how
old, but it was admitted that her own generation
had long passed away, and that she had
not a competitor left. She had French blood in
her veins, and although she did not retain her
charms quite so well as Ninon de l’Enclos, she
was in full possession of all her mental activity,
and talked quite enough for herself and the major.
“So, Peter,” she said, “you have seen the
dear, old Royal Irish again in the streets of
Chapelizod. Make him a tumbler of punch,
Frank; and Peter, sit down, and while you take
it let us have the story.”
Peter accordingly, seated near the door, with
a tumbler of the nectarian stimulant steaming
beside him, proceeded with marvelous courage,
considering they had no light but the uncertain
glare of the fire, to relate with minute particularity
his awful adventure. The old lady listened
at first with a smile of good-natured incredulity;
her cross-examination touching the drinking-bout
at Palmerstown had been teasing, but as the
narrative proceeded she became attentive, and
at length absorbed, and once or twice she uttered
ejaculations of pity or awe. When it was over,
the old lady looked with a somewhat sad and
stern abstraction on the table, patting her cat
assiduously meanwhile, and then suddenly looking
upon her son, the major, she said,
“Frank, as sure as I live he has seen the
wicked Captain Devereux.”
The major uttered an inarticulate expression
of wonder.
“The house was precisely that he has described.
I have told you the story often, as I
heard it from your dear grandmother, about the
poor young lady he ruined, and the dreadful
suspicion about the little baby. She, poor thing,
died in that house heart-broken, and you know
he was shot shortly after in a duel.”
This was the only light that Peter ever received
respecting his adventure. It was supposed,
however, that he still clung to the hope
that treasure of some sort was hidden about
the old house, for he was often seen lurking
about its walls, and at last his fate overtook
him, poor fellow, in the pursuit; for climbing
near the summit one day, his holding gave way,
and he fell upon the hard uneven ground, fracturing
a leg and a rib, and after a short interval
died, and he, like the other heroes of these true
tales, lies buried in the little church-yard of
Chapelizod.
A MORNING WITH MORITZ RETZSCH.
BY MRS. S.C. HALL.
At Dresden we enjoyed the advantage of
friendly intercourse with one who is honored
as much for his virtues as his talents, and
whom it is a gratification to name—Professor
Vogel von Vogelstein, whose latest work decorates
a new church at Leipzig, designed by the
estimable and highly gifted Professor Heidelhoff
of Nuremberg. The simplicity of life of the
great German masters, is very striking; they
care nothing for display, except that upon their
canvas, or their walls. One of the great secrets
of their success is their earnestness of purpose.
Professor Vogel seldom leaves his studio except
to render courtesy to friend or stranger: and
it is happy for those who have the privilege of
his acquaintance, to know that such labors of
love draw him frequently forth. As yet, years
have not diminished the ardor with which he
works—respected and beloved by all who know
him. It was a true pleasure to sit in his studio,
and converse with him; not only about Art,
but about England; where he spent some time
in communion with Wilkie, and Callcott, and
Lawrence, and others, who, though passed away,
have left immortalities behind them.
While conversing with Professor Vogel one[Pg 510]
morning we expressed an earnest wish to see
Moritz Retzsch—who had so wonderfully embodied
the conceptions of Goethe, of Shakspeare,
and of Schiller; his extraordinary powers of invention
and description, with a few strokes of
his pencil, had rendered him an object of the
deepest interest to us, many years ago when an
artist friend, now dead and gone, first made
him known to us; and although he resided we
had been told, “a long way out of Dresden,”
we resolved, if we could, to visit him at his
home. It was therefore very pleasant when
Professor Vogel offered to accompany us himself,
and present us to the great artist. In the
evening, as we stood on the noble bridge that
spans the rapid Elbe, a summer-house crowning
one of the distant vine-clad hills, was pointed
out to us as belonging to him whom we so much
desired to know.
“His dwelling,” said our friend, “is directly
below that hill, and he resides on his paternal
acres; his father’s vineyards are as green as
ever; and the artist’s love of nature, is fostered
amid its beauties.” Nothing could be
more charming than the scene. We had left
the Bruhl Terrace crowded with company, driven
away from its music and society by the clouds
of tobacco smoke which wrap the Germans in
an elysium peculiarly “their own;” but the
music was softened by distance, into sweeter
harmony. The sun was setting, warming the
pale green of the vineyards into autumnal richness,
and casting delicious tints upon the undulating
waters; the atmosphere was so pure,
so free from what sad experience teaches us to
consider the natural vapors of city life, that the
spires and public buildings looked as if carved
in ivory; the mighty river swept freely on, its
strong current hopelessly contending with the
massive masonry of the bridge; one or two
steamers were puffing their way from some of
the distant villages; and a party near the shore
were moving their oars, rather than rowing,
singing what sounded to us like a round and
chorus, in that perfect tune and time, where the
voices seem as one; twilight came down without
any haze, so that the range of hills was still
visible, and still we fancied we saw the Pavilion
of Moritz Retzsch. Our friend told us he was
born at Dresden in 1779, and had never visited
the distant schools, nor wandered far from his
native city; in early childhood he manifested a
talent for Art; modeling in clay, carving in
wood, and exercising his imitative, as well as
his imaginative powers, by drawing with any
thing, or upon any thing, whatever he saw or
fancied. He never intended to become an
artist; he had not received what is called “an
artistic education.” He looked at and loved
whatever was beautiful in nature, and copied
it without an effort. At that period, the profession
of Art would have been all too tranquil
a dream for his boyhood to enjoy; nay, his
“hot youth,” ardent and desiring excitement,
full of visions of adventure and liberty, had, at
one time, nearly induced him to become a
huntsman, or forester—(one of the jägers made
familiar to us on the stage, in green hunting
dress and buckskin, with belt and bugle)—in
the Royal service; a little consideration, a few
speaking facts, however, taught him that this
project would not have secured him the freedom
he coveted so much; and, most fortunately,
when he entered his twentieth year, he determined
on the course which has given both to
himself and to the world, such delicious pleasure.
He abandoned himself to Art, and has
ever since exercised it with a devotion and enthusiasm,
a sacred freedom, that, despite his
excitable temperament, has rendered him happy.
Such was our friend’s information concerning
the author of those wonderful “outlines”
which have been the admiration of the world
for nearly half a century, and are scarcely
better known in Germany than they are in England.
“Nothing,” he added, “could surpass the
ardor with which the young artist labored. His
soul was animated by the grand conceptions of
Goethe and Schiller; his ears drank in the
beauty and sublimity of their poetry; and he
lived in the mingled communion of great men,
and the lovely and softened beauty of Saxon
fatherland.” In 1828, he was nominated Professor
of Painting in the Dresden Royal Academy;
but fame, much as he sought and loved
it, did not fill his soul. The older he grew, the
more his great heart yearned for that continuous
sympathy with some object to comprehend and
appreciate his noble pursuit, and to value him,
as he believed he deserved. He coveted affection
as much as fame.
One of the dwellers near his father’s vineyard
was rich in the possession of a little daughter
of extraordinary grace and beauty. She
inspired the artist with some of his brightest
conceptions of that peculiar infantine loveliness
which his pencil has rendered with such eloquent
fidelity.
The child crept into his heart—the young
girl took possession of it. The poet-painter
made no effort to dispossess her; on the contrary,
he increased her power by giving her an
excellent education; and when she had arrived
at the age of womanhood, he made her his wife.
Their married years have numbered many. One
may be considered old, the other is no longer
young; but their happiness has been, as far as
it can be, without a shadow. Although they
have no children, they do not seem to have desired
them. Some gallant husbands pen a sonnet
to a wife on her birth-day, or the anniversary
of her marriage, but Moritz Retzsch sketches
his birthday ode, in which the beauty and
worth of his cherished wife, his own tenderness
and happiness, their mingled hopes and prayers,
are penciled in forms the most poetic and expressive.
From year to year these designs
have enriched the album of Madame Retzsch;
and never was a more noble tribute laid at the
feet of any lady-love, even in the times of old
romance!
Professor Vogel had promised that Moritz
Retzsch should show us his drawings; and we
were full of hope that we should also have the
privilege of seeing this Album. The sunset had
given promise of—
And it was with no small delight that, on our
return to our hotel, we found an hour had been
fixed for our visit to the village, or Weinberg,
and that Professor Vogel would be ready to
accompany us at the time appointed.
We were prepared to expect allegorical designs;
and Mrs. Jameson has long since converted
us to a belief in the great power and
benefit of symbolic painting, particularly on the
minds and imaginations of the young. “To
address the moral faculties through the medium
of the imagination,” says this distinguished
lady, “for any permanent or beneficial purpose,
is the last thing thought of by our legislators
and educators. Fable, except as a mere nomenclature
of heathen gods and goddesses, is
banished from the nursery, and allegory in
Poetry and the Fine Arts is out of fashion;”
and then she mingles her ink with gall, and
adds, “it is deemed the child’s play of the intellect,
fit only for the days of Dante, or Spenser,
or Michael Angelo.”
Wearied with pleasure, we slept; but what
we had seen and what we anticipated rendered
repose impossible. The morning was bright,
and warm, and sunny; and when our kind
friend entered the carriage, we felt assured of a
day’s enjoyment. We soon skirted the city,
and found ourselves rolling in sight of the river;
the road was overshadowed by trees, which had
not yielded a leaf to the insidious advances of
autumn; the villas—not certainly with shaven
lawns and carefully-tended gardens, were picturesque
and charming from the novelty of their
construction, and not the less striking because
the foliage was left to twine about them in unconstrained
luxuriance. We had become accustomed
to the wicker wagons, and the heavy
oxen, and slow paces of men and horses; but
there is something always to admire in the
broad faces of the well-built Saxons, and the
frank and kindly expression of their clear blue
eyes.
We soon reached the narrow roads that wound
along the base of the vine-clad hills, rising so
abruptly as to form terrace after terrace, until
they achieved the topmost height. Nothing
can be more delightful than the situation of the
houses at the foot of these hills, commanding,
as they do, the whole of the rich valley in which
Dresden is placed. “They call it Paradise,”
said our kind companion; “and truly it deserves
the name.”
It was positively refreshing to hear how Professor
Vogel delighted in extolling Professor
Retzsch. His eulogiums were so warm from
the heart, and the desire to do his friend service
so sincere, that we honored him more than ever.
At last we paused at the garden-gate of the
cottage-house of the illustrator of Faust, and
entered. Wide-spreading trees overshadowed
the path which led along the side of the house
to a sort of stone verandah, formed by the upper
story projecting over the lower, and supported
by rude stone pillars. At the further end were
stairs leading to the living-rooms; and down
these stairs came a gentleman who must have
riveted attention wherever seen. His figure
was somewhat short and massive, and his dress
not of the most modern fashion; yet the head
was magnificent. His whole appearance recalled
Cuvier to us so forcibly, that we instantly
murmured the name of the great naturalist;
but when his clear wild blue eyes beamed their
welcome, and his lips parted into a smile to
give it words, we were even more strongly reminded
of Professor Wilson; in each, a large,
well-developed head, masculine features, a broad
and high forehead, a mouth strongly expressive
of a combination of generosity and force, bespoke
the careful thinker and acute observer; and in
both, the hair, “sable silvered,” seemed to have
been left to the wild luxuriance of nature. He
preceded us to the drawing-room—an uncarpeted
chamber, furnished with old-fashioned
German simplicity. Several birthday garlands
were hung upon the walls. There were three
doors opening into the apartment, and a long
sofa extending along one of the sides; this sofa
was canopied by ivy, growing in pots at either
end, and entwined round a delicate framework.
In Heidelhoff’s house, at Nüremberg, we had
seen wreaths of ivy growing round the window-curtains
in a peculiarly graceful manner; and
at Berlin, in the costly and beautiful dwelling
of the admirable sculptor Wichmann, the door
leading from the dining into the billiard-room—where
Mendelssohn delighted to play while
Jenny Lind sat by and sung, enjoying, as she
always does, the enjoyment of others—that
door is trellised with ivy, the trellis being formed
of light bamboo, and the foliage contrasting
charmingly with the color of the trellis. The
dust of our carpets, perhaps, prevents the introduction
of this charming ornament generally
into our rooms; but it is difficult to conceive
how much this simple loan from nature may be
made to enrich the interiors of our dwellings.
Nothing can be more frank and cordial than
Retzsch’s manner, mingling, as it does, much
simplicity with promptness and decision. After
the lapse of a few minutes, the servant who had
opened the gate brought in a couple of easels,
and upon them the artist placed two paintings;
both exquisitely drawn and designed, but so
unlike what we had expected in color, that for
a moment we felt disappointed. Our enthusiasm
and admiration however, soon revived;
and when, shortly afterward, he conducted us
into an inner room, and, having seated us with
due formality, in a great chair, opposite a little
table, produced a portfolio of drawings, the kind
face of Professor Vogel was illumined: “Ah!”
he exclaimed, “now you will be delighted. I
have brought many to my friend’s studio; I
have looked at these drawings over and over[Pg 512]
again, yet each time I see something to admire
anew; there is always a discovery to be made—some
allegory, half hidden under a rose-leaf;
some wise and playful satire, peeping beneath
the wing of a Cupid, or from the fardel of a
traveler. What a pity you do not understand
German, that you might hear him read those
exquisite lyrics, beautiful as the sonnets of your
own Shakspeare, or Wordsworth—but I will
interpret—I will interpret.”
And so he did—with considerate patience:
there we sat turning over page after page of the
most exquisite fancies; the overflowings not
only of the purest and most brilliant imagination,
but of the deepest tenderness and exalted
independence. The allegories of Moritz Retzsch,
are not of the “hieroglyphic caste,” such as
roused the indignation of Horace Walpole; there
were no sentimental Hopes supported by anchors:
no fat-cheeked Fames puffing noiseless trumpets;
no common-place Deaths, with dilapidated
hour-glasses; they were triumphs of pure Art,
conveying a poetical idea, a moral or religious
truth, a brilliant satire, brilliant and sharp as
a cutting diamond, by “graphical representation;”
each subject was a bit of the choicest
lyric poetry, or an epigram, in which a single
idea or sentiment had been illustrated and embodied,
giving “a local habitation,” a name, a
history, in the smallest compass, and in the
most intelligible and attractive form.
With what delight we turned over these
matchless drawings, many of them little more
than outlines, yet so full of meaning—pausing
between each, to glance at the face of the
interpreter; though so distinctly was the idea
conveyed, that there needed none; only it was
such a rare delight to hear him tell his meaning
in his own full sounding tongue, his face expressing
all he wished to say, before the words were
spoken.
We could have lingered over that portfolio
for hours, and like Professor Vogel have found
something new at each inspection of the same
drawing; but the artist seemed to grow gently
impatient to show us his wife’s Album—the
book of which we had heard so much on the
previous evening; there it was, carefully cased
and covered—and before he opened it, he explained,
with smiling lips, that on each of
Madame Retzsch’s birthdays, he had presented
to her a drawing expressive of his devotion, his
faith in her virtues, or the hopes or disappointments
to which the destiny of life had subjected
them. However delicate and endearing may
be the love of youth, with it there is always
associated a dread that it may not endure until
the end—that the world may tarnish or destroy
it; that,
may be the herald of harshness and of estrangement;
but when, after a lapse of accumulated
years, Cupid folds his wings without the loss of
a single feather, and laughs at his arch-enemy
“Time,” the sunshine of the picture creates an
atmosphere of happiness that excites the best
sympathies of our nature. While he descanted
on these results of his luxuriant and overflowing
imagination and affection, never was genius
more thoroughly love-inspired; never, as we had
heard, did poet pen more exquisite birthday
odes, than were framed by the tender and eloquent
pencil of Moritz Retzsch on the birthdays
of his wife.
We did not feel it to be a defect in the graphic
allegories, so rich and varied in thought and
expression, that they required, or rather received,
the eloquent explanations, of their great originator;
the scene around that little table was in
exquisite harmony; Professor Vogel’s expressions
of delight were as enthusiastic as our own;
he repeatedly said that a visit to his old friend
was a renewal of his own youth; he hailed the
precious Album with as much pleasure as ourselves,
and reveled in the poetry and originality
of its illustrations, with a freshness of feeling
supposed only to belong to the early years of
life.
We can not remember that Retzsch sat down
once during our long visit; he was standing or
moving about, the entire time, and frequently
passed his fingers through the masses of his
long gray hair, so that it assumed most peculiar
styles; but nothing could detract from the picturesque
magnificence of his noble head. His
restlessness was certainly peculiar, he passed
and repassed into the room where his precious
drawings were scattered in such rich profusion,
returning again and again to the window, enjoying
our pleasure, the expression of his face varying
so eloquently and honestly, that a young
child could have read his thoughts: and then
the indescribable brightness of that face; stormy,
it no doubt could be at times, but the thunder
would have been as nothing to the lightning.
The great artist seemed as curious about
England as a country child is about London;
indeed the mingling of simplicity and wisdom,
is one of the strongest phases in his character;
so gigantic, and yet so delicate, in Art; so full
of the rarest knowledge; animated by an unsurpassable
imagination; proud of the distinction
his talents command, and yet of a noble
and heroic independence which secures universal
respect. The artist and his wife accompanied
us to the gate which was soon to shut us out of
“Paradise;” and, amply gratified as we were
with our visit and its results, we felt that there
was still so much more to say and to see, that
the past hours appeared like winged moments,
reminding us how—
That only treads on flowers.”
It seemed as though the gate had closed upon
an old friend, instead of upon one seen for so
brief a space, and never perhaps to be met
with again in this world. One of the dreams
of a life-time had been fully realized. We had
paid Moritz Retzsch the involuntary compliment,
of forgetting the celebrity of the artist,
in the warmth of our admiration of the man.
The gate was closed, and we were driving[Pg 513]
rapidly toward Dresden—the scenery softened
and mellowed by the gray and purply tone which
follows a golden sunset. Yes, we felt as if we
had parted from a friend; and surely the sacred
lovingness we bear to those—honored though
unseen—who have been as friends within our
homes, dispersing by the power of their genius
all trace, for a time, of the fret and turmoil of
the busy world; soothing our sorrows; teaching
us how to endure, and how to triumph; or
enriching our minds by that Art-knowledge,
which, in the holiness of its beauty, is only
second to the wisdom “which cometh from
above;”—surely a higher tribute than either
gratitude or admiration, is that of placing them
within our hearts, there to remain until the end;
amid the good, the beautiful, the true, and the
beloved of life itself.
THE QUEEN’S TOBACCO-PIPE.
We have seen pipes of all sorts and sizes in
our time. In Germany, where the finest
cnaster is but twenty-pence a pound, and excellent
leaf-tobacco only five-pence, we have
seen pipes that resembled actual furnaces compared
with the general race of pipes, and have
known a man smoke out half a pound of cnaster
and drink a gallon of beer at a sitting. But
this is perfectly pigmy work when compared
with the royal pipe and consumptive tobacco
power of Victoria of England. The queen’s pipe
is, beyond all controversy—for we have seen it—equal
to any other thousand pipes that can
be produced from the pipial stores of this smoking
world. She has not only an attendant to
present it whenever she may call for it, but his
orders are to have it always in the most admirable
smoking state—always lighted, without
regard to the quantity of tobacco it may consume;
and, accordingly, her pipe is constantly
kept smoking day and night without a moment’s
intermission, and there are, besides the grand
pipe-master, a number of attendants incessantly
employed in seeking the most suitable tobacco,
and bringing it to the grand-master. There is
no species of tobacco which the queen has not
in her store-room. Shag, pig-tail, Cavendish,
Manilla, Havanna, cigars, cheroots, negrohead,
every possible species of nicotian, she gives a
trial to, by way of variety. A single cigar she
holds in as much contempt as a lion would a
fly by way of mouthful. We have seen her
grand-master drop whole handfuls of Havannas
at once into her pipe, and after them as many
Cubas.
It may abate the wonder of the reader at this
stupendous smoking power of the queen, if we
admit, as must, indeed, have become apparent
in the course of our remarks, that the queen
performs her smoking, as she does many of her
other royal acts, by the hands of her servants.
In truth, to speak candidly, the queen never
smokes at all, except through her servants.
And this will appear very likely, when we describe
the actual size of her royal pipe. It is,
indeed of most imperial dimensions. The head
alone is so large, that while its heel rests on the
floor of her cellar, its top reaches out of the
roof. We speak a literal fact, as any one who
procures an order for the purpose may convince
himself by actual inspection. We are sure that
the quantity of tobacco which is required to supply
it, must amount to some tons in the year.
Nay, so considerable is it, that ships are employed
specially to bring over this tobacco, and
these ships have a dock of one acre in extent at
the port of London entirely for their exclusive
reception. In a word, the Queen’s Tobacco-pipe,
its dimensions, its attendance, its supply
and consumption of tobacco, are without any
parallel in any age or any nation.
If we have raised any wonder in the breasts
of our readers, we shall not diminish that wonder
by some further explanations regarding this
extraordinary pipe; if we have raised any incredulity,
what we are now about to add will at
once extinguish it.
The Queen’s Tobacco-pipe, then, is a furnace
built in the very centre of the great Tobacco
Warehouse at the London Docks. This furnace
is kept for the purpose of consuming all the
damaged tobacco which comes into port. As
the warehouse is the Queen’s Warehouse, the
furnace is really termed the Queen’s Pipe; and
all that we have related of it is literally true,
and is, in itself and all the circumstances connected
with it, one of the most remarkable
things in this country.
If any one would form any thing like an adequate
conception of the wonders of London, and
of the power and wealth of this country, he
should pay a visit to the London Docks. After
having traversed the extent, and amazed himself
at the myriad population, the intense activity,
the stupendous affluence, and the endless
variety of works going on in this capital of the
globe, he will, on arriving at the Docks, feel a
fresh and boundless astonishment. From near
the Tower all the way to Blackwall, a distance
of four miles, he will find it a whole world of
docks. The mass of shipping, the extent of
vast warehouses, many of them five and seven
stories high, all crowded with ponderous heaps
of merchandise from every region of the globe,
have nothing like it besides in the world, and
never have had. The enormous wealth here
collected is perfectly overwhelming to the imagination.
If the spectator first enter St. Katherine’s
Docks, he finds them occupying twenty-three
acres, with water capable of accommodating
one hundred and twenty ships, and warehouses
of holding one hundred and ten thousand tons
of goods; the capital of the company alone exceeding
two millions of pounds. Proceeding to the
London Docks, properly so called, there he will
find an extent of more than one hundred acres,
offering water for five hundred ships, and warehouse
room for two hundred and thirty-four
thousand tons of goods; the capital of the company
amounting to four millions of pounds.
The West India Docks next present themselves,[Pg 514]
being three times as extensive as the London
Docks, having an area of no less than two hundred
and ninety-five acres, with water to accommodate
four hundred vessels, and warehouse-room
for one hundred and eighty thousand tons
of merchandise; the capital of the company is
more than six millions of pounds, and the value
of goods which have been on the premises at one
time twenty millions. Lastly, the East India
Docks occupy thirty-two acres, and afford warehouse-room
for fifteen thousand tons of goods.
The whole of these docks occupying four hundred
and fifty acres, offering accommodations for
one thousand two hundred ships, and for five
hundred and thirty thousand tons of goods.
But these are only the docks on the left bank
of the river; on the other side, docks extend
from Rotherhithe to Deptford; the Surrey Docks,
the Commercial Docks, and the East Country
Docks. When the gigantic extent of these
docks, and the mass of property in them, are
considered, Tyre and Sidon shrink up into utter
insignificance.
But of all these astonishing places, our present
attention is devoted only to the London
Docks, properly so called, as being connected
with the operations of the Queen’s Pipe; the
damaged and unsalable goods of these docks
being its food. In these docks are especially
warehoused wine, wool, spices, tea, ivory, drugs,
tobacco, sugars, dye-stuffs, imported metals, and
sundry other articles. Except the teas and
spices, you may procure inspection of all these
articles, as they lie in their enormous quantities,
by a ticket from the secretary. If you wish to
taste the wines, you must have a tasting order
for the purpose.
Imagine yourselves, then, entering the gateway
of the London Docks. If you wish only to
walk round and see the shipping, and people at
work, you can do that without any order. As
you advance, you find yourself surrounded right
and left by vast warehouses, where numbers of
people, with carts and trucks, are busily at
work taking in and fetching out goods. On
your right you soon pass the ivory warehouse,
where no lady is admitted except by a special
order. The cause of this singular regulation,
by no means complimentary to the fair sex, we
were unable to ascertain. No lady could very
well be suspected of carrying off in her muff an
elephant’s tooth of some hundred weight, but
there must have been female thieves, dexterous
enough to secrete, perhaps a rhinoceros’s tooth,
of perhaps some dozen pounds, valued at one
pound seven shillings per pound; and thus contrived
to bring a stigma on the whole sex.
Vast heaps of ivory lie on the floor of this
warehouse, in huge elephants’ tusks, of from
twenty to a hundred pounds weight each; tusks
of rhinoceros, and the ivory weapons of sword-fish
and sea-unicorns. Here lay, on our last
visit, the African spoils of Mr. Gordon Cumming;
and, indeed, the spectacle is one that
carries you away at once to the African deserts,
and shows you what is going on there while
we are quietly and monotonously living at
home.
Proceeding down the dock-yard, you see before
you a large area literally paved with wine-casks,
all full of the most excellent wines. On
our last visit, the wine then covering the ground
was delicious Bordeaux, as you might easily
convince yourself by dipping a finger into the
bunghole of any cask; as, for some purpose of
measurement, or testing the quality, the casks
were most of them open. This is, in fact, the
great depôt of the wine of the London merchants,
no less than sixty thousand pipes being
capable of being stored away in the vaults here.
One vault alone, which formerly was seven
acres, has now been extended under Gravel-lane,
so that at present it contains upward of
twelve acres! These vaults are faintly lit with
lamps, but on going in, you are at the entrance
accosted with the singular demand—”Do you
want a cooper?” Many people, not knowing
its meaning, say, “No, by no means!” The
meaning of the phrase is, “do you want to
taste the wines?” when a cooper accompanies
you to pierce the casks, and give you the wine.
Parties are every day, and all day long, making
these exploratory and tasting expeditions. Every
one on entering is presented with a lamp at
the end of a lath, about two feet long, and you
soon find yourselves in some of the most remarkable
caving in the world. Small streets, which
you perceive are of great extent, by the glimmering
of lamps in the far distance, extend before
you, and are crossed by others in such a
manner that none but those well acquainted
with the geography of these subterranean regions
could possibly find their way about them. From
the dark vaulted roof over head, especially in
one vault, hang strange figures, black as night,
light as gossamer, and of a yard or more in
length, resembling skins of beasts, or old shirts
dipped in soot. These are fed to this strange
growth by the fumes of the wine.
For those who taste the wines the cooper
bores the heads of the pipes, which are ranged
throughout these vast cellars on either hand in
thousands and tens of thousands, and draws a
glassful. These glasses, though shaped as wine-glasses,
resemble much more goblets in their
size, containing each as much as several ordinary
wine-glasses. What you do not drink is
thrown upon the ground; and it is calculated
that at least a hogshead a day is thus consumed.
Many parties who wish for a cheap carouse, procure
a tasting order, take biscuits with them,
and drink of the best of all sorts of wine in the
cellars, and in quantities enough to terrify any
disciple of Father Mathew. Here, again, we
find a regulation permitting no ladies to enter
these cellars after one o’clock. For such a rule
there must be a sufficient cause, and the fact
which we have just stated may perhaps furnish
the key to it.
Not less striking than those cellars is the
Mixing House above, where there are vats into
which merchants who wish to equalize all their[Pg 515]
wines of one vintage can have them emptied,
and then re-drawn into their casks. The largest
of these vats contains twenty-three thousand
two hundred and fifty gallons; and to it the
famous Heidelburg Tun is a mere keg.
But the reader may ask, what have these
wine-cellars to do with the Queen’s Pipe? It
is this: in the centre of the great east vault
you come to a circular building without any
entrance. It is the root and foundation of the
Queen’s Pipe. Quitting the vault, and ascending
into the warehouse over it, you find that
you are in the Great Tobacco Warehouse, called
the Queen’s Warehouse, because the Government
rent the Tobacco Warehouses here for
fourteen thousand pounds per annum. This
one warehouse has no equal in any other part
of the world. It is five acres in extent, and
yet it is covered with a roof, the framework of
which is of iron, erected, we believe, by Mr. Barry,
the architect of the new houses of parliament,
and of so light and skillful a construction, that
it admits of a view of the whole place; and so
slender are the pillars, that the roof seems almost
to hang upon nothing. Under this roof is
piled a vast mass of tobacco in huge casks, in
double tiers; that is, two casks in height. This
warehouse is said to hold, when full, twenty-four
thousand hogsheads, averaging one thousand two
hundred pounds each, and equal to thirty thousand
tons of general merchandise. Each cask
is said to be worth, duty included, two hundred
pounds; giving a sum total of tobacco in this
one warehouse, when filled, of four millions,
eight hundred thousand pounds in value! Besides
this, there is another warehouse of nearly
equal size, where finer kinds of tobacco are deposited,
many of them in packages of buffalo-hide,
marked “Giron,” and Manilla for cheroots,
in packages of sacking lined with palmetto
leaves. There is still another warehouse for
cigars, called the Cigar Floor, in which there
are frequently one thousand five hundred chests,
valued at one hundred pounds each, at an average,
or one hundred and fifty thousand pounds
in cigars alone.
The scene in the Queen’s Warehouse, to which
we return, is very singular. Long streets stretch
right and left between the walls of tobacco-casks;
and when the men are absent at one of their
meals, you find yourself in an odd sort of solitude,
and in an atmosphere of tobacco. Every
one of these giant hogsheads is stripped twice
from the tobacco during its stay in this warehouse;
once on entrance, to weigh it, and again
before leaving, to ascertain whether the mass is
uninjured; and to weigh what is found good for
the duty, and for the sale price to the merchant.
Thus the coopers take all these hogsheads twice
to pieces, and put them together again. This
tobacco is of the strong, coarse kind, for pigtail,
shag, snuff, &c. The finer kinds, as we have
said, go to the other warehouse.
But your eye is now attracted by a guide-post,
on which is painted, in large letters, “To the
Kiln.” Following this direction, you arrive at
the centre of the warehouse, and at the Queen’s
Pipe. You enter a door on which is rudely
painted the crown royal and the initials “V.R.,”
and find yourself in a room of considerable
size, in the centre of which towers up the kiln;
a furnace of the conical kind, like a glass-house
or porcelain furnace. On the door of the furnace
is again painted the crown and the “V.R.”
Here you find, in the furnace, a huge
mass of fire, and around are heaps of damaged
tobacco, tea, and other articles ready to be flung
upon it, as it admits of it. This fire never goes
out, day or night, from year to year. There is
an attendant who supplies it with its fuel, as it
can take it; and men, during the day-time,
constantly coming laden with great loads of
tobacco, cigars, and other stuff, condemned to
the flames. Whatever is forfeited, and is too
bad for sale, be it what it will, is doomed to the
kiln. At the other Docks damaged goods, we
were assured, are buried till they are partly rotten,
and then taken up and disposed of as rubbish
or manure. Here the Queen’s Pipe smokes
all up, except the greater quantity of the tea,
which, having some time ago set the chimney
of the kiln on fire, is now rarely burnt. And
strange are the things that sometimes come to
this perpetually burning furnace. On one occasion,
the attendant informed us, he burnt nine
hundred Australian mutton-hams. These were
warehoused before the duty came off. The owner
suffered them to remain till the duty ceased, in
hopes of their being exempt from it; but this
not being allowed, they were left till so damaged
as to be unsalable. Yet a good many,
the man declared, were excellent; and he often
made a capital addition to his breakfast from
the roast that, for some time, was so odoriferously
going on. On another occasion he burnt
thirteen thousand pairs of condemned French
gloves.
In one department of the place often lie many
tons of the ashes from the furnace, which are
sold by auction, by the ton, to gardeners and
farmers, as manure, and for killing insects, to
soap-boilers and chemical manufacturers. In a
corner are generally piled cart-loads of nails,
and other pieces of iron, which have been swept
up from the floors, or have remained in the
broken pieces of casks and boxes which go to
the kiln. Those which have been sifted from
the ashes are eagerly bought up by gunsmiths,
sorted, and used in the manufacture of gun-barrels,
for which they are highly esteemed, as possessing
a toughness beyond all other iron, and
therefore calculated, pre-eminently, to prevent
bursting. Gold and silver, too, are not unfrequently
found among these ashes; for many
manufactured articles, if unsalable, are broken
up, and thrown in. There have sometimes, indeed,
been vast numbers of foreign watches, professing
themselves to be gold watches, but being
gross impostors, which have been ground up in
a mill, and then flung in here.
Such is the Queen’s Tobacco-Pipe, unique of
its kind, and in its capacity of consumption.[Pg 516]
None of the other Docks have any thing like it.
It stands alone. It is the Pipe—and as we
have said, establishes the Queen of England,
besides being the greatest monarch on the globe,
as the greatest of all smokers—not excepting
the Grand Turk, or the Emperor of Austria, the
greatest tobacconist of Europe.
THE METAL-FOUNDER OF MUNICH.
When we gaze in admiration at some great
work of plastic art, our thoughts naturally
recur rather to the master mind whence the conception
we now see realized first started into
life, than to any difficulties which he or others
might have had to overcome in making the
quickened thought a palpable and visible thing.
All is so harmonious; there is such unity throughout;
material, form, and dimensions, are so
adapted and proportioned one to the other, that
we think not of roughnesses or of opposing force
as connected with a work whence all disparities
are removed, and where every harshness is
smoothed away. There stands the achieved
fact in its perfect completeness: there is nothing
to remind us of its progress toward that state,
for the aids and appliances thereunto have been
removed; and the mind, not pausing to dwell
on an intermediate condition, at once takes in
the realized creation as an accomplished whole.
And if even some were inclined to follow in
thought such a work in its growth, there are
few among them who, as they look at a monument
of bronze, have any notion how the figure
before them grew up into its present proportions.
They have no idea how the limbs were formed
within their earthen womb, and how many and
harassing were the anxieties that attended on
the gigantic birth.
The sculptor, the painter, the engraver, has
each, in his own department, peculiar difficulties
to overcome; but these for the most part are
such as skill or manual dexterity will enable
him to vanquish. He has not to do with a
mighty power that opposes itself to his human
strength, and strives for the mastery. He has
not to combat an element which he purposely
rouses into fury, and then subjugates to his will.
But the caster in metal has to do all this. He
flings into the furnace heaps of brass—cannon
upon cannon, as though they were leaden toys;
and he lights a fire, and fans and feeds the
flames, till within that roaring hollow there is
a glow surpassing what we have yet seen of fire,
and growing white from very intensity. Anew
it is plied with fuel, fed, gorged. The fire itself
seems convulsed and agonized with its own
efforts; but still it roars on. Day by day, and
night after night, with not a moment’s relaxation,
is this fiery work carried on. The air is hot
to breathe; the walls, the rafters, are scorched,
and if the ordeal last much longer, all will soon
be in a blaze. The goaded creature becomes
maddened and desperate, and is striving to burst
its prison; while above it a molten metal sea,
seething and fiery, is heaving with its ponderous
weight against the caldron’s sides!
Lest it be thought this picture is too highly
colored, or that it owes any thing to the imagination
for its interest, let us look into the foundry
of Munich, and see what was going on there at
midnight on the 11th of October 1845.
When King Louis I. had formed the resolution
of erecting a colossal statue of Bavaria, it
was Schwanthaler whom he charged to execute
the work. The great artist’s conception responded
to the idea which had grown in the mind of the
king, and in three years’ time a model in clay
was formed, sixty-three feet in height, the size
of the future bronze statue. The colossus was
then delivered over to the founder, to be cast in
metal. The head was the first large portion
that was executed. While the metal was preparing
for the cast, a presentiment filled the
master’s mind that, despite his exact reckoning,
there might still be insufficient materials for the
work, and thirty cwt. were added to the half-liquid
mass. The result proved how fortunate
had been the forethought: nothing could be
more successful. And now the chest of the
figure was to be cast, and the master conceived
the bold idea of forming it in one piece. Those
who have seen thirty or forty cwt. of metal
rushing into the mould below, have perhaps
started back affrighted at the fiery stream.
But 400 cwt. were requisite for this portion of
the statue; and the formidable nature of the
undertaking may be collected from the fact that
till now, not more than 300 cwt. had ever filled
a furnace at one time.
But see, the mass begins slowly to melt;
huge pieces of cannon float on the surface, like
boats on water, and then gradually disappear.
Presently upon the top of the mass a crust is
seen to form, threatening danger to the furnace
as well as to the model prepared to receive the
fluid bronze. To prevent this crust from forming,
six men were employed day and night in
stirring the lava-like sea with long poles of iron;
retiring, and being replaced by others every now
and then; for the scorching heat, in spite of
wetted coverings, causes the skin to crack like
the dried rind of a tree. Still the caldron was
being stirred, still the fire was goaded to new
efforts, but the metal was not yet ready to be
allowed to flow. Hour after hour went by, the
day passed, and night came on. For five days
and four nights the fire had been kept up and
urged to the utmost intensity, and still no one
could tell how long this was yet to last. The
men worked on at their tremendous task in
silence; the fearful heat was increasing, and
as though it would never stop. There was a
terrible weight in the burning air, and it pressed
upon the breasts of all. There was anxiety in
their hearts, though they spoke not, but most of
all in his who had directed this bold undertaking.
For five days he had not left the spot,
but, like a Columbus watching for the hourly-expected
land, had awaited the final moment.
On the evening of the fifth day exhausted nature
demanded repose, and he sat down to sleep.
Hardly had he closed his eyes when his wife[Pg 517]
roused him with the appalling cry, “Awake,
awake, the foundry is on fire!” And it was so.
Nothing could stand such terrific heat. The
rafters of the building began to burn. To quench
the fire in the usual way was impossible, for had
any cold fluid come in contact with the liquid
metal, the consequences would have been frightful:
the furnace would have been destroyed, and
the 400 cwt. of bronze lost. With wet cloths,
therefore, the burning rafters were covered to
smother the flames. But the walls were glowing,
too; the whole building was now like a vast
furnace. Yet still more fuel on the fire!—the
heat is not enough; the metal boils not yet!
Though the rafters burn, and the walls glow,
still feed, and gorge, and goad the fire!
At last the moment comes!—the whole mass
is boiling! Then the metal-founder of Munich,
Miller by name, called to the men who were extinguishing
the burning beams, “Let them burn;
the metal is ready for the cast!” And it was
just midnight, when the whole of the rafters of
the interior of the building were in flames, that
the plug was knocked in, and the fiery flood
rushed out into the mould below.
All now breathed more freely: there was an
end of misgiving and foreboding; and the rude
workmen, as if awe-struck by what they had
accomplished, stood gazing in silence, and listening
to the roar of the brazen cataract. It was
not till the cast was completed that the master
gave the signal for extinguishing the burning
roof.
In due time the bell of the little chapel of
Neuhausen was heard summoning thither the
master and his workmen to thank God for the
happy completion of the work. No accident
had occurred to any during its progress; not
one had suffered either in life or limb.
THE FAIRY QUEEN.
THE LAST TALE BY THE AUTHOR OF “PUSS IN BOOTS,”
“CINDERELLA,” “LITTLE RED RIDING-HOOD,” ETC.
“Once upon a time,” in the earlier part of
the seventeenth century, was born Charles
Perrault. We pass over his boyhood and youth
to the period when, after having long filled the
situation of Commissioner of Public Buildings,
he fell into disgrace with his patron, the prime
minister Colbert, and was obliged to resign his
situation. Fortunately he had not been unmindful
of prudential economy during the days of
prosperity, and had made some little savings on
which he retired to a small house in the Rue St.
Jacques, and devoted himself to the education
of his children.
About this time he composed his fairy tales.
He himself attached little literary importance to
productions destined to be handed down to posterity,
ever fresh and ever new. He usually
wrote in the morning the story intended for the
evening’s amusement. Thus were produced in
their turn “Cinderella,” “Little Red Riding-Hood,”
“Blue Beard,” “Puss in Boots,” “Riquet
with the Tuft,” and many other wondrous
tales which men now, forsooth, pretend to call
fictions. Charles Lamb knew better. He was
once looking for books for a friend’s child, and
when the bookseller, seeing him turn from shelves
loaded with Mrs. Trimmer and Miss Edgeworth,
offered him modern tales of fay and genii, as
substitutes for his old favorites, he exclaimed,
“These are not my own true fairy tales!”
When surrounded by his grandchildren, Perrault
related to them the stories he had formerly
invented for his children. One evening after
having repeated for the seventh or eighth time
the clever tricks of “Puss in Boots,” Mary, a
pretty little girl of seven years of age, climbed
up on her grandfather’s knee, and giving him a
kiss, put her little dimpled hands into the curls
of the old man’s large wig.
“Grandpapa,” said she, “why don’t you make
beautiful stories for us as you used to do for
papa and my uncles?”
“Yes,” exclaimed the other children, “dear
grandpapa, you must make a story entirely for
ourselves.”
Charles Perrault smiled, but there was a touch
of sadness in the smile. “Ah, dear children,”
said he, “it is very long since I wrote a fairy
tale, and I am not as young as I was then.
You see I require a stick to enable me to get
along, and am bent almost double, and can walk
but very, very slowly. My eyes are so dim, I
can hardly distinguish your little merry faces;
my ear can hardly catch the sound of your
voices; nor is my mind what it was. My imagination
has lost its vigor and freshness; memory
itself has nearly deserted me; but I love you
dearly, and like to give you pleasure. However,
I doubt if my poor bald head could now make a
fairy tale for you, so I will tell you one which I
heard so often from my mother that I think I
can repeat it word for word.”
The children joyfully gathered round the old
man, who passed his hands for a moment across
his wrinkled brow, and began the story as follows:
My mother and your great-grandmother, Madeline
Geoffrey, was the daughter of a linendraper,
who, at the time I speak of, had been residing
for three years in the Rue des Bourdonnais, close
to the Cemetery of the Innocents. One evening,
having gone alone to vespers at the church of
St. Eustace, as she was hastening home to her
mother, who had been prevented by illness from
accompanying her, she heard a great noise at the
top of the street, and looking up saw an immense
mob hurrying along, shouting and hooting. As
they were then in the midst of the troubles of
the Fronde, Madeline in alarm hurried toward
the house, and having opened the door by a
latch-key, was turning to close it, when she was
startled on seeing behind her a woman wrapped
in a black mantle holding two children by the
hand. This woman rushed past Madeline into
the shop, exclaiming, “In the name of all you
hold most dear, save me! Hide me and my
children in some corner of your house! However
helpless and unfortunate I may appear at
this moment, doubt not my power to prove my
gratitude to you.”
“I should want no reward for helping the
distressed,” said Madeline, deeply touched by
the mother’s agony; “but poor protection can
this house afford against a brutal mob.” The
stranger cast a hurried and tearful glance around;
when, suddenly uttering a cry of joy, she fixed
her eye upon part of the floor almost concealed
by the shop counter, and rushing to the spot,
exclaimed, “I have it!—I have it!” As she
spoke, she lifted a trap-door contrived in the
floor, opening on a stone staircase which led to
a subterranean passage; and snatching up her
children in her arms, darted down into the gulf,
leaving my mother stupefied with astonishment.
But the cries of the mob, who had by this time
reached the shop, and were clamorously demanding
admittance, roused her; and quickly closing
the trap-door, she called her father who came
down in great alarm.
After a short parley, he opened the door,
which they were beginning to force. The mob
consisted of two or three hundred miserable tattered
wretches, who poured into the house; and
after searching every corner of it, without finding
any thing, were so furious with disappointment,
that they seized upon Madeline and her
father.
“Deliver up to us the woman we are looking
for!” they exclaimed. “She is a vile sorceress—an
enemy to the citizens of Paris; she
takes the part of the hated Austrian against
us; she is the cause of all the famine and misery
that is desolating Paris. We must have
her and her children, that we may wreak just
vengeance on them!”
“We know not who you mean,” replied my
grandfather, who, in truth, was quite ignorant
of what had occurred; “we have not seen any
one—no one has entered the house.”
“We know how to make such obstinate old
wretches speak,” exclaimed one of the ringleaders.
He seized my mother, and pointing a
loaded pistol at her breast, cried, “The woman!
We want the woman!”
At this moment Madeline, being exactly over
the trap-door, heard a slight rustle underneath;
and fearing that it would betray the stranger’s
hiding-place, endeavored to drown the noise
from below by stamping with her foot, while
she boldly replied, “I have no one to give up to
you.”
“Well, then, you shall see how it fares with
those who dare to resist us!” roared one of the
infuriated mob. Tearing off her vail, he seized
Madeline by the hair, and pulled her to the
ground.
“Speak!” he exclaimed, “or I will drag you
through the streets of Paris to the gibbet on the
Place de la Grève.” My mother uttered not a
word, but silently commended herself to God.
What might have been the issue Heaven only
knows, had not the citizens in that quarter, on
seeing their neighbor’s house attacked, hastily
armed themselves, and dispersed the mob.
Madeline’s first care was to reassure her almost
fainting mother. After which, rejoining her
father, she helped him to barricade the door, so
as to be prepared for any new incursion, and
then began to prepare the supper as usual.
While laying the cloth, the young girl debated
whether she should tell her father of the refuge
afforded to the stranger by the subterraneous
passage; but after a fervent prayer to God, to
enable her to act for the best, she decided that
it would be more prudent not to expose him to
any risk arising from the possession of such a
secret. Arming herself, therefore, with all the
resolution she could command, she performed
her usual household duties; and when her father
and mother had retired to rest, and all was
quiet in the house, she took off her shoes, and
stealing down stairs into the shop, cautiously
opened the trap-door, and entered the vault with
provisions for those who already were indebted
to her for life and safety.
“You are a noble girl,” said the stranger to
her. “What do I not owe to your heroic devotedness
and presence of mind? God will reward
you in heaven, and I trust he will permit
me to recompense you here below.” Madeline
gazed with intense interest on the stranger, as
the light of the lamp in her hand, falling full
upon her face, gave to view features whose dignified
and majestic expression inspired at the
very first glance a feeling of respect. A long
black mantle almost wholly concealed her figure
and a vail was thrown over her head. Her children
lay at her feet in a quiet sleep.
“Thanks for the food you have brought,”
said she to Madeline. “Thanks, dear girl. As
for me, I can not eat; but my children have
tasted nothing since morning. I will ask you
to leave me your light; and now go, take some
rest, for surely you must want it after the excitement
you have undergone.” Madeline looked
at her in surprise.
“I should have thought, madam,” said she,
“that you would make an effort to find some
asylum, if not more secure, at least more comfortable
than this.”
“Be not uneasy about me, my good girl.
When my time is come, it will be as easy for
me to leave this place as it was to reveal to
you the secret of its existence. Good-night,
my child. Perhaps we may not meet again for
some time; but remember I solemnly promise
that I will grant any three wishes you may
form!” She motioned to her to retire; and
that indescribable air of majesty which accompanied
every gesture of the unknown seemed as
if it left Madeline no choice but to obey.
Notwithstanding her fatigue, Madeline hardly
slept that night. The events of the day had
seized hold of her imagination, and she exhausted
herself in continued and wondering conjecture.
Who could this woman be, pursued by the populace,
and accused of being a sorceress, and an
enemy to the people? How could she know of
a place of concealment of which the inhabitants
of the house were ignorant? As vainly did
Madeline try to explain her entire composure,
the certainty with which she spoke of being[Pg 519]
able to leave the vault whenever she pleased,
and, above all, the solemn and mysterious
promise she had made to fulfill any three wishes
of the young girl.
Had you, my dear children, been in your
great-grandmother’s place, should you not have
been very much excited and very curious?
What think you? would you have slept a
bit better than Madeline did? I hardly think
you would, if I may judge from those eager
eyes.
The whole of the next day Madeline could
think of nothing but her secret. Seated behind
the counter, in her usual place, she started at
the slightest sound. At one moment, it seemed
to her as if every one who entered the shop
must discover the trap-door; at the next she
expected to see it raised to give egress to the
unknown, till, dizzy and bewildered, she scarcely
knew whether to believe her whose life she had
saved to be a malignant sorceress or a benevolent
fairy. Then smiling at her own folly, she
asked herself how a woman endowed with supernatural
power could need her protection. It is
unnecessary to say how long the time appeared
to her till she could revisit the subterranean
passage, and find herself once more in the presence
of the stranger. Thus the morning, the
afternoon, and the evening wore slowly away,
and it seemed ages to her till her father, mother,
and the shopmen were fairly asleep.
As soon as the clock struck twelve, she rose,
using still more precaution than on the preceding
night, opened the trap-door, descended
the stone staircase, and entered the subterraneous
passage, but found no one. She turned
the light in every direction. The vault was
empty: the stranger and her children had disappeared!
Madeline was almost as much
alarmed as surprised; however, recovering herself,
she carefully examined the walls of the
vault. Not an opening, not a door, not the
smallest aperture was to be seen. She stamped
on the ground, but no hollow sound was heard.
Suddenly she thought she perceived some written
characters on the stone-flag. She bent
down, and by the light of her lamp read the
following words, evidently traced with some
pointed instrument: “Remember, Madeline,
that she who owes to thee the life of her children,
promises to grant thee three wishes.”
Here Perrault stopped.
“Well, children,” said he, “what do you
think of this first part of my story, and of your
great-grandmother’s adventures? What conjectures
have you formed as to the mysterious
lady?”
“She is a good fairy,” said little Mary, “for
she can grant three wishes, like the fairy in
Finetta.”
“No, she is a sorceress,” objected Louisa.
“Did not the people say so, and they would
not have wanted to kill her unless she was
wicked?”
“As for me,” replied Joseph, the eldest of
the family, “I believe neither in witches nor
fairies, for there are no such things. Am not I
right, grandpapa?”
Charles Perrault smiled, but contented himself
with saying—”Now, be off to bed. It is
getting late. Do not forget to pray to God to
make you good children; and I promise, if you
are very diligent to-morrow, to finish for you in
the evening the wonderful adventures of your
great-grandmother.”
The children kissed their grandpapa, and
went to bed to dream of Madeline and the
fairy.
The next evening, the old man, taking his
usual seat in the arm-chair, resumed his story
without any preamble, though a preamble is
generally considered as important by a story-teller
as a preface is by the writer of a romance.
He spoke as follows:
It would seem that my mother, in her obscure
and peaceful life, had nothing to wish for,
or that her wishes were all fulfilled as soon as
formed; for she not only never invoked the fairy
of the vault, but even gradually lost all remembrance
of the promises made her by the unknown,
and the whole adventure at last faded from her
memory. It is true that thirteen years had
passed away, and the young girl had become a
wife and mother. She had long left the house
where the occurrence I have related to you took
place, and had come to live in the Rue St.
Jacques, where we now reside, though I have
since then rebuilt the former tenement.
My father, as you know, was a lawyer.
Though of noble birth, he did not think it beneath
him to marry the daughter of a shopkeeper,
with but a small dowry. He found in
Madeline’s excellent qualities, her gentleness
and beauty, irresistible attractions—and who
that knew her could disapprove of his choice?
Madeline possessed in an eminent degree that
natural refinement of mind and manner which
education and a knowledge of the world so often
fail to give, while it seems intuitive in some.
She devoted herself entirely to the happiness of
her husband and her four sons, of whom I was
the youngest. My father’s income was quite
sufficient for all the expenses of our happy family;
for a truly happy family it was, till it
pleased God to lay heavy trial upon us. My
father fell ill, and for a whole year was obliged
to give up the profits of his situation to provide
a substitute; and he had scarcely begun, after
his recovery, to endeavor to repair the losses he
had suffered, when a fresh misfortune occurred.
One night, as my mother was lying quietly in
bed, with her four little cubs around her, she
was awakened by an unusual noise to behold
the house wrapped in flames, which had already
almost reached the room in which we were. At
this moment my father appeared, and took my
eldest brothers in his arms, while my mother
had charge of Nicholas and me, who were the
two youngest. Never shall I forget this awful
moment. The flames crackled and hissed around
us, casting a livid hue over the pale faces of
my father and mother, who boldly advanced[Pg 520]
through the fire. With great difficulty they
gained the staircase. My father dashed bravely
forward. Nicholas, whom my mother held by
the hand, screamed violently, and refused to go
a step further. She caught him up in her arms,
but during the short struggle the staircase had
given way, and for a few moments my mother
stood paralyzed by despair. But soon the imminent
danger roused all the energy of her
heroic nature. Your grandmother was no common
woman. She immediately retraced her
steps, and firmly knotting the bedclothes together,
fastened my brother and myself to them,
and letting us down through the window, my
father received us in his arms. Her children
once saved, my mother thought but little of
danger to herself, and she waited in calm self-possession,
till a ladder being brought, she was
rescued.
This trial was but a prelude to many others.
The loss of our house completed the ruin of
which my father’s illness was the beginning.
He was obliged to dispose of his situation, and
take refuge in small lodgings at Chaillot, and
there set to work steadily and cheerfully to
support his family, opening a kind of pleader’s
office for legal students; but his health soon
failed, and he became dangerously ill. My
noble-minded mother struggled hard to ward off
the want that now seemed inevitable; but what
availed the efforts of one woman to support a
sick husband and four children? One night
came when we had literally nothing to eat. I
shall never forget my mother’s face, and the
tears which streamed down her cheeks, when
one of us cried, “Mother, we are very hungry!”
She now resolved to apply for help to the nuns
of Chaillot; a step which, to her independent
spirit, was a far greater trial than to brave the
threats of the mob or the fury of the flames.
But what is there too hard for a mother who
has heard her children ask for food which she
had not to give them? With sinking heart, and
cheek now pale, now crimson from the struggle
within her, she presented herself at the convent,
and timidly made known her desire to speak
with the superior. Her well-known character
procured her instant admission, and her tale
once told, obtained for her much kindly sympathy
and some relief. As she was passing through
the cloisters on her way back, she was startled
by a voice suddenly demanding, “Art thou not
Madeline Perrault?”
My mother started; the tones of that voice
found an echo in her memory, and though thirteen
years had elapsed since she had heard it,
she recognized it to be that of the being whom
her husband was wont to call her “Fairy.” She
turned round, and as the pale moonbeams that
were now struggling through the long dim aisle
fell upon the well-remembered stately form, in
its black garb and flowing mantle, it seemed
to Madeline’s excited imagination to be indeed
a being of some other world.
“I made thee a promise,” said the unknown—”didst
thou doubt my power, that thou hast
never invoked my aid?” My mother crossed
herself devoutly, now convinced that she was
dealing with a supernatural being. The phantom
smiled at her awe-struck look, and resumed,
“Yet fear not; you have but to name three
wishes, and my promise is still sure: they shall
be granted.” “My husband—oh, if he were
but once more well!” “I say not that to give
life or healing is within my province to bestow.
God alone holds in his hands the issues of life
and death. Say what else lies near thine
heart?”
“Bread for my husband and children. Save
them and me from beggary and want!”
“This is but one wish, and I would grant
two more.”
“I ask not—wish not for more.”
“Be it so, then, Madeline Perrault; hold yourself
in readiness to obey the orders that shall
reach you before twelve hours have passed over
your head.” And she disappeared from Madeline’s
sight as suddenly as she had appeared to
her.
My mother returned home in considerable
agitation, and told my father all that had occurred.
He tried to persuade her that the whole
scene had been conjured up by her own excited
imagination. But my mother persisted in repeating
that nothing could be real if this was
but fancy; and they passed a sleepless night in
bewildering conjectures.
Early the next day a carriage stopped at the
door, and a footman announced to my mother
that it was sent to convey her and her family
to a place appointed by one whose summons
there was good reason they should obey. No
questioning could extract from him any further
information. You may well fancy how long
my father and mother debated as to the prudence
of obeying the mysterious summons. But
curiosity at last prevailed; and to the unmixed
delight of the children of the party, we all got
into the carriage, which took the road to Paris,
and drove on rapidly till we reached the Rue
St. Jacques, where it drew up before a new
house; and as the servant opened the carriage-door
and let down the steps, my father perceived
that it occupied the site of his house
which had been burned down.
Our little party was met in the entrance by
a deputation of the civic authorities, who welcomed
my father to his house, and congratulated
him on his being reinstated in the situation he
had so long held with such credit to himself,
and, as they were pleased to add, to themselves
as members of the body to which he was such
an honor.
My father stood as if in a dream, while my
mother shed tears of joy and gratitude. A letter
was now handed to her; and, hastily breaking
the seal, she read, “Madeline, hast thou
still a wish? Speak, and it shall be gratified!”
“Only that I may be allowed to see my
benefactress, to pour out at her feet my heart’s
gratitude.”
And at the instant the door opened, and the
unknown appeared. Madeline, with clasped
hands, darted suddenly forward; then, as suddenly
checking herself, uttered some incoherent
words, broken by sobs.
“Madeline,” said the lady, “I have paid but
a small part of the debt I owe you. But for
you a ferocious mob would have murdered me
and my children. To you I owe lives dearer to
me than my own. Do not deem me ungrateful
in so long appearing to have forgotten you.
It has pleased our Heavenly Father to visit me
also with heavy trials. Like you, I have seen
my children in want of food which I had not to
give, and without a spark of fire to warm their
chilled limbs. But more, my husband was
traitorously put to death, and I have been myself
proscribed. When you rescued me, they
were hunting me like a wild beast, because I
refused to take part against the son of my
brother. But brighter days have dawned. My
son is restored to the throne of his fathers, and
Henrietta of England can now pay the debt of
gratitude she owes Madeline Perrault.”
“But how can poor Madeline ever pay the
debt she owes?” exclaimed my mother.
“By sometimes coming to visit me in my
retreat at Chaillot; for what has a queen without
a kingdom, a widow weeping for her murdered
husband, a mother forever separated
from her children—what has she any more to
do with the world whose nothingness she has
so sadly experienced? To know that amid
my desolation I have made one being happy,
will be soothing to me, and your children’s innocent
merriment perchance may beguile some
lonely hours. Henceforth, Madeline, our intercourse
will not bear the romantic character that
has hitherto marked it, and which chance, in
the first instance, and afterward a whim of
mine, has made it assume. By accident I was
led to take refuge in your house in the Rue des
Bourdonnais, and instantly recollected it as the
former abode of Ruggieri, my mother’s astrologer.
His laboratory was the vault which doubtless
you have not forgotten, and the entrance
to which was as well known to me as the subterraneous
passage by which I left it, and which
led to the Cemetery of the Innocents. Last
night I heard all you said to the superior, and
was about to inquire directly of yourself, when,
seeing the effect of my sudden appearance, I
was induced to play the fairy once more. The
instant you left me I put in requisition the only
fairy wand I possessed, and money soon placed
at my disposal the house which I have the happiness
of making once again your own. You
now know my secret, but though no fairy, I
have still some influence, and you shall ever
have in me a firm friend and protectress.”
And from that time the queen never lost an
opportunity of serving my mother and her family,
and it is to her I owe the favor and patronage
of the minister Colbert.
“And now, children,” said Perrault, “how
do you like my last fairy tale?”
[From Dickens’s Household Words.]
THE EFFORTS OF A GENTLEMAN IN SEARCH OF DESPAIR.
Mr. Blackbrook lived in a world of his
own. It was his pleasure to believe that
men were phantoms of a day. For life he had
the utmost contempt. He pronounced it to be
a breath, a sigh, a fleeting shadow. His perpetual
theme was, that we are only here for a
brief space of time. He likened the uncertainty
of existence to all the most frightful ventures he
could conjure up. He informed timid ladies
that they were perpetually on the edge of a
yawning abyss; and warned little boys that
their laughter might be turned to tears and
lamentation, at the shortest notice. Mr. Blackbrook
was a welcome guest in a large serious
circle. From his youth he had shown a poetic
leaning, of the most serious order. His muse
was always in deep mourning—his poetic gum
oozed only from his favorite grave-yard.
He thought “L’Allegro” Milton’s worst performance;
and declared that Gray’s “Elegy in
a Country Church-yard” was too light and
frivolous. His life was not without its cares;
but, then, he reveled in his misfortunes. He
was always prepossessed with a man who wore
a hatband. The owl was his favorite bird. A
black cat was the only feline specimen he would
admit to his sombre apartment; and his garden
was stocked with yew-trees. He reveled in the
charm of melancholy—he would not, if he could,
be gay. His meditations raised him so great a
height above his family, that little sympathy
could exist between them. Eternity so engaged
him, that his brothers and sisters—mere phantoms—did
not cost him much consideration.
His youthful Lines to the Owl, in the course of
which he called the bird in question “a solemn
messenger,” “a dread image of the moral darkness
which surrounds us,” “a welcome voice,”
and “a mysterious visitant,” indicated the
peculiar turn of his mind. His determination
to be miserable was nothing short of heroic.
In his twenty-second year a relation left him a
modest fortune. His friends flocked about him
to congratulate him; but they found him in a
state of seraphic sorrow, searching out a proper
rhyme to the urn in which he had poetically
deposited the ashes of his benefactor. On looking
over the lines he had distilled from his
prostrate heart, his friends, to their astonishment,
discovered that he had alluded to the
bequest in question in the most contemptuous
strain:
Whose wealth is boundless, and whose velvet’s moss?
So ran his poetic commentary. His boundless
wealth consisted of intellectual treasures exclusively,
and the sweet declaration that moss was
his velvet, was meant to convey to the reader
the simplicity and Arcadian nature of his habits.
The relation who had the assurance to leave him
a fortune, was dragged remorselessly through
fifty lines as a punishment for his temerity.[Pg 522]
Yet, in a fit of abstraction, Mr. Blackbrook
hurried to Doctors’ Commons to prove the will;
hereby displaying his resignation to the horrible
degree of comfort which the money assured to
him. It was not for him, however, to forget
that life was checkered with woe, that it was a
vale of tears—a brief, trite, contemptible matter.
The gayety of his house and relations horrified
him; they interfered, at every turn, with his
melancholy mood. He sighed for the fate of
Byron or Chatterton! Why was he doomed to
have his three regular meals per diem; to lie,
at night, upon a feather-bed, and the recognized
layers of mattresses; to have a new coat when
he wanted one; to have money continually in
his pocket, and to be accepted when he made an
offer of marriage? The fates were obviously
against him. One of his sisters fell in love.
How hopefully he watched the course of her
passion! How fondly he lingered near, in the
expectation, the happy expectation, of a lovers’
quarrel. But his sister had a sweet disposition—a
mouth made to distill the gentlest and
most tender accents. The courtship progressed
with unusual harmony on both sides. Only
once did fortune appear to favor him. One
evening, he observed that the lovers avoided
each other, and parted coldly. Now was his
opportunity; and in the still midnight, when all
the members of his household were in bed, he
took his seat in his chamber, and, by the midnight
oil, threw his soul into some plaintive
lines “On a Sister’s Sorrow.” He mourned for
her in heart-breaking syllables; likened her
lover to an adder in an angel’s path; dwelt on
her quiet gray eyes, her stately proportions, and
her classic face. He doomed her to years of
quiet despair, and saw her fickle admirer the
gayest of the gay. He concluded with the
consoling intelligence, that he would go hand
in hand with her along the darkened passage to
the grave. His sister, however, did not avail
herself of this proffered companionship, but
chose rather to be reconciled, and to marry her
lover.
Mr. Blackbrook found some consolation for
this disappointment in the composition of an
epithalamium of the most doleful character on
the occasion of his sister’s marriage, in the
course of which he informed her that Jove’s
thunderbolts might be hurled at her husband’s
head at any period of the day; that we all
must die; that the bride may be a widow on
the morrow of her nuptials; and other equally
cheerful truths. Yet at his sister’s wedding-breakfast,
Mr. Blackbrook coquetted with the
choice parts of a chicken, and drowned his
sorrow in a delectable jelly.
When for a short time he was betrayed into
the expression of any cheerful sentiment, if he
ever allowed that it was a fine day, he quickly
relapsed into congenial gloom, and discovered
that there might be a thunder-storm within the
next half-hour. His only comfort was in the
reflection that his maternal uncle’s family were
consumptive. Here he anticipated a fine field
for the exercise of his poetic gifts, and, accordingly,
when his aunt was gathered to her fore-fathers,
her dutiful nephew laid a sheet of blank
paper upon his desk, and settled himself down
to write “a Dirge.” He began by attributing
all the virtues to her—devoting about six lines
to each separate virtue. Her person next engaged
his attention, and he discovered, though
none of her friends had ever remarked her surpassing
loveliness, that her step was as the
breath of the summer-wind on flowers (certainly
no gardener would have trusted her upon his
box-borders); that she was fresh as Hebe (she always
breakfasted in bed); that she had pearly
teeth (her dentist has maliciously informed us
that they were made of the very best ivory);
and, finally, that her general deportment was
most charming—so charming that Mr. Blackbrook
never dared trust himself in her seductive
presence. Having proceeded thus far with his
melancholy duty, the poet ate a hearty supper
of the heaviest cold pudding, and—we had almost
written—went to bed—but we remember
that Mr. Blackbrook always “retired to his solitary
couch.” He rose, betimes, on the following
morning, looking most poetically pale. His
dreams had been of woe, and darkness, and
death; the pudding had had the desired effect.
Again he placed himself at his desk, and having
read over the prefatory lines which we have
endeavored to describe, he threw his fragrant
curl from his marble forehead, and thought of
the funeral-pall, the darkened hall—of grief
acute, and the unstrung lute. He put his aunt’s
sorrowing circle in every possible position of
despair. He represented his surviving uncle as
threatening to pass the serene portals of reason;
he discovered that a dark tide rolled at the unhappy
man’s feet; that the sun itself would
henceforth look dark to him; that he would
never smile again; and that, in all probability,
the shroud would soon enwrap his manly form.
He next proceeded to describe minutely the
pearly tears of his cousins, and the terrible darkness
that had come over their bright, young
dreams. An affecting allusion to his own unfathomable
grief on the occasion, was concluded
by the hope that he might soon join his sainted
aunt, though he had never taken the least trouble
to pay her a visit while she lived in St.
John’s Wood. This touching dirge was printed
upon mourning paper, and distributed among
Mr. Blackbrook’s friends. The death of an
aunt was an affecting incident, but still it fell
short of the brink of despair. Mr. Blackbrook’s
natural abiding-place was the edge of a precipice.
His muse must be fed on heroic sorrows,
hopeless agony, and other poetical condiments
of the same serious nature. The course of modern
life was too level for his impetuous spirit;
but in the absence of that terrible condition to
which he aspired, he caught at every incident
that could nerve the pinion of his muse for
grander flights. A dead fly, which he found
crushed between the leaves of a book, furnished
him with a theme for one of his tenderest compositions.[Pg 523]
He speculated upon the probable
career of the fly—opined that it had a little
world of its own, a family, and a sense of the
beautiful. This effusion met with such fervent
praise, that he followed it up by “Thoughts on
Cheese-dust,” in which he dived into the mysteries
of these animalculæ, and calculated the
myriads of lives that were sacrificed to give a
momentary enjoyment to the “pampered palate
of man.” His attention was called, however,
from these minor poetic considerations, to a
matter approaching in its gravity to that heroic
pitch of sorrow which he had sought so unsuccessfully
hitherto.
His cousin was drowned by the upsetting of
a pleasure-boat. At such a calamity it was
reasonable to despair—to refuse comfort—to
leave his hair uncombed—to look constantly on
the ground—to lose all appetite—to write flowing
verse. Mr. Blackbrook entered upon his
vocation with a full sense of its heroism. At
least one hundred lines would be expected from
him on so tremendous an occasion. The catastrophe
was so poetical! The sea-weed might
have been represented entangled in the golden
tresses of the poor girl, had the accident happened
only a little nearer the Nore; and the
print of her fair form might have been faintly
traced upon “the ribbed sea-sand.” This was
unfortunate. In reality, the “melancholy occurrence”
took place at Richmond. Mr. Blackbrook
began by calling upon the willows of Richmond
and its immediate vicinity to dip their
tender branches in the stream, in token of their
grief. Mr. Blackbrook, felicitously remembering
that Pope once lived not far from Richmond,
next invoked that poet’s shade, and begged the
loan of his melodious rhythm. But the shade
in question not answering to the summons, all
that remained for the sorrowing poet to do was
to take down his dictionary of rhymes, and tune
his own lyre to its most mournful cadences.
He set to work: he called the Thames a treacherous
stream; he christened the wherry a bark;
he declared that when the pleasure-party embarked
at Richmond-bridge, Death, the lean fellow,
was standing upon the beach with his
weapon upraised. Asterisks described the death;
and some of his friends declared this passage
the best in the poem. He then went on to inform
his readers that all was over; but by this
expression the reader must not infer that the
dirge was brought to a conclusion: by no means.
Mr. Blackbrook had made up his mind that his
state of despair required, at least, one hundred
lines to give it adequate expression. He had
devoted twenty to the death of a fly—surely,
then, a female cousin deserved one hundred.
This logical reflection spurred him on. He
pulled down the blinds, and in a gloom that
suited well with his forlorn state of mind, he
began a picture of his condition. With the
aid of his dictionary, having asserted that the
shroud enwrapped a cousin’s form, he reflected
that he envied the place of the winding-sheet,
and was jealous of the worms. He felt that he
was warming into his subject. He tried to
think of the condition in which the remains of
his relative would speedily be; and having carefully
referred to an eminent medical work as to
the length of time which the human body requires
to resolve itself into its original earth (for
he was precise in his statements), he proceeded
to describe, with heart-rending faithfulness, the
various stages of this inevitable decay. That
was true poetry. He declared that the worm
would crawl upon those lips that the lover had
fondly pressed, and that the hand which once
touched the harp so magically was now motionless
forever. Having brought this tragic description
to a conclusion, he proceeded to number
the flowers that should spring from his
cousin’s grave, and to promise that
Roses shall flourish, moistened by a tear.
This vow evidently eased his heart a little, and
enabled him to conclude the poem in a more
cheerful spirit. He wound up with the reflection,
that care was the lot of humanity, and
that it was his duty to bear his proportion of
the common load with a patient though bruised
spirit. He felt that to complete his poetic destiny
he ought to wander, none knew whither, and to
turn up only at most unseasonable hours, and
in most solemn places. But unhappily he was
informed that it was necessary he should remain
on the spot for the proper management of his
affairs. Fate would have it so. Why was he
not allowed to pursue his destiny? He was
one day mentally bewailing the even tenor of
his way, when a few kind friends suggested that
he should publish his effusions. At first he
firmly refused. What was fame to him—a
hopeless, despairing man on the brink of the
grave! His friends, however, pressed him in
the end into compliance; and in due time Mr.
Blackbrook’s “Life-drops from the Heart” were
offered to the public for the price of ten shillings—little
more than one shilling per drop.
An eminent critic wrote the following opinion
of our friend and his poetry:
“We notice Mr. Blackbrook as the representative
of a school—the Doleful School. He
draws terrible pictures; but what are his materials?
He does not write from the heart, inasmuch
as, if he really felt that incessant agony,
which is his everlasting theme, we should find
in his performances some original imagery—something
with an individual stamp. We
rather hold Mr. Blackbrook to be a very deliberate,
vain, and calculating being, who takes
advantage of a domestic calamity to display his
knack of verse-making; who composedly turns
a couplet upon the coffin of his mistress; whose
sympathy and sensibility are only the ingenious
masks of inordinate self-esteem. His view of
the poetic is only worthy of an undertaker. He
sees nature through a black-crape vail. He describes
graves with the minuteness of a body-snatcher;
and when he would be impressive is
disgusting. You see the actor, not the poet.
He admits you (for he can not help it) behind[Pg 524]
the scenes. His rhymes are not the music of a
poetic faculty; but rather the jingle of a parrot.
He is one of a popular school, however; and
while the public buy his wares, he will continue
to fashion them. Materialist to the back-bone,
he simpers about the littleness of human dealings
and human sympathies. He who pretends to
be melted with pity over the fate of a fly, would
use his mother’s tombstone as a writing-desk.
He deals in human sorrow, as his baker deals in
loaves. Nervous dowagers, who love tears and
‘dreadful descriptions;’ who enjoy ‘a good cry;’
and who have the peculiar faculty of seeing the
dark side of every thing, enjoy his dish of verses
amazingly. To sensitive young ladies there is
a terrible fascination in his inventories of the
tomb and its appendages; and children are
afraid to walk about in the dark, after listening
to one of his effusions. The followers of his
school include one or two formidable young
ladies, who enter into descriptions of death—that
is to say, the material part of death—with
a minuteness that must excite the envy even of
the most ingenious auctioneer. When bent
upon a fresh composition, these terrible young
poetesses, having killed a child, proceed to trace
its journey to the tomb—its return to earth.
How they gloat over the dire changes!—how
systematically the painful portrait is proceeded
with! In this they rival Chinese artists. And
people of ill-regulated sympathy, who, containing
within them all the elements of spiritual culture,
are yet affected only by sensual appeals, regard
these doleful effusions as the outpourings of true
human suffering.
“Mr. Blackbrook and his disciples are hapless
materialists, verse-makers without a sense of
the beautiful. They are patronized by those to
whom they write down; and the effect of their
lucubrations is to enchain the imagination, to
debase the moral capacity, to weaken that
spiritual faith which disdains the horrors of the
church-yard. Mr. Blackbrook’s adventures in
search of despair were undertaken, to our mind,
in a cold-blooded spirit. A resolute determination
to discover the gloomiest phase of every
earthly matter, a longing for the applause of a
foolish clique, and a confused idea that Chatterton
was a poet because he perished miserably, while
Byron owed his inspiration to his domestic unhappiness—make
up that picture of a verse-writer
which we have endeavored to delineate.
When extraordinary vanity is allied to very ordinary
ability, the combination is an unwholesome,
ascetic, weak, and deformed mind: such a
mind has Mr. Blackbrook. He endeavors to
drag us into a vault, when we would regard the
heavenly aspect of death. Ask him to solve
the great mystery, and he points to the fading
corpse. His tears suggest the use of onions;
and his threats of self-destruction, remind us of
the rouge and Indian ink of an indifferent melodramatic
actor. We have no respect for his
misfortunes, since we find that he esteems them
only as opportunities for display: we know that
despair is welcome to him. He turns his back
to the sun, and rejoices to see the length of
shade he can throw upon the earth. Nature to
him is only a vast charnel-house—so constructed
that he may sing a life-long requiem. He would
have us journey through life with our eyes fixed
upon the ground, scenting the gases of decay.
But wiser men—poets of the soul—bid us look
up to heaven, nor disdain, as we raise our heads,
to mark the beauty of the lily—to gather, and
with hearty thanks, the fragrance of the rose.”
MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.
(Continued from page 396.)
CHAPTER XIII.
Whatever may be the ultimate success
of Miss Jemima Hazeldean’s designs upon
Dr. Riccabocca, the Machiavelian sagacity with
which the Italian had counted upon securing the
services of Lenny Fairfield was speedily and triumphantly
established by the result. No voice
of the Parson’s, charmed he ever so wisely, could
persuade the peasant-boy to go and ask pardon
of the young gentleman, to whom, because he
had done as he was bid, he owed an agonizing
defeat and a shameful incarceration. And, to
Mrs. Dale’s vexation, the widow took the boy’s
part. She was deeply offended at the unjust disgrace
Lenny had undergone in being put in the
stocks; she shared his pride, and openly approved
his spirit. Nor was it without great difficulty
that Lenny could be induced to resume
his lessons at school; nay, even to set foot beyond
the precincts of his mother’s holding. The
point of the school at last he yielded, though sullenly;
and the Parson thought it better to temporize
as to the more unpalatable demand. Unluckily
Lenny’s apprehensions of the mockery
that awaited him in the merciless world of his
village were realized. Though Stirn at first
kept his own counsel, the Tinker blabbed the
whole affair. And after the search instituted for
Lenny on the fatal night, all attempt to hush up
what had passed would have been impossible.
So then Stirn told his story, as the Tinker had
told his own; both tales were very unfavorable
to Leonard Fairfield. The pattern boy had broken
the Sabbath, fought with his betters, and
been well mauled into the bargain; the village lad
had sided with Stirn and the authorities in spying
out the misdemeanors of his equals: therefore
Leonard Fairfield, in both capacities of degraded
pattern boy and baffled spy, could expect
no mercy; he was ridiculed in the one, and
hated in the other.
It is true that, in the presence of the schoolmaster,
and under the eye of Mr. Dale, no one
openly gave vent to malignant feelings; but the
moment those checks were removed, popular
persecution began.
Some pointed and mowed at him; some cursed
him for a sneak, and all shunned his society;
voices were heard in the hedgerows, as he
passed through the village at dusk, “Who was[Pg 525]
put in the stocks? baa!” “Who got a bloody
nob for playing spy to Nick Stirn? baa!” To
resist this species of aggression would have been
a vain attempt for a wiser head and a colder
temper than our poor pattern boy’s. He took
his resolution at once, and his mother approved
it; and the second or third day after Dr. Riccabocca’s
return to the Casino, Lenny Fairfield
presented himself on the terrace with a little
bundle in his hand. “Please, sir,” said he to the
Doctor, who was sitting cross-legged on the balustrade,
with his red silk umbrella over his head.
“Please, sir, if you’ll be good enough to take
me now, and give me any hole to sleep in, I’ll
work for your honor night and day; and as for
the wages, mother says ‘just suit yourself, sir.'”
“My child,” said the Doctor, taking Lenny
by the hand, and looking at him with the sagacious
eye of a wizard, “I knew you would come!
and Giacomo is already prepared for you! As
to wages, we’ll talk of them by-and-by.”
Lenny being thus settled, his mother looked
for some evenings on the vacant chair, where he
had so long sate in the place of her beloved
Mark; and the chair seemed so comfortless and
desolate, thus left all to itself, that she could
bear it no longer.
Indeed the village had grown as distasteful to
her as to Lenny—perhaps more so; and one
morning she hailed the Steward as he was trotting
his hog-maned cob beside the door, and
bade him tell the Squire that “she would take it
very kind if he would let her off the six months’
notice for the land and premises she held—there
were plenty to step into the place at a much
better rent.”
“You’re a fool,” said the good-natured Steward;
“and I’m very glad you did not speak to
that fellow Stirn instead of to me. You’ve been
doing extremely well here, and have the place,
I may say, for nothing.”
“Nothin’ as to rent, sir, but a great deal as to
feeling,” said the widow. “And now Lenny
has gone to work with the foreign gentleman, I
should like to go and live near him.”
“Ah, yes—I heard Lenny had taken himself
off to the Casino—more fool he; but, bless your
heart, ’tis no distance—two miles or so. Can’t
he come home every night after work?”
“No, sir,” exclaimed the widow almost fiercely;
“he shan’t come home here, to be called
bad names and jeered at! he whom my dead
good-man was so fond and proud of. No, sir;
we poor folks have our feelings, as I said to
Mrs. Dale, and as I will say to the Squire hisself.
Not that I don’t thank him for all favors—he
be a good gentleman, if let alone; but he
says he won’t come near us till Lenny goes and
axes pardin. Pardin for what, I should like to
know? Poor lamb! I wish you could ha’ seen
his nose, sir—as big as your two fists. Ax pardin!
If the Squire had had such a nose as that,
I don’t think it’s pardin he’d ha’ been axing. But
I let’s the passion get the better of me—I humbly
beg you’ll excuse it, sir. I’m no scollard,
as poor Mark was, and Lenny would have been,
if the Lord had not visited us otherways. Therefore
just get the Squire to let me go as soon as
may be; and as for the bit o’ hay and what’s on
the grounds and orchard, the new-comer will no
doubt settle that.”
The Steward, finding no eloquence of his
could induce the widow to relinquish her resolution,
took her message to the Squire. Mr. Hazeldean,
who was indeed rarely offended at the
boy’s obstinate refusal to make the amende honorable
to Randal Leslie, at first only bestowed a
hearty curse or two on the pride and ingratitude
both of mother and son. It may be supposed,
however, that his second thoughts were more
gentle, since that evening, though he did not go
himself to the widow, he sent his “Harry.”
Now, though Harry was sometimes austere and
brusque enough on her own account, and in such
business as might especially be transacted between
herself and the cottagers, yet she never
appeared as the delegate of her lord except in
the capacity of a herald of peace and mediating
angel. It was with good heart, too, that she
undertook this mission, since, as we have seen,
both mother and son were great favorites of
hers. She entered the cottage with the friendliest
beam in her bright blue eye, and it was with
the softest tone of her frank, cordial voice that
she accosted the widow. But she was no more
successful than the Steward had been. The
truth is, that I don’t believe the haughtiest duke
in the three kingdoms is really so proud as your
plain English rural peasant, nor half so hard to
propitiate and deal with when his sense of dignity
is ruffled. Nor are there many of my own
literary brethren (thin-skinned creatures though
we are) so sensitively alive to the Public Opinion,
wisely despised by Dr. Riccabocca, as that
same peasant. He can endure a good deal of
contumely sometimes, it is true, from his superiors,
(though, thank Heaven! that he rarely
meets with unjustly); but to be looked down
upon, and mocked, and pointed at by his own
equals—his own little world—cuts him to the
soul. And if you can succeed in breaking this
pride, and destroying this sensitiveness, then he
is a lost being. He can never recover his self-esteem,
and you have chucked him half way—a
stolid, inert, sullen victim—to the perdition of
the prison or the convict-ship.
Of this stuff was the nature both of the widow
and her son. Had the honey of Plato flowed
from the tongue of Mrs. Hazeldean, it could not
have turned into sweetness the bitter spirit upon
which it descended. But Mrs. Hazeldean,
though an excellent woman, was rather a bluff,
plain-spoken one—and, after all, she had some
little feeling for the son of a gentleman, and a
decayed fallen gentleman, who, even by Lenny’s
account, had been assailed without any intelligible
provocation; nor could she, with her strong
common sense, attach all the importance which
Mrs. Fairfield did to the unmannerly impertinence
of a few young cubs, which, she said[Pg 526]
truly, “would soon die away if no notice was
taken of it.” The widow’s mind was made up,
and Mrs. Hazeldean departed—with much chagrin
and some displeasure.
Mrs. Fairfield, however, tacitly understood
that the request she had made was granted, and
early one morning her door was found locked,
the key left at a neighbor’s to be given to the
Steward; and, on farther inquiry, it was ascertained
that her furniture and effects had been
removed by the errand-cart in the dead of the
night. Lenny had succeeded in finding a cottage,
on the road-side, not far from the Casino;
and there, with a joyous face, he waited to welcome
his mother to breakfast, and show how he
had spent the night in arranging her furniture.
“Parson!” cried the Squire, when all this
news came upon him, as he was walking arm-in-arm
with Mr. Dale to inspect some proposed
improvement in the Alms-house, “this is all
your fault. Why did not you go and talk to
that brute of a boy, and that dolt of a woman?
You’ve got ‘soft sawder enough,’ as Frank calls
it in his new-fashioned slang.”
“As if I had not talked myself hoarse to both!”
said the Parson, in a tone of reproachful surprise
at the accusation. “But it was in vain! O
Squire, if you had taken my advice about the
Stocks—quieta non movere!”
“Bother!” said the Squire. “I suppose I
am to be held up as a tyrant, a Nero, a Richard
the Third, or a Grand Inquisitor, merely for having
things smart and tidy! Stocks, indeed!—your
friend Rickeybockey said he was never
more comfortable in his life—quite enjoyed sitting
there. And what did not hurt Rickeybockey’s
dignity (a very gentleman-like man he
is, when he pleases) ought to be no such great
matter to Master Leonard Fairfield. But ’tis
no use talking! What’s to be done now? The
woman must not starve, and I’m sure she can’t
live out of Rickeybockey’s wages to Lenny (by
the way, I hope he don’t board him upon his and
Jackeymo’s leavings: I hear they dine upon
newts and sticklebacks—faugh!). I’ll tell you
what, Parson, now I think of it—at the back of
the cottage which she has taken there are some
fields of capital land just vacant. Rickeybockey
wants to have ’em, and sounded me as to the
rent when he was at the Hall. I only half
promised him the refusal. And he must give
up four or five acres of the best land round the
cottage to the widow—just enough for her to
manage—and she can keep a dairy. If she
wants capital, I’ll lend her some in your name—only
don’t tell Stirn; and as for the rent, we’ll
talk of that when we see how she gets on, thankless,
obstinate jade that she is! You see,” added
the Squire, as if he felt there was some apology
due for this generosity to an object whom
he professed to consider so ungrateful, “her
husband was a faithful servant, and so—I wish
you would not stand there staring me out of
countenance, but go down to the woman at once,
or Stirn will have let the land to Rickeybockey,
as sure as a gun. And hark ye, Dale, perhaps
you can contrive, if the woman is so cursedly
stiff-backed, not to say the land is mine, or that
it is any favor I want to do her—or, in short,
manage it as you can for the best.” Still even
this charitable message failed. The widow
knew that the land was the Squire’s, and worth
a good £3 an acre. “She thanked him humbly
for that and all favors; but she could not afford
to buy cows, and she did not wish to be beholden
to any one for her living. And Lenny was well
off at Mr. Rickeybockey’s, and coming on wonderfully
in the garden way; and she did not
doubt she could get some washing—at all
events, her haystack would bring in a good bit
of money, and she should do nicely, thank their
honors.”
Nothing further could be done in the direct
way, but the remark about the washing suggested
some mode of indirectly benefiting the
widow. And a little time afterward, the sole
laundress in that immediate neighborhood happening
to die, a hint from the Squire obtained
from the landlady of the inn opposite the Casino
such custom as she had to bestow, which at
times was not inconsiderable. And what with
Lenny’s wages (whatever that mysterious item
might be), the mother and son contrived to live
without exhibiting any of those physical signs
of fast and abstinence which Riccabocca and his
valet gratuitously afforded to the student in animal
anatomy.
CHAPTER XIV.
Of all the wares and commodities in exchange
and barter, wherein so mainly consists
the civilization of our modern world, there is not
one which is so carefully weighed—so accurately
measured—so plumbed and gauged—so
doled and scraped—so poured out in minima
and balanced with scruples—as that necessary
of social commerce called “an apology!” If
the chemists were half so careful in vending
their poisons, there would be a notable diminution
in the yearly average of victims to arsenic
and oxalic acid. But, alas, in the matter of
apology, it is not from the excess of the dose,
but the timid, niggardly, miserly manner in
which it is dispensed, that poor Humanity is
hurried off to the Styx! How many times does
a life depend on the exact proportions of an
apology! Is it a hairbreadth too short to cover
the scratch for which you want it? Make your
will—you are a dead man! A life, do I say?—a
hecatomb of lives! How many wars would
have been prevented, how many thrones would
be standing, dynasties flourishing—commonwealths
brawling round a bema, or fitting out
galleys for corn and cotton—if an inch or two
more of apology had been added to the proffered
ell! But then that plaguy jealous, suspicious
old vinegar-faced Honor, and her partner Pride—as
penny-wise and pound-foolish a she-skinflint
as herself—have the monopoly of the article.[Pg 527]
And what with the time they lose in adjusting
their spectacles, hunting in the precise
shelf for the precise quality demanded, then
(quality found) the haggling as to quantum—considering
whether it should be apothecary’s
weight or avoirdupois, or English measure
or Flemish—and, finally, the hullaboloo they
make if the customer is not perfectly satisfied
with the monstrous little he gets for his money—I
don’t wonder, for my part, how one loses
temper and patience, and sends Pride, Honor,
and Apology, all to the devil. Aristophanes, in
his “Comedy of Peace,” insinuates a beautiful
allegory by only suffering that goddess, though
in fact she is his heroine, to appear as a mute.
She takes care never to open her lips. The
shrewd Greek knew very well that she would
cease to be Peace, if she once began to chatter.
Wherefore, O reader, if ever you find your pump
under the iron heel of another man’s boot, Heaven
grant that you may hold your tongue, and
not make things past all endurance and forgiveness
by bawling out for an apology!
CHAPTER XV.
But the Squire and his son, Frank, were large-hearted,
generous creatures in the article of
apology, as in all things less skimpingly dealt
out. And seeing that Leonard Fairfield would
offer no plaster to Randal Leslie, they made
amends for his stinginess by their own prodigality.
The Squire accompanied his son to Rood
Hall, and, none of the family choosing to be at
home, the Squire, in his own hand, and from his
own head, indited and composed an epistle which
might have satisfied all the wounds which the
dignity of the Leslies had ever received.
This letter of apology ended with a hearty request
that Randal would come and spend a few
days with his son. Frank’s epistle was to the
same purport, only more Etonian and less legible.
It was some days before Randal’s replies to
these epistles were received. The replies bore
the address of a village near London, and stated
that the writer was now reading with a tutor
preparatory to entrance at Oxford, and could
not, therefore, accept the invitation extended to
him.
For the rest, Randal expressed himself with
good sense, though not with much generosity.
He excused his participation in the vulgarity of
such a conflict by a bitter but short allusion to
the obstinacy and ignorance of the village boor;
and did not do what you, my kind reader, certainly
would have done under similar circumstances,
viz., intercede in behalf of a brave and
unfortunate antagonist. Most of us like a foe
better after we have fought him—that is, if we
are the conquering party; this was not the case
with Randal Leslie. There, so far as the Etonian
was concerned, the matter rested. And the
Squire, irritated that he could not repair whatever
wrong that young gentleman had sustained,
no longer felt a pang of regret as he passed
by Mrs. Fairfield’s deserted cottage.
CHAPTER XVI.
Lenny Fairfield continued to give great satisfaction
to his new employers, and to profit, in
many respects, by the familiar kindness with
which he was treated. Riccabocca, who valued
himself on penetrating into character, had, from
the first, seen that much stuff of no common
quality and texture was to be found in the disposition
and mind of the English village boy.
On farther acquaintance, he perceived that, under
a child’s innocent simplicity, there were the
workings of an acuteness that required but development
and direction. He ascertained that
the pattern boy’s progress at the village-school
proceeded from something more than mechanical
docility and readiness of comprehension.
Lenny had a keen thirst for knowledge, and
through all the disadvantages of birth and circumstance,
there were the indications of that
natural genius which converts disadvantages
themselves into stimulants. Still, with the germs
of good qualities lay the embryos of those which,
difficult to separate, and hard to destroy, often
mar the produce of the soil. With a remarkable
and generous pride in self-repute, there was some
stubbornness; with great sensibility to kindness,
there was also strong reluctance to forgive
affront.
This mixed nature in an uncultivated peasant’s
breast interested Riccabocca, who, though
long secluded from the commerce of mankind,
still looked upon man as the most various and entertaining
volume which philosophical research
can explore. He soon accustomed the boy to
the tone of a conversation generally subtle and
suggestive; and Lenny’s language and ideas
became insensibly less rustic and more refined.
Then Riccabocca selected from his library, small
as it was, books that, though elementary, were
of a higher cast than Lenny could have found
within his reach at Hazeldean. Riccabocca
knew the English language well, better in grammar,
construction, and genius, than many a not
ill-educated Englishman; for he had studied it
with the minuteness with which a scholar studies
a dead language, and amidst his collection he had
many of the books which had formerly served
him for that purpose. These were the first
works he had lent to Lenny. Meanwhile Jackeymo
imparted to the boy many secrets in practical
gardening and minute husbandry, for at
that day farming in England (some favored
counties and estates excepted) was far below
the nicety to which the art has been immemorially
carried in the north of Italy—where, indeed,
you may travel for miles and miles as
through a series of market-gardens—so that, all
these things considered, Leonard Fairfield might
be said to have made a change for the better.
Yet, in truth, and looking below the surface,
that might be fair matter of doubt. For, the[Pg 528]
same reason which had induced the boy to fly
his native village, he no longer repaired to the
church of Hazeldean. The old intimate intercourse
between him and the Parson became necessarily
suspended, or bounded to an occasional
kindly visit from the latter—visits which grew
more rare, and less familiar, as he found his
former pupil in no want of his services, and
wholly deaf to his mild entreaties to forget and
forgive the past, and come at least to his old
seat in the parish church. Lenny still went to
church—a church a long way off in another parish—but
the sermons did not do him the same
good as Parson Dale’s had done; and the clergyman,
who had his own flock to attend to, did
not condescend, as Parson Dale would have done,
to explain what seemed obscure, and enforce
what was profitable, in private talk, with that
stray lamb from another’s fold.
Now, I question much if all Dr. Riccabocca’s
sage maxims, though they were often very moral,
and generally very wise, served to expand
the peasant boy’s native good qualities, and
correct his bad, half so well as the few simple
words, not at all indebted to Machiavelli, which
Leonard had once reverently listened to, when
he stood by his father’s chair, yielded up for the
moment to the good Parson, worthy to sit in it;
for Mr. Dale had a heart in which all the fatherless
of the parish found their place. Nor was
this loss of tender, intimate, spiritual lore so
counterbalanced by the greater facilities for
purely intellectual instruction, as modern enlightenment
might presume. For, without disputing
the advantage of knowledge in a general
way, knowledge, in itself, is not friendly to content.
Its tendency, of course, is to increase the
desires, to dissatisfy us with what is, in order
to urge progress to what may be; and, in that
progress, what unnoticed martyrs among the
many must fall, baffled and crushed by the way!
To how large a number will be given desires
they will never realize, dissatisfaction of the lot
from which they will never rise! Allons! one
is viewing the dark side of the question. It is
all the fault of that confounded Riccabocca, who
has already caused Lenny Fairfield to lean gloomily
on his spade, and, after looking round, and
seeing no one near him, groaned out querulously:
“And am I born to dig a potato-ground?”
Pardieu, my friend Lenny, if you live to be
seventy, and ride in your carriage; and by the
help of a dinner-pill, digest a spoonful of curry,
you may sigh to think what a relish there was
in potatoes, roasted in ashes, after you had digged
them out of that ground with your own
stout young hands. Dig on, Lenny Fairfield,
dig on! Dr. Riccabocca will tell you that there
was once an illustrious personage[4] who made
experience of two very different occupations—one
was ruling men, the other was planting cabbages;
he thought planting cabbages much the
pleasanter of the two!
CHAPTER XVII.
Dr. Riccabocca had secured Lenny Fairfield
and might, therefore, be considered to have ridden
his hobby in the great whirligig with adroitness
and success. But Miss Jemima was still
driving round in her car, handling the reins, and
flourishing the whip, without apparently having
got an inch nearer to the flying form of Dr.
Riccabocca.
Indeed, that excellent and only too-susceptible
spinster, with all her experience of the villainy
of man, had never conceived the wretch to be
so thoroughly beyond the reach of redemption
as when Dr. Riccabocca took his leave, and once
more interred himself amidst the solitudes of the
Casino, without having made any formal renunciation
of his criminal celibacy. For some days
she shut herself up in her own chamber, and
brooded with more than her usual gloomy satisfaction
on the certainty of the approaching crash.
Indeed, many signs of that universal calamity
which, while the visit of Riccabocca lasted, she
had permitted herself to consider ambiguous,
now became luminously apparent. Even the
newspaper, which, during that credulous and
happy period, had given half a column to Births
and Marriages, now bore an ominously-long catalogue
of Deaths; so that it seemed as if the
whole population had lost heart, and had no
chance of repairing its daily losses. The leading
articles spoke, with the obscurity of a Pythian,
of an impending crisis. Monstrous turnips
sprouted out from the paragraphs devoted to
General News. Cows bore calves with two
heads, whales were stranded in the Humber,
showers of frogs descended in the High-street
of Cheltenham.
All these symptoms of the world’s decrepitude
and consummation, which by the side of the fascinating
Riccabocca might admit of some doubt
as to their origin and cause, now conjoined with
the worst of all, viz.—the frightfully progressive
wickedness of man—left to Miss Jemima no ray
of hope save that afforded by the reflection that
she could contemplate the wreck of matter without
a single sentiment of regret.
Mrs. Dale, however, by no means shared the
despondency of her fair friend, and, having gained
access to Miss Jemima’s chamber, succeeded,
though not without difficulty, in her kindly attempts
to cheer the drooping spirits of that female
misanthropist. Nor, in her benevolent
desire to speed the car of Miss Jemima to its
hymeneal goal, was Mrs. Dale so cruel toward
her male friend, Dr. Riccabocca, as she seemed
to her husband. For Mrs. Dale was a woman
of shrewdness and penetration, as most quick-tempered
women are; and she knew that Miss
Jemima was one of those excellent young ladies
who are likely to value a husband in proportion
to the difficulty of obtaining him. In fact, my
readers of both sexes must often have met, in
the course of their experience, with that peculiar
sort of feminine disposition, which requires
the warmth of the conjugal hearth to develop all[Pg 529]
its native good qualities; nor is it to be blamed
overmuch if, innocently aware of this tendency
in its nature, it turns toward what is best fitted
for its growth and improvement, by laws akin to
those which make the sunflower turn to the sun,
or the willow to the stream. Ladies of this disposition,
permanently thwarted in their affectionate
bias, gradually languish away into intellectual
inanition, or sprout out into those abnormal
eccentricities which are classed under the general
name of “oddity” or “character.” But,
once admitted to their proper soil, it is astonishing
what healthful improvement takes place—how
the poor heart, before starved and stinted
of nourishment, throws out its suckers, and bursts
into bloom and fruit. And thus many a belle
from whom the beaux have stood aloof, only
because the puppies think she could be had for
the asking, they see afterward settled down into
true wife and fond mother, with amaze at their
former disparagement, and a sigh at their blind
hardness of heart.
In all probability, Mrs. Dale took this view
of the subject; and certainly in addition to all
the hitherto dormant virtues which would be
awakened in Miss Jemima when fairly Mrs.
Riccabocca, she counted somewhat upon the
mere worldly advantage which such a match
would bestow upon the exile. So respectable
a connection with one of the oldest, wealthiest,
and most popular families in the shire, would in
itself give him a position not to be despised by a
poor stranger in the land; and though the interest
of Miss Jemima’s dowry might not be
much, regarded in the light of English pounds
(not Milanese lire), still it would suffice to prevent
that gradual progress of dematerialization
which the lengthened diet upon minnows and
sticklebacks had already made apparent in the
fine and slow-evanishing form of the philosopher.
Like all persons convinced of the expediency
of a thing, Mrs. Dale saw nothing wanting but
opportunities to insure its success. And that
these might be forthcoming, she not only renewed
with greater frequency, and more urgent
instance than ever, her friendly invitations to
drink tea and spend the evening, but she artfully
so chafed the Squire on his sore point of hospitality,
that the Doctor received weekly a pressing
solicitation to dine and sleep at the Hall.
At first the Italian pished and grunted, and
said Cospetto, and Per Bacco, and Diavolo, and
tried to creep out of so much proffered courtesy.
But, like all single gentlemen, he was a little
under the tyrannical influence of his faithful
servant; and Jackeymo, though he could bear
starving as well as his master when necessary,
still, when he had the option, preferred roast
beef and plum-pudding. Moreover, that vain
and incautious confidence of Riccabocca, touching
the vast sum at his command, and with no
heavier drawback than that of so amiable a lady
as Miss Jemima—who had already shown him
(Jackeymo) many little delicate attentions—had
greatly whetted the cupidity which was in the
servant’s Italian nature: a cupidity the more
keen because, long debarred its legitimate exercise
on his own mercenary interests, he carried
it all to the account of his master’s!
Thus tempted by his enemy, and betrayed by
his servant, the unfortunate Riccabocca fell,
though with eyes not unblinded, into the hospitable
snares extended for the destruction of his—celibacy!
He went often to the Parsonage,
often to the Hall, and by degrees the sweets of
the social domestic life, long denied him, began
to exercise their enervating charm upon the
stoicism of our poor exile. Frank had now returned
to Eton. An unexpected invitation had
carried off Captain Higginbotham to pass a few
weeks at Bath with a distant relation, who had
lately returned from India, and who, as rich as
Crœsus, felt so estranged and solitary in his
native isle that, when the Captain “claimed
kindred there,” to his own amaze “he had his
claims allowed;” while a very protracted sitting
of Parliament still delayed in London the
Squire’s habitual visitors in the later summer;
so that—a chasm thus made in his society—Mr.
Hazeldean welcomed with no hollow cordiality
the diversion or distraction he found in
the foreigner’s companionship. Thus, with
pleasure to all parties, and strong hopes to the
two female conspirators, the intimacy between
the Casino and Hall rapidly thickened; but still
not a word resembling a distinct proposal did
Dr. Riccabocca breathe. And still, if such an
idea obtruded itself on his mind, it was chased
therefrom with so determined a Diavolo that,
perhaps, if not the end of the world, at least the
end of Miss Jemima’s tenure in it, might have
approached, and seen her still Miss Jemima,
but for a certain letter with a foreign post-mark
that reached the Doctor one Tuesday morning.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The servant saw that something had gone
wrong, and, under pretense of syringing the
orange-trees, he lingered near his master, and
peered through the sunny leaves upon Riccabocca’s
melancholy brows.
The Doctor sighed heavily. Nor did he, as
was his wont, after some such sigh, mechanically
take up that dear comforter, the pipe. But
though the tobacco-pouch lay by his side on the
balustrade, and the pipe stood against the wall
between his knees, childlike lifting up its lips to
the customary caress—he heeded neither the
one nor the other, but laid the letter silently on
his lap, and fixed his eyes upon the ground.
“It must be bad news, indeed!” thought
Jackeymo, and desisted from his work. Approaching
his master, he took up the pipe and
the tobacco-pouch, and filled the bowl slowly,
glancing all the while to that dark, musing face
on which, when abandoned by the expression of
intellectual vivacity or the exquisite smile of
Italian courtesy, the deep downward lines revealed
the characters of sorrow. Jackeymo did[Pg 530]
not venture to speak; but the continued silence
of his master disturbed him much. He laid that
peculiar tinder which your smokers use upon
the steel, and struck the spark—still not a word,
nor did Riccabocca stretch forth his hand.
“I never knew him in this taking before,”
thought Jackeymo; and delicately he insinuated
the neck of the pipe into the nerveless fingers
of the hand that lay supine on those quiet knees—the
pipe fell to the ground.
Jackeymo crossed himself, and began praying
to his sainted namesake with great fervor.
The Doctor rose slowly, and, as if with effort,
he walked once or twice to and fro the terrace;
and then he halted abruptly, and said,
“Friend!”
“Blessed Monsignore San Giacomo, I knew
thou wouldst hear me!” cried the servant; and
he raised his master’s hand to his lips, then
abruptly turned away and wiped his eyes.—”Friend,”
repeated Riccabocca, and this time
with a tremulous emphasis, and in the softest
tone of a voice never wholly without the music
of the sweet South, “I would talk to thee of my
child.”
CHAPTER XIX.
“The letter, then, relates to the Signorina.
She is well?”
“Yes, she is well now. She is in our native
Italy.”
Jackeymo raised his eyes involuntarily toward
the orange-trees, and the morning breeze swept
by and bore to him the odor of their blossoms.
“Those are sweet even here, with care,”
said he, pointing to the trees. “I think I have
said that before to the Padrone.”
But Riccabocca was now looking again at the
letter, and did not notice either the gesture or
the remark of his servant.
“My aunt is no more!” said he, after a pause.
“We will pray for her soul!” answered Jackeymo,
solemnly. “But she was very old, and
had been a long time ailing. Let it not grieve
the Padrone too keenly: at that age, and with
those infirmities, death comes as a friend.”
“Peace be to her dust!” returned the Italian.
“If she had her faults, be they now forgotten
forever; and in the hour of my danger and
distress, she sheltered my infant! That shelter
is destroyed. This letter is from the priest,
her confessor. You know that she had nothing
at her own disposal to bequeath to my child,
and her property passes to the male heir—mine
enemy.”
“Traitor!” muttered Jackeymo; and his
right hand seemed to feel for the weapon which
the Italians of lower rank often openly wear in
their girdles.
“The priest,” resumed Riccabocca, calmly,
“has rightly judged in removing my child as a
guest from the house in which my enemy enters
as lord.”
“And where is the Signorina?”
“With that poor priest. See, Giacomo—here,
here—this is her handwriting at the end
of the letter—the first lines she ever yet traced
to me.”
Jackeymo took off his hat, and looked reverently
on the large characters of a child’s writing.
But large as they were, they seemed indistinct,
for the paper was blistered with the child’s
tears; and on the place where they had not
fallen, there was a round fresh moist stain of
the tear that had dropped from the lids of the
father. Riccabocca renewed, “The priest recommends
a convent.”
“To the devil with the priest!” cried the
servant; then, crossing himself rapidly, he added,
“I did not mean that, Monsignore San Giacomo—forgive
me! But your Excellency[5] does
not think of making a nun of his only child!”
“And yet why not?” said Riccabocca, mournfully;
“what can I give her in the world? Is
the land of the stranger a better refuge than the
home of peace in her native clime?”
“In the land of the stranger beats her father’s
heart!”
“And if that beat were stilled, what then?
Ill fares the life that a single death can bereave
of all. In a convent at least (and the priest’s
influence can obtain her that asylum among her
equals and amidst her sex) she is safe from trial
and from penury—to her grave.”
“Penury! Just see how rich we shall be
when we take those fields at Michaelmas.”
“Pazzie!” (follies) said Riccabocca, listlessly.
“Are these suns more serene than ours, or
the soil more fertile? Yet in our own Italy,
saith the proverb, ‘he who sows land reaps
more care than corn.’ It were different,” continued
the father, after a pause, and in a more
irresolute tone, “if I had some independence,
however small, to count on—nay, if among all
my tribe of dainty relatives there were but one
female who would accompany Violante to the
exile’s hearth—Ishmael had his Hagar. But
how can we two rough-bearded men provide for
all the nameless wants and cares of a frail female
child? And she has been so delicately
reared—the woman-child needs the fostering
hand and tender eye of a woman.”
“And with a word,” said Jackeymo, resolutely,
“the Padrone might secure to his child all
that he needs, to save her from the sepulchre of
a convent; and ere the autumn leaves fall, she
might be sitting on his knee. Padrone, do not
think that you can conceal from me the truth,
that you love your child better than all things
in the world—now the Patria is as dead to you
as the dust of your fathers—and your heart-strings
would crack with the effort to tear her
from them, and consign her to a convent. Padrone,
never again to hear her voice—never
again to see her face! Those little arms that
twined round your neck that dark night, when[Pg 531]
we fled fast for life and freedom, and you said,
as you felt their clasp, ‘Friend, all is not yet
lost!'”
“Giacomo!” exclaimed the father, reproachfully,
and his voice seemed to choke him. Riccabocca
turned away, and walked restlessly to
and fro the terrace; then, lifting his arms with
a wild gesture as he still continued his long, irregular
strides, he muttered, “yes, heaven is my
witness that I could have borne reverse and
banishment without a murmur, had I permitted
myself that young partner in exile and privation.
Heaven is my witness that, if I hesitate now, it
is because I would not listen to my own selfish
heart. Yet never, never to see her again—my
child! And it was but as the infant that I beheld
her! O friend, friend—” (and, stopping
short with a burst of uncontrollable emotion, he
bowed his head upon his servant’s shoulder;)
“thou knowest what I have endured and suffered
at my hearth, as in my country; the wrong,
the perfidy, the—the—” His voice again failed
him; he clung to his servant’s breast, and his
whole frame shook.
“But your child, the innocent one—think now
only of her!” faltered Giacomo, struggling with
his own sobs.
“True, only of her,” replied the exile, raising
his face—”only of her. Put aside thy thoughts
for myself, friend—counsel me. If I were to
send for Violante, and if, transplanted to these
keen airs, she drooped and died—look, look—the
priest says that she needs such tender care;
or if I myself were summoned from the world,
to leave her in it alone, friendless, homeless,
breadless perhaps, at the age of woman’s sharpest
trial against temptation; would she not live
to mourn the cruel egotism that closed on her
infant innocence the gates of the House of
God?”
Giacomo was appalled by this appeal; and
indeed Riccabocca had never before thus reverently
spoken of the cloister. In his hours of
philosophy, he was wont to sneer at monks and
nuns, priesthood and superstition. But now, in
that hour of emotion, the Old Religion reclaimed
her empire; and the skeptical, world-wise man,
thinking only of his child, spoke and felt with a
child’s simple faith.
CHAPTER XX.
“But again, I say,” murmured Jackeymo,
scarce audibly, and after a long silence, “if the
Padrone would make up his mind—to marry!”
He expected that his master would start up
in his customary indignation at such a suggestion—nay,
he might not have been sorry so to have
changed the current of feeling; but the poor
Italian only winced slightly, and mildly withdrawing
himself from his servant’s supporting
arm, again paced the terrace, but this time
quietly and in silence. A quarter of an hour
thus passed. “Give me the pipe,” said P.
Riccabocca, passing into the Belvidere.
Jackeymo again struck the spark, and, wonderfully
relieved at the Padrone’s return to his
usual adviser, mentally besought his sainted
namesake to bestow a double portion of soothing
wisdom on the benignant influences of the
weed.
CHAPTER XXI.
Dr. Riccabocca had been some little time in
the solitude of the Belvidere, when Lenny Fairfield,
not knowing that his employer was therein,
entered to lay down a book which the Doctor
had lent him, with injunctions to leave on a
certain table when done with. Riccabocca
looked up at the sound of the young peasant’s
step.
“I beg your honor’s pardon—I did not know—”
“Never mind; lay the book there. I wish to
speak with you. You look well, my child; this
air agrees with you as well as that of Hazeldean?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“Yet it is higher ground, more exposed?”
“That can hardly be, sir,” said Lenny; “there
are many plants grow here which don’t flourish
at the Squire’s. The hill yonder keeps off the
east wind, and the place lays to the south.”
“Lies, not lays, Lenny. What are the principal
complaints in these parts?”
“Eh, sir?”
“I mean what maladies, what diseases?”
“I never heard tell of any, sir, except the
rheumatism.”
“No low fevers? no consumption?”
“Never heard of them, sir.”
Riccabocca drew a long breath, as if relieved.
“That seems a very kind family at the Hall.”
“I have nothing to say against it,” answered
Lenny, bluntly. “I have not been treated
justly. But as that book says, sir, ‘It is not
every one who comes into the world with a
silver spoon in his mouth.'”
Little thought the Doctor that those wise
maxims may leave sore thoughts behind them.
He was too occupied with the subject most at
his own heart to think then of what was in
Lenny Fairfield’s.
“Yes; a kind, English, domestic family. Did
you see much of Miss Hazeldean?”
“Not so much as of the Lady.”
“Is she liked in the village, think you?”
“Miss Jemima? Yes. She never did harm.
Her little dog bit me once—she did not ask me
to beg its pardon, she asked mine! She’s a
very nice young lady; the girls say she’s very
affable: and,” added Lenny with a smile, “there
are always more weddings going on when she’s
down at the Hall.”
“Oh!” said Riccabocca. Then, after a long
whiff, “Did you ever see her play with the little
children? Is she fond of children, do you think?”
“Lord, sir, you guess every thing. She’s
never so pleased as when she’s playing with the
babies.”
“Humph!” grunted Riccabocca. “Babies—well,
that’s womanlike. I don’t mean exactly
babies, but when they’re older—little girls.”
“Indeed, sir, I dare say; but,” said Lenny,
primly, “I never as yet kept company with the
little girls.”
“Quite right, Lenny; be equally discreet all
your life. Mrs. Dale is very intimate with Miss
Hazeldean—more than with the Squire’s lady.
Why is that, think you?”
“Well, sir,” said Leonard, shrewdly, “Mrs.
Dale has her little tempers, though she’s a very
good lady; and Madam Hazeldean is rather
high, and has a spirit. But Miss Jemima is so
soft: any one could live with Miss Jemima, as
Joe and the servants say at the Hall.”
“Indeed! Get my hat out of the parlor, and—just
bring a clothes-brush, Lenny. A fine
sunny day for a walk.”
After this most mean and dishonorable inquisition
into the character and popular repute of
Miss Hazeldean, Signore Riccabocca seemed as
much cheered up and elated as if he had committed
some very noble action; and he walked
forth in the direction of the Hall with a far lighter
and livelier step than that with which he had
paced the terrace.
“Monsignore San Giacomo, by thy help and
the pipe’s, the Padrone shall have his child!”
muttered the servant, looking up from the garden.
CHAPTER XXII.
Yet Dr. Riccabocca was not rash. The man
who wants his wedding-garment to fit him must
allow plenty of time for the measure. But, from
that day, the Italian notably changed his manner
toward Miss Hazeldean. He ceased that profusion
of compliment in which he had hitherto
carried off in safety all serious meaning. For
indeed the Doctor considered that compliments,
to a single gentleman, were what the inky liquid
it dispenses is to the cuttle-fish, that by obscuring
the water, sails away from its enemy.
Neither did he, as before, avoid prolonged conversations
with that young lady, and contrive to
escape from all solitary rambles by her side.
On the contrary, he now sought every occasion
to be in her society; and, entirely dropping the
language of gallantry, he assumed something
of the earnest tone of friendship. He bent down
his intellect to examine and plumb her own.
To use a very homely simile, he blew away that
froth which there is on the surface of mere acquaintanceships,
especially with the opposite
sex; and which, while it lasts, scarce allows
you to distinguish between small beer and double
X. Apparently Dr. Riccabocca was satisfied
with his scrutiny—at all events, under that
froth there was no taste of bitter. The Italian
might not find any great strength of intellect in
Miss Jemima, but he found that, disentangled
from many little whims and foibles—which he
had himself the sense to perceive were harmless
enough if they lasted, and not so absolutely constitutional
but what they might be removed by
a tender hand—Miss Hazeldean had quite enough
sense to comprehend the plain duties of married
life; and if the sense could fail, it found a substitute
in good old homely English principles and
the instincts of amiable kindly feelings.
I know not how it is, but your very clever
man never seems to care so much as your less
gifted mortals for cleverness in his helpmate.
Your scholars, and poets, and ministers of state,
are more often than not found assorted with exceedingly
humdrum good sort of women, and
apparently like them all the better for their deficiencies.
Just see how happily Racine lived
with his wife, and what an angel he thought
her, and yet she had never read his plays.
Certainly Goethe never troubled the lady who
called him “Mr. Privy Councilor” with whims
about “monads,” and speculations on “color,”
nor those stiff metaphysical problems on which
one breaks one’s shins in the Second Part of the
Faust. Probably it may be that such great
geniuses—knowing that, as compared with
themselves, there is little difference between
your clever woman and your humdrum woman—merge
at once all minor distinctions, relinquish all
attempts that could not but prove unsatisfactory,
at sympathy in hard intellectual pursuits, and are
quite satisfied to establish that tie which, after
all, best resists wear and tear—viz., the tough
household bond between one human heart and
another.
At all events, this, I suspect, was the reasoning
of Dr. Riccabocca, when one morning, after
a long walk with Miss Hazeldean, he muttered
to himself,
Non fece mai buon muro.”
Which may bear the paraphrase, “Bricks without
mortar would make a very bad wall.”
There was quite enough in Miss Jemima’s disposition
to make excellent mortar: the Doctor
took the bricks to himself.
When his examination was concluded, our
philosopher symbolically evinced the result he
had arrived at by a very simple proceeding on
his part—which would have puzzled you greatly
if you had not paused, and meditated thereon,
till you saw all that it implied. Dr. Riccabocca
took off his spectacles! He wiped them carefully,
put them into their shagreen case, and
locked them in his bureau: that is to say, he
left off wearing his spectacles.
You will observe that there was a wonderful
depth of meaning in that critical symptom,
whether it be regarded as a sign outward, positive,
and explicit; or a sign metaphysical, mystical,
and esoteric. For, as to the last—it denoted
that the task of the spectacles was over;
that, when a philosopher has made up his mind
to marry, it is better henceforth to be short-sighted—nay,
even somewhat purblind—than to
be always scrutinizing the domestic felicity, to
which he is about to resign himself, through a
pair of cold, unillusory barnacles. And for the[Pg 533]
things beyond the hearth, if he can not see
without spectacles, he is not about to ally to
his own defective vision a good sharp pair of
eyes, never at fault where his interests are concerned?
On the other hand, regarded positively,
categorically, and explicitly, Dr. Riccabocca,
by laying aside those spectacles, signified
that he was about to commence that happy
initiation of courtship when every man, be he
ever so much a philosopher, wishes to look as
young and as handsome as time and nature will
allow. Vain task to speed the soft language of
the eyes through the medium of these glassy
interpreters! I remember, for my own part,
that once on a visit to Adelaide, I was in great
danger of falling in love—with a young lady,
too, who would have brought me a very good
fortune—when she suddenly produced from her
reticule a very neat pair of No. 4, set in tortoise-shell,
and, fixing upon me their Gorgon
gaze, froze the astonished Cupid into stone!
And I hold it a great proof of the wisdom of
Riccabocca, and of his vast experience in mankind,
that he was not above the consideration of
what your pseudo-sages would have regarded
as foppish and ridiculous trifles. It argued all
the better for that happiness which is our being’s
end and aim, that, in condescending to play the
lover, he put those unbecoming petrifiers under
lock and key.
And certainly, now the spectacles were abandoned,
it was impossible to deny that the Italian
had remarkably handsome eyes. Even through
the spectacles, or lifted a little above them, they
were always bright and expressive; but without
those adjuncts, the blaze was soft and more
tempered: they had that look which the French
call velouté, or velvety; and he appeared altogether
ten years younger. If our Ulysses, thus
rejuvenated by his Minerva, has not fully
made up his mind to make a Penelope of Miss
Jemima, all I can say is, that he is worse than
Polyphemus, who was only an Anthropophagos.
He preys upon the weaker sex, and is a Gynophagite!
CHAPTER XXIII.
“And you commission me, then, to speak to
our dear Jemima?” said Mrs. Dale, joyfully,
and without any bitterness whatever in that
“dear.”
Dr. Riccabocca.—”Nay, before speaking to
Miss Hazeldean, it would surely be proper to
know how far my addresses would be acceptable
to the family.”
Mrs. Dale.—”Ah!”
Dr. Riccabocca.—”The Squire is of course
the head of the family.”
Mrs. Dale (absent and distrait).—”The Squire—yes,
very true—quite proper.” (Then looking
up with naïveté)—”Can you believe me, I
never thought of the Squire. And he is such
an odd man, and has so many English prejudices,
that really—dear me, how vexatious that it
should never once have occurred to me that
Mr. Hazeldean had a voice in the matter. Indeed,
the relationship is so distant—it is not like
being her father; and Jemima is of age, and
can do as she pleases; and—but as you say, it
is quite proper that he should be consulted, as
the head of the family.”
Dr. Riccabocca.—”And you think that the
Squire of Hazeldean might reject my alliance!
Pshaw! that’s a grand word indeed; I mean,
that he might object very reasonably to his
cousin’s marriage with a foreigner, of whom he
can know nothing, except that which in all
countries is disreputable, and is said in this to
be criminal—poverty.”
Mrs. Dale (kindly).—”You mistake us poor
English people, and you wrong the Squire,
heaven bless him! for we were poor enough
when he singled out my husband from a hundred
for the minister of his parish, for his neighbor
and his friend. I will speak to him fearlessly—”
Dr. Riccabocca.—”And frankly. And now
I have used that word, let me go on with the
confession which your kindly readiness, my fair
friend, somewhat interrupted. I said that if I
might presume to think my addresses would be
acceptable to Miss Hazeldean and her family, I
was too sensible of her amiable qualities not to—not
to—”
Mrs. Dale (with demure archness).—”Not
to be the happiest of men—that’s the customary
English phrase, Doctor.”
Riccabocca (gallantly).—”There can not be
a better. But,” continued he, seriously, “I
wish it first to be understood that I have—been
married before.”
Mrs. Dale (astonished).—”Married before!”
Riccabocca.—”And that I have an only child,
dear to me—inexpressibly dear. That child, a
daughter, has hitherto lived abroad; circumstances
now render it desirable that she should
make her home with me. And I own fairly
that nothing has so attached me to Miss Hazeldean,
nor so induced my desire for our matrimonial
connection, as my belief that she has the
heart and the temper to become a kind mother
to my little one.”
Mrs. Dale (with feeling and warmth).—”You
judge her rightly there.”
Riccabocca.—”Now, in pecuniary matters,
as you may conjecture from my mode of life, I
have nothing to offer to Miss Hazeldean correspondent
with her own fortune, whatever that
may be.”
Mrs. Dale.—”That difficulty is obviated by
settling Miss Hazeldean’s fortune on herself,
which is customary in such cases.”
Dr. Riccabocca’s face lengthened. “And my
child, then?” said he, feelingly. There was
something in that appeal so alien from all sordid
and merely personal mercenary motives, that
Mrs. Dale could not have had the heart to make
the very rational suggestion—”But that child is[Pg 534]
not Jemima’s, and you may have children by
her.”
She was touched, and replied hesitatingly—”But,
from what you and Jemima may jointly
possess, you can save something annually—you
can insure your life for your child. We did so
when our poor child whom we lost was born,” (the
tears rushed into Mrs. Dale’s eyes); “and I
fear that Charles still insures his life for my
sake, though heaven knows that—that—”
The tears burst out. That little heart, quick
and petulant thought it was, had not a fibre of
the elastic muscular tissues which are mercifully
bestowed on the hearts of predestined widows.
Dr. Riccabocca could not pursue the subject of
life insurances further. But the idea—which
had never occurred to the foreigner before,
though so familiar to us English people, when
only possessed of a life income—pleased him
greatly. I will do him the justice to say, that
he preferred it to the thought of actually appropriating
to himself and his child a portion of
Miss Hazeldean’s dower.
Shortly afterward he took his leave, and Mrs.
Dale hastened to seek her husband in his study,
inform him of the success of her matrimonial
scheme, and consult him as to the chance of the
Squire’s acquiescence therein. “You see,”
said she, hesitatingly, “though the Squire might
be glad to see Jemima married to some Englishman,
yet, if he asks who and what is this Dr.
Riccabocca, how am I to answer him?”
“You should have thought of that before,”
said Mr. Dale, with unwonted asperity; “and,
indeed, if I had ever believed any thing serious
could come out of what seemed to me so absurd,
I should long since have requested you not to
interfere in such matters.” “Good heavens!” continued
the Parson, changing color, “if we should
have assisted, underhand as it were, to introduce
into the family of a man to whom we
owe so much, a connection that he would dislike!
how base we should be! how ungrateful!”
Poor Mrs. Dale was frightened by this speech,
and still more by her husband’s consternation
and displeasure. To do Mrs. Dale justice,
whenever her mild partner was really either
grieved or offended, her little temper vanished—she
became as meek as a lamb. As soon as
she recovered the first shock she experienced,
she hastened to dissipate the Parson’s apprehensions.
She assured him that she was convinced
that if the Squire disapproved of Riccabocca’s
pretensions, the Italian would withdraw
them at once, and Miss Hazeldean would never
know of his proposals. Therefore, in that case,
no harm would be done.
This assurance coinciding with Mr. Dale’s
convictions as to Riccabocca’s scruples on the
point of honor, tended much to compose the
good man; and if he did not, as my reader of
the gentler sex would expect from him, feel
alarm lest Miss Jemima’s affections should have
been irretrievably engaged, and her happiness
thus put in jeopardy by the Squire’s refusal, it
was not that the Parson wanted tenderness of
heart, but experience in womankind; and he
believed, very erroneously, that Miss Jemima
Hazeldean was not one upon whom a disappointment
of that kind would produce a lasting impression.
Therefore Mr. Dale, after a pause of
consideration, said kindly—
“Well, don’t vex yourself—and I was to
blame quite as much as you. But, indeed, I
should have thought it easier for the Squire to
have transplanted one of his tall cedars into his
kitchen-garden, than for you to inveigle Dr.
Riccabocca into matrimonial intentions. But a
man who could voluntarily put himself into the
Parish Stocks for the sake of experiment, must
be capable of any thing! However, I think it
better that I, rather than yourself, should speak
to the Squire, and I will go at once.”
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Parson put on the shovel hat, which—conjoined
with other details in his dress peculiarly
clerical, and already, even then, beginning to
be out of fashion with churchmen—had served
to fix upon him, emphatically, the dignified but
antiquated style and cognomen of “Parson;”
and took his way toward the Home Farm, at
which he expected to find the Squire. But he
had scarcely entered upon the village green
when he beheld Mr. Hazeldean, leaning both
hands on his stick, and gazing intently upon the
Parish Stocks. Now, sorry am I to say that,
ever since the Hegira of Lenny and his mother,
the Anti-Stockian and Revolutionary spirit in
Hazeldean, which the memorable homily of our
Parson had awhile averted or suspended, had
broken forth afresh. For though, while Lenny
was present to be mowed and jeered at, there
had been no pity for him, yet no sooner was he
removed from the scene of trial, than a universal
compassion for the barbarous usage he had received
produced what is called “the reaction of
public opinion.” Not that those who had mowed
and jeered repented them of their mockery, or
considered themselves in the slightest degree
the cause of his expatriation. No; they, with
the rest of the villagers, laid all the blame upon
the Stocks. It was not to be expected that a
lad of such exemplary character could be thrust
into that place of ignominy, and not be sensible
of the affront. And who, in the whole village,
was safe, if such goings-on and puttings-in were
to be tolerated in silence, and at the expense
of the very best and quietest lad the village
had ever known? Thus, a few days after the
widow’s departure, the Stocks was again the
object of midnight desecration: it was bedaubed
and bescratched—it was hacked and hewed—it
was scrawled all over with pithy lamentations
for Lenny, and laconic execrations on tyrants.
Night after night new inscriptions appeared,
testifying the sarcastic wit and the vindictive
sentiment of the parish. And perhaps the Stocks[Pg 535]
themselves were only spared from ax and bonfire
by the convenience they afforded to the
malice of the disaffected: they became the
Pasquin of Hazeldean.
As disaffection naturally produces a correspondent
vigor in authority, so affairs had been
lately administered with greater severity than
had been hitherto wont in the easy rule of the
Squire and his predecessors. Suspected persons
were naturally marked out by Mr. Stirn, and
reported to his employer, who, too proud or too
pained to charge them openly with ingratitude,
at first only passed them by in his walks with a
silent and stiff inclination of his head; and afterward
gradually yielding to the baleful influence
of Stirn, the Squire grumbled forth that “he did
not see why he should be always putting himself
out of his way to show kindness to those who
made such a return. There ought to be a
difference between the good and the bad.”
Encouraged by this admission, Stirn had conducted
himself toward the suspected parties,
and their whole kith and kin, with the iron-handed
justice that belonged to his character.
For some, habitual donations of milk from the
dairy, and vegetables from the gardens, were
surlily suspended; others were informed that
their pigs were always trespassing on the woods
in search of acorns; or that they were violating
the Game Laws in keeping lurchers. A beer-house,
popular in the neighborhood, but of late
resorted to overmuch by the grievance-mongers
(and no wonder, since they had become the
popular party), was threatened with an application
to the magistrates for the withdrawal of its
license. Sundry old women, whose grandsons
were notoriously ill-disposed towards the Stocks,
were interdicted from gathering dead sticks
under the avenues, on pretense that they broke
down the live boughs; and, what was more
obnoxious to the younger members of the parish
than most other retaliatory measures, three
chestnut trees, one walnut, and two cherry
trees, standing at the bottom of the park, and
which had, from time immemorial, been given
up to the youth of Hazeldean, were now solemnly
placed under the general defense of “private
property.” And the crier had announced that,
henceforth, all depredators on the fruit-trees in
Copse Hollow would be punished with the utmost
rigor of the law. Stirn, indeed, recommended
much more stringent proceedings than
all these indications of a change of policy, which,
he averred, would soon bring the parish to its
senses—such as discontinuing many little jobs of
unprofitable work that employed the surplus
labor of the village. But there the Squire, falling
into the department, and under the benigner
influence of his Harry, was as yet not properly
hardened. When it came to a question that
affected the absolute quantity of loaves to be
consumed by the graceless mouths that fed upon
him, the milk of human kindness—with which
Providence has so bountifully supplied that class
of the mammalia called the “Bucolic,” and of
which our Squire had an extra “yield”—burst
forth, and washed away all the indignation of
the harsher Adam.
Still your policy of half-measures, which irritates
without crushing its victims, which flaps an
exasperated wasp-nest with a silk pocket-handkerchief,
instead of blowing it up with a match
and train, is rarely successful; and, after three or
four other and much guiltier victims than Lenny
had been incarcerated in the Stocks, the parish
of Hazeldean was ripe for any enormity. Pestilent
jacobinical tracts, conceived and composed
in the sinks of manufacturing towns—found their
way into the popular beer-house—heaven knows
how, though the Tinker was suspected of being
the disseminator by all but Stirn, who still, in a
whisper, accused the Papishers. And, finally,
there appeared among the other graphic embellishments
which the poor Stocks had received,
the rude gravure of a gentleman in a broad-brimmed
hat and top-boots, suspended from a
gibbet, with the inscription beneath—”A warnin
to hall tirans—mind your hi!—sighnde Captin
sTraw.”
It was upon this significant and emblematic
portraiture that the Squire was gazing when the
Parson joined him.
“Well, Parson,” said Mr. Hazeldean, with a
smile which he meant to be pleasant and easy,
but which was exceedingly bitter and grim, “I
wish you joy of your flock—you see they have
just hanged me in effigy!”
The Parson stared, and, though greatly
shocked, smothered his emotions; and attempted,
with the wisdom of the serpent and the
mildness of the dove, to find another original
for the effigy.
“It is very bad,” quoth he, “but not so bad
as all that, Squire; that’s not the shape of your
hat. It is evidently meant for Mr. Stirn.”
“Do you think so!” said the Squire, softened.
“Yet the top-boots—Stirn never wears top-boots.”
“No more do you—except in hunting. If
you look again, those are not tops—they are
leggings—Stirn wears leggings. Besides, that
flourish, which is meant for a nose, is a kind of
a hook like Stirn’s; whereas your nose—though
by no means a snub—rather turns up than not,
as the Apollo’s does, according to the plaster
cast in Riccabocca’s parlor.”
“Poor Stirn!” said the Squire, in a tone that
evinced complacency, not unmingled with compassion,
“that’s what a man gets in this world
by being a faithful servant, and doing his duty
with zeal for his employer. But you see that
things have come to a strange pass, and the
question now is, what course to pursue. The
miscreants hitherto have defied all vigilance,
and Stirn recommends the employment of a
regular night-watch with a lantern and bludgeon.”
“That may protect the Stocks, certainly; but
will it keep those detestable tracts out of the
beer-house?”
“We shall shut the beer-house up at the next
sessions.”
“The tracts will break out elsewhere—the
humor’s in the blood!”
“I’ve half a mind to run off to Brighton or
Leamington—good hunting at Leamington—for
a year, just to let the rogues see how they can
get on without me!”
The Squire’s lip trembled.
“My dear Mr. Hazeldean,” said the Parson,
taking his friend’s hand, “I don’t want to parade
my superior wisdom; but if you had taken my
advice, quieta non movere. Was there ever a
parish so peaceable as this, or a country-gentleman
so beloved as you were, before you undertook
the task which has dethroned kings and
ruined states—that of wantonly meddling with
antiquity, whether for the purpose of uncalled-for
repairs, or the revival of obsolete
uses.”
At this rebuke the Squire did not manifest his
constitutional tendencies to choler; but he replied
almost meekly, “If it were to do again,
faith, I would leave the parish to the enjoyment
of the shabbiest pair of Stocks that ever disgraced
a village. Certainly I meant it for the
best—an ornament to the green; however, now
they are rebuilt, the Stocks must be supported.
Will Hazeldean is not the man to give way to a
set of thankless rapscallions.”
“I think,” said the Parson, “that you will
allow that the House of Tudor, whatever its
faults, was a determined, resolute dynasty
enough—high-hearted and strong-headed. A
Tudor would never have fallen into the same
calamities as the poor Stuart did!”
“What the plague has the House of Tudor
got to do with my Stocks?”
“A great deal. Henry the VIII. found a subsidy
so unpopular that he gave it up; and the
people, in return, allowed him to cut off as many
heads as he pleased, besides those in his own
family. Good Queen Bess, who, I know, is your
idol in history—”
“To be sure!—she knighted my ancestor at
Tilbury Fort.”
“Good Queen Bess struggled hard to maintain
a certain monopoly; she saw it would not
do, and she surrendered it with that frank heartiness
which becomes a sovereign, and makes
surrender a grace.”
“Ha! and you would have me give up the
Stocks?”
“I would much rather they had staid as they
were, before you touched them; but, as it is, if
you could find a good plausible pretext—and
there is an excellent one at hand—the sternest
kings open prisons, and grant favors, upon joyful
occasions. Now a marriage in the royal family
is of course a joyful occasion!—and so it should
be in that of the King of Hazeldean.” Admire
that artful turn in the Parson’s eloquence!—it
was worthy of Riccabocca himself. Indeed,
Mr. Dale had profited much by his companionship
with that Machiavellian intellect.
“A marriage—yes; but Frank has only just
got into long tails!”
“I did not allude to Frank, but to your cousin
Jemima!”
CHAPTER XXV.
The Squire staggered as if the breath had
been knocked out of him, and, for want of a better
seat, sate down on the Stocks.
All the female heads in the neighboring cottages
peered, themselves unseen, through the
casements. What could the Squire be about?—what
new mischief did he meditate? Did he
mean to fortify the Stocks? Old Gaffer Solomons,
who had an indefinite idea of the lawful
power of squires, and who had been for the last
ten minutes at watch on his threshold, shook
his head and said, “Them as a-cut out the mon,
a-hanging, as a-put in the Squire’s head!”
“Put what?” asked his grand-daughter.
“The gallus!” answered Solomons—”he be
a-goin to have it hung from the great elm-tree.
And the Parson, good mon, is a-quotin Scripter
agin it—you see he’s a-taking off his gloves,
and a-putting his two han’s together, as he do
when he pray for the sick, Jenny.”
That description of the Parson’s mien and
manner, which, with his usual niceness of observation,
Gaffer Solomons thus sketched off,
will convey to you some idea of the earnestness
with which the Parson pleaded the cause he had
undertaken to advocate. He dwelt much upon
the sense of propriety which the foreigner had
evinced in requesting that the Squire might be
consulted before any formal communication to
his cousin; and he repeated Mrs. Dale’s assurance,
that such were Riccabocca’s high standard
of honor and belief in the sacred rights of
hospitality, that, if the Squire withheld his consent
to his proposals, the Parson was convinced
that the Italian would instantly retract them.
Now, considering that Miss Hazeldean was, to
say the least, come to years of discretion, and
the Squire had long since placed her property
entirely at her own disposal, Mr. Hazeldean
was forced to acquiesce in the Parson’s corollary
remark, “That this was a delicacy which
could not be expected from every English pretender
to the lady’s hand.” Seeing that he had
so far cleared ground, the Parson went on to intimate,
though with great tact, that, since Miss
Jemima would probably marry sooner or later,
(and, indeed, that the Squire could not wish to
prevent her), it might be better for all parties
concerned that it should be with some one who,
though a foreigner, was settled in the neighborhood,
and of whose character what was known
was certainly favorable, than run the hazard of
her being married for her money by some adventurer
or Irish fortune-hunter at the watering-places
she yearly visited. Then he touched
lightly on Riccabocca’s agreeable and companionable
qualities; and concluded with a skillful
peroration upon the excellent occasion the wedding[Pg 537]
would afford to reconcile Hall and Parish,
by making a voluntary holocaust of the Stocks.
As he concluded, the Squire’s brow, before
thoughtful, though not sullen, cleared up benignly.
To say truth, the Squire was dying to
get rid of the Stocks, if he could but do so handsomely
and with dignity; and if all the stars in
the astrological horoscope had conjoined together
to give Miss Jemima “assurance of a husband,”
they could not so have served her with
the Squire, as that conjunction between the
Altar and the Stocks which the Parson had effected!
Accordingly, when Mr. Dale had come to an
end, the Squire replied with great placidity and
good sense, “That Mr. Rickeybockey had behaved
very much like a gentleman, and that he
was very much obliged to him; that he (the
Squire) had no right to interfere in the matter,
farther than with his advice; that Jemima was
old enough to choose for herself, and that, as
the Parson had implied, after all, she might go
farther and fare worse—indeed, the farther she
went (that is, the longer she waited), the worse
she was likely to fare. I own for my part,”
continued the Squire, “that, though I like
Rickeybockey very much, I never suspected
that Jemima was caught with his long face;
but there’s no accounting for tastes. My Harry,
indeed, was more shrewd, and gave me many a
hint, for which I only laughed at her. Still I
ought to have thought it looked queer when
Mounseer took to disguising himself by leaving
off his glasses, ha—ha! I wonder what Harry
will say; let’s go and talk to her.”
The Parson, rejoiced at this easy way of taking
the matter, hooked his arm into the Squire’s,
and they walked amicably toward the Hall. But
on coming first into gardens, they found Mrs.
Hazeldean herself, clipping dead leaves or fading
flowers from her rose-trees. The Squire
stole slily behind her, and startled her in her
turn by putting his arm round her waist, and
saluting her smooth cheek with one of his hearty
kisses; which, by the way, from some association
of ideas, was a conjugal freedom that he
usually indulged whenever a wedding was going
on in the village.
“Fie, William!” said Mrs. Hazeldean coyly,
and blushing as she saw the Parson. “Well,
who’s going to be married now?”
“Lord, was there ever such a woman?—she’s
guessed it!” cried the Squire in great admiration.
“Tell her all about it, Parson.”
The Parson obeyed.
Mrs. Hazeldean, as the reader may suppose,
showed much less surprise than her husband
had done; but she took the news graciously,
and made much the same answer as that which
had occurred to the Squire, only with somewhat
more qualification and reserve. “Signor Riccabocca
had behaved very handsomely; and
though a daughter of the Hazeldeans of Hazeldean,
might expect a much better marriage, in
a worldly point of view, yet as the lady in question
had deferred finding one so long, it would
be equally idle and impertinent now to quarrel
with her choice—if indeed she should decide on
accepting Signor Riccabocca. As for fortune,
that was a consideration for the two contracting
parties. Still, it ought to be pointed out to Miss
Jemima that the interest of her fortune would
afford but a very small income. That Dr. Riccabocca
was a widower was another matter for
deliberation; and it seemed rather suspicious
that he should have been hitherto so close upon
all matters connected with his former life. Certainly
his manners were in his favor, and as long
as he was merely an acquaintance, and at most
a tenant, no one had a right to institute inquiries
of a strictly private nature; but that, when he
was about to marry a Hazeldean of Hazeldean,
it became the Squire at least to know a little
more about him—who and what he was. Why
did he leave his own country? English people
went abroad to save; no foreigner would choose
England as a country in which to save money!
She supposed that a foreign doctor was no very
great things; probably he had been but a professor
in some Italian university. At all events, if
the Squire interfered at all, it was on such points
that he should request information.”
“My dear madam,” said the Parson, “what
you say is extremely just. As to the causes
which have induced our friend to expatriate
himself, I think we need not look far for them.
He is evidently one of the many Italian refugees
whom political disturbances have driven to our
shore, whose boast it is to receive all exiles, of
whatever party. For his respectability of birth
and family he certainly ought to obtain some
vouchers. And if that be the only objection, I
trust we may soon congratulate Miss Hazeldean
on a marriage with a man who, though certainly
very poor, has borne privations without a murmur;
has preferred all hardship to debt; has
scorned to attempt betraying her into any clandestine
connection; who, in short, has shown
himself so upright and honest, that I hope my
dear Mr. Hazeldean will forgive him if he is
only a doctor—probably of laws—and not, as
most foreigners pretend to be, a marquis, or a
baron at least.”
“As to that,” cried the Squire, “’tis the best
thing I know about Rickeybockey, that he don’t
attempt to humbug us by any such foreign
trumpery. Thank heaven, the Hazeldeans of
Hazeldean were never tuft-hunters and title-mongers;
and if I never ran after an English
lord, I should certainly be devilishly ashamed of
a brother-in-law whom I was forced to call
markee or count! I should feel sure he was a
courier, or runaway valley-de-sham. Turn up
your nose at a doctor, indeed, Harry!—pshaw,
good English style that! Doctor! my aunt
married a Doctor of Divinity—excellent man—wore
a wig, and was made a dean! So long as
Rickeybockey is not a doctor of physic, I don’t
care a button. If he’s that, indeed, it would be
suspicious; because, you see those foreign doctors[Pg 538]
of physic are quacks, and tell fortunes, and
go about on a stage with a Merry-Andrew.”
“Lord, Hazeldean! where on earth did you
pick up that idea?” said Harry, laughing.
“Pick it up!—why, I saw a fellow myself at
the cattle fair last year—when I was buying
short-horns—with a red waistcoat and a cocked
hat, a little like the Parson’s shovel. He called
himself Doctor Phoscophornio—wore a white
wig, and sold pills! The Merry-Andrew was
the funniest creature—in salmon-colored tights—turned
head over heels, and said he came from
Timbuctoo. No, no; if Rickeybockey’s a physic
Doctor, we shall have Jemima in a pink tinsel
dress, tramping about the country in a caravan!”
At this notion, both the Squire and his wife
laughed so heartily that the Parson felt the thing
was settled, and slipped away, with the intention
of making his report to Riccabocca.
CHAPTER XXVI.
It was with a slight disturbance of his ordinary
suave and well-bred equanimity that the Italian
received the information, that he need apprehend
no obstacle to his suit from the insular prejudices
or the worldly views of the lady’s family. Not
that he was mean and cowardly enough to recoil
from the near and unclouded prospect of that
felicity which he had left off his glasses to behold
with unblinking naked eyes:—no, there
his mind was made up; but he had met with
very little kindness in life, and he was touched
not only by the interest in his welfare testified
by a heretical priest, but by the generosity with
which he was admitted into a well-born and
wealthy family, despite his notorious poverty and
his foreign descent. He conceded the propriety
of the only stipulation, which was conveyed to
him by the Parson with all the delicacy that became
a man professionally habituated to deal
with the subtler susceptibilities of mankind—viz.,
that, among Riccabocca’s friends or kindred,
some one should be found whose report would
confirm the persuasion of his respectability entertained
by his neighbors;—he assented, I say,
to the propriety of this condition; but it was not
with alacrity and eagerness. His brow became
clouded. The Parson hastened to assure him
that the Squire was not a man qui stupet in
titulis, (who was besotted with titles), that he
neither expected nor desired to find an origin
and rank for his brother-in-law above that decent
mediocrity of condition to which it was evident,
from Riccabocca’s breeding and accomplishments,
he could easily establish his claim.
“And though,” said he smiling, “the Squire is
a warm politician in his own country, and would
never see his sister again, I fear, if she married
some convicted enemy of our happy constitution,
yet for foreign politics he does not care a straw:
so that if, as I suspect, your exile arises from
some quarrel with your Government—which,
being foreign, he takes for granted must be
insupportable—he would but consider you as he
would a Saxon who fled from the iron hand of
William the Conqueror, or a Lancastrian expelled
by the Yorkists in our Wars of the Roses.”
The Italian smiled. “Mr. Hazeldean shall
be satisfied,” said he simply. “I see, by the
Squire’s newspaper, that an English gentleman
who knew me in my own country has just
arrived in London. I will write to him for a
testimonial, at least to my probity and character.
Probably he may be known to you by name—nay,
he must be, for he was a distinguished
officer in the late war. I allude to Lord L’Estrange.”
The Parson started.
“You know Lord L’Estrange?—a profligate,
bad man, I fear.”
“Profligate!—bad!” exclaimed Riccabocca.
“Well, calumnious as the world is, I should
never have thought that such expressions would
be applied to one who, though I knew him but
little—knew him chiefly by the service he once
rendered to me—first taught me to love and
revere the English name!”
“He may be changed since—” The parson
paused.
“Since when?” asked Riccabocca, with evident
curiosity.
Mr. Dale seemed embarrassed. “Excuse
me,” said he, “it is many years ago; and, in
short, the opinion I then formed of the gentleman
in question was based upon circumstances
which I can not communicate.”
The punctilious Italian bowed in silence, but
he still looked as if he should have liked to prosecute
inquiry.
After a pause, he said, “Whatever your impressions
respecting Lord L’Estrange, there is
nothing, I suppose, which would lead you to
doubt his honor, or reject his testimonial in my
favor?”
“According to fashionable morality,” said
Mr. Dale, rather precisely, “I know of nothing
that could induce me to suppose that Lord
L’Estrange would not, in this instance, speak
the truth. And he has unquestionably a high
reputation as a soldier, and a considerable position
in the world.” Therewith the Parson took
his leave. A few days afterward, Dr. Riccabocca
inclosed to the Squire, in a blank envelope,
a letter he had received from Harley
L’Estrange. It was evidently intended for the
Squire’s eye, and to serve as a voucher for the
Italian’s respectability; but this object was fulfilled,
not in the coarse form of a direct testimonial,
but with a tact and delicacy which
seemed to show more than the fine breeding to
be expected from one in Lord L’Estrange’s
station. It argued that most exquisite of all
politeness which comes from the heart: a certain
tone of affectionate respect (which even the
homely sense of the Squire felt, intuitively,
proved far more in favor of Riccabocca than the
most elaborate certificate of his qualities and
antecedents) pervaded the whole, and would
have sufficed in itself to remove all scruples[Pg 539]
from a mind much more suspicious and exacting
than that of the Squire of Hazeldean. But, lo
and behold! an obstacle now occurred to the
Parson, of which he ought to have thought long
before—viz., the Papistical religion of the Italian.
Dr. Riccabocca was professedly a Roman
Catholic. He so little obtruded that fact—and,
indeed, had assented so readily to any animadversions
upon the superstition and priestcraft
which, according to Protestants, are the essential
characteristics of Papistical communities—that
it was not till the hymeneal torch, which
brings all faults to light, was fairly illumined
for the altar, that the remembrance of a faith so
cast into the shade burst upon the conscience of
the Parson. The first idea that then occurred
to him was the proper and professional one—viz.,
the conversion of Dr. Riccabocca. He
hastened to his study, took down from his shelves
long neglected volumes of controversial divinity,
armed himself with an arsenal of authorities,
arguments, and texts; then, seizing the shovel-hat,
posted off to the Casino.
CHAPTER XXVII.
The Parson burst upon the philosopher like
an avalanche! He was so full of his subject
that he could not let it out in prudent driblets.
No, he went souse upon the astounded Riccabocca,
Jupiter ipse ruens tumultu.”
The sage—shrinking deeper into his arm-chair,
and drawing his dressing-robe more closely
round him—suffered the Parson to talk for three-quarters
of an hour, till indeed he had thoroughly
proved his case; and, like Brutus, “paused for
a reply.”
Then said Riccabocca mildly, “In much of
what you have urged so ably, and so suddenly,
I am inclined to agree. But base is the man
who formally forswears the creed he has inherited
from his fathers, and professed since the cradle
up to years of maturity, when the change presents
itself in the guise of a bribe;—when, for
such is human nature, he can hardly distinguish
or disentangle the appeal to his reason from the
lure to his interests—here a text, and there a
dowry!—here Protestantism, there Jemima.
Own, my friend, that the soberest casuist would
see double under the inebriating effects produced
by so mixing his polemical liquors. Appeal,
my good Mr. Dale, from Philip drunken to
Philip sober!—from Riccabocca intoxicated
with the assurance of your excellent lady, that
he is about to be “the happiest of men,” to
Riccabocca accustomed to his happiness, and
carrying it off with the seasoned equability of
one grown familiar with stimulants—in a word,
appeal from Riccabocca the wooer to Riccabocca
the spouse. I may be convertible, but
conversion is a slow process; courtship should
be a quick one—ask Miss Jemima. Finalmente,
marry me first, and convert me afterward!”
“You take this too jestingly,” began the
Parson; “and I don’t see why, with your excellent
understanding, truths so plain and obvious
should not strike you at once.”
“Truths,” interrupted Riccabocca profoundly,
“are the slowest growing things in the
world! It took 1500 years from the date of the
Christian era to produce your own Luther, and
then he flung his Bible at Satan (I have seen
the mark made by the book on the wall of
his prison in Germany), besides running off with
a nun, which no Protestant clergyman would
think it proper and right to do nowadays.”
Then he added, with seriousness, “Look you,
my dear sir—I should lose my own esteem if I
were even to listen to you now with becoming
attention—now, I say, when you hint that the
creed I have professed may be in the way of my
advantage. If so, I must keep the creed and
resign the advantage. But if, as I trust—not
only as a Christian, but a man of honor—you
will defer this discussion, I will promise to listen
to you hereafter; and though, to say truth, I
believe that you will not convert me, I will
promise you faithfully never to interfere with
my wife’s religion.”
“And any children you may have?”
“Children!” said Dr. Riccabocca, recoiling—”you
are not contented with firing your pocket-pistol
right in my face; you must also pepper
me all over with small-shot. Children! well,
if they are girls, let them follow the faith of
their mother; and if boys, while in childhood,
let them be contented with learning to be Christians;
and when they grow into men, let them
choose for themselves which is the best form for
the practice of the great principles which all
sects have in common.”
“But,” began Mr. Dale again, pulling a large
book from his pocket.
Dr. Riccabocca flung open the window, and
jumped out of it.
It was the rapidest and most dastardly flight
you could possibly conceive; but it was a great
compliment to the argumentative powers of the
Parson, and he felt it as such. Nevertheless,
Mr. Dale thought it right to have a long conversation,
both with the Squire and Miss Jemima
herself, upon the subject which his intended
convert had so ignominiously escaped.
The Squire, though a great foe to Popery,
politically considered, had also quite as great a
hatred to turn-coats and apostates. And in his
heart he would have despised Riccabocca if he
could have thrown off his religion as easily as
he had done his spectacles. Therefore he said,
simply—”Well, it is certainly a great pity that
Rickeybockey is not of the Church of England,
though, I take it, that would be unreasonable to
expect in a man born and bred under the nose
of the Inquisition”—(the Squire firmly believed
that the Inquisition was in full force in all the
Italian states, with whips, racks, and thumb-screws;
and, indeed, his chief information of
Italy was gathered from a perusal he had given[Pg 540]
in early youth to The One-Handed Monk)—”but
I think he speaks very fairly, on the whole, as
to his wife and children. And the thing’s gone
too far now to retract. It is all your fault for
not thinking of it before; and I’ve now just
made up my mind as to the course to pursue
respecting those d—d Stocks!”
As for Miss Jemima, the parson left her with
a pious thanksgiving that Riccabocca at least
was a Christian, and not a Pagan, Mahometan,
or Jew!
CHAPTER XXVIII.
There is that in a wedding which appeals to
a universal sympathy. No other event in the
lives of their superiors in rank creates an equal
sensation among the humbler classes.
From the moment the news had spread throughout
the village that Miss Jemima was to be married,
all the old affection for the Squire and his
House burst forth the stronger for its temporary
suspension. Who could think of the Stocks at such
a season? They were swept out of fashion—hunted
from remembrance as completely as the
question of Repeal or the thought of Rebellion
from the warm Irish heart, when the fair young
face of the Royal Wife beamed on the sister isle.
Again cordial courtesies were dropped at the
thresholds by which the Squire passed to his
home-farm; again the sun-burnt brows uncovered—no
more with sullen ceremony—were
smoothed into cheerful gladness at his nod.
Nay, the little ones began again to assemble at
their ancient rendezvous by the Stocks, as if
either familiarized with the phenomenon, or
convinced that, in the general sentiment of
good-will, its powers of evil were annulled.
The Squire tasted once more the sweets of
the only popularity which is much worth having,
and the loss of which a wise man would reasonably
deplore; viz., the popularity which arises
from a persuasion of our goodness, and a reluctance
to recall our faults. Like all blessings, the
more sensibly felt from previous interruption, the
Squire enjoyed this restored popularity with an
exhilarated sense of existence; his stout heart
beat more vigorously; his stalwart step trod
more lightly; his comely English face looked
comelier and more English than ever—you would
have been a merrier man for a week to have
come within hearing of his jovial laugh.
He felt grateful to Jemima and to Riccabocca
as the special agents of Providence in this general
integratio amoris. To have looked at him,
you would suppose that it was the Squire who
was going to be married a second time to his
Harry!
One may well conceive that such would have
been an inauspicious moment for Parson Dale’s
theological scruples. To have stopped that marriage—chilled
all the sunshine it diffused over the
village—seen himself surrounded again by long
sulky visages—I verily believe, though a better
friend of Church and State never stood on a
hustings, that, rather than court such a revulsion,
the Squire would have found jesuitical excuses
for the marriage if Riccabocca had been
discovered to be the Pope in disguise! As for
the Stocks, their fate was now irrevocably
sealed. In short, the marriage was concluded—first
privately, according to the bridegroom’s
creed, by a Roman Catholic clergyman, who
lived in a town some miles off, and next publicly
in the village church of Hazeldean.
It was the heartiest rural wedding! Village
girls strewed flowers on the way; a booth was
placed amidst the prettiest scenery of the Park,
on the margin of the lake—for there was to be
a dance later in the day—an ox was roasted
whole. Even Mr. Stirn—no, Mr. Stirn was not
present, so much happiness would have been the
death of him! And the Papisher, too, who had
conjured Lenny out of the stocks; nay, who had
himself sate in the Stocks for the very purpose
of bringing them into contempt—the Papisher!
he had as lief Miss Jemima had married the
devil! Indeed he was persuaded that, in point
of fact, it was all one and the same. Therefore
Mr. Stirn had asked leave to go and attend his
uncle the pawnbroker, about to undergo a torturing
operation for the stone! Frank was there,
summoned from Eton for the occasion—having
grown two inches taller since he left—for the
one inch of which nature was to be thanked, for
the other a new pair of resplendent Wellingtons.
But the boy’s joy was less apparent than that
of others. For Jemima was a special favorite
with him—as she would have been with all boys—for
she was always kind and gentle, and made
many pretty presents whenever she came from
the watering-places. And Frank knew that he
should miss her sadly, and thought she had made
a very queer choice.
Captain Higginbotham had been invited; but,
to the astonishment of Jemima, he had replied
to the invitation by a letter to herself, marked
“private and confidential.” ‘She must have long
known,’ said the letter, ‘of his devoted attachment
to her; motives of delicacy, arising from
the narrowness of his income, and the magnanimity
of his sentiments, had alone prevented his
formal proposals; but now that she was informed
(he could scarcely believe his senses, or command
his passions) that her relations wished to
force her into a barbarous marriage with a foreigner
of most forbidding appearance, and
most abject circumstances, he lost not a moment
in laying at her feet his own hand and fortune.
And he did this the more confidently, inasmuch
as he could not but be aware of Miss Jemima’s
secret feelings toward him, while he was proud
and happy to say, that his dear and distinguished
cousin, Mr. Sharpe Currie, had honored him
with a warmth of regard which justified the most
brilliant expectations—likely to be soon realized—as
his eminent relative had contracted a
very bad liver-complaint in the service of his
country, and could not last long!’
In all the years they had known each other, Miss[Pg 541]
Jemima, strange as it may appear, had never once
suspected the Captain of any other feelings to her
than those of a brother. To say that she was
not gratified by learning her mistake, would be
to say that she was more than woman. Indeed,
it must have been a source of no ignoble triumph
to think that she could prove her disinterested
affection to her dear Riccabocca, by a prompt
rejection of this more brilliant offer. She couched
the rejection, it is true, in the most soothing
terms. But the Captain evidently considered
himself ill used; he did not reply to the letter,
and did not come to the wedding.
To let the reader into a secret, never known
to Miss Jemima, Captain Higginbotham was
much less influenced by Cupid than by Plutus
in the offer he had made. The Captain was
one of that class of gentlemen who read their
accounts by those corpse-lights, or will-o’-the-wisps,
called expectations. Ever since the Squire’s
grandfather had left him—then in short clothes—a
legacy of £500, the Captain had peopled the
future with expectations! He talked of his expectations
as a man talks of shares in a Tontine;
they might fluctuate a little—be now up and
now down—but it was morally impossible, if he
lived on, but that he should be a millionaire one
of these days. Now, though Miss Jemima was
a good fifteen years younger than himself, yet
she always stood for a good round sum in the
ghostly books of the Captain. She was an expectation
to the full amount of her £4000, seeing
that Frank was an only child, and it would be
carrying coals to Newmarket to leave him any
thing.
Rather than see so considerable a cipher suddenly
sponged out of his visionary ledger—rather
than so much money should vanish clean out of
the family, Captain Higginbotham had taken
what he conceived, if a desperate, at least a
certain, step for the preservation of his property.
If the golden horn could not be had without the
heifer, why, he must take the heifer into the
bargain. He had never formed to himself an
idea that a heifer so gentle would toss and fling
him over. The blow was stunning. But no one
compassionates the misfortunes of the covetous,
though few perhaps are in greater need of compassion.
And leaving poor Captain Higginbotham
to retrieve his illusory fortunes as he
best may among “the expectations” which
gathered round the form of Mr. Sharpe Currie,
who was the crossest old tyrant imaginable, and
never allowed at his table any dishes not compounded
with rice, which played Old Nick with
the Captain’s constitutional functions—I return
to the wedding at Hazeldean, just in time to see
the bridegroom—who looked singularly well on
the occasion—hand the bride (who, between sunshiny
tears and affectionate smiles, was really
a very interesting and even a pretty bride, as
brides go) into a carriage which the Squire had
presented to them, and depart on the orthodox
nuptial excursion amidst the blessings of the assembled
crowd.
It may be thought strange by the unreflective
that these rural spectators should so have approved
and blessed the marriage of a Hazeldean
of Hazeldean with a poor, outlandish, long-haired
foreigner; but, besides that Riccabocca,
after all, had become one of the neighborhood,
and was proverbially “a civil-spoken gentleman,”
it is generally noticeable that on wedding
occasions the bride so monopolizes interest,
curiosity, and admiration, that the bridegroom
himself goes for little or nothing. He is merely
the passive agent in the affair—the unregarded
cause of the general satisfaction. It was not
Riccabocca himself that they approved and blessed—it
was the gentleman in the white waistcoat
who had made Miss Jemima—Madam Rickeybocky!
Leaning on his wife’s arm—(for it was a habit
of the Squire to lean on his wife’s arm rather
than she on his, when he was specially pleased;
and there was something touching in the sight
of that strong sturdy frame thus insensibly, in
hours of happiness, seeking dependence on the
frail arm of woman)—leaning, I say, on his wife’s
arm, the Squire, about the hour of sunset, walked
down to the booth by the lake.
All the parish—young and old, man, woman,
and child—were assembled there, and their
faces seemed to bear one family likeness, in
the common emotion which animated all, as they
turned to his frank fatherly smile. Squire
Hazeldean stood at the head of the long table;
he filled a horn with ale from the brimming
tankard beside him. Then he looked round,
and lifted his hand to request silence; and, ascending
the chair, rose in full view of all. Every
one felt that the Squire was about to make a
speech, and the earnestness of the attention was
proportioned to the rarity of the event; for
(though he was not unpracticed in the oratory
of the hustings) only thrice before had the
Squire made what could fairly be called “a
speech” to the villagers of Hazeldean—once on
a kindred festive occasion, when he had presented
to them his bride—once in a contested
election for the shire, in which he took more
than ordinary interest, and was not quite so
sober as he ought to have been—once in a time
of great agricultural distress, when, in spite of
reduction of rents, the farmers had been compelled
to discard a large number of their customary
laborers; and when the Squire had
said, “I have given up keeping the hounds, because
I want to make a fine piece of water,
(that was the origin of the lake), and to drain all
the low lands round the park. Let every man
who wants work come to me!” And that sad
year the parish rates of Hazeldean were not a
penny the more.
Now, for the fourth time, the Squire rose, and
thus he spoke. At his right hand, Harry; at
his left, Frank. At the bottom of the table, as
vice-president, Parson Dale, his little wife behind
him, only obscurely seen. She cried readily,
and her handkerchief was already before her eyes.
CHAPTER XXIX. THE SQUIRE’S SPEECH.
“Friends and neighbors—I thank you kindly
for coming round me this day, and for showing
so much interest in me and mine. My cousin
was not born among you as I was, but you have
known her from a child. It is a familiar face
and one that never frowned, which you will miss
at your cottage doors, as I and mine will miss
it long in the old Hall—”
Here there was a sob from some of the women,
and nothing was seen of Mrs. Dale but the
white handkerchief. The Squire himself paused,
and brushed away a tear with the back of his
hand. Then he resumed, with a sudden change
of voice that was electrical—
“For we none of us prize a blessing till we
have lost it! Now, friends and neighbors—a
little time ago, it seemed as if some ill-will had
crept into the village—ill-will between you and
me, neighbors!—why, that is not like Hazeldean!”
The audience hung their heads! You never
saw people look so thoroughly ashamed of
themselves. The Squire proceeded—
“I don’t say it was all your fault; perhaps it
was mine.”
“Noa—noa—noa,” burst forth in a general
chorus.
“Nay, friends,” continued the Squire humbly,
and in one of those illustrative aphorisms which,
if less subtle than Riccabocca’s were more
within reach of the popular comprehension;
“nay—we are all human; and every man has
his hobby: sometimes he breaks in the hobby,
and sometimes the hobby, if it is very hard in
the mouth, breaks in him. One man’s hobby
has an ill habit of always stopping at the public
house! (Laughter). Another man’s hobby
refuses to stir a peg beyond the door where
some buxom lass patted its neck the week before—a
hobby I rode pretty often when I went courting
my good wife here! (Much laughter and applause).
Others have a lazy hobby, that there’s
no getting on; others, a runaway hobby that
there’s no stopping: but to cut the matter short,
my favorite hobby, as you well know, is always
trotted out to any place on my property which
seems to want the eye and hand of the master. I
hate (cried the Squire warming) to see things
neglected and decayed, and going to the dogs!
This land we live in is a good mother to us, and
we can’t do too much for her. It is very true,
neighbors, that I owe her a good many acres,
and ought to speak well of her; but what then?
I live among you, and what I take from the rent
with one hand, I divide among you with the
other (low, but assenting murmurs). Now the
more I improve my property, the more mouths
it feeds. My great-grandfather kept a Field-Book,
in which were entered, not only the names
of all the farmers and the quantity of land they
held, but the average number of the laborers each
employed. My grandfather and father followed
his example: I have done the same. I find,
neighbors, that our rents have doubled since my
great-grandfather began to make the book. Ay—but
there are more than four times the number
of laborers employed on the estate, and at much
better wages, too! Well, my men, that says a
great deal in favor of improving property, and
not letting it go to the dogs. (Applause). And
therefore, neighbors, you will kindly excuse my
hobby: it carries grist to your mill. (Reiterated
applause). Well—but you will say,
‘What’s the Squire driving at?’ Why this, my
friends: There was only one worn-out, dilapidated
tumble-down thing in the Parish of Hazeldean,
and it became an eyesore to me; so I
saddled my hobby, and rode at it. O ho! you
know what I mean now! Yes, but neighbors,
you need not have taken it so to heart. That
was a scurvy trick of some of you to hang me
in effigy, as they call it.”
“It warn’t you,” cried a voice in the crowd,
“it war Nick Stirn.”
The Squire recognized the voice of the Tinker;
but though he now guessed at the ringleader—on
that day of general amnesty, he had the prudence
and magnanimity not to say, “Stand forth,
Sprott: thou art the man.” Yet his gallant
English spirit would not suffer him to come off
at the expense of his servant.
“If it was Nick Stirn you meant,” said he,
gravely, “more shame for you. It showed
some pluck to hang the master; but to hang the
poor servant, who only thought to do his duty,
careless of what ill-will it brought upon him,
was a shabby trick—so little like the lads of
Hazeldean, that I suspect the man who taught
it to them was never born in the parish. But
let by-gones be by-gones. One thing is clear,
you don’t take kindly to my new Pair of Stocks!
They have been a stumbling-block and a grievance,
and there’s no denying that we went on
very pleasantly without them. I may also say
that in spite of them we have been coming together
again lately. And I can’t tell you what
good it did me to see your children playing again
on the green, and your honest faces, in spite of
the Stocks, and those diabolical tracts you’ve
been reading lately, lighted up at the thought
that something pleasant was going on at the
Hall. Do you know, neighbors, you put me in
mind of an old story which, besides applying to
the Parish, all who are married, and all who intend
to marry, will do well to recollect? A
worthy couple, named John and Joan, had lived
happily together many a long year, till one unlucky
day, they bought a new bolster. Joan
said the bolster was too hard, and John that it
was too soft. So, of course, they quarreled.
After sulking all day, they agreed to put the
bolster between them at night.” (Roars of
laughter among the men; the women did not
know which way to look, except, indeed, Mrs.
Hazeldean, who, though she was more than usually
rosy, maintained her innocent, genial smile,
as much as to say, “There is no harm in the
Squire’s jests.”) The orator resumed, “After[Pg 543]
they had thus lain apart for a little time, very
silent and sullen, John sneezed. ‘God bless
you!’ says Joan over the bolster. ‘Did you say
God bless me?’ cries John—’then here goes the
bolster!'”
Prolonged laughter and tumultuous applause.
“Friends and neighbors,” said the Squire,
when silence was restored, and lifting the horn
of ale, “I have the pleasure to inform you that
I have ordered the Stocks to be taken down,
and made into a bench for the chimney nook of
our old friend Gaffer Solomons yonder. But
mind me, lads, if ever you make the Parish regret
the loss of the Stocks, and the overseers
come to me with long faces, and say, ‘the Stocks
must be rebuilded,’ why—” Here from all the
youth of the village rose so deprecating a clamor,
that the Squire would have been the most
bungling orator in the world if he had said a
word further on the subject. He elevated the
horn over his head, “Why, that’s my old Hazeldean
again! Health and long life to you all!”
The Tinker had sneaked out of the assembly,
and did not show his face in the village for the
next six months. And as to those poisonous
tracts, in spite of their salubrious labels, “The
Poor Man’s Friend,” or “The Rights of Labor,”
you could no more have found one of them lurking
in the drawers of the kitchen-dressers in
Hazeldean, than you would have found the
deadly nightshade on the flower-stands in the
drawing-room of the Hall. As for the revolutionary
beer-house, there was no need to apply
to the magistrates to shut it up; it shut itself up
before the week was out.
O young head of the great House of Hapsburg,
what a Hazeldean you might have made
of Hungary!—What a “Moriamur pro rege nostro”
would have rung in your infant reign—if
you had made such a speech as the Squire’s!
(To be continued.)
BEAUTIES OF THE LAW.
As a happy illustration of the certainty, cheapness,
and expedition of the English law, in
upholding those who are in the right, we have
received the following strange narrative from
an esteemed correspondent, who is himself a
lawyer:
“The most litigious fellow I ever knew, was
a Welshman, named Bones. He had got possession,
by some means, of a bit of waste
ground behind a public-house in Hogwash-street.
Adjoining this land was a yard, belonging to
the parish of St. Jeremiah, which the Parish
Trustees were fencing in with a wall. Bones
alleged that one corner of their wall was advanced
about ten inches on his ground, and as
they declined to remove it back, he kicked down
the brickwork before the mortar was dry. The
Trustees having satisfied themselves that they
were not only within their own boundary, but
that they had left Bones some feet of the parish
land to boot, built up the wall again. Bones
kicked it down again.
“The Trustees put it up a third time under
the protection of a policeman. The inexorable
Bones, in spite of the awful presence of this
functionary, not only kicked down the wall
again, but kicked the bricklayers into the bargain.
This was too much, and Bones was
marched off to Guildhall for assaulting the
bricklayers. The magistrate rather pooh-poohed
the complaint, but bound over Bones to keep
the peace. The causa belli, the wall, was re-edified
a fourth time; but when the Trustees
revisited the place next morning, it was again
in ruins! While they were in consultation upon
this last insult, they were politely waited on by
an attorney’s clerk, who served them all with
‘writs’ in an action of trespass, at the suit of
Bones, for encroaching on his land.
“Thus war was declared about a piece of
dirty land, literally not so big as a door-step,
and the whole fee-simple of which would not
sell for a shilling. The Trustees, however,
thought they ought not to give up the rights of
the parish to the obstinacy of a perverse fellow,
like Bones, and resolved to indict Bones for
assaulting the workmen. Accordingly, the action
and the indictment went on together.
“The action was tried first, and as the evidence
clearly showed the Trustees had kept
within their own boundary, they got the verdict.
Bones moved for a new trial; that failed. The
Trustees now thought they would let the matter
rest, as it had cost the parish about one hundred
and fifty pounds, and they supposed Bones
had had enough of it. But they had mistaken
their man. He brought a writ of error in the
action, which carried the cause into the Exchequer
Court, and tied it up nearly two years,
and in the mean time he forced them, nolens
volens, to try the indictment. When the trial
came on, the Judge said, that as the whole
question had been decided in the action, there
was no occasion for any further proceedings,
and therefore the defendant had better be acquitted,
and so make an end of it.
“Accordingly, Bones was acquitted; and the
very next thing Bones did, was to sue the
Trustees in a new action, for maliciously instituting
the indictment against him without reasonable
cause! The new action went on to
trial; and it being proved that one of the
Trustees had been overheard to say that they
would punish him, this was taken as evidence
of malice, and Bones got a verdict for forty
shillings damages besides all the costs. Elated
with this victory, Bones pushed on his old action
in the Exchequer Chamber to a hearing,
but the court affirmed the judgment against
him, without hearing the Trustees’ counsel.
“The Trustees were now sick of the very
name of Bones, which had become a sort of
bugbear, so that if a Trustee met a friend in
the street, he would be greeted with an inquiry
after the health of his friend Mr. Bones. They
would have gladly let the whole matter drop
into oblivion, but Jupiter and Bones had determined
otherwise; for the indomitable Briton
brought a writ of error in the House of Lords,[Pg 544]
on the judgment of the Exchequer Chamber.
The unhappy Trustees had caught a Tartar, and
follow him into the Lords they must. Accordingly
after another year or two’s delay, the case
came on in the Lords. Their Lordships pronounced
it the most trumpery writ of error they
had ever seen, and again affirmed the judgment,
with costs, against Bones. The Trustees now
taxed their costs, and found that they had spent
not less than five hundred pounds in defending
their claim to a bit of ground that was not of
the value of an old shoe. But, then, Bones
was condemned to pay the costs. True; so
they issued execution against Bones; caught
him, after some trouble, and locked him up in
jail. The next week, Bones petitioned the Insolvent
Court, got out of prison; and, on examination
of schedule, his effects appeared to be
£0 0s. 0d.! Bones had, in fact, been fighting
the Trustees on credit for the last three years;
for his own attorney was put down as a creditor
to a large amount, which was the only satisfaction
the Trustees obtained from perusing his
schedule.
“They were now obliged to have recourse to
the Parish funds to pay their own law expenses,
and were consoling themselves with the reflection
that these did not come out of their own
pockets, when they received the usual notification
that a bill in Chancery had been filed
against them, at Mr. Bones’s suit, to overhaul
their accounts with the parish, and prevent the
misapplication of the parish money to the payment
of their law costs! This was the climax.
And being myself a disciple of Coke, I have
heard nothing further of it; being unwilling,
as well, perhaps, as unqualified, to follow the
case into the labyrinthic vaults of the Court of
Chancery. The catastrophe, if this were a tale,
could hardly be mended—so the true story may
end here.”
THE ROBBER OUTWITTED.
Willie Bailie was a household name
about a hundred years ago, in the upper
parts of Clydesdale. Men, women, and children
had heard of Willie, and the greater proportion
had seen him. Few, in his time, could
excel Willie in dexterity in his profession, which
consisted of abstracting money from people’s
pockets, and in other predatory feats. He frequented
the fairs all round the district, and no
man’s purse was safe if Willie happened to be
in the market. The beautiful village of Moffat,
in Annandale, was one of his frequent places
of resort when any of its fairs happened to be
held, and here, among the honest farmers, he
was invariably successful; and to show his professional
skill on such occasions, he has been
known to rob a man and return his purse to
him two or three times in the same day; but
this he did only with his intimate friends, who
were kind to him in providing lodgings, when
plying his nominal occupation of tinker from
one farm-house to another; in the case of others,
it was, of course, different. His wife abetted
him in all his thieving exploits, and generally
sat in a place in the outskirts of the town, that
had been previously fixed on, and there received
in silence whatever spoil her husband might
throw incidentally into her lap in the shape
of her fairing. But Willie was a privileged
freebooter, was generous withal, and well liked
by the people in the neighborhood, on whom
he rarely committed any acts of plunder, and
any one might have trusted what he called his
“honor.”
Willie’s character was well known both to
high and low, and he became renowned for a
heroism which few who esteem respectability
would now covet. The high estimation in
which he was held as an adept in his profession,
induced a Scottish nobleman to lay a high bet,
with an Englishman of some rank, that Willie
would actually rob and fairly despoil a certain
noted riever on the southern side of the border,
who was considered one of the most daring and
dexterous that frequented the highways in those
dubious times, and one whose exploits the gentleman
was in the habit of extolling. The
Scottish nobleman conferred with Willie, and
informed him of the project—a circumstance
which mightily pleased our hero, and into which
he entered with all enthusiasm. The interest
which Willie took in the matter was to the nobleman
a guarantee of ultimate success; and,
having given all the marks of the robber, and
directed him to the particular place on the
road where he was sure to meet with him, he
left it to Willie himself to arrange the subsequent
mode of procedure.
Willie’s ingenuity was instantly at work, and
he concocted a scheme which fairly carried him
through the enterprise. He got an old, frail-looking
pony, partially lame, and with long,
shaggy hair. He filled a bag of considerable
dimensions with a great quantity of old buttons,
and useless pieces of jingling metal. He next
arrayed himself in beggarly habiliments, with
clouted shoes, tattered under-garments, a cloak
mended in a hundred places, and a soiled, broad-brimmed
bonnet on his head. The money-bag
he tied firmly behind the saddle; he placed a
pair of pistols under his coat, and a short dagger
close by his side. Thus accoutred he wended
his way slowly toward the border, both he
and the animal apparently in the last stage of
helplessness and decrepitude. The bag behind
was carefully covered by the cloak, that spread
its duddy folds over the hinder parts of the poor
lean beast that carried him. Sitting in a crouching
posture on the saddle, with a long beard and
an assumed palsified shaking of the hand, nobody
would have conceived for a moment that
Willie was a man in the prime of life, of a
well-built, athletic frame, with more power in
his arm than three ordinary men, and of an intrepid
and adventurous spirit, that feared nothing,
but dared every thing. In this plight,
our worthy went dodging over the border, and
entered the neighboring kingdom, where every
person that met him regarded him as a poor,[Pg 545]
doited, half-insane body, fit only to lie down at
the side of a hedge, and die unheeded, beside the
crazy steed. In this way, he escaped without
suspicion, and advanced without an adventure
to the skirts of the wood, where he expected to
encounter his professional brother.
When Willie entered the road that led through
the dark and suspicious forest, he was all on
the alert for the highwayman. Every rustling
among the trees and bushes arrested his attention,
not knowing but a whizzing ball might in
a moment issue therefrom, or that the redoubted
freebooter himself might spring upon him like
a tiger. Neither of these, however, occurred;
but a man on horseback was seen advancing
slowly and cautiously on the road before him.
This might be he, or it might not, but Willie
now recollected every particular mark given of
the man with whom he expected to encounter,
and he was prepared for the most vigilant observation.
As the horseman advanced, Willie
was fully convinced that he had met with his
man, and this was the critical moment, for here
was the identical highwayman.
“How now, old fellow?” exclaimed the robber;
“what seek you in these parts? Where
are you bound for, with this magnificent equipage
of yours?”
“Why, to tell you the truth, I am e’en a
puir honest man frae Scotland, gaen a wee bit
farther south on business of some consequence,
and I am glad I have met with a gentleman
like you, and I would fain put myself under
your protection in this dreary wood, as I am a
stranger, and wadna like ony mischance to befa’,
considering the errand I am on.”
The robber eyed Willie with a sort of leer,
thinking he had fallen in with an old driveling
fool, at whose expense he might amuse himself
with impunity, and play a little on his simplicity.
“What makes you afraid of this wood?”
said the robber.
“Why, I was told that it was infested with
highwaymen; and, to tell you the truth, as I
take you to be an honest man and a gentleman,
I hae something in this bag that I wadna like
to lose, for twa reasons—baith because of its
value, and because it was intrusted to my care.”
“What have you got, pray, that you seem so
anxious to preserve? I can’t conceive that any
thing of great value can be intrusted to your
care. Why, I would not give a crown-piece,
nor the half of it, for the whole equipage.”
“That’s just the very thing. You see, I am
not what I appear to be. I have ta’en this
dress, and this auld, slovenly pony, for the purpose
of avoiding suspicion in these precarious
places. I have behind me a bag full of gold—you
may hear by the jingling of the pieces when
I strike here with my hand. Now, I am intrusted
with all this treasure, to convey it to a
certain nobleman’s residence in the south; and
I say again, that I am glad that I have met
you, to conduct me safely through the forest.”
At this, the robber was highly amused, and
could scarcely believe that a simplicity so extreme,
and bordering on insanity, could exist;
and yet there was an archness in the old man’s
look, and a wiliness in his manner, that hardly
comported with his external appearance. He
said he had gold with him—he affirmed that he
was not exactly what he appeared to be—not
so poor as his tattered garments would indicate,
and withal trustworthy, having so large a sum
of money committed to his care. It might be,
there was not a word of truth in his story; he
might be some cunning adventurer from the
border, plying a certain vocation on his own
account, not altogether of a reputable cast;
but, whatever the case might be, the silly old
man was completely in his power, and, if he
had gold in his possession, it must be seized on,
and no time was to be lost.
“I tell you,” said the highwayman, wheeling
his horse suddenly round in front of Willie’s
pony, “I tell you, old man, that I am that
same robber of whom you seem to be afraid,
and I demand an instant surrender of your
gold.”
“Hoot, toot,” exclaimed Willie, “gae wa, gae
wa! You a robber! You are an honest man,
and you only want to joke me.”
“I tell you distinctly that I am the robber,
and I hold you in my power.”
“And I say as distinctly,” persisted Willie,
“that you are a true man. That face of yours
is no a robber’s face—there’s no a bit o’ a robber
about ye, and sae ye maun e’en guard me
through the wood, and gie me the word o’ a
leel-hearted Englishman that ye’ll no see ony
ill come ower me.”
“No humbug!” vociferated the highwayman,
in real earnest; “dismount, and deliver me that
bag immediately, else I will make a riddle of
your brainless skull in a trice.”
Willie saw that it was in vain to parley, for
the highwayman had his hand on the pommel
of his pistol, and an unscrupulous act would lay
him dead at his feet. Now was the time for
the wary Scot to put his plan in execution. All
things had happened as he wished, and he hoped
the rest would follow.
“Weel, weel,” said Willie, “since it maun
be, it maun be. I shall dismount, and deliver
you the treasure, for life is sweet—sweeter far
than even gold to the miser. I wanted to act
an honest part, but, as we say on the north side
of the border, ‘Might makes right,’ and sae, as
I said, it e’en maun be.”
Willie then, with some apparent difficulty, as
an old, stiff-limbed man, lifted himself from the
pony, and stood staggering on the ground.
“Now,” said he, laying his hand heavily on
the money-bag, “I have a request or two to
make, and all is yours. When I return to Scotland,
I must have some marks about my person
to show that I have been really robbed, and
that I have not purloined the gold to my own
purposes. I will place my bonnet here on the
side of the road, and you will shoot a ball
through it; and then, here is this old cloak—you
must send another ball exactly through[Pg 546]
here, so that I can show, when I return, what
a fray I have been in, and how narrowly I have
escaped.”
To this the robber consented, and, having
alighted from his steed, made two decided perforations
in the way he was desired. This was
with Willie a great point gained, for the robber’s
pistols were now empty, and restored to
their place.
“I have yet another request,” said Willie,
“and then the matter will be completed. You
must permit me to cut the straps that tie the
bag to the saddle, and to throw it over this
hedge, and then go and lift it yourself, that I
may be able to swear that, in the struggle, I
did what I could to conceal the money, and
that you discovered the place where I had hid
it, and then seized it; and thus I will stand acquitted
in all points.”
To this also the highwayman consented.
Willie, accordingly, threw the heavy bag over
the hedge, and obsequiously offered to hold the
robber’s high-spirited steed till he should return
with the treasure. The bandit, suspecting nothing
on the part of the driveling old man, readily
committed his horse to his care, while he
eagerly made his way through the hedge to secure
the prize. In the mean time, however,
Willie was no less agile; for, having thrown
off his ragged and cumbersome cloak, he vaulted
upon the steed of the highwayman with as
much coolness as if he had been at his own door.
When the robber had pushed his way back
through the hedge, dragging the bag with him,
he was confounded on seeing his saddle occupied
by the simpleton whose gold he had so easily
come by. But he was no longer a simpleton—no
longer a wayfaring man in beggar’s weeds—but
a tall, buirdly man, arrayed in decent garb,
and prepared to dispute his part with the best.
“What, ho! scoundrel! Do you intend to
run off with my horse? Dismount instantly,
or I will blow out your brains!”
“The better you may,” replied Willie; “your
pistols are empty, and your broadsword is but
a reed; advance a single step nearer, and I will
send a whizzing ball through your beating heart.
As to the bag, you can retain its contents, and
sell the buttons for what they will bring. In
the mean time, farewell, and should you happen
to visit my district across the border, I shall be
happy to extend to you a true Scotch hospitality.”
On this, Willie applied spur and whip to the
fleet steed, and in a few minutes was out of the
wood, and entirely beyond the reach of the highwayman.
When Willie had time to consider
the matter, he found a valise behind the saddle,
which, he had no doubt, was crammed with
spoils of robbery; nor was he mistaken, for, on
examination, it contained a great quantity of
gold, and other precious articles. The highwayman,
on opening Willie’s bag, found it filled
with old buttons and other trash. His indignation
knew no bounds: he swore, and vociferated,
and stamped with his feet, but all to no purpose;
he had been outwitted by the wily Scot,
and, artful as he himself was, he had met with
one more artful still.
The Scottish nobleman gained the bet, and
the affair made a great noise for many a long
year. Daring men of this description were
found in every part of the kingdom, frequenting
the dark woods, the thick hedges, and the ruinous
buildings by the wayside; and, what is remarkable,
these desperadoes were conventionally
held in high repute, and were deemed heroes.
In the time of Charles II., when the English
thoroughfares were so infested with such adventurers,
we find that one Claude Duval, a
highwayman, while he was a terror to all men,
was at the same time a true gallant in the esteem
of all the ladies. He was as popular and
renowned as the greatest chieftains of his age;
and, when he was at last apprehended, “dames
of high rank visited him in prison, and, with
tears, interceded for his life; and, after his execution,
the corpse lay in state, with all the
pomp of scutcheons, wax-lights, black hangings,
and mutes.” The order of society in the
times to which we refer was vastly different
from what it is now. Men’s habits and moral
sentiments were then of the lowest grade, but,
thanks to the clearer light and better teaching
of Christianity, the condition of all classes is
vastly elevated. The Gospel has effected in the
community infinitely more than all law and social
regulations otherwise could have accomplished.
[From Bentley’s Miscellany.]
A CHAPTER ON BEARS, THEIR HABITS, HISTORY, ETC.
Slender. Why do your dogs bark so? be there bears
i’ the town?Anne. I think there are, sir; I heard them talked of.
Slender. I love the sport well; but I shall as soon
quarrel at it as any man in England: you are afraid if
you see the bear loose, are you not?Anne. Ay, indeed, sir.
Slender. That’s meat and drink to me now! I have
seen Sackerson loose twenty times; and have taken him
by the chain; but I warrant you the women have so
cried and shrieked at it that it passed—but women, indeed
can not abide ’em; they are very ill-favored, rough
things.—Merry Wives of Windsor.
Those who ramble amid the beautiful scenery
of Torquay, who gaze with admiration
on the bold outlines of the Cheddar Cliffs,
or survey the fertile fen district of Cambridgeshire,
will find it difficult to believe that in
former ages these spots were ravaged by bears
surpassing in size the grizzly bear of the Rocky
Mountains, or the polar bear of the Arctic regions;
yet the abundant remains found in Kent
Hole Torquay, and the Banwell Caves, together
with those preserved in the Woodwardian Museum
at Cambridge, incontestably prove that
such was the case. Grand indeed was the
Fauna of the British isles in those early days!
Lions—the true old British lions—as large
again as the biggest African species, lurked in
the ancient thickets; elephants, of nearly twice
the bulk of the largest individuals that now exist[Pg 547]
in Africa or Ceylon, roamed here in herds;
at least two species of rhinoceros forced their
way through the primeval forests; the lakes and
rivers were tenanted by hippopotami as bulky
and with as great tusks as those of Africa.
These statements are not the offspring of imagination,
but are founded on the countless remains
of these creatures which are continually
being brought to light, proving from their numbers
and variety of size, that generation after
generation had been born, and lived, and died
in Great Britain.[6]
It is matter of history, that the brown bear
was plentiful here in the time of the Romans,
and was conveyed in considerable numbers to
Rome, to make sport in the arena. In Wales
they were common beasts of chase, and in the
history of the Gordons, it is stated that one of
that clan, so late as 1057, was directed by his
sovereign to carry three bears’ heads on his banner,
as a reward for his valor in killing a fierce
bear in Scotland.
In 1252, the sheriffs of London were commanded
by the king to pay fourpence a day for
“our white bear in the Tower of London and his
keeper;” and in the following year they were
directed to provide “unum musellum et unam
cathenam ferream”—Anglicè, a muzzle and an
iron chain, to hold him when out of the water,
and a long and strong rope to hold him when
fishing in the Thames. This piscatorial bear
must have had a pleasant time of it, as compared
to many of his species, for the barbarous
amusement of baiting was most popular with our
ancestors. The household book of the Earl of
Northumberland contains the following characteristic
entry: “Item, my Lorde usith and accustomith
to gyfe yearly when hys Lordshipe is
att home to his barward, when he comyth to
my Lorde at Cristmas with his Lordshippes
beests, for making his Lordschip pastyme the
said xij days xxs.”
In Bridgeward Without there was a district
called Paris Garden; this, and the celebrated
Hockley in the Hole, were in the sixteenth century
the great resorts of the amateurs in bear-baiting
and other cruel sports, which cast a
stain upon the society of that period—a society
in a transition state, but recently emerged from
barbarism, and with all the tastes of a semi-barbarous
people. Sunday was the grand day
for these displays, until a frightful occurrence
which took place in 1582. A more than usually
exciting bait had been announced, and a prodigious
concourse of people assembled. When
the sport was at its highest, and the air rung
with blasphemy, the whole of the scaffolding on
which the people stood gave way, crushing
many to death, and wounding many more.
This was considered as a judgment of the Almighty
on these Sabbath-breakers, and gave
rise to a general prohibition of profane pastime
on the Sabbath.
Soon after the accession of Elizabeth to the
throne, she gave a splendid banquet to the
French embassadors, who were afterward entertained
with the baiting of bulls and bears (May
25, 1559). The day following, the embassadors
went by water to Paris Garden, where they
patronized another performance of the same
kind. Hentzer, after describing from observation
a very spirited and bloody baiting, adds,
“To this entertainment there often follows that
of whipping a blinded bear, which is performed
by five or six men, standing circularly with
whips, which they exercise upon him without
any mercy, as he can not escape because of his
chain. He defends himself with all his strength
and skill, throwing down all that come within
his reach and are not active enough to get out
of it, and tearing their whips out of their hands
and breaking them.” Laneham, in his account
of the reception of Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth,
in 1575, gives a very graphic account
of the “righte royalle pastimes.” “It was a
sport very pleasant to see the bear, with his
pink eyes learing after his enemies’ approach;
the nimbleness and wait of the dog to take his
advantage, and the force and experience of the
bear again to avoid his assaults. If he were
bitten in one place, how he would pinch in
another to get free; that if he were taken once,
then by what shift with biting, with clawing,
with roaring, with tossing and tumbling he
would work and wind himself from them, and
when he was loose, to shake his ears twice or
thrice with the blood and the slaver hanging
about his physiognomy.”
These barbarities continued until a comparatively
recent period, but are now, it is to be
hoped, exploded forever. Instead of ministering
to the worst passions of mankind, the animal
creation now contribute, in no inconsiderable
degree, to the expansion of the mind and the
development of the nobler feelings. Zoological
collections have taken the place of the Southwark
Gardens and other brutal haunts of vice,
and we are glad to say, often prove a stronger
focus of attraction than the skittle ground and,
its debasing society. By them, laudable curiosity
is awakened, and the impression, especially
on the fervent and plastic minds of young
people, is deep and lasting. The immense
number of persons[7] of the lower orders, who
visited the London Gardens during the past
season, prove the interest excited. The love
of natural history is inherent in the human
mind, and now for the first time the humbler
classes are enabled to see to advantage, and to
appreciate the beauties of animals of whose
existence they were in utter ignorance, or if
known, so tinctured with the marvelous, as to
cause them to be regarded mainly as objects of
wonder and of dread.
California is hardly less remarkable for its
bears than for its gold. The Grizzly Bear, expressively
named Ursus Ferox and U. Horribilis,[Pg 548]
reigns despotic throughout those vast wilds
which comprise the Rocky Mountains and the
plains east of them, to latitude 61°. In size
it is gigantic, often weighing 800 pounds; and
we ourselves have measured a skin eight feet
and a half in length. Governor Clinton received
an account of one fourteen feet long, but there
might have been some stretching of this skin.
The claws are of great length, and cut like a
chisel when the animal strikes a blow with
them. The tail is so small as not to be visible;
and it is a standing joke with the Indians (who
with all their gravity are great wags), to desire
one unacquainted with the grizzly bear to take
hold of its tail. The strength of this animal
may be estimated from its having been known
to drag easily to a considerable distance, the
carcase of a bison, weighing upward of a thousand
pounds. Mr. Dougherty, an experienced
hunter, had killed a very large bison, and having
marked the spot, left the carcase for the
purpose of obtaining assistance to skin and cut
it up. On his return, the bison had disappeared!
What had become of it he could not divine; but
at length, after much search, discovered it in a
deep pit which had been dug for it at some distance
by a grizzly bear, who had carried it off
and buried it during Mr. Dougherty’s absence.
The following incident is related by Sir John
Richardson: “A party of voyagers, who had
been employed all day in tracking a canoe up
the Saskatchewan, had seated themselves in the
twilight by a fire, and were busy preparing their
supper, when a large grizzly bear sprang over
their canoe that was tilted behind them, and
seizing one of the party by the shoulder, carried
him off. The rest fled in terror, with the exception
of a Metif, named Bourasso, who, grasping
his gun, followed the bear as it was retreating
leisurely with his prey. He called to his unfortunate
comrade that he was afraid of hitting
him if he fired at the bear, but the man entreated
him to fire immediately, as the bear was squeezing
him to death. On this he took a deliberate
aim, and discharged his piece into the body of
the bear, which instantly dropped his prey to
follow Bourasso, who however escaped with
difficulty, and the bear retreated to a thicket,
where it is supposed to have died.” The same
writer mentions a bear having sprung out of a
thicket, and with one blow of his paw completely
scalped a man, laying bare the skull,
and bringing the skin down over the eyes. Assistance
coming up, the bear made off without
doing him further injury; but the scalp, not
being replaced, the poor man lost his sight,
though it is stated the eyes were uninjured.
Grizzly bears do not hug, but strike their
prey with their terrific paws. We have been
informed by a gentleman who has seen much
of these creatures (having indeed killed five
with his own hand) that when a grizzly bear
sees an object, he stands up on his hind legs,
and gazes at it intently for some minutes. He
then, if it be a man or a beast, goes straight
on utterly regardless of numbers, and will seize
it in the midst of a regiment of soldiers. One
thing only scares these creatures, and that
is the smell of man. If in their charge they
should cross a scent of this sort, they will turn
and fly.
Our informant was on one occasion standing
near a thicket, looking at his servant cleaning
a gun. He had just dismounted, and the bridle
of the thorough-bred horse was twisted round
his arm. While thus engaged, a very large
grizzly bear rushed out of the thicket, and made
at the servant, who fled. The bear then turned
short upon this gentleman, in whose hand was
a rifle, carrying a small ball, forty to the pound;
and as the bear rose on his hind legs to make a
stroke, he was fortunate enough to shoot him
through the heart. Had the horse moved in
the slightest at the critical moment, and jerked
his master’s arm, nothing could have saved him;
but the noble animal stood like a rock. On another
occasion, a large bear was shot mortally.
The animal rushed up a steep ascent, and fell
back, turning a complete somerset ere he reached
the ground. The same gentleman told us two
curious facts, for which he could vouch; namely,
that these bears have the power of moving their
claws independently. For instance, they will
take up a clod of earth which excites their
curiosity, and crumble it to pieces by moving
their claws one on the other; and that wolves,
however famished, will never touch a carcase
which has been buried by a grizzly bear, though
they will greedily devour all other dead bodies.
The instinct of burying bodies is so strong with
these bears, that instances are recorded where
they have covered hunters who have fallen into
their power and feigned death, with bark, grass,
and leaves. If the men attempted to move, the
bear would again put them down, and cover them
as before, finally leaving them comparatively
unhurt.
The grizzly bears have their caves, to which
they retire when the cold of winter renders them
torpid; and this condition is taken advantage
of by the most intrepid of the hunters. Having
satisfied themselves about the cave, these men
prepare a candle from wax taken from the comb
of wild bees, and softened by the grease of the
bear. It has a large wick, and burns with a
brilliant flame. Carrying this before him, with
his rifle in a convenient position, the hunter
enters the cave. Having reached its recesses,
he fixes the candle on the ground, lights it, and
the cavern is soon illuminated with a vivid light.
The hunter now lies down on his face, having
the candle between the back part of the cave
where the bear is, and himself. In this position,
with the muzzle of the rifle full in front of
him, he patiently awaits his victim. Bruin is
soon roused by the light, yawns and stretches
himself, like a person awaking from a deep
sleep. The hunter now cocks his rifle, and
watches the bear turn his head, and with slow
and waddling steps approach the candle. This
is a trying moment, as the extraordinary tenacity
of life of the grizzly bear renders an unerring[Pg 549]
shot essential. The monster reaches the
candle, and either raises his paw to strike, or
his nose to smell at it. The hunter steadily
raises his piece; the loud report of the rifle reverberates
through the cavern; and the bear
falls with a heavy crash, pierced through the
eye, one of the few vulnerable spots through
which he can be destroyed.
The Zoological Society have at various times
possessed five specimens of the grizzly bear.
The first was Old Martin, for many years a well
known inhabitant of the Tower Menagerie. We
remember him well as an enormous brute, quite
blind from cataract, and generally to be seen
standing on his hind legs with open mouth,
ready to receive any tit-bit a compassionate
visitor might bestow. Notwithstanding the
length of time he was in confinement (more
than twenty years), all attempts of conciliation
failed, and to the last he would not permit of
the slightest familiarity, even from the keeper
who constantly fed him. Some idea may be
formed of his size, when we say that his skull
(which we recently measured) exceeds in length
by two inches the largest lion’s skull in the
Osteological Collection, although several must
have belonged to magnificent animals.
After the death of old Martin, the Society
received two fine young bears from Mr. Catlin,
but they soon died. Their loss, however, has
been amply replaced by the three very thriving
young animals which have been recently added
to the collection. These come from the Sierra
Nevada, about 800 miles from San Francisco,
and were brought to this country by Mr. Pacton.
They were transported with infinite trouble across
the Isthmus of Panama, in a box carried on
men’s shoulders, and are certainly the first of
their race who have performed the overland
journey. The price asked was £600, but they
were obtained at a much less sum; since their
sojourn in this country, they have greatly increased
in size, and enjoy excellent health. An
additional interest attaches to these animals
from two of them having undergone the operation
for cataract.
Bears are extremely subject to this disease,
and of course are thereby rendered blind. Their
strength and ferocity forbade any thing being
done for their relief, until a short time ago,
when, by the aid of that wonderful agent, chloroform,
it was demonstrated that they are as
amenable to curative measures as the human
subject.
On the 5th of last November, the first operation
of the sort was performed on one of these
grizzly bears, which was blind in both eyes. As
this detracted materially from his value, it was
decided to endeavor to restore him to sight; and
Mr. White Cooper having consented to operate,
the proceedings were as follow: A strong leathern
collar to which a chain was attached, was
firmly buckled around the patient’s neck, and
the chain having been passed round one of the
bars in front of the cage, two powerful men endeavored
to pull him up, in order that a sponge
containing chloroform should be applied to his
muzzle by Dr. Snow. The resistance offered by
the bear was as surprising as unexpected. The
utmost efforts of these men were unavailing;
and, after a struggle of ten minutes, two others
were called to their aid. By their united efforts,
Master Bruin was at length brought up, and the
sponge fairly tied round his muzzle. Meanwhile
the cries and roarings of the patient were echoed
in full chorus by his two brothers, who had been
confined to the sleeping den, and who scratched
and tore at the door to get to the assistance of
their distressed relative. In a den on one side
was the Cheetah, whose leg was amputated
under chloroform some months ago, and who
was greatly excited by the smell of the fluid and
uproar. The large sloth bear in a cage on the
other side, joined heartily in the chorus, and the
Isabella bear just beyond, wrung her paws in
an agony of woe. Leopards snarled in sympathy,
and laughing hyenas swelled the chorus
with their hysterical sobs. The octo-basso growling
of the polar bears, and roaring of the lions
on the other side of the building, completed as
remarkable a diapason as could well be heard.
The first evidence of the action of the chloroform
on the bear, was a diminution in his struggles;
first one paw dropped, then the other. The
sponge was now removed from his face, the door
of the den opened, and his head laid upon a
plank outside. The cataracts were speedily
broken up, and the bear was drawn into the
cage again. For nearly five minutes he remained,
as was remarked by a keeper without
knowledge, sense, or understanding, till at length
one leg gave a kick, then another, and presently
he attempted to stand. The essay was a failure,
but he soon tried to make his way to his cage.
It was Garrick, if we remember right, who affirmed
that Talma was an indifferent representative
of inebriation, for he was not drunk in his
legs. The bear, however acted the part to perfection,
and the way in which (like Commodore
Trunnion on his way to church) he tacked, during
his route to his den, was ludicrous in the extreme.
At length he blundered into it, and
was left quiet for a time. He soon revived, and
in the afternoon ate heartily. The following
morning on the door being opened, he came out,
staring about him, caring nothing for the light,
and began humming, as he licked his paws, with
much the air of a musical amateur sitting down
to a sonata on his violoncello.
A group might have been dimly seen through
the fog which covered the garden on the morning
of the 15th November, standing on the spot
where the proceedings above narrated took place
ten days previously. This group comprised
Professor Owen, Mr. Yarrell, the president of
the Society, Count Nesselrode, Mr. Waterhouse,
Mr. Pickersgill, R.A., Captain Stanley, R.N.,
and two or three other gentlemen. They were
assembled to witness the restoration to sight of
another of the grizzly bears. The bear this
time was brought out of the den, and his chain
passed round the rail in front of it. Diluted[Pg 550]
chloroform was used, and the operation was
rendered more difficult by the animal not being
perfectly under its influence. He recovered immediately
after the couching needle had been
withdrawn from the second eye, and walked
pretty steadily to his sleeping apartment, where
he received the condolences of his brethren, rather
ungraciously it must be confessed, but his head
was far from clear, and his temper ruffled.
When the cataracts have been absorbed the
animals will have sight.
The wooded districts of the American continent
were tenanted before civilization had made such
gigantic strides, by large numbers of the well
known black bear, Ursus Americanus. Some
years ago, black bears’ skins were greatly in
vogue for carriage hammer-cloths, &c.; and an
idea of the animals destroyed, may be formed
from the fact, that in 1783, 10,500 skins were
imported, and the numbers gradually rose to
25,000 in 1803, since which time there has been
a gradual decline. In those days, a fine skin
was worth from twenty to forty guineas, but
may now be obtained for five guineas.
The chase of this bear is the most solemn
action of the Laplander; and the successful
hunter may be known by the number of tufts of
bears’ hair he wears in his bonnet. When the
retreat of a bear is discovered, the ablest sorcerer
of the tribe beats the runic drum to discover
the event of the chase, and on which side
the animal ought to be assailed. During the
attack, the hunters join in a prescribed chorus,
and beg earnestly of the bear that he will do
them no mischief. When dead, the body is
carried home on a sledge, and the rein-deer
employed to draw it, is exempt from labor
during the remainder of the year. A new hut
is constructed for the express purpose of cooking
the flesh, and the huntsmen, joined by their
wives, sing again their songs of joy and of gratitude
to the animal, for permitting them to
return in safety. They never presume to speak
of the bear with levity, but always allude to
him with profound respect, as “the old man in
the fur cloak.” The Indians, too, treat him
with much deference. An old Indian, named
Keskarrah, was seated at the door of his tent,
by a small stream, not far from Fort Enterprise,
when a large bear came to the opposite
bank, and remained for some time apparently
surveying him. Keskarrah, considering himself
to be in great danger, and having no one to
assist him but his aged wife, made a solemn
speech, to the following effect: “Oh, bear! I
never did you any harm; I have always had
the highest respect for you and your relations,
and never killed any of them except through
necessity. Pray, go away, good bear, and let
me alone, and I promise not to molest you.”
The bear (probably regarding the old gentleman
as rather a tough morsel) walked off, and the
old man, fancying that he owed his safety to
his eloquence, favored Sir John Richardson with
his speech at length. The bear in question,
however, was of a different species to, and more
sanguinary than the black bear, so that the
escape of the old couple was regarded as remarkable.
The Ursus Americanus almost invariably hybernates;
and about a thousand skins have
been annually imported by the Hudson’s Bay
Company, from these black bears destroyed in
their winter retreats. A spot under a fallen
tree is selected for its den, and having scratched
away a portion of the soil, the bear retires
thither at the commencement of a snow-storm,
and the snow soon furnishes a close warm covering.
When taken young, these bears are
easily tamed; and the following incident occurred
to a gentleman of our acquaintance: a
fine young bear had been brought up by him
with an antelope of the elegant species called
Furcifer, the two feeding out of the same dish,
and being often seen eating the same cabbage.
He was in the habit of taking these pets out
with him, leading the bear by a string. On
one occasion he was thus proceeding, a friend
leading the antelope, when a large fierce dog
flew at the latter. The gentleman, embarrassed
by his charge, called out for assistance to
my informant, who ran hastily up, and in doing
so accidentally let the bear loose. He seemed
to be perfectly aware that his little companion
was in difficulty, and rushing forward, knocked
the dog over and over with a blow of his paw,
and sent him off howling. The same bear
would also play for hours with a Bison calf,
and when tired with his romps, jumped into a
tub to rest; having recovered, he would spring
out and resume his gambols with his boisterous
playfellow, who seemed to rejoice when the bear
was out of breath, and could be taken at a
disadvantage, at which time he was sure to be
pressed doubly hard. There was a fine bear of
this description in the old Tower Menagerie,
which long shared his den with a hyena, with
whom he was on good terms except at meal-times,
when they would quarrel in a very ludicrous
manner, for a piece of beef, or whatever
else might happen to form a bone of contention
between them. The hyena, though by far the
smaller was generally master, and the bear
would moan most piteously in a tone resembling
the bleating of a sheep, while the hyena quietly
consumed the remainder of the dinner.
The following is an account of an adventure
which occurred to Frank Forester, in
America. A large bear was traced to a cavern
in the Round Mountain, and every effort made
for three days without success to smoke or burn
him out. At length a bold hunter, familiar
with the spot, volunteered to beard the bear in
his den. The well-like aperture, which, alone
could be seen from without, descended for about
eight feet, then turned sharp off at right angles,
running nearly horizontally for about six feet,
beyond which it opened into a small circular
chamber, where the bear had taken up his
quarters. The man determined to descend, to
worm himself, feet forward, on his back, and to
shoot at the eyes of the bear, as they would be[Pg 551]
visible in the dark. Two narrow laths of pine
wood were accordingly procured, and pierced
with holes, in which candles were placed and
lighted. A rope was next made fast about his
chest, a butcher’s knife disposed in readiness
for his grasp, and his musket loaded with two
good ounce bullets, well wrapped in greased
buckskin. Gradually he disappeared, thrusting
the lights before him with his feet, and holding
the musket ready cocked in his hand. A few
anxious moments—a low stifled growl was
heard—then a loud, bellowing, crashing report,
followed by a wild and fearful howl, half anguish,
half furious rage. The men above wildly
and eagerly hauled up the rope, and the
sturdy hunter was whirled into the air uninjured,
and retaining in his grasp his good
weapon; while the fierce brute rushed tearing
after him even to the cavern’s mouth. As
soon as the man had entered the small chamber,
he perceived the glaring eyeballs of the bear,
had taken steady aim at them, and had, he
believed, lodged his bullets fairly. Painful
moanings were soon heard from within, and
then all was still! Again the bold man determined
to seek the monster; again he vanished,
and his musket shot roared from the recesses
of the rock. Up he was whirled; but this time,
the bear, streaming with gore, and furious with
pain, rushed after him, and with a mighty
bound, cleared the confines of the cavern! A
hasty and harmless volley was fired, while the
bear glared round as if undecided upon which of
the group to wreak his vengeance. Tom, the
hunter, coolly raised his piece, but snap! no
spark followed the blow of the hammer! With a
curse Tom threw down the musket, and, drawing
his knife, rushed forward to encounter the
bear single handed. What would have been
his fate had the bear folded him in his deadly
hug, we may be pretty sure; but ere this could
happen, the four bullets did their work, and he
fell; a convulsive shudder passed through his
frame, and all was still. Six hundred and odd
pounds did he weigh, and great were the rejoicings
at his destruction.
The wild pine forests of Scandinavia yet contain
bears in considerable numbers. The general
color of these European bears is dark brown,
and to a great degree they are vegetable feeders,
although exceedingly fond of ants and honey.
Their favorite food is berries and succulent
plants; and in autumn, when the berries are
ripe, they become exceedingly fat. Toward the
end of November the bear retires to his den, and
passes the winter months in profound repose.
About the middle of April he leaves his den,
and roams about the forest ravenous for food.
These bears attain a large size, often weighing
above four hundred pounds; and an instance is
on record of one having weighed nearly seven
hundred and fifty pounds. The best information
relative to the habits and pursuits of these Scandinavian
bears is to be found in Mr. Lloyd’s
“Field Sports of the North of Europe,” from
which entertaining work we shall draw largely.
When a district in Sweden is infested with
bears, public notice is given from the pulpit
during divine service, that a skăll or battue is
to take place, and specifying the number of
people required, the time and place of rendezvous,
and other particulars. Sometimes as
many as 1500 men are employed, and these are
regularly organized in parties and divisions.
They then extend themselves in such a manner
that a cordon is formed, embracing a large
district, and all simultaneously move forward.
By this means the wild animals are gradually
driven into a limited space, and destroyed as
circumstances admit. These skălls are always
highly exciting, and it not unfrequently happens
that accidents arise, from the bears turning
upon and attacking their pursuers. A bear
which had been badly wounded, and was hard
pressed, rushed upon a peasant whose gun had
missed fire, and seized him by the shoulders
with his fore paws. The peasant, for his part,
grasped the bear’s ears. Twice did they fall,
and twice get up, without loosening their holds,
during which time the bear had bitten through
the sinews of both arms, from the wrists upward,
and was approaching the exhausted peasant’s
throat, when Mr. Falk, “öfwer jäg mästare,”
or head ranger of the Wermeland forests,
arrived, and with one shot ended the fearful
conflict.
Jan Svenson was a Dalecarlian hunter of
great repute, having been accessory to the death
of sixty or seventy bears, most of which he had
himself killed. On one occasion he had the
following desperate encounter: having, with
several other peasants, surrounded a very large
bear, he advanced with his dog to rouse him
from his lair; the dog dashed toward the bear,
who was immediately after fired at and wounded
by one of the peasants. This man was prostrated
by the infuriated animal, and severely
lacerated. The beast now retraced his steps,
and came full on Jan Svenson, a shot from
whose rifle knocked him over. Svenson, thinking
the bear was killed, coolly commenced re-loading
his rifle. He had only poured in the
powder, when the bear sprung up and seized
him by the arm. The dog, seeing the jeopardy
in which his master was placed, gallantly fixed
on the bear’s hind quarters. To get rid of this
annoyance, the bear threw himself on his back,
making with one paw a blow at the dog, with
the other holding Svenson fast in his embraces.
This he repeated three several times, handling
the man as a cat would a mouse, and in the
intervals he was biting him in different parts
of the body, or standing still as if stupefied. In
this dreadful situation Svenson remained nearly
half an hour; and during all this time the noble
dog never ceased for a moment his attacks on
the bear. At last the brute quitted his hold,
and moving slowly to a small tree at a few
paces’ distance, seized it with his teeth; he
was in his last agonies, and presently fell dead
to the ground. On this occasion Svenson was
wounded in thirty-one different places, principally[Pg 552]
in the arms and legs. This forest monster
had, in the early part of the winter, mortally
wounded another man, who was pursuing him,
and from his great size was an object of general
dread.
Lieutenant Oldenburg, when in Torp in Norrland,
saw a chasseur brought down from the
forest, who had been desperately mangled by a
bear. The man was some distance in advance
of his party, and wounded the animal with a
ball. The bear immediately turned on him;
they grappled, and both soon came to the
ground. Here a most desperate struggle took
place, which lasted a considerable time. Sometimes
the man, who was a powerful fellow,
being uppermost, at other times the bear. At
length, exhausted with fatigue and loss of blood,
the chasseur gave up the contest, and turning
on his face in the snow, pretended to be dead.
Bruin, on this, quietly seated himself on his
body, where he remained for near half an
hour. At length the chasseur’s companions
came up, and relieved their companion by shooting
the bear through the heart. Though terribly
lacerated, the man eventually recovered.
Captain Eurenius related to Mr. Lloyd an
incident which he witnessed in Wenersborg, in
1790: A bear-hunt or skăll was in progress,
and an old soldier placed himself in a situation
where he thought the bear would pass. He
was right in his conjecture, for the animal soon
made his appearance, and charged directly at
him. He leveled his musket, but the piece
missed fire. The bear was now close, and he
attempted to drive the muzzle of the gun down
the animal’s throat. This attack the bear parried
like a fencing master, wrested the gun from
the man, and quickly laid him prostrate. Had
he been prudent all might have ended well, for
the bear, after smelling, fancied him dead, and
left him almost unhurt. The animal then began
to handle the musket, and knock it about
with his paws. The soldier seeing this, could
not resist stretching out his hand and laying
hold of the muzzle, the bear having the stock
firmly in his grasp. Finding his antagonist
alive, the bear seized the back of his head with
his teeth, and tore off the whole of his scalp,
from the nape of the neck upward, so that it
merely hung to the forehead by a strip of skin.
Great as was his agony, the poor fellow kept
quiet, and the bear laid himself along his body.
While this was going forward, Captain Eurenius
and others approached the spot, and on coming
within sixteen paces, beheld the bear licking
the blood from the bare skull, and eying the
people, who were afraid to fire lest they should
injure their comrade. Captain Eurenius asserted,
that in this position the soldier and bear
remained for a considerable time, until at last
the latter quitted his victim, and slowly began
to retire, when a tremendous fire being opened,
he fell dead. On hearing the shots, the wretched
sufferer jumped up, his scalp hanging over his
face, so as to completely blind him. Throwing
it back with his hand, he ran toward his comrades
like a madman, frantically exclaiming,
“The bear! the bear!” the scalp was separated,
and the captain described it as exactly
resembling a peruke. In one respect the catastrophe
was fortunate for the poor soldier; it
was in the old days of pipe-clay and pomatum,
and every one in the army was obliged to wear
his hair of a certain form, and this man being,
for satisfactory reasons, unable to comply with
the regulation, and a tow wig not being admissible,
he immediately received his discharge.
A curious circumstance is related by Mr.
Lloyd, showing the boldness of wolves when
pressed by hunger. A party were in chase of a
bear, who was tracked by a dog. They were
some distance behind the bear, when a drove of
five wolves attacked and devoured the dog.
Their appetites being thus whetted, they forthwith
made after the bear, and coming up with
him, a severe conflict ensued, as was apparent
from the quantity of hair, both of the bear and
wolves, that was scattered about the spot.
Bruin was victorious, but was killed a few days
afterward by the hunters. The wolves, however,
had made so free with his fur, that his
skin was of little value. On another occasion,
a drove of wolves attacked a bear, who, posting
himself with his back against a tree, defended
himself for some time with success; but at
length his opponents contrived to get under the
tree, and wounded him desperately in the flank.
Just then some men coming up, the wolves retreated,
and the wounded bear became an easy
prey.
It occasionally happens that cattle are attacked
by bears, but the latter are not always
victorious. A powerful bull was charged in the
forest by a bear, when, striking his horns into
his assailant, he pinned him to a tree. In this
situation they were both found dead—the bull
from starvation, the bear from wounds. So
says the author above quoted.
The hybernation of bears gives rise to a
curious confusion of cause and effect in the
minds of the Swiss peasantry. They believe
that bears which have passed the winter in the
mountain caverns, always come out to reconnoitre
on the 2d of February; and that they
if the weather be then cold and winterly, return,
like the dove to the ark, for another fortnight;
at the end of which time they find the season
sufficiently advanced to enable them to quit
their quarters without inconvenience; but that,
if the weather be fine and warm on the 2d,
they sally forth, thinking the winter past. But
on the cold returning after sunset, they discover
their mistake, and return in a most sulky state
of mind, without making a second attempt
until after the expiration of six weeks, during
which time man is doomed to suffer all the inclemencies
consequent on their want of urbanity.
Thus, instead of attributing the retirement of
the bears to the effects of the cold, the myth
makes the cold to depend on the seclusion of the
bears!
The fat of bears has, from time immemorial,[Pg 553]
enjoyed a high reputation for promoting the
growth of hair; but not a thousandth part of
the bear’s grease sold in shops comes from the
animal whose name it carries. In Scandinavia,
the only part used for the hair is the fat found
about the intestines. The great bulk of the fat,
which in a large bear may weigh from sixty to
eighty pounds, is used for culinary purposes.
Bears’ hams, when smoked, are great delicacies,
as are also the paws; and the flesh of bears is
not inferior to our excellent beef.
On a certain memorable day, in 1847, a large
hamper reached Oxford, per Great Western
Railway, and was in due time delivered according
to its direction, at Christchurch, consigned
to Francis Buckland, Esq., a gentleman
well known in the University for his fondness
for natural history. He opened the hamper,
and the moment the lid was removed out jumped
a creature about the size of an English sheep
dog, covered with long shaggy hair, of a brownish
color. This was a young bear, born on
Mount Lebanon, in Syria, a few months before,
who had now arrived to receive his education at
our learned University. The moment that he
was released from his irksome attitude in the
hamper, he made the most of his liberty, and
the door of the room being open, he rushed off
down the cloisters. Service was going on in
the chapel, and, attracted by the pealing organ,
or some other motive, he made at once for the
chapel. Just as he arrived at the door, the
stout verger happened to come thither from
within, and the moment he saw the impish
looking creature that was rushing into his domain,
he made a tremendous flourish with his
silver wand, and, darting into the chapel, ensconced
himself in a tall pew, the door of which
he bolted. Tiglath-pe-leser (as the bear was
called), being scared by the silver wand, turned
from the chapel, and scampered frantically about
the large quadrangle, putting to flight the numerous
parties of dogs, who in those days made
that spot their afternoon rendezvous. After a
sharp chase, a gown was thrown over Tig, and
he was with difficulty secured. During the
struggle, he got one of the fingers of his new
master into his mouth, and—did he bite it off?
No, poor thing! but began vigorously sucking
it, with that peculiar mumbling noise for which
bears are remarkable. Thus was he led back
to Mr. B.’s rooms, walking all the way on his
hind legs, and sucking the finger with all his
might. A collar was put round his neck, and
Tig became a prisoner. His good-nature and
amusing tricks soon made him a prime favorite
with the undergraduates; a cap and gown were
made, attired in which (to the great scandal of
the dons) he accompanied his master to breakfasts
and wine parties, where he contributed
greatly to the amusement of the company, and
partook of good things, his favorite viands being
muffins and ices. He was in general of an
amiable disposition, but subject to fits of rage,
during which his violence was extreme; but a
kind word, and a finger to suck, soon brought
him round. He was most impatient of solitude,
and would cry for hours when left alone, particularly
if it was dark. It was this unfortunate
propensity which brought him into especial
disfavor with the Dean of Christchurch, whose
Greek quantities and hours of rest were sadly
disturbed by Tig’s lamentations.
On one occasion he was kept in college till
after the gates had been shut, and there was no
possibility of getting him out without the porter
seeing him, when there would have been a fine
of ten shillings to pay the next morning; for
during this term an edict had gone forth against
dogs, and the authorities not being learned in
zoology, could not be persuaded that a bear
was not a dog. Tig was, therefore, tied in a
court-yard near his master’s rooms, but that
gentleman was soon brought out by his piteous
cries, and could not pacify him in any other
way than by bringing him into his rooms, and
at bed time Tig was chained to the post at the
bottom of the bed, where he remained quiet till
day-light, and then shuffling on to the bed,
awoke his master by licking his face—he took
no notice, and presently Tig deliberately put his
hind legs under the blankets and covered himself
up; there he remained till chapel time,
when his master left him, and on his return
found that the young gentleman had been
amusing himself during his solitude by overturning
every thing he could get at in the room,
and, apparently, had had a quarrel and fight
with the looking-glass, which was broken to
pieces and the wood work bitten all over. The
perpetrator of all this havoc sat on the bed,
looking exceedingly innocent, but rocking backward
and forward as if conscious of guilt and
doubtful of the consequences. Near to Tig’s
house there was a little monkey tied to a tree,
and Jacko’s great amusement was to make
grimaces at Tig; and when the latter composed
himself to sleep in the warm sunshine, Jacko
would cautiously descend from the tree, and,
twisting his fingers in Tig’s long hair, would
give him a sharp pull and in a moment was up
the tree again, chattering and clattering his
chain. Tig’s anger was most amusing—he
would run backward and forward on his hind
legs sucking his paws, and with his eyes fixed
on Jacko, uttering all sorts of threats and imprecations,
to the great delight of the monkey.
He would then again endeavor to take a nap,
only to be again disturbed by his little tormentor.
However, these two animals established a truce,
became excellent friends, and would sit for half-an-hour
together confronting each other, apparently
holding a conversation. At the commencement
of the long vacation, Tig, with the
other members of the University, retired into
the country, and was daily taken out for a walk
round the village, to the great astonishment of
the bumpkins. There was a little shop, kept
by an old dame who sold whipcord, sugar-candy,
and other matters, and here, on one occasion,
Tig was treated to sugar-candy. Soon afterward
he got loose, and at once made off for the[Pg 554]
shop, into which he burst to the unutterable
terror of the spectacled and high capped old
lady, who was knitting stockings behind the
counter; the moment she saw his shaggy head
and heard the appalling clatter of his chain, she
rushed up stairs in a delirium of terror. When
assistance arrived the offender was discovered,
seated on the counter, helping himself most
liberally to brown sugar; and it was with some
difficulty, and after much resistance, that he
was dragged away.
Mr. Buckland had made a promise that Tig
should pay a visit to a village about six miles
distant, and determined that he should proceed
thither on horseback. As the horse shied whenever
the bear came near him, there was some
difficulty in getting him mounted; but at last
his master managed to pull him up by the chain
while the horse was held quiet. Tig at first
took up his position in front, but soon walked
round and stood up on his hind legs, resting his
fore paws on his master’s shoulders. To him
this was exceedingly pleasant, but not so to the
horse, who not being accustomed to carry two,
and feeling Tig’s claws, kicked and plunged to
rid himself of the extra passenger. Tig held on
like grim death, and stuck in his claws most
successfully; for in spite of all the efforts of the
horse he was not thrown. In this way the
journey was performed, the country folks opening
their eyes at the apparition.
This reminds us of an anecdote mentioned by
Mr. Lloyd: a peasant had reared a bear which
became so tame that he used occasionally to
cause him to stand at the back of his sledge
when on a journey; but the bear kept so good
a balance that it was next to impossible to upset
him. One day, however, the peasant amused
himself by driving over the very worst ground
he could find, with the intention, if possible, of
throwing Bruin off his equilibrium. This went
on for some time, till the animal became so
irritated that he gave his master, who was in
front of him, a tremendous thump on the shoulder
with his paw, which frightened the man so
much that he caused the bear to be killed immediately;
this, as he richly deserved the thump,
was a shabby retaliation.
When term recommenced, Tiglath-pe-leser returned
to the University, much altered in appearance,
for being of the family of silver bears
of Syria, his coat had become almost white; he
was much bigger and stronger, and his teeth
had made their appearance, so that he was
rather more difficult to manage; the only way
to restrain him when in a rage, was to hold him
by the ears; but on one occasion having lost his
temper, he tore his cap and gown to pieces.
About this time the British Association paid a
visit to Oxford, and Tig was an object of much
interest. The writer was present on several
occasions when he was introduced to breakfast
parties of eminent savants, and much amusement
was created by his tricks, albeit they were
a little rough. In more than one instance he
made sad havoc with book-muslins and other
fragile articles of female attire; on the whole,
however, he conducted himself with great propriety,
especially at an evening meeting at Dr.
Daubeny’s, where he was much noticed, to his
evident pleasure.
Still, however, the authorities at Christchurch,
not being zoologists, had peculiar notions respecting
bears; and at length, after numerous
threats and pecuniary penalties, the fatal day
arrived, and Tig’s master was informed that
either “he or the bear must leave Oxford the
next morning.” There was no resisting this,
and poor dear Tig was, accordingly, put into a
box—a much larger one than that in which he
had arrived—and sent off to the Zoological
Gardens, Regent’s Park; here he was placed in
a comfortable den by himself; but, alas! he
missed the society to which he had been
accustomed, the excitement of a college life,
and the numerous charms by which the University
was endeared to him; he refused his
food; he ran perpetually up and down his
den in the vain hope to escape, and was
one morning found dead, a victim to a broken
heart!
NOT ALL ALONE.
BY ALARIC A. WATTS.
Communion sweet with saint and sage;
And gather gems, of price untold,
From many a consecrated page:
Youth’s dreams, the golden lights of age,
The poet’s lore, are still thine own;
Then, while such themes thy thoughts engage,
Oh, how canst thou be all alone?
As mounting up to heaven, she sings;
The thousand silvery sounds that float
Above, below, on morning’s wings;
The softer murmurs twilight brings—
The cricket’s chirp, cicada’s glee;
All earth, that lyre of myriad strings,
Is jubilant with life for thee!
The rippling brook, the starry sky,
Have each peculiar harmonies
To soothe, subdue, and sanctify:
The low, sweet breath of evening’s sigh,
For thee hath oft a friendly tone,
To lift thy grateful thoughts on high,
And say—thou art not all alone!
That notes the wandering sparrow’s fall,
A saving Hand is ever nigh,
A gracious Power attends thy call—
When sadness holds the heart in thrall,
Oft is His tenderest mercy shown;
Seek, then, the balm vouchsafed to all,
And thou canst never be alone!
[Pg 555]
Monthly Record of Current Events.
POLITICAL AND GENERAL NEWS.
THE UNITED STATES.
The public mind has been almost wholly absorbed,
during the past month, in anxiety for
the safety of the American steamer Atlantic. She
was known to have left Liverpool on the 28th of
December, and was seen four days out by a packet
which afterward reached New York. From that
time until the 16th of February an interval of fifty
days, nothing whatever was known of her fate.
The anxiety of the public mind was becoming intense,
when, on the evening of February 16th, the
Africa arrived with news of her safety. It seems
that on the 6th of January the main shaft of her engine
was broken, which rendered the engine completely
unmanageable. She stood for Halifax until
the 11th, against strong head winds, when it became
evident that she could not reach that port
before her provisions would give out, and she accordingly
put back for Cork, where she arrived on
the 22d of January. Her mails and passengers
came in the Africa. The Cambria had been chartered
to bring her cargo, and was to sail February
4th. The Atlantic was to be taken to Liverpool
for repairs, which would probably occupy three
months. Few events within our recollection have
caused more general joy than the intelligence of
her safety.
Congress, during the past month, has done but
little of permanent interest to any section of the
country. Various important subjects have been
extensively discussed, but upon none of them has
any favorable or decisive action been taken. Several
attempts have been made, by the friends of a
protective tariff in the House of Representatives,
to insert some provisions in the deficiency and appropriation
bills which would secure an amendment
of the existing tariff favorable to their views. None
of these efforts, however, have been successful. A
zealous discussion has also been had upon a bill to
establish a branch of the United States Mint in the
city of New York; it met with strong opposition—especially
from the city of Philadelphia and was
finally defeated. A bill concerning the land titles
in California has also been largely discussed in the
Senate, and finally passed. A resolution has been
adopted in that body authorizing the President of
the United States to confer the brevet rank of Lieutenant
General; it is of course designed for application
to General Scott. A bill further reducing
the rates of postage has passed the House of Representatives.
Three cents was by it adopted as
the uniform rate of letter postage. The bill was
very greatly changed in the Senate, and its fate is
still doubtful. The French Spoliation Bill, the
project for establishing a line of steamers on the
coast of Africa, and other bills have been before
Congress but no action has been had upon them.
The Senate has passed a bill appropriating ten
millions of acres of public lands (equal to twelve
millions five hundred thousand dollars) to be apportioned
among the several States in an equitable
ratio, for the endowment of Hospitals for the indigent
insane. This act is one of the most philanthropic
and beneficent ever passed by any legislative
body. It has been ably and zealously pressed
upon the attention of Congress by Miss Dix, whose
devotion to the cause of humanity has already won
for her a world-wide reputation.
Elections of United States Senators have been
held in several of the States with various results.
In Florida, on the 15th of January, Mr. Mallory,
Democrat, was elected over Mr. Yulee. In Missouri,
after a protracted effort, Henry S. Geyer,
Whig, was elected on the fortieth ballot, receiving
80 votes against 55 for Mr. Benton, and 20 scattering.
Mr. Geyer is a German by birth, but came
to this country when he was about three years old.
He is now one of the ablest lawyers and most upright
men in the State which he is hereafter in part
to represent. In Pennsylvania, Mr. Broadhead,
Democrat, was elected without serious difficulty.
In New York both branches of the Legislature
proceeded to nominate a Senator in accordance
with the law upon the subject, on the 4th day of
February. In the Assembly Hamilton Fish was
nominated, receiving 79 votes against 48 for other
candidates. In the Senate he had 16 votes, while
16 Senators voted each for a separate candidate, one
of them, Senator Beekman from New York City,
being a Whig. After two ballotings, on Mr. Beekman’s
motion, the Senate adjourned. No nomination
has been made, nor can the attempt be renewed,
except by the passage of a special law.
In Massachusetts repeated efforts to elect a Senator
have proved unsuccessful. Charles Sumner,
Free Soil, has several times lacked but three or
four votes of an election, Mr. Winthrop being his
principal opponent. The vacancy occasioned by
Mr. Webster’s resignation has been filled by the
election of Hon. Robert Rantoul. Mr. Boutwell
was elected Governor of the State by the
Legislature. The effort to elect a Senator for the
next term will be renewed from time to time. In
Rhode Island, after several ballotings, in which
two Whigs and one Democrat received about an
equal number of votes each, Charles T. James,
Esq., Democrat, was elected, having received a
large number of Whig votes. In Ohio, an attempt
to elect a Senator to succeed Mr. Ewing, proved
ineffectual. Ten ballots were had, after which the
Legislature adjourned, thus abandoning the effort.
In Michigan General Cass has been re-elected
United States Senator by the Legislature.
The Legislature of North Carolina has closed
its session. Notwithstanding the strenuous efforts
that have been made to excite among the people
of this State serious disaffection toward the Union,
the action of the Legislature has been exceedingly
moderate. Resolutions upon the subject, calculated
to inflame the public mind, were laid upon the table
by a very decisive vote. A bill has been passed
authorizing an agricultural, mineralogical, and
botanical survey of the State. The Governor is to
make the appointment, and the Surveyor is required
personally, or by his assistants, “to visit
every county in the State, and examine every
thing of interest or value in either of the above departments,
to ascertain the nature and character of[Pg 556]
its products, and the nature and character of its
soil, as well as to give an account of its minerals.”
Gen. Quitman, Governor of Mississippi, has been
indicted at New Orleans on charge of having participated
in the unlawful expedition from the United
States against Cuba. He has resigned his office,
and given bail for his appearance in Court, asking
for a speedy trial. A number of others have also
been indicted, one of whom, Gen. Henderson, has
been tried. The trial lasted several days, and was
conducted on both sides with great ability. The
connection of the accused with the expedition
seemed to have been clearly proved: the jury,
however, were not able to agree on a verdict, four
of them, it is said, taking the ground that the expedition
was justifiable and proper.
Intelligence to December 19th has been received
from the Commission to survey the boundary line
between Mexico and the United States. The Mexican
Commissioner, Gen. Conde, had joined the
American Commissioners at El Paso. Several
conferences were had before a starting point could
be agreed upon for the survey, as the maps of that
region were very inconsistent and imperfect.
Throughout New Mexico, according to the most
recent advices, great inconvenience is sustained
from Indian depredations, made in spite of treaty
stipulations.
The Arkansas Legislature adjourned January 14,
after a session of seventy-one days, which has been
fruitful in acts of local importance.
The Governor of Texas has designated the first
Thursday in March as a day of public thanksgiving.
The fact is worthy of record here as an evidence
that this New England custom is steadily making
its way into the new States.
Accidents to steamboats on our Western waters
continue to challenge public attention. The steamer
John Adams on the Ohio, on the 27th of January,
struck a snag and sunk in two minutes. One hundred
and twenty-three lives were lost—mostly of
emigrants.
Hon. George F. Fort was installed into office
as Governor of New Jersey on the 21st of January.
His inaugural address recommends the establishment
of free schools, the enactment of general incorporation
laws, homestead exemption, &c., and
urges a full assent to the Compromise measures of
the last session of Congress.
Some attention has been attracted to a letter
from Gen. Houston to Hon. John Letcher of Virginia,
rebuking very severely the attempt made by
South Carolina to induce Virginia to take the lead
in a scheme of secession. Gen. Houston speaks of
the Constitution as the most perfect of human instruments,
and refuses to countenance any attempt
to alter or amend its provisions. He says that
every intelligent and disinterested observer must
concede that agitation at the North is dying out,
that the laws are obeyed, and that no necessity
exists for resisting or dissolving the Union. The
letter exerts a marked influence on the political
movements of the day.
The House of Representatives in Delaware on
the 5th of February adopted a series of resolutions
very warmly approving the Compromise measures
of the last session of Congress, and especially the
law for the more effectual enforcement of the provisions
of the Constitution requiring the surrender
of fugitive slaves.
Hon. D.S. Kaufman, member of Congress from
Texas, died very suddenly on the 31st of January.
His decease was ascribed to an affliction of the
heart, but it is supposed by those who knew him
most intimately to have resulted from a wound received
by a pistol shot some years since in a rencontre
in the Texas Legislature. The ball had
never been extracted. He was a gentleman of
ability and of a very amiable disposition.
A large “Union meeting” was held at Westchester,
N.Y., on the 30th of January. A letter
was received from Daniel Webster, regretting his
inability to attend the meeting, and warmly approving
its objects. Mr. Clay also wrote a letter
which was read at the meeting, in which he said
that “two classes of disunionists threaten our country:
one is that which is open and undisguised in
favor of separation—the other is that which, disowning
a desire of dissolution of the Union, adopts a
course and contends for measures and principles
which must inevitably lead to that calamitous result.”
He considered the latter the “more dangerous,
because it is deceptive and insidious.”
A correspondence between Mr. Mathew, a British
consul, and the Governor of South Carolina, has
excited some attention. Mr. Mathew represents
the very great inconvenience occasioned by the
law of South Carolina requiring the imprisonment
of every colored person arriving in her ports until
the departure of the vessel, and the payment of
expenses by her captain. The correspondence is
friendly, and the subject has been referred to a
committee in the South Carolina Legislature. The
fact of a correspondence between the representative
of a foreign power and one of the States of the
Union, in its separate capacity, excites remark and
censure.
From California our advices are to the 15th of
January. The cholera had entirely disappeared.
The result of the late State election had been definitely
ascertained. In the Senate there is a Whig
majority of two, and in the Assembly a Whig majority
of nine. This result is deemed important on
account of the pending election of U.S. Senator in
place of Mr. Frémont. Gov. Burnett has resigned,
and Lieut.-Gov. McDougal been installed in his
place. Hon. David C. Broderick, formerly of New
York, was chosen President of the Senate. Renewed
difficulties have occurred with the Indians, and the
general impression seemed to be that no friendly
arrangement could be made with them. They demand
the free use of their old hunting-grounds, and
will listen to no proposition which involves their
surrender. The settlers, especially on the Trinity
and Klamath rivers, suffer grievously from their
marauding incursions, and have been compelled to
raise and arm companies to repel them. A serious
and protracted war is apprehended.
The latest arrival brings the report of a discovery
of gold exceeding in magnitude any before made.
Twenty-seven miles beyond the Trinity River, it is
said, is a beach seven miles in extent, bounded by
a high bluff. A heavy sea, breaking upon the
shore washes away the lighter sand, and that
which remains is rich to an unparalleled extent.
A company has been formed to proceed to this
locality, and the Secretary estimates the sum which
each member will secure, at many millions.
The whole amount of gold dust shipped at San
Francisco during the year 1850, is officially stated
at $29,441,583. At least twenty millions are supposed
to have gone forward, in addition, in private
hands, so that the total product of the mines during
the year is estimated at nearly fifty millions. The
mines in all quarters continued to yield abundant
returns.
MEXICO.
We have intelligence from Mexico to the 25th of
January. Congress assembled on the 1st. The
President opened the session by a speech about an
hour in length. He says that the stipulations of the
treaty of peace with the United States have been
faithfully observed, and have proved highly advantageous
for Mexico. Three treaties have been concluded
during his administration—one with the
United States in regard to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec,
another with the same power concerning the
extradition of criminals, and another with Guatemala
on the same subject. Domestic tranquillity
has been preserved throughout the country; complaint,
however, is made that the States transcend
their rightful authority, and thus weaken the General
Government; and the necessity of providing a
remedy for this abuse, in order to maintain the integrity
of the Federal Constitution, is strongly
urged. Commerce and manufactures are said to
have flourished, and the mining business, which is
the chief resource of Mexico, has been peculiarly
good. Their entire returns during the last year are
estimated at thirty millions. The President urges
the propriety of making laws to restrain the licentiousness
of the press. The army has been thoroughly
reformed, consisting now of only 6246 men,
all of whom are characterized as “true soldiers,”
stationed in places where their services will be
most useful to the Republic. On the 15th, Gen.
Arista was inaugurated President of Mexico. His
opening address was brief, pertinent, and patriotic.
He spoke of peace as the first necessity of the Republic,
and promised that it should be “maintained
at any cost, as the only manner in which the happiness
and prosperity of the people can be secured.”
He says that “every thing will be done by the central
authorities to enable the States to equalize the
expenses and their revenues; to multiply their
ways of communication; to augment their agricultural
and commercial industry; in short, to make
them great and powerful, attracting to their bosoms
the intelligent, industrious and enlightened population
which they so much need.” The address was
received with great satisfaction. The ceremony of
the inauguration was extremely brilliant, and was
witnessed by an immense concourse of people.
After it was over, the President and his ministers
repaired to the cathedral, where a Te Deum was
sung, and prayers offered up for the happiness of
the nation. The personal popularity of Gen. Arista
is very great, and the best hopes are indulged of
his administration.
Mr. Letcher, the American Minister, left for the
United States, on the 26th, and reached New Orleans
Feb. 4th. It was supposed that he brought
the Tehuantepec treaty ratified with him. A revolt
against the central government has occurred in
Guanajuato, but it was soon put down by the troops.
A number of the ringleaders in it have been executed.
The Mexican Government has granted to a
company styled Rubio, Barron, Garay, Torre & Co.,
the whole of the public lands in the State of Sonora,
comprising one of the most valuable tracts in the
whole country.
The Yucatan papers complain loudly of the encroachments
of the English in fortifying Belize, and
in otherwise interfering in the affairs of the Peninsula.
The American Hydrographic Party was busily
engaged in surveying the route across the Isthmus.
CENTRAL AMERICA.
From Nicaragua we have intelligence to the
13th of January. A rich placer of gold is said to
have been discovered about eight miles from Realejo.
The crops throughout the country have been
seriously threatened by immense flocks of locusts.
In consequence of the alarm created by this menaced
destruction, the Government has thrown open
all the ports of the country to the free admission of
all kinds of grain. Don Jose Sacasa has been elected
Director of Nicaragua—the term of the present
incumbent expiring on the 1st of May. The difficulties
between the Government of San Salvador and
the British Charge, Mr. Frederick Chatfield, have led
to the blockade by the latter, on behalf of his Government,
of all the ports of San Salvador. Mr. Chatfield
resorted to this extreme measure because the Government
refused to comply with his demands, that
they should countermand certain instructions they
had given to their agents, and contradict, officially,
certain statements concerning the British Government
made in the public prints of San Salvador.
The cause of this blockade was certainly somewhat
singular; but the form of it was still more so; for by
its terms, British vessels were excluded from its
operation. Mr. Chatfield has also written a letter to
the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Nicaragua, complaining
of the unwillingness of that Government to
negotiate with Great Britain, acting on behalf of the
King of Mosquito, for a boundary between the territories
of Mosquito and those of Nicaragua; and
saying that, “as a proof of the conciliatory spirit
of the British Government,” it had determined to
prescribe and maintain a certain boundary line,
which is designated. He adds that the British
government is still willing to treat on the subject,
and urges the importance of “coming to a friendly
understanding with the Mosquito government, since
no canal, or any other improved mode of transit
across the Isthmus, can well be established before
the difficulty, raised by Nicaragua on this point, is
put an end to.” In a subsequent letter, enforcing
the necessity of arranging the claims of a British
house for damages, Mr. Chatfield makes a singular
but evident allusion to the hopes entertained by the
Government of Nicaragua of aid from the United
States. He says that, “Whatever assurances Nicaragua
may receive that the conduct of its Government,
however irregular it may be toward another,
will at all times find support from third parties,
still the Government of Nicaragua must feel
that no reliance should be placed on such assurances,
as no foreign Government will compromise
political and commercial interests on the behalf of
a country whose rulers reject the ordinary means
of settling matters open to dispute, by argument,
and negotiation.”
From Valparaiso we have intelligence to January
2d. The U.S. Corvette Vincennes had been
at that port, and took the American Minister, Hon.
Bailie Peyton, on a visit to the province of Conception.
A very destructive fire had occurred at Valparaiso,
at which property to the value of a quarter
of a million of dollars was consumed. Congress
met December 16th, in extra session. A law had
been passed authorizing the Executive to reform
the Custom-House regulations. A law is under discussion
making an appropriation of $36,000 annually
to the Pacific Steam Navy. By an existing law
of the country, eight acres of land are given to each
foreign colonist: a new law is proposed, largely increasing
the grant. The sum of $2244 has been
voted to afford temporary residences for a colony
of German emigrants. These facts are important
indications of the efforts made to invite foreigners
into the country. Henri Herz, the pianist, was
at Valparaiso on the 1st of January. On the 5th,[Pg 558]
there was an eruption of the volcano of Portillo,
near Santiago.
GREAT BRITAIN.
It is decided that Parliament is to be opened by
the Queen in person, on the 4th of February.
Speculation is rife as to the course of Government
upon the subject of the “Papal Aggressions,” of
which though there are many rumors, nothing
authentic has transpired. The excitement upon
this subject, though the mode of manifestation is
changed, seems not to have died away. It occupies
less space in the newspapers, and fewer public
meetings are held; the discussion now being carried
on in books and pamphlets, of which the last
month has produced about one hundred, in addition
to nearly two hundred before published. In the
address of the English prelates to the Queen,
which was noticed in our last Number, no mention
was made of the Irish Church. The bishops of that
country have taken the matter up, and have protested
both to her Majesty and to their English
brethren, against any proceedings which shall imply
that the two branches of the Episcopal Church
have separate rights and interests. The Church
question, in various aspects, can not well fail of
being the prominent one in the ensuing session of
Parliament. A movement has been set on foot, by
the High Church Party with a view to a convocation
for the settlement of various questions in debate
within the Church; at a public meeting for this
object speeches marked by peculiar acrimony were
made. Secessions to the Roman Church, among
the higher classes and the clergy, are more frequent
than at any former period.
The unwonted prospect of a surplus in the revenue,
has occasioned propositions for the abolition
of many of the most onerous and odious taxes.
Among those spoken of are the window tax, the
tax on paper, that on tea, and the malt tax. The
paper tax seems to be the favorite of the press;
but the probability is that the reduction will be
made upon the window tax. The question threatens
to be an embarrassing one for the Ministry,
who will find it difficult to decide among so many
conflicting claims.
The Austrian government has officially demanded
that punishment should be inflicted upon those persons
who committed the assault upon General
Haynau. After a somewhat prolonged correspondence
the British Home Secretary declined to make
any inquiry into the matter, on the plea that “it
could not be attended with any satisfactory result.”
The refusal of General Haynau to enter any complaint
before the authorities is assigned as the
ground for this conclusion. Prince Schwartzenberg,
in his closing dispatch, hints that the Austrian
government may consider it “befitting to exercise
reciprocity with regard to British subjects
who may happen to be in Austria.”
In the colonies, the process of “annexation” goes
on steadily. In India one or two extensive districts
are in course of absorption. At the Cape of Good
Hope, the Governor has deposed the most powerful
of the Kaffir chiefs, and appointed a British officer
to assume the control of his people. In Australia
vehement opposition has sprung up against the
transportation system; and there is reason to suppose
that this outlet for the criminal population of
Great Britain will soon be closed.
The “Crystal Palace,” is so far completed that it
has been made over into the hands of the Commissioners.
Severe storms have luckily occurred,
which have proved the entire stability of the edifice,
not a pane of glass, even, of which has been
broken by them. Mr. Paxton has written a letter
to Lord John Russell, strenuously urging that after
the first fortnight, and with the exception of one
day in each week, admission to the Exhibition be
gratis.
FRANCE.
From France the political intelligence is of considerable
importance, not so much on its own account,
as showing a deep and increasing hostility
between the President and the National Assembly.
This feeling has been manifested by several incidents,
and has caused within three weeks three
separate Ministries, besides an interregnum of a
week. The personal adherents of the President in
the Assembly have never constituted more than a
third of that body; but he has always succeeded in
carrying his measures by dexterously pitting one
party against the other: each party preferring him
to their opponents. But when the President’s designs
for the perpetuation of his power became apparent,
all parties began to look upon General
Changarnier as in some sort a counterpoise. A collision
having arisen between the General and the
Ministers, the Assembly took part with the former,
whereupon the Ministry resigned. The President,
despite the remonstrances of the leaders of the Assembly,
made the dismissal of Changarnier a sine
quâ non in the appointment of a new Ministry. He
at length succeeded in forming one that would take
this step; and the General was dismissed, and the
enormous military functions he had exercised were
divided among a number of officers. A fierce opposition
at once sprang up against the new Ministry.
A singular coalition was formed, mainly through the
tactics of M. Thiers, of Conservatives, Cavaignac
Republicans, and ultra Democrats, so that a vote
declaring want of confidence in the Ministry passed
by 417 to 278; whereupon this Ministry resigned.
No man of all the majority could be found who
would undertake to form a Ministry from its discordant
elements; a like attempt to form one from the
minority in the Assembly was unsuccessful. At
last, the President formed one of which not an individual
was a member of the Assembly. Throughout
the whole of these transactions, Louis Napoleon
has shown a political skill and dexterity scarcely
inferior to that manifested in the field by the Great
Emperor. With vastly inferior forces at his command,
he has gained every point: he has got rid of
his most formidable rival, Changarnier; he has convinced,
apparently, the middle classes that the only
hope of peace and stability lies in his possession of
power; and the Assembly have been driven into
acts of opposition which can bear no other interpretation
than that of a factious struggle for power.
The position of the President is considerably
strengthened by the late occurrences.
GERMANY.
The Dresden Free Conference is still in session,
and matters seem as impracticable as the Genius of
Mysticism could desire. Enough has transpired to
show that the minor Powers have not been alarmed
without good reason. The cordial understanding
between Austria and Prussia is displayed perhaps
too ostentatiously to be altogether sincere; but
there can be no doubt that the two governments
have combined to aggrandize themselves at the expense
of the others. It seems to be determined
that the new Executive Committee will be composed
of eleven votes, of which Austria and Prussia
are each to have two. The Committee of the old[Pg 559]
Confederation consisted of seventeen votes, of
which those Powers had one each, and even then
it was complained that their influence was excessive.
It is admitted on all hands that any approach
to a nearer union is impracticable at present; that
the Dresden Conference is quite as incapable of
improvising a German Nation, as was that assembly
of pedants and pettifoggers that called itself the
Frankfort Parliament.——Hostilities have ceased
in Schleswig-Holstein, the stadtholderate of which
have yielded their functions to the commissioners
of the Confederation.——The first trial by jury at
Vienna, took place, under the new Austrian Constitution,
on the 15th of January.
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, ART, PERSONAL MOVEMENTS, Etc.
UNITED STATES.
The literary incidents of the month have not been
very noteworthy. James, the English novelist, has
been lecturing at Albany to large and interested
audiences. He has bought a residence at Stockbridge,
Mass., where he will reside, in the immediate
neighborhood of Longfellow, the Sedgwicks,
and other literary celebrities. A series of valuable
lectures upon Art have been delivered before the
Artists of New York, in pursuance of a very excellent
plan adopted by their Association. The
first of the series was delivered by Henry James,
Esq., and was an excellent critical exposition of
the nature and characteristics of Art. He was followed
by George W. Curtis, Esq., in a fine sketch
of the condition and prospects of Art on the Continent.
The leading idea of his lecture was that Art
never promised more abundant results than now.
Congress at its last session appropriated two
thousand dollars to commence the purchase of a
library for the use of the President of the United
States. It is a little singular that a project so eminently
useful should have been so long neglected.
Its execution has been now undertaken with spirit,
under the direction of Mr. Charles Lanman.
The birth-day of Burns was celebrated by a public
dinner on the 25th of January at the Astor House,
in New York. The poet Bryant was present as
a guest, and made a very happy speech, in which
he said that the fact that Burns had taken a local
dialect, and made it classical and given it a character
of universality, was of itself sufficient to stamp
him as a man of the highest order of genius.
Mr. Hoe, celebrated for his printing presses, has
just completed a new one, having eight cylinders,
and thus throwing off eight sheets at each revolution,
for the use of the Sun newspaper in New
York. He was the recipient lately of a public dinner
given to him by the proprietors of the paper, at
which several of the most eminent literary celebrities
in the country were present as guests. The
occasion was one of interest: we hope it may be
deemed indicative of a growing disposition to tender
public honors to the benefactors, as well as to the
destroyers, of their race.
The literary productions of the month will be
found noticed in another department of this Magazine.
Several works of interest are promised by
the leading publishers. The Harpers have in press
a volume of traveling sketches, entitled Nile Notes,
by an American, which will be found to be one
of the best of its kind. It is written with great
vivacity and with very marked ability. Many of
its chapters are fully equal to Eothen, and the work
in its general characteristics is not at all inferior to
that spirited and admirable book. The Harpers
have also in press a work by Mr. H.M. Field,
giving a succinct history of the Great Irish Rebellion
with biographical sketches of the most prominent
of the Irish Confederates. It will find a wide circle
of readers. The Harpers are also about to publish
Mayhew’s London Labor and the London Poor in
the Nineteenth Century, made up of his Letters in
the London Morning Chronicle upon that subject, revised
and extended. These papers reveal a state
of things not at all creditable to the English people
or to the age in which we live. As originally
published in London they excited great attention
and have done much toward arousing the public
sense of justice to the poor.
Cooper, the novelist, has a work in preparation
upon the Social History of this country. It will
probably, however, not be published until fall. Mr.
Putnam has in progress a new and very elegantly
printed uniform edition of his novels. Another
New York house promise a complete edition of
Joanna Baillie’s poems, with a new edition of
Elizabeth Barret Browning.
Prof. Agassiz, the celebrated Naturalist, is making
a survey of the Florida reefs and keys, in the
hope that he may throw some light upon their
formation and growth. He is nominally attached
to the Coast Survey.
American scholars still continue their valuable
contributions to classical learning. Prof. Drisler,
of Columbia College, one of the most thorough and
accurate linguists in the country, is engaged upon
an English-Greek Lexicon, which will be a most
valuable aid to the classical student, in connection
with similar works by the same author hitherto
issued.
In the departments of religious and theological
literature, we find indications of renewed activity
among the divines of our country. Prof. J. Addison
Alexander, of Princeton, has a new critical
and exegetical work in the course of preparation.
Rev. Dr. Spring will soon publish, through M.W.
Dodd, a volume under the title of First Things, a
series of lectures designed to set forth and illustrate
some of the facts and moral duties earliest
revealed to mankind. From Rev. Dr. Condit, of
Newark, we are to have a work entitled The
Christian Home, setting forth the relations, duties,
and benefits of the domestic institution. Rev. H.A.
Rowland, author of a work on the Common
Maxims of Infidelity, has in press a volume under
the title of The Path of Life.
The late Edmond Charles Genet, Embassador
from the Republic of France to this country at the
close of the last century, left behind him, at his decease,
a vast amount of papers, consisting of journals
of his life, letters from the prominent statesmen
and politicians of this country, and correspondence
with his sister, the celebrated Madame Campan.
It is understood that members of his family are arranging
them with a view to publication. From
the close social and political relations which M.
Genet, after his dismissal from the embassy, bore
to the prominent politicians of the Democratic
party, there can be no doubt that these papers, if
judiciously edited, will throw much light upon the
political history of the period preceding the war of
1812.
It is known by those familiar with current Continental
literature, that the wife of Prof. Edward
Robinson published, some time since, in Germany,
under her usual pseudonym, Talvi, a very full and
excellent history of the early Colonization of New
England. This work has lately been translated
from German into English by William Hazlitt, and[Pg 560]
published in London. It was published originally
at Leipsic in 1847. We presume it will be reprinted
here.
Rev. H.T. Cheever‘s Whale and his Captors
has been reprinted in London, with a preface by
Dr. Scoresby, who commends it very highly.
EUROPEAN.
The London Leader destroys the romance of
Lamartine’s visit to England. It seems, according
to that paper, that he did not go for the philosophic
purpose of studying the country, but to make bargains
for the publication of his History of the Directory,
which he offered for five thousand pounds.
The publishers, he urged, could issue it simultaneously
in England, France, and Germany, and so
secure an enormous profit. “Our countrymen,”
says the Leader, “with an indifference to Mammon
worthy of a philosopher, declined the magnificent
proposal: and Lamartine returned to France and
sold his work to an association of publishers for
12,000 francs, which he hopes to get.” He is also
to publish a new novel in the feuilleton of the
Siècle.
Edmond Texier, a French journalist, has published
a very lively history of French journals and
journalists. It is a small and unelaborate book,
but is exceedingly readable. Political writers in
France, it will be remembered, are required to sign
their names to their articles. The Vote Universel
recently contained a strong essay signed by Gilland.
The Attorney-general prosecuted the paper,
alleging that the article was written by George
Sand, and citing the bad spelling of Gilland’s private
letters as a proof that he could not have been
the writer. Madame George Sand peremptorily
denies having written a line of the article, and
avers that Rousseau himself, in a single letter in
her possession, makes three mistakes in spelling
three lines, owing to the difficult and capricious
rules of the French language.
Lady Morgan has published a pamphlet on the
Roman Catholic Controversy. It is in the form of a
letter to Cardinal Wiseman, and is a defense of
herself against an attack upon a passage in her
book on Italy. In that book she had related a
curious anecdote. She said that when Bonaparte
entered Italy the enthroned chair of St. Peter, contained
in the magnificent shrine of bronze which
closes the view of the nave in St. Peter’s Cathedral,
was brought into a better light and the cobwebs
brushed off. Certain curious letters were
discovered on the surface, which were deciphered
and found to contain the Arabian formula, “There
is but one God, and Mahomet is his prophet.”
Cardinal Wiseman branded this story as “false,
foolish, slanderous, and profligate.” Lady Morgan
gives as her authority for it the eminent savans
Denon and Champollion, who saw the inscription,
deciphered it, and told its meaning in her presence.
Her letter is ably written, and excites attention.—Lady
Morgan is said to be the oldest living writer
who continues to write: for though Miss Joanna
Baillie is some five years, and Rogers perhaps ten
years her senior, neither of the latter has touched a
pen in the way of authorship for a long time;
whereas Lady Morgan, for all her blindness, has,
according to the Liverpool Albion, for a good while
back, been a regular contributor to one of the London
morning journals.
The British government has bestowed a pension
of £100 a year upon the widow of the celebrated
Belzoni, who died fifteen years ago. The public
satisfaction at this announcement is tempered with
surprise that the pension was not bestowed fifteen
years ago. Mr. Poole, the author of “Paul Pry,”
and other literary works of a light character, has
received a retiring pension of the same amount.
Similar pensions have been granted to George
Petrie, LL.D., author of “The Round Towers of
Ireland,” and other antiquarian works; and to Dr.
Kitto, editor of the “Pictorial Bible,” “Cyclopædia
of Biblical Literature,” and other works in that
department of letters. Dr. Kitto, although deaf
from an early age, in consequence of an accident,
has traveled over many lands in connection with
the Missionary Society.
Letters from Rome announce the death in that
city of Mr. Ritchie, the sculptor, of Edinburgh.
The circumstances are peculiarly melancholy. It
had been the dream of Mr. Ritchie’s life to go to
Rome; this year he was able to travel, and he arrived
in that city in September last, with some
friends as little acquainted with the nature of the
malaria as himself. With these friends it appears
that he made a visit to Ostia; the season was dangerous;
the party took no precautions, and they
all caught the malaria fever. He died after a few
days’ illness, and was followed to the grave by
most of the English and American artists in Rome.
Austen Henry Layard, whose enterprise has
opened a new field for historical research, was born
in Paris, March 5, 1817. His father, who was Dean
of Bristol, filled a high civil office in Ceylon, between
the years 1820 and 1830. The early years
of the future explorer of Nineveh were spent in
Florence, where he early acquired his artistic
tastes and skill as a draughtsman. On returning
to England, young Layard commenced the study
of law, but his love of adventure rendered this profession
distasteful to him, and he abandoned it. In
1839 he left England, with no very definite object
in view, visited Russia and the North of Europe,
and spent some time in Germany. Thence he took
his course toward the Danube, and visited the
semi-barbarous provinces on the Turkish frontier,
which form the debatable ground between the
Orient and the Occident. In Montenegro he passed
some time, aiding an active young Chief in his
efforts to ameliorate the condition of his subjects.
From hence he passed into the East, where he led
the life of an Arab of the desert, and acquired a
thorough knowledge of the languages of Arabia and
Turkey. We next find him in Persia, Asia Minor,
and Syria, where he visited almost every spot
made memorable by history or tradition. He now
felt an irresistible desire to penetrate to the regions
beyond the Euphrates, to which history and tradition
point as the birth-place of the wisdom of the
West. At Constantinople, he fell in with the English
Embassador, Sir Stratford Canning, by whom
he was encouraged to undertake and carry on those
excavations amid the Assyrian and Babylonian
ruins, which have conclusively demonstrated that a
gigantic civilization had passed away before what
we are accustomed to call ancient civilization
dawned, a civilization stretching back almost to
the days when the ark rested upon Ararat; a civilization
which was old when the pyramids were
young. And, what is still more remarkable, the
relics of this civilization are more perfect and beautiful
in proportion to the remoteness of their date,
the earlier of these ancient sculptures being invariably
the noblest in design, and the most exquisite
and elaborate in execution.
In 1848, Mr. Layard visited England for a few
months, where, notwithstanding the monthly attacks
of an aguish fever contracted in the damp[Pg 561]
apartments which he was obliged to inhabit while
prosecuting his excavations at Nimroud, he prepared
for the press the two volumes of his Nineveh
and its Remains, executed the drawings for the
hundred plates, and a volume of inscriptions in the
cuneiform character for the British Museum.
The last survivor of Cook’s voyage, a sailor named
John Wade, is said to be now begging his bread at
Kingston-on-Thames. He is within a few months
of completing his hundredth year, having been born
in New York in May, 1751. He was with Cook
when he was killed on the Island of Hawaii; and
is said to have served at the battles of Cape St.
Vincent, Teneriffe, the Nile, Copenhagen, Camperdown,
and Trafalgar.
An interesting collection of sketches, by members
of the Sketching Society has been opened to the
public. This society numbers among its members
the two Chalons, Bone, Christall, Partridge, Stump,
Leslie, Stanfield, and Uwins. What gives to the
present collection a unique interest is that they are
entirely impromptu productions, three hours being
the limit allowed for their completion. At each
meeting of the society the president announces a
subject, and the drawings are made on the spot.
Sir Roger de Coverley’s chaplain is familiar to
the recollection of all. He has lately found an imitator.
The Vicar of Selby announced a few weeks
since, that he should that day commence reading
the sermons of others, as there were many productions
of the ablest divines which were altogether
unknown to his parishioners; and he thought the
time spent in writing so many new sermons might
be more usefully employed in other matters connected
with his profession. He then proceeded to
read a sermon which he said he had heard preached
at the University with great effect.
Professor Owen, in 1840, had submitted to him
for examination, a fossil body, which he was enabled
to identify as the tooth of some species of
whale. It was subsequently discovered that certain
crags upon the coast of Suffolk, especially one
at Felixstow, contained an immense quantity of
fossils of a similar character, which examinations,
undertaken by Owen and Henslow, showed to be
rolled and water-worn fragments of the skeletons
of extinct species of mammals, mostly of the whale
kind. This discovery has been shown by a recent
trial in the English courts, to be of immense pecuniary
value. A Mr. Lawes took out a patent for
the manufacture of super-phosphate of lime, as a
substitute for bone-dust, for agricultural purposes,
by applying sulphuric acid to any mineral whatever,
known or unknown, which might contain the
phosphate of lime. It was found that these fossil
remains contained of this from 50 to 60 per cent.,
and Mr. Lawes undertook to extend his patent so
as to include the production of the super-phosphate
from them. In this he was unsuccessful, the court
deciding that he could not claim a monopoly of all
the fossil remains in the country. It was shown
on the trial, that an income of more than $50,000 a
year has been derived from the use of this phosphate.
A number of classical works of decided interest
have recently been published; among them are:
Platonis Opera Omnia. This new edition of Plato
is edited by Stallbaum, whose name is a sufficient
guarantee for the faithful editorial care bestowed
upon it. It is in one volume, small folio, uniform
with the edition of Aristotle by Weisse, and that
of Cicero by Nobbe.—Lachmann’s edition of Lucretius
supplies a want which has been long felt
of a good critical edition of the philosophical poet.
The volume of the text is accompanied by a critical
commentary in a separate volume.—The second
part of the second volume of Professor Ritschl’s
edition of Plautus containing the “Pseudulus,” has
appeared. The editor has the reputation of being
the best Plautinian scholar in Germany. He has
spent years in the preparation of this edition, having
undertaken an entirely new recension of the
works of the great dramatic poet.—Corpus Inscriptionum
Græcarum. This important work, under
the editorial charge of the veteran Böckh, with
whom is associated Franz, is rapidly approaching
completion. The third part of the third volume is
published. A fourth part, which will complete the
work, is promised speedily.
From the press of the Imperial Academy at St.
Petersburgh has appeared the first volume of a collection
of Mohammedan Sources for the History of
the Southern Coasts of the Caspian Sea. The
volume contains 643 pages of the Persian text of
the history of Tabaristan, Rujan, and Massanderan,
by Seher-Eddin, edited, with a German introduction,
by Bernhard Dorn, Librarian of the Imperial
Library. It gives a history, commencing with the
mythical ages and ending with the year 1476, of the
various dynasties which have ruled those regions,
which have scarcely been brought within the light
of authentic history, but to which we must look for
the solution of many interesting problems in relation
to the progress and development of the race. The
editor promises forthwith a translation of the history,
with annotations.
Professor Heinrich Ewald, of Göttingen, has
just put forth a translation of and commentary upon
the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, marked
by that free dealing with the sacred text characteristic
of the Rationalistic school. He proposes to
himself the task of separating what he supposes to
be the original substance of the evangelical narrative
from subsequent additions and interpolations—”to
free the kernel from the Mosaic husk.” The
author had intended to delay the publication of this
commentary until after the publication of his History
of the Jews; but he thought he perceived in
the present state of religion in Germany, and especially
in the alarming decline of the religious element
among the masses of the people, a call upon
him to furnish an antidote—such as it is. In the
preface he takes occasion to make some severe criticisms
upon the politics of the day, and in particular
those of Prussia.
OBITUARIES.
John James Audubon, the Ornithologist, died at
his residence a few miles from New York, on the
27th of January. He was born in Louisiana, about
1775, of French parentage, traces of which were
apparent through life in the foreign intonation with
which he spoke the English language, although he
wrote it with great vigor and correctness. He
early manifested that enthusiastic love of nature,
which subsequently became his ruling passion, and
the mainspring of all his endeavors through life. In
the preface to his “Ornithological Biography,”
he gives a vivid sketch of the growth of his fondness
for the winged creation. “None but aerial companions,”
says he, “suited my fancy; no roof seemed
so secure to me as that formed of the dense foliage
under which the feathered tribes were seen to resort,
or the caves and fissures of the massy rocks to
which the dark-winged cormorant and the curlew
retired to rest, or to protect themselves from the
fury of the tempest.” With increasing years, a
desire for the actual possession of his favorites[Pg 562]
grew up in his mind. But this longing was nowise
satiated by the possession of them dead: with
their life their charms were gone. At this period
his father showed him a book of illustrations—of no
very high artistic excellence, we may well believe.
A bush thrown into certain solutions, in a particular
state, will cause crystalization. The young enthusiast’s
mind was in such a state—the vague desires,
the indefinite longings crystalized around that Book
of Illustrations. He longed to be a creator. To imitate
by lines and colors the beings he loved, became the
passion of his life. But like all true artists, he was
at first doomed to experience the disappointment
of being unable to realize his ideal: his drawings
so far from truly representing the originals, were
even inferior to the engravings in his book. Every
year he made hundreds, which he regularly burned
upon every succeeding birthday.
In his sixteenth year he was sent to Paris to pursue
his education. There he studied drawing under
the revolutionary painter David. But his heart
was ever in his native woods, and after a stay of
eighteen months he gladly returned. His father
now gave him a farm near Philadelphia, at the junction
of the Pekioming Creek and the Schuylkill.
Here he married, and entered into mercantile transactions,
apparently with ill success. He was in
the forests when he should have been in the counting-house,
if he would succeed in business. His
friends looked askance at him, as one who only
made drawings when he might have made money.
They were doubtless correct in their estimate of
his capacity. That indomitable spirit which bore
him thousands of miles through the untrodden wilderness,
softened the earth or the branch of a tree for
his bed; “bore bravely up his chin” when he swam
the swollen stream, with his rifle and painting materials
lashed above his head—was doubtless adequate,
if directed to that end, to have gained any
given amount of money. Pegasus made an indifferent
plow-horse; and Audubon but a poor trader.
So after ten years of this divided pursuit, one bright
October morning found him floating down the Ohio
in a skiff in which were his wife and child, his
scanty wares, and a couple of negro rowers. He
set up his household gods at Henderson, Kentucky,
where he resided for some years, and engaged
again, with a partner, in trade. Still he was accustomed
to make long excursions, with no companion
but his dog and rifle, a tin box strapped to
his side containing his brushes and paints. All
this while his collection of drawings, which was
subsequently to constitute the “Birds of America,”
grew under his hand; yet strange to say, the
thought of publishing never entered his mind.
One spring day in 1810, a stranger entered the
counting-room of Audubon, presented specimens of
a book he was preparing, and requested his patronage.
The stranger was Alexander Wilson, and
the book was his “American Ornithology.” Audubon
was about to subscribe for it, when his partner
asked him, in French, why he did so, assuring him
that his own drawings were far better, and that he
must be as well acquainted with the habits of
American birds as the stranger could be. Wilson
asked if Audubon had any drawings of birds. A
large portfolio was exhibited: and the veteran ornithologist
could not avoid the conclusion that his
own efforts were far surpassed. He became sad,
and though Audubon showed him every attention,
loaned him drawings, and accompanied him through
the neighboring woods, the thought of being excelled
was more than he could bear. He departed,
shaking the dust from his feet, and entered in his
diary that “literature or art had not a friend in the
place.”
The year following, we find Audubon far down
among the bayous of Florida, still engaged in collecting
materials for his work; yet still, apparently,
with no definite purpose of publication. Of the
next ten or twelve years of his life, we have no
particular accounts. But we understand that he
has left behind him an autobiography, which will
doubtless be made public, and which we venture to
predict, will exceed in interest and adventure the
lion-king Cumming’s African exploits, springing as
Audubon’s did from high devotion to science, instead
of the mere animal instinct of destruction.
All this while his great work was growing. But
in a single night the result of the labor of years was
destroyed by a pair of rats, who selected a box
containing two hundred drawings, with more than
a thousand figures, as a place in which to rear
their plundering brood. “The burning heat,” says
he, “which rushed through my brain was too great
to be endured without affecting the whole of my
nervous system. I slept not for several nights, and
the days passed like days of oblivion, until the dormant
powers being aroused into action through the
strength of my constitution, I took up my gun, my
note-book, and my pencils, and went forward to the
woods as gayly as though nothing had happened.”
In three years his portfolios were again full.
In 1824, Audubon found himself at Philadelphia,
on his way to the great lakes. Here he was introduced
to Lucien Bonaparte, who seems to have
induced him to determine upon the publication of
his work. A year and a half of happy toil ensued,
enlivened by a new object. He had loved and
wooed Nature for her own dear self; but now he
began to feel presentiments that his bride would
raise him to a throne among the immortals. In
1826 he set sail for England. His first feeling was
that of despondency. What was he, whose acquirements
had been won by the solitary wanderings
of more than a quarter of a century, amid
lonely forest solitudes; what could he be in comparison
with those who had been trained and
taught by intercourse with civilized life? But
these feelings were of brief duration. The wonderful
backwoodsman was warmly welcomed by
the best and wisest men of Europe. Cuvier was
his admirer, Alexander von Humboldt became his
cherished friend and correspondent. “The hearts
of all,” wrote Wilson, “warmed toward Audubon,
who were capable of conceiving the difficulties,
dangers, and sacrifices that must have been encountered,
endured, and overcome, before genius
could have embodied these, the glory of its innumerable
triumphs.”
And so Audubon was encouraged to publish his
work. It was a vast undertaking. It would take
sixteen years to accomplish it; he was now somewhat
declined into the vale of years, and would be
an old man when it was completed; and when the
first drawings were put into the hands of the engraver
he had not a single subscriber. But his
heart was upborne by reliance on that Power, on
whom depends success. After three years spent
in Europe, he returned to America in 1829, leaving
his work in process of execution in Edinburgh.
Toward the close of 1830 his first volume, containing
one hundred plates, every figure of the size
and colors of life, was issued. It was hailed with
universal applause; royal names headed his subscription
list, which, at one thousand dollars each,
reached the number of 175, of whom eighty were
Americans. His name was enrolled among the[Pg 563]
members of the learned Societies of Great Britain
and the Continent, and the world claimed him
among her great men.
In the Autumn of 1831, Audubon visited Washington,
where he received from Government letters
of protection and assistance, to be used at all
national ports, revenue, and naval stations. Having
been delayed by sickness, he proceeded upon
his expedition toward the close of the following
summer. He tracked the forests of Maine, explored
the shores of the British provinces, bringing
back rich spoils; and returned to Charleston,
to spend the winter in the preparation of his drawings
and the accompanying descriptions. In 1834
he published his second volume. The three following
years were passed in exploring expeditions,
mostly to the South, one of which was to
Florida, another to Texas, in a vessel placed at his
disposal by Government, and in the preparation
of his drawings and descriptions. At the close of
this period he published the fourth and last volume
of plates, and the fifth of descriptions. The whole
work contained 435 plates, comprising more than
a thousand figures of birds, all drawn of the size of
life, in their natural attitudes and circumstances,
and colored from nature.
In 1839 Audubon commenced in this country the
republication of the “Birds of America,” in seven
large octavo volumes, which were issued during
the succeeding five years. Before the expiration
of this period, however, he commenced the preparation
of the “Quadrupeds of America,” of which
he had materials for five large volumes: in the
literary department of which he was assisted by
Dr. Bachman, of Charleston. This has recently
been concluded, and forms a monument to his
memory hardly less imposing than his earlier
work. In the meanwhile, though more than sixty
winters had passed over his head, he projected an
expedition to the Rocky Mountains, with all the
adventurous spirit of his youth. But he perhaps
over-rated his physical capabilities; at least the
expedition was not made. The concluding years
of his life were passed on the beautiful estate of
Minniesland, upon the Hudson, some ten miles
from New York. For several years his health had
been giving way, until the time when he passed
from earth to the still land of the immortals. His
was a happy life. He had found his vocation, and
pursued it for long years, earnestly, faithfully, and
triumphantly. The forms of beauty which won his
early love, and drew him into the broad forests, he
brought back to cheer us who can not follow his
footsteps. He has linked himself with the undying
loveliness of Nature; and, therefore, his works
are a possession to all men forevermore.
Joseph Bem, the famous Polish General in the
late Hungarian war, died at Aleppo in the early
part of December. It is somewhat singular that
during the whole course of hostilities he declared
his conviction that he should survive until the year
1850. Bem was born in 1795 at Tarnow in Gallicia.
Having completed his education at the Military
School in Warsaw, he entered the army, and served
as lieutenant of artillery in the divisions of Davoust
and Macdonald. On the conclusion of peace, he
remained with the Polish army, who were now in
the Russian service, where he attained the rank of
captain and adjutant, and was finally appointed
teacher in the Artillery School at Warsaw. Dissatisfied
with his position, he applied for a discharge,
which was granted; but for some unexplained
cause he was summoned before a court-martial,
and sentenced to an imprisonment of two
months. From 1825 to the outbreak of the Polish
insurrection in 1830, he resided at Lemberg, where
he busied himself with mechanical and mathematical
studies. When the rising of the Poles took
place, he hastened to Warsaw, was appointed
major, and obtained the command of a regiment of
flying artillery. For his distinguished services at
the battles of Igania and Ostrolenka he was raised
successively to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and
colonel, and received the command of the Polish
artillery. At Ostrolenka he was wounded, but as
he lay upon the ground, he directed the movements
of his guns. When the cause of Poland was lost,
he headed the first emigration to France, where
the greater portion of the next eighteen years was
spent. In 1833 he entered into negotiations with
Don Pedro of Portugal to raise a Polish regiment
for his service; but the project was unsuccessful;
and Bem incurred the suspicions of his fellow
exiles, by one of whom an attempt was made to
assassinate him. The following years he passed
in France and England, where we trace him by
several treatises which he published upon the
organization of artillery, the manufacture of powder,
the distillation of brandy, the modes of working in
wood and metal, and a system of mnemonics. He
also taught languages, for a time, for very scanty
pay, at London and Oxford, but was obliged to
abandon this occupation in consequence of a surgical
operation for the extraction of a bullet; for a time
he was in receipt of the few shillings weekly which
the Polish Association were able to bestow upon
destitute exiles. The bread of exile which Dante
found so bitter, was sweet compared with that
which Bem, for long years, was forced to taste.
He made an attempt to establish a Polytechnic
Company, near Paris, which failed from the want
of adequate funds.
Upon the breaking out of the revolutions of 1848,
we find Bem in the thick of the conflict. On the
14th of October he made his appearance at Vienna,
where he endeavored to organize the revolt in the
Austrian capital. Here he could never have anticipated
success; but he was aware that resistance
in Vienna would give the Hungarians time to arm.
Finding the cause hopeless in Vienna, he betook
himself to Kossuth, at Comorn. Here he had some
difficulty in proving his identity; but at length Bem
succeeded in winning the confidence of the Hungarian
ruler. At Pesth, where he concerted future
operations with Kossuth, another attempt was
made to assassinate Bem by a young Pole who
had conceived the idea that he had betrayed the
popular cause at Vienna. From Pesth Bem was
dispatched by Kossuth to Transylvania, in order to
organize the revolt against Austria. The transactions
in Transylvania formed perhaps the most
brilliant portion of the whole Hungarian war. In
the course of ten weeks, with a newly raised army,
always inferior in force to the enemy, by a series
of hard fighting and skillful manœuvres, he placed
Transylvania in the hands of the Hungarians. The
accession of Russia to the side of Austria was
decisive of the contest. Bem, sorely pressed in
Transylvania, was summoned by Kossuth to assume
the command in chief; and at Temesvar, on
the 10th of August 1849, he lost the last battle of
Hungary; though he here displayed the highest
qualities of the soldier and the general. The Austrians
were repulsed at all points, mowed down by
the terrible fire from the Hungarian artillery, which
Bem had posted with his accustomed skill; but his[Pg 564]
troops were exhausted, and a fresh body of Austrians
under Prince Lichtenstein, decided the day.
“A single draught of wine to each hussar,” said
Guyon, “would have saved the battle.” In the
rout which ensued, Bem, who was weakened by
his wounds, was thrown from his horse, and broke
his collar bone. The day following the disastrous
battle of Temesvar, Kossuth resigned the dictatorship
into the hands of Görgey, who two days after,
on the 13th of August, surrendered his whole army,
consisting of 24,000 men with 144 pieces of cannon,
to the Russians.
Bem at first made some efforts to prolong the
hopeless contest; but it was in vain, and on the
17th of the month he bade farewell to the country
from which he had hoped so much. Kossuth,
Dembinski, Bem, and some others took refuge in
Turkey, where their residence or extradition was
made a political question by the powers of Europe.
In the anticipation of being given up, Bem embraced
Mohammedanism, and entered the Turkish service,
under the name of Murad Bey. There is nothing
to wonder at in this procedure. His one principle
through life had been hatred to Russia, and to this
he would not hesitate to sacrifice any and every
other consideration; his only religion was to avenge
his country upon the Czar; if that could be done, it
mattered little to him whether it was effected
under the banner of the cross or the crescent. He
persisted to the last in his profession of Mohammedanism,
and was buried with military honors,
greatly lamented by the Ottoman government, into
whose military organization he had introduced many
beneficial reforms. Bem possessed military genius
of a high order; he was bold and rapid in his decisions,
fertile in resources, whether to take advantage
of a victory or to retrieve a defeat. He clearly
perceived that the most effective arm in modern
warfare is artillery, the service of which he always
superintended in person. Previous to a battle he
appointed the positions his guns were to assume,
examined and leveled them in person, whence he
was nicknamed, by his German legion, “the Piano-forte
player.” At the time of his death, he had
reached his fifty-sixth year, but the severe exposures
which he had undergone, and his numerous wounds,
gave him the appearance of a still greater age. As
a man, all who knew Bem were enthusiastic in
his praise. Generous in disposition, gentle and
modest in demeanor, he inspired deep personal
attachment in all with whom he came in contact.
Viscount Alford (John Hume Cust) died on the
2d of January. In 1849 he succeeded to the vast
Bridgewater estates, and assumed, by royal license,
the name of Egerton, in place of that of Cust. He
was a member of the House of Commons from 1836
to 1847. He inherited an estate from the late Earl
of Bridgewater, under a will of very singular character.
By this document it was provided that unless
Lord Alford should, within five years, succeed
in gaining a rank in the peerage higher than that
of earl, the estate should go to his brother, with a
like condition, which also failing, it was to pass to
another branch of the family.
The Duke of Newcastle (Henry Pelham Fiennes
Pelham Clinton) died Jan. 12, at the age of
66. He was one of the most consistent and unbending
of the Tory conservative nobility of England,
and a most strenuous opponent of every measure of
reform. He said of himself that “on looking back
to the past, I can honestly assert that I repent of
nothing that I have done. Vestigia nulla retrorsum.
Such has been the cradle of my opinions:
time may have matured them, and given them
something like authority; at all events, the sentiments
that might have been doubtful, are now rootedly
confirmed.” Thus incapable of learning by
experience, of becoming wiser as a man than he
was when a boy, his political career was thoroughly
consistent. He was alike opposed to Catholic
emancipation, the repeal of the Test Act, and any
modification of the Corn Laws. When Lord Lieutenant
of Nottinghamshire, he refused, in spite of
the positive demand of Government, to insert in the
commission of the peace the names of two gentlemen
who were not members of the Established
Church. When the Reform Bill was in agitation,
he stood up manfully for the rotten boroughs which
enabled him to return six members to the House of
Commons, the disfranchisement of which cost him
a large sum which he had invested in property of
which the franchise constituted the main value.
His hereditary possessions were very large, and by
his wife he obtained estates to the value of £12,000
per annum, besides personal property to the amount
of £200,000; yet, owing to extensive purchases of
unproductive estates, he was embarrassed in pecuniary
matters. Apart from his narrow and bigoted
politics, his character was marked by many noble
and excellent traits.
Frederick Bastiat, the leader of the free-trade
party in France, died at Rome, on the 24th of December.
He was a member of the National Assembly;
and his death was hastened by his severe
and protracted labors during the last session. His
essays, bearing the general title of Sophismes
Economiques, originally published in a periodical,
the Journal des Economistes, of which he was editor,
have been made known to the American public
through the columns of the Evening Post, which
is a sufficient guarantee of their authority with the
upholders of that policy.
W.H. Maxwell, the Irish novelist, died at
Musselburg, near Edinburgh, December 29. In
early life he was a captain in the British army,
and noted for his social qualities. He subsequently
entered the Church, and obtained the benefice of
prebendary of Balla, a wild district in Connaught,
with an income, but no congregation or official duties.
Among his works we recollect “Hector
O’Halloran,” “Story of My Life,” “Wild Sports of
the West,” and many humorous sketches in the
periodical literature of the day.
Professor Schumacher, the Astronomer of the
Observatory at Altona, died on the 28th of December,
in his 71st year. For many years he conducted
the Astronomische Nachrichten, in which capacity
he was well known in the scientific world. He
had been successively Professor of Astronomy at
the University of Copenhagen, and Director of the
Observatory at Manheim, in Baden. From 1817 to
1821 he measured the length of the degree of longitude
from Copenhagen to the western coast of Jutland,
and that of the degree of latitude from the
northern extremity of Jutland to the frontiers of
Hanover. He subsequently executed for the English
Government the measure of the difference of
longitude between the observatories of Greenwich
and Altona.
Literary Notices.
The Howadji; or, Nile Notes (published by Harper
and Brothers), is a new volume of Oriental
travels, by a young New-Yorker, describing a voyage
on the Nile and the marvels of Egypt, with a
freshness and originality that give it all the fascination
of a romance. Speaking in the character of
the Howadji, which is the name given by the
Egyptians to foreign travelers, the author describes
a succession of rare incidents, revealing the very
heart of Eastern life, and transporting us into the
midst of its dim, cloud-like scenes, so as to impress
us with the strongest sense of reality. He does
not claim the possession of any antiquarian lore;
he has no ambition to win the fame of a discoverer;
nor in the slightest degree is he a collector of statistical
facts. He leaves aside all erudite speculations,
allowing the moot points of geography and
history to settle themselves, and gives himself up
to the dreamy fancies and romantic musings which
cluster round the imagination in the purple atmosphere
of the East. His work is, in fact, a gorgeous
prose-poem, inspired by his recollections of strange
and vivid experiences, and clothed in the quaint,
picturesque costume which harmonizes with his
glowing Oriental visions. No previous traveler
has been so richly imbued with the peculiar spirit
of the East. His language is pervaded with its
luxurious charm. Bathed in the golden light of
that sunny clime, his words breathe a delicious
enchantment, and lull the soul in softest reveries.
The descriptive portions of the book are often
diversified with a vein of profound and tender reflection,
and with incidental critical allusions to
Art, which have the merit both of acuteness and
originality. From the uncommon force and freedom
of mind, exhibited in this volume, with its
genuine poetic inspirations, we foresee that a brilliant
career in letters is opened to the author, if
his ambition or tastes impel him to that sphere of
activity.
Crumbs from the Land o’ Cakes, by John Knox
(published by Gould and Lincoln), is a rapid sketch
of a tour in Scotland, by an enthusiastic admirer
and native of that country. It makes no pretensions
to originality or literary skill, but written without
affectation, and from recent actual experience, it
makes a very readable volume. The title is quaintly
explained in the preface. “Crumbs are but trifles,
though a morsel of manchineel may poison a
man, and the same quantity of gingerbread may
tickle his palate; but the crumbs here presented do
not belong to either class. All Scotchmen know
that the cakes for which their native land is celebrated
are made of oatmeal (baked hard); which,
though substantial, are very dry: this consideration
will show the propriety of the title. It is also appropriate
in another respect, for the writer is conscious
that these fragmentary notes of travel in his
native country are, in comparison to the richness
of the materials and the subject, but as the crumbs
to the loaf.”
Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, Boston, have published
a third volume of De Quincy‘s Writings,
comprising his Miscellaneous Essays on sacred
subjects, of which the quaint peculiarity of the title
is suggestive of the bold, fanciful genius of the
author. Among them, we find “Murder, considered
as one of the Fine Arts;” “The Vision of Sudden
Death;” “Dinner, Real and Reputed,” and others,
all redolent of the strange imaginative conceits,
the playful toying with language, and the startling
intensity of description which characterize the
Visions of the English Opium Eater.
The same house have issued a neat duodecimo
edition of Goethe‘s Faust, translated by Hayward,
of which the curious aesthetic and philological
merits are well known to every German scholar.
It is an almost literal transcript of the original
into English prose, but executed with such a profound
appreciation of its spirit, such nice verbal
accuracy, and such exquisite handling of the delicate
mechanism of language, as to present a more
faithful idea of the wild and marvelous beauty of
the great German poem, than the most successful
translation in verse. According to Mr. Hayward’s
theory of translation, “If the English reader, not
knowing German, be made to stand in the same
relation to Faust as the English reader, thoroughly
acquainted with German stands in toward it—that
is, if the same impressions be conveyed
through the same sort of medium, whether bright
or dusky, coarse or fine—the very extreme point
of a translator’s duty has been attained.” The
loudly-expressed verdict of competent literary
judges (so far as we know without a dissenting
voice), and the numerous editions it has gone
through on both sides of the Atlantic, are ample
proofs of the felicitous and effective manner in
which the translator has completed the task thus
imposed upon himself. The Preface and Notes
attached to this volume, show the vivacity of his
genius, and his rich stores of choice learning.
Lavengro: The Scholar—The Gipsy—The
Priest, by George Borrow (published by Harper
and Brothers, and George P. Putnam), is the title
of certain portions of the unique autobiography of
the erratic author of “The Bible in Spain.” Among
the many things which he professes to have aimed
at in this book, is the encouragement of charity,
and free and genial manners, as well as the exposure
of humbug in various forms. The incidents
related are in accordance with this design. Borrow’s
early life was filled with strange and startling
adventures. With a taste from the cradle for
savage freedom, he never became subject to social
conventionalisms. His soul expanded in the free
air, by the side of running streams, and in the
mountain regions of liberty. He received the
strongest impressions from all the influences of
nature. He was led by a strange magnetism to
intimacy with the most eccentric characters. An
ample fund of material for an interesting narrative
was thus provided. He has made use of them in
his own peculiar and audacious manner. A more
self-reliant writer is not to be found in English literature.
He has no view to the effect of his words
on the reader, but aims only to tell the story with
which his mind teems. Hence his pages are as
fresh as morning dew, and often run riot with a
certain gipsy wildness. His narrative has little
continuity. He piles up isolated incidents, which
remain in his memory, but with no regard to regular[Pg 566]
sequence or completeness. On this account he
is sometimes not a little provoking. He shuts off
the stream at the moment your curiosity is most
strongly excited. But the joyous freedom of his
spirit, his consummate skill as a story teller, and
the startling eccentricities of his life, so little in accordance
with the tameness and dull proprieties of
English society, give an elastic vitality to his book,
and make it of more interest to the reader than
almost any recent issue of the English press.
Harper and Brothers have commenced the publication
of a new series of juvenile tales by Jacob
Abbott, entitled The Franconia Stories. The
first volume, called Malleville, is a very agreeable
narrative of life in New Hampshire, abounding in
attractive incidents, and related in the fresh and
natural style for which the author is justly celebrated.
This series is intended by the author to
exert a kindly moral influence on the hearts and
dispositions of the readers, although it will contain
little formal exhortation and instruction. He has
no doubt hit upon the true philosophy, in this respect,
nothing being so distasteful to a young reader
as the interruption of the narrative by the statement
of a moral, unless he can contrive to swallow
the sugar, while he rejects the medicine. Mr. Abbott
relies on his quiet and peaceful pictures of
happy domestic life, and the expression of such
sentiments and feelings as it is desirable to exhibit
in the presence of children. He is far more
sure of the effect aimed at by this method, than by
any insipid dilutions of Solomon or Seneca.
The Practical Cook-Book (published by Lippincott,
Grambo, and Co.) is the title of a new work on
gastronomic science, by a Lady of Boston, which
brings the taste and philosophy of that renowned
seat of the Muses to the elucidation of the mysteries
of the cuisine. The young housekeeper will
be saved from many perplexities by consulting its
lucid oracles.
Edward H. Fletcher has published a new edition
of the celebrated Discourse on Missions, by John
Foster, delivered in 1818, before the London Baptist
Missionary Society, with a Preliminary Essay
on the Skepticism of the Church, by Rev. Joseph
P. Thompson, of the Broadway Tabernacle. It is
republished in this country with a view to counteract
the impression since made by the extraordinary
writer, in his critique on Rev. Dr. Harris’s
popular work, “The Great Commission,” in which
Foster alludes to the missionary enterprise in terms
of disparagement, giving the opposers of evangelical
missions and evangelical religion the sanction
of his great name, and the authority of his latest
opinions. In the opinion of the Editor, no better
refutation of his argument can be given than is
contained in the Missionary Discourse from Mr.
Foster’s own pen. Being written in the maturity
of his intellect, and regarded by himself as one of
his most successful efforts, it may be taken as a
more authentic expression of his opinions than the
letter to Dr. Harris, which was written in his old
age: an old age rendered gloomy and morose by
seclusion from the world, and by the failure of the
schemes which he had fondly cherished in more
ardent years. The character of the Discourse is
tersely summed up in a short paragraph by Mr.
Thompson. “In the thoroughness of its discussion
and the comprehensiveness of its view; in the
clearness and strength of its reasoning, and the
force and beauty of its diction; in the glow of its
sentiment, and the sublimity of its faith, this discourse
stands at the head of productions of its class,
as an exhibition of the grandeur of the work of
missions, and of the imperative claims of that work
upon the Church of Christ. There is nothing in it
local or temporary, but it comes to Christians of
this generation with all the freshness and power
which thirty years ago attended its delivery.”
The Preliminary Essay by the Editor is a vigorous
and uncompromising attack on the prevalent skepticism
of the Church in respect to the obligations
of the Missionary Enterprise.
J.S. Redfield has issued a work on The Restoration
of the Jews, by Seth Lewis, in which the
author maintains the doctrine of a literal return of
the Jews to Palestine, and the second coming of
Christ in connection with that event. Mr. Lewis,
whose death took place one or two years since, at
an advanced old age, was one of the District Judges
of the State of Louisiana, and highly respected for
his learning and ability, as well as his exemplary
private character. He was devoted to the study
of the Scriptures, and presents the fruits of his research
with modesty and earnestness, though hardly
in a manner adapted to produce a general conviction
of the correctness of his views.
The same publisher has issued A Practical System
of Modern Geography, by John F. Anderson,
a successful teacher of one of the Public Schools in
this city. The leading features of this little work
are brevity, clearness, and simplicity. The author
has aimed to present a practical system of Geography,
unconnected with subjects not pertaining to
the science, in a manner adapted to facilitate the
rapid progress of the pupil. We think that he has
met with great success in the accomplishment of
his plan.
Tallis, Willoughby, and Co. continue the serial
publication of The Life of Christ, by John Fleetwood,
which beautiful work is now brought down
to the Twelfth Number. It is embellished with
exquisite engravings, and in all respects is worthy
of a place in every family.
The same house are bringing out Scripture Illustrations
for the Young, by Frederick Bambridge,
in a style of peculiar beauty—a work every
way adapted to charm the taste and inform the
mind of the juvenile reader.
The Dove and the Eagle (published by Ticknor,
Reed, and Fields, Boston) is a slight satirical
poem, with some clever hits at transcendentalism,
socialism, teetotalism, woman’s-rights-ism, and
other rampant hobbies of the day.
Among the latest republications of Robert Carter
and Brothers, we find a neat edition of Young’s
Night Thoughts, printed on excellent white paper,
in a convenient, portable form; The Principles of
Geology Explained, by Rev. David King, showing
the relations of that science to natural and
revealed religion; The Listener, by Caroline Fry;
the able and elaborate work on The Method of the
Divine Government, by James M’Cosh; and Daily
Bible Illustrations, by John Kitto, in three volumes.
This last work has gained an extensive
popularity in England, and has the rare merit of
presenting the scenes of Sacred History in a vivid
and picturesque light, with a rare freedom from
bombast on the one hand, and from weak common-place
on the other.
The Carters have recently published a new edition
of Mrs. L.H. Sigourney‘s popular contribution
to the cause of Temperance, entitled Water Drops,
consisting of an original collection of stories, essays,
and short poems, illustrative of the benefits of total
abstinence. The Eighth Edition of Dr. G.B.
Cheever‘s Lectures on the Pilgrim’s Progress, is
also just issued by the same house.
The History of the United States, by Richard
Hildreth, Vol. IV. (published by Harper and
Brothers), commences a new series of his great
historical work, embracing the period subsequent
to the adoption of the Federal Constitution in 1789,
and reaching to the close of Mr. Monroe’s first
Presidential term in 1821. The volume now issued
is devoted to the administration of Washington,
and gives a condensed and intelligible view of the
early development of American legislation, of the
gradual formation of the parties which have since
borne the most conspicuous part in our national
politics, and of the character and influence of the
statesmen who presided over the first operations
of the Federal Government.
With a greater vivacity of style than is shown in
the preceding volumes, the present exhibits the
results of no less extensive research, and a more
profound spirit of reflection. Mr. Hildreth evidently
aims at a rigid impartiality in his narrative of
political events, although he never affects an indifference
toward the pretensions of conflicting parties.
His sympathies are strongly on the side of
Washington, Hamilton, and Jay, with regard to the
questions that soon embarrassed the first administration.
While he presents a lucid statement of
the principles at issue, he takes no pains to conceal
his own predilections, always avoiding, however,
the tone of a heated partisan. This portion of his
work, accordingly, is more open to criticism, than
his account of the earlier epochs of American history.
The political devotee may be shocked at the
uncompromising treatment of some of his favorites,
while he can not fail to admit the ability which is
evinced in the estimate of their characters.
Among the topics which occupy an important
place in this volume, are the Inauguration of the
Federal Government, the establishment of the
Revenue System, the Financial Policy of Hamilton,
the Growth of Party Divisions, the Insurrection
in Pennsylvania, Mr. Jay’s Treaty with England,
and Mr. Monroe’s Mission to France. These are
handled with great fullness and clearness of detail,
with a sound and discriminating judgment, and in
a style which, though seldom graphic and never
impassioned, has the genuine historical merits of
precision, energy, and point. We rejoice to welcome
this series as an admirable introduction to the
political history of our Republic, and shall look for
its completion with impatience.
Lossing‘s Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution
(published by Harper and Brothers) has now
reached the close of the First Volume. Its interest
has continued without diminution through the successive
Numbers. The liveliness of the narrative,
as well as the beauty of the embellishments, has
given this work a wide popularity, which we have
no doubt it will fully sustain by the character of the
subsequent volumes. The union of history, biographical
incidents, and personal anecdotes is one
of its most attractive features, and in the varied intercourse
of Mr. Lossing with the survivors of the
Revolutionary struggle, and the descendants of
those who have deceased, he has collected an almost
exhaustless store of material for this purpose,
which he has shown himself able to work up
with admirable effect.
The United States: Its Power and Progress
(published by Lippincott, Grambo, and Co.) is a
translation by Edmund L. Du Barry of the Third
Paris edition of a work by M. Poussin, late Minister
of France to the United States. It presents a
systematic historical view of the early colonization
of the country, with an elaborate description of the
means of national defense, and of agriculture, commerce,
manufactures, and education in the United
States. M. Poussin had some excellent qualifications
for the performance of this task. Residing
in this country for many years, he was able to
speak from experience of the practical working of
republican institutions. Connected with the Board
of Engineers appointed by the American Government
for topographical surveys in reference to future
military operations, he had attained an exact
knowledge of our geographical position, and the
whole organization of our internal improvements.
A decided republican in feeling, his warmest sympathies
were with the cause of political progress in
this country. Free from the aristocratic prejudices
of the Old World, the rapid development of social
prosperity in the United States was a spectacle
which he could not contemplate with indifference.
Hence his volume is characterized not only by
breadth of information, but by fairness of judgment.
If he sometimes indulges a French taste for
speculative theories, he is, in general, precise and
accurate in his statements of facts. His description
of our organization for the defense of the coast
and the frontiers is quite complete, and drawn to a
great degree from personal observation, may be
relied on as authentic. We can freely commend
this work to the European who would attain a correct
view of the social condition, political arrangements,
and industrial resources of the United States,
as well as to our own citizens who are often so
absorbed in the practical operations of our institutions
as to lose sight of their history and actual development.
Salander and the Dragon, by Frederic William
Shelton (published by George P. Putnam and
Samuel Hueston), is a more than commonly successful
attempt in a difficult species of composition,
and one in which the disgrace of failure is too imminent
to present a strong temptation to any but
aspirants of the most comfortable self-complacency.
Mr. Shelton, however, has little to fear from the
usual perils that beset this path of literary effort.
He has a genius for the vocation. With such a
fair fruitage, from the first experiment, we hope
he will allow no rust to gather on his implements.
Salander is a black, or rather greenish monster
of a dwarf, without bones, capable of being doubled
into all shapes, like a strip of India Rubber, and
stretching himself out like the same. He was
committed for safe-keeping to the jailer of an important
fortress, called the Hartz Prison. The
jailer, whose name was Goodman, held the place
under the Lord of Conscienza, a noble of the purest
blood, and very strict toward his vassals. After
suffering no slight annoyance from the pranks of
the horrid imp, the jailer applied to the lord of the
castle for relief, who told him that the rascally
prisoner had been imposed upon him by forged
orders, but now that he had him in possession, he
must guard him with the strictest vigilance, and
subject him to the most severe treatment. The
adventures of the jailer with the infernal monster
compose the materials of the allegory, which is
conducted with no small skill, and with uncommon
beauty of expression. The upshot of the story is
to illustrate the detestable effects of slander, a vice
which the author treats with a wholesome bitterness
of invective, regarding it as one of the most
diabolical forms of the unpardonable sin. It could
not be incarnated in a more loathsome body than
that of the hideous Salander. We can only tolerate
his presence on account of the exceeding beauty of
the environment in which he is placed.
Geo. P. Putnam has published the Fifth Volume
of Cooper‘s Leather-Stocking Tales, containing
The Prairie, with an original Introduction and
Notes by the author. In this volume we have the
last scenes in the exciting career of Leather-Stocking,
who has been driven from the forest by the
sound of the ax, and forced to seek a desperate
refuge in the bleak plains that skirt the Rocky
Mountains. The new generation of readers, that
have not yet become acquainted with this noble
creation, have a pleasure in store that the veteran
novel-reader may well envy.
An Address by Henry B. Stanton, and Poem by
Alfred B. Street pronounced before the Literary
Societies of Hamilton College, are issued in a neat
pamphlet by Rogers and Sherman Utica. Mr.
Stanton’s Address presents a comparative estimate
of Ultraists, Conservatives, and Reformers, as mingled
in the conflicting classes of American Society,
using the terms to designate forces now in operation
rather than parties and with no special reference
to combinations of men which have been thus
denominated. His views are brought forward with
vigor and discrimination, and free from the offensive
tone which discussions of this nature are apt to
produce. In applying the principles of his Address
to the subject of American literature, he forcibly
maintains the absurdity of an abject dependence on
the ancient classics. “I would not speak disparagingly
of the languages of Greece and Rome. As
mere inventions, pieces of mechanism, they are as
perfect as human lip ever uttered, as exquisite as
mortal pen ever wrote; and the study of the literature
they embalm refines the taste and strengthens
the mind. But while the writers of Greece
and Rome are retained in our academic halls, they
should not be allowed to exclude those authors
whose researches have enlarged the boundaries of
knowledge, and whose genius has added new
beauties to the Anglo-Saxon tongue. Let Homer
and Shakspeare, Virgil and Milton, Plato and Bacon,
Herodotus and Macaulay, Livy and Bancroft, Xenophon
and Prescott, Demosthenes and Webster,
Cicero and Brougham, stand on the same shelves,
and be studied by the same classes.”
Mr. Street‘s Poem is a polished and graceful
description of the romantic scenery of the Mohawk
Valley, interspersed with several striking Indian
legends, comparing the tranquil happiness of the
present day, with the carnage and misery of the
old warfare. Mr. Street gives a pleasing picture
in the following animated verses:
Villages strew, like jewels on a chain,
All its bright length. Whole miles of level grain,
With leagues of meadow-land and pasture-field,
Cover its surface; gray roads wind about,
O’er which the farmer’s wagon clattering rolls,
And the red mail-coach. Bridges cross the streams,
Roofed, with great spider-webs of beams within.
Like friends they talk by language of the eye;
Upon its iron strips the engine shoots,
(That half-tamed savage with its boiling heart
And flaming veins, its warwhoop and its plume.
That seems to fly in sullen rage along—
Rage at its captors—and that only waits
Its time to dash its victims to quick death).
Swift as the swallow skims, that engine fleets
Through all the streaming landscape of green field
And lovely village. On their pillared lines,
Distances flash to distances their thoughts,
And all is one abode of all the joy
And happiness that civilization yields.
Harper and Brothers have republished from the
English edition Lord Holland‘s Foreign Reminiscences,
edited by his son, Henry Edward, Lord
Holland—a book which has excited great attention
from the English press, and will be read with interest
by the lovers of political anecdote in this
country. It is filled with rapid, gossiping notices
of the principal European celebrities of the past
generation, and devotes a large space to personal
recollections of the Emperor Napoleon. Lord Holland
writes in an easy conversational style, and his
agreeable memoirs bear internal marks of authenticity.
Jane Bouverie, by Catherine Sinclair, is a
popular English novel (republished by Harper and
Brothers), intended to sketch a portrait of true
feminine loveliness, without an insipid formality
and without any romantic impossibilities of perfection.
The denouement has the rare peculiarity
of not ending in marriage, the heroine remaining in
the class of single ladies, designated by the author
as par excellence “The Sisters of England.”
London Labor and the London Poor, by Henry
Mayhew (republished by Harper and Brothers), is
the title of a work of the deepest interest and importance
to all who wish to obtain a comprehensive
view of the present condition of industry and its rewards
in the metropolis of Great Britain. It consists
of the series of papers formerly contributed by
the author to the Morning Chronicle, entirely rewritten
and enlarged by the addition of a great
variety of facts and descriptions. The author has
devoted his attention for some time past to the
state of the working classes. He has collected an
immense number of facts, illustrative of the subject,
which are now brought to light for the first time.
His evident sympathies with the poor do not blind
his judgment. His statements are made after
careful investigation, and show no disposition to
indulge in theoretic inferences. As a vivid picture
of London life, in the obscure by-ways, concerning
which little is generally known, his work possesses
an uncommon value. It is to be issued in successive
parts, illustrated with characteristic engravings,
the first of which only has yet appeared in
the present edition.
Harper and Brothers have published a new English
novel by the author of Mary Barton, entitled The
Moorland Cottage, a pleasing domestic story of exquisite
beauty.
Three Leaves From Punch.
LECTURES ON LETTERS.
We find in a recent number of that well-known
and reliable newspaper, the London
Punch, an interesting sketch of a new and
improved system of teaching the elementary
branches of education. It proceeds upon principles
somewhat different from those which
have generally obtained in the popular methods
of instruction. It was prepared by the Editor
of the journal referred to, for the Council of
Education established a few years since by the
English Government, for the express purpose of
discussing and promoting improved methods of
public teaching. In a note accompanying the
work, the author states that, as soon as it was
completed, he forwarded it, by
with a polite note to the Secretary of the Council.
We regret that our limits will not permit us
to present to the readers of the New Monthly
Magazine a full description of this novel work.
We can only give a slight sketch of the manner
in which it proposes to teach the Alphabet.
The author thinks that, in the systems in general
use hitherto, advantage has not been sufficiently
taken of the pictorial form, as capable
of connecting with the alphabet, not only agreeable
associations, but many useful branches of
knowledge.
He would begin with the letter A, by rendering
it attractive to children as a swing, and the
opportunity might then be taken of leading the
conversation to the swing of the pendulum, the
laws which govern its oscillations, and the experiments
of Maupertius, Clairault, and Lemmonier,
upon its variations in different latitudes.
G, the child might be told, stands for George,
and the pictorial illustrations of St. George and
the dragon (the latter about to swallow its own
tail) would enable the teacher to enter upon a
disquisition relative to the probable Eastern
origin of the legendary stories of the middle
ages.
H would naturally suggest reminiscences of
modern English history. The teacher would
give some account of George Fox, the first
Quaker, and of the singular customs and opinions
of the sect he founded. Thence the child
might be led to perceive the evils of schism,
and the legitimate, and mischievous consequences
of that right of private judgment still
claimed by a small, but happily now an uninfluential
minority in the established church.
J might introduce some profitable remarks
upon Natural History, when the difference could
be explained between bipeds by nature, and
quadrupeds who become bipeds only for selfish
ends.
Advantage might be taken of the pictorial
illustration of K to lay the foundation of an
acquaintance both with the science of Pneumatics,
and with Captain Reid’s theory of the laws
affecting the course of storms.
With the letter M the child might learn the
meaning of what is termed the centre of gravity,
so important to be maintained by ladies walking
on stilts.
The letter S, reminding the teacher of Pisces—fishes—one
of the signs of the Zodiac, would
furnish him with a suitable opportunity for
discoursing upon Astronomy. Afterward he
might take up the subject of Ichthyology, and
speak of the five orders, the apodal, the jugular,
the abdominal, the thoracic, and cartilaginous
species, into which the great family of fishes is
divided.
The Editor of this work gives also a general
outline of the manner in which this system
was received by the Council, when it was first
brought to their notice. The President was so
highly delighted with it, that he not only promised
to give the matter still further consideration,
but invited the author to bring forward
certain other works for infancy, upon which, it
was generally understood, he had been engaged.
To this polite invitation the Editor replied that
he had been able as yet to complete only two
works of this description, namely, the delightful
Poem,
and the equally interesting and still more tragic
history of
He thought the teacher could not better follow
out Dr. Watts’s idea of “improving the shining
hour,” than by rendering the same lesson of
industry available for a full account of the genus
apis, taking care not to confound in the child’s
mind the apis of entomology with apis the bull,
worshiped by the ancient Egyptians. With
regard to the historical work referred to, it was
high time that the juvenile mind should be disabused
of a popular error. The facts were, that
a man of the name of Sparrow had robbed a
farm-yard of its poultry, for which offense, after
being taken and made to confess his guilt, he
was transported. The crime and punishment
were suggestive of many useful reflections upon
the importance of honesty; but the facts were
ludicrously distorted and deprived of all their
moral force in the spurious account published
by certain booksellers in St. Paul’s Church-yard
of the same transaction. A question is asked,
“Who kill’d Cock Robin?” and the following
answer is given:
With my bow and arrow,
I killed Cock Robin!!!”
In continuing his account of this interview,
the Editor introduces the new system of musical
notation, which he also brought to the notice
of the Council, and which they all agreed would
be found exceedingly useful in
But into this branch of the subject we can not
follow him. In fact, the Editor states that, at
this point of his exposition, he was constrained
to desist by noticing that several members of
the Council had become so deeply impressed
with the merits of his pictorial system, that
they were illustrating it in their own persons,
by throwing themselves into the form of
PUNCH ON SPECIAL PLEADING.
INTRODUCTION.
Before administering law between litigating
parties, there are two things to be done—in
addition to the parties themselves—namely, first
to ascertain the subject for decision, and, secondly,
to complicate it so as to make it difficult to
decide. This is effected by letting the lawyers
state in complicated terms the simple cases of
their clients, and thus raising from these opposition
statements a mass of entanglement which
the clients themselves might call nasty crotchets,
but which the lawyers term “nice points.” In
every subject of dispute with two sides to it, there
is a right and a wrong, but in the style of putting
the contending statements, so as to confuse
the right and the wrong together, the science of
special pleading consists. This system is of such
remote antiquity, that nobody knows the beginning
of it, and this accounts for no one being
able to appreciate its end. The accumulated
chicanery and blundering of several generations,
called in forensic language the “wisdom of successive
ages,” gradually brought special pleading
into its present shape, or, rather, into its present
endless forms. Its extensive drain on the pockets
of the suitors has rendered it always an important
branch of legal study, while, when properly understood,
it appears an instrument so beautifully
calculated for distributive justice, that, when
brought to bear upon property, it will often distribute
the whole of it among the lawyers, and
leave nothing for the litigants themselves.
CHAPTER I. OF THE PROCEEDINGS IN AN ACTION, FROM ITS
COMMENCEMENT TO ITS TERMINATION.
Actions are divided into Real, in which there
is often much sham; Personal, in which the
personality is frequently indulged in by Counsel,
at the expense of the witnesses; and Mixed, in
which a great deal of pure nonsense sometimes
prevails. The Legislature being at last sensible
to the shamness of Real, and the pure nonsense
of Mixed actions, abolished all except four, and
for the learning on these subjects, now become
obsolete, we must refer to the “books,” which
have been transferred to the shops of Butter,
from the shop of Butterworth.[8]
There are three superior Courts of Common
Law, one of their great points of superiority
being their superior expense, which saves the
Common Law from being so common as to be
positively vulgar; and its high price gives it one
of the qualities of a luxury, rendering it caviare
to the million, or indeed to any but the millionaire.
These Courts are the Queen’s Bench—a bench
which five judges sit upon; the Exchequer, whose
sign is a chess or draught-board—some say to
show how difficult is the game of law, while
others maintain it is merely emblematic of the
drafts on the pockets of the suitor; and thirdly,
the Common Pleas, which took its title, possibly,[Pg 572]
from the fact of the lawyers finding the
profits such as to make them un-Common-ly
Pleas’d.
The real and mixed actions not yet abolished,
are—1st, the Writ of Right of Dower, and 2d,
the Writ of Dower; both relating to widows;
but as widows are formidable persons to go to
law against, these actions are seldom used.
The third is the action of Quare Impedit, which
would be brought against me by a parson if I
kept him out of his living; but as the working
parsons find it difficult to get a living, this action
is also rare. The fourth is the action of
Ejectment, for the recovery of land, which is the
only action that can not be brought without
some ground.
Of personal actions, the most usual are debt,
and a few others; but we will begin by going
into debt as slightly as possible. The action
of debt is founded on some contract, real or
supposed, and when there has been no contract,
the law, taking a contracted view of matters,
will have a contract implied. Debt, like every
other personal action, begins with a summons,
in which Victoria comes “greeting;” which
means, according to Johnson, “saluting in kindness,”
“congratulating,” or “paying compliments
at a distance;” but, considering the unpleasant
nature of a writ at all times, we can
not help thinking that the word “greeting” is
misapplied. The writ commands you to enter
an appearance within eight days, and, by way
of assisting you to make an appearance, the
writ invests you, as it were, with a new suit.
The action of Covenant lies for breach of
covenant, that is to say, a promise under seal;
and under wafer it is just as binding, for you
are equally compelled to stick to it like wax.
The action of Detinue lies where a party seeks
to recover what is detained from him; though
it does not seem that a gentleman detaining a
newspaper more than ten minutes at a coffee-house
would be liable to detinue, though the
action would be an ungentlemanly one, to say
the least of it.
The action of Trespass lies for any injury
committed with violence, such as assault and
battery, either actual or implied; as, if A, while
making pancakes, throws an egg-shell at B, the
law will imply battery, though the egg-shell was
empty.
The action of Trespass on the Case lies, where
a party seeks damages for a wrong to which
trespass will not apply—where, in fact, a man
has not been assaulted or hurt in his person,
but where he has been hurt in that tender part—his
pocket. Of this action there are two
species, called assumpsit, by which the law—at
no time very unassuming—assumes that a person,
legally liable to do a thing, has promised
to do it, however unpromising such person may
be; and trover, which seeks to recover damages
for property which it is supposed the defendant
found and converted, so that an action might
perhaps be brought in this form, to recover from
Popery those who have been found and converted
to the use, or rather lost and converted to the
abuses, of the Romish Church.
Having gone slightly into the different forms
of actions; having just tapped the reader on
the shoulder with a writ in each case, which,
by the way, should be personally served on him
at home, though the bailiff runs the risk of getting
sometimes served out, we shall proceed to
trial—perhaps, of the reader’s patience—in a
subsequent chapter.
CHAPTER II. OF THE DECLARATION.
The writ being now served, it is next to be
returned, and this is sometimes done by giving
it back at once to the bailiff or throwing it in
his face. Such quick returns as these would
bring such very small profit to a plaintiff that
they are not allowable, and the writ can only
be returned by the sheriff bringing it back, on a
certain day, into the superior court. He then
gives a short account, in writing, of the manner
in which the writ has been executed; but, if the
bailiff has been pumped upon—as we find reported
in Shower—or pelted with oysters, as
in Shelley‘s case, or kicked down stairs, as he
was in Foot against the Sheriff, it does not
seem that the particulars need be set forth.
If the defendant does not appear within eight
days after the writ has come “greeting,” as if
it would say, “my service to you,” the plaintiff
may, in most cases, appear for him; and this
shows how true it is that appearances are often
deceitful and treacherous; for, when a plaintiff
appears for a defendant, it is only to have an
opportunity of appearing against him at the
next step.
The pleadings now commence, which were
originally delivered orally by the parties themselves
in open Court, when success might depend
on length of tongue; but the parties themselves
being got rid of, in the modern practice, and the
lawyers coming in to represent them, success
usually depends on length of purse. The object
of pleading, whether oral or written, is to bring
the parties to an issue; which means, literally,
a way out; but, in practice, the effect of getting
plaintiff and defendant to an issue is to let them
both regularly in.
Almost all pleas, except those of the simplest
kind, must be signed by a barrister; who does
not usually draw the plea, but he merely draws
the half guinea for the use of his name. The
pleading begins with the declaration, in which
the plaintiff is supposed to state the cause of
action; but in which he gives such an exaggerated
account of his grievances, that not more
than one-tenth of what he states, is to be believed.
For example, if A has had his nose
slightly pulled by B, the former proceeds to say
that “the defendant, with force and arms, and
with great force and violence, seized, laid hold of,
pulled, plucked, and tore, and with his fists, gave
and struck a great many violent blows, and
strokes, on and about, diverse parts of the plaintiff’s
nose.” If Jones has been given into[Pg 573]
custody by Smith, without sufficient reason;
and Jones brings an action for false imprisonment;
instead of saying, “he was compelled to
go to a station-house,” he declares that the defendant,
“with force, and arms, seized, laid hold
of, and with great violence pulled, and dragged,
and gave, and struck a great many violent blows
and strokes, and forced, and compelled him—the
plaintiff—to go in and along divers public
streets and highways, to a police office; whereby
the plaintiff was not only greatly hurt, bruised,
and wounded, but was also kept.”
If Snooks‘s dog bites Thomson‘s pet lamb,
Snooks declares, “That defendant did willfully
and injuriously keep a certain dog, he, the defendant,
well knowing that the said dog was
and continued to be fierce and mad, and accustomed
to attack, bite, injure, hurt, chase, worry,
harass, tear, agitate, wound, lacerate, snap at,
and kill sheep and lambs, and that the said dog
afterward to wit, on the — day of ——, and
divers other days, did attack (&c., &c., down
to) and kill one hundred sheep and one hundred
lambs of the plaintiff; whereby the said sheep
and the said lambs (it will be remembered there
was only one lamb), were greatly terrified,
damaged, injured, hurt, deteriorated, frightened,
depreciated, floored, flustered, and flabbergasted,
to the damage of the plaintiff of £—, and therefore
he brings his suit.”
The various forms of declaration are so numerous,
that they fill a volume of 700 large pages
of Chitty, who is quite chatty on this dry subject,
so much does he find to say with regard
to it. To this able and amusing writer we refer
those who are curious to know how a schoolmaster
may declare for “work and labor, care,
diligence, and attendance of himself, his ushers
and teachers, there performed and bestowed in
and about the teaching, instructing, boarding,
educating, lodging, flogging, enlightening, thrashing,
washing, whipping, and otherwise soundly
improving divers infants and persons.” These,
and almost all other conceivable causes of action,
are dealt with fully in the pages to which we
allude, and all therefore who wish the treat of
going to law, are referred to the treatise alluded
to.
SMITHFIELD CLUB CATTLE SHOW.
(FROM OUR OWN PROTECTIONIST.)
This melancholy event came off last week,
when prizes were distributed to the breeders
of the very leanest stock—a brass band, the
horns and ophicleides draperied with black crape,
playing funeral airs at intervals. The results
of free trade were never more shockingly conspicuous
than in the shadowy forms of steers
and oxen; while there was a pen of a dozen
pigs, scarcely one of which was visible to the
naked eye. We observed more than one benevolent
lady weeping pearls over indefinite things
that had vainly struggled to become porkers.
There were sheep that were nothing but the
merest bladebones, here and there covered with
threads of worsted. The Queen and Prince
Albert, with two of the little Princes, visited
the spectacle, contemplating it with becoming
gravity. The Prince carried away the prize
for a bull that was only visible when placed
under a glass of forty Opera power. Occasionally,
an acute ear might detect sounds that a
liberal mind might interpret as ghost-like bellowings—spectral
bleatings—with now and then
an asthmatic attempt at a grunt. The Duke
of Wellington‘s battering-ram is not to be
seen when looked at in front; but only from
either side. It is said to have been fed upon
old drum-heads, with occasionally the ribbons
of a recruiting sergeant chopped and made into
a warm mash. We ought, by the way, to have
remarked that the Duke of Richmond attended,
as President, in deep mourning; and bore
in his face and manner the profoundest traces
of unutterable woe. However, let us proceed
to give the list of prizes, all of them so many
triumphant proofs of the withering influence of
Free-Trade.
OXEN OR STEERS.
The Duke of Rutland carried away the
£30 prize for the thinnest steer. It had been
fed on waste copies of Protectionist pamphlets
with the tune of “The Roast Beef of Old England,”
played in A flat on a tin trumpet. Some
idea may be entertained of the nicety with
which the animal had been brought to the lowest
point of life, when we state that five minutes
after the noble Duke received the prize, the
thing died; all the brass band braying “The
Roast Beef of Old England” for half-an-hour,
in the vain hope of reviving it. The beast was
distributed among the Marylebone poor; all of
them ordered to appear in spectacles to see, if
possible, their proper quantities.
LONG-WOOLED SHEEP.
The Duke of Atholl bore off the first prize
of £20, for an extraordinary specimen of Highland
sheep, that both puzzled and delighted the
judges. The sheep had been reared upon Highland
thistles, according to the Duke’s well-known
hospitality; and these thistles so judiciously
served, that they had taken the place
of the wool, growing through the animal’s sides,
and coating them all over with their brushy
points. The Rev. Mr. Bennett was present,
and was much delighted with his wool of thistles;
he is to be presented with a comforter—the
thing will be very popular by Christmas,
to be called the Atholl Bosom Friend—woven
from the fleece. The web, in place of the vulgar
linen shirt, is expected to become very general
with the ladies and gentlemen who feed
upon the honey hived at St. Barnabas.
PIGS.
Colonel Sibthorp took the prize for the Pig
of Lead; so small a pig, that it might creep
down the tube of a Mordan‘s pencil. Mr. Disraeli
sent the shadow of a sow; one of his
practical epigrams, showing he had ceased to
have even a real squeak for Protection; he also
sent a porker that, from its largeness of size—where
smallness was the object—was deemed[Pg 574]
hopeless of any reward. However, Mr. Disraeli
carefully removing a muzzle from the
pig’s snout, the animal collapsed flat as a crush-hat.
The fact is, Mr. Disraeli had, as he afterward
averred, seemingly fattened the hog upon
a pair of bellows. There are, we have heard,
pigs that see the wind; whether Mr. Disraeli‘s
pig is of that sort, the eloquent Protectionist
said not. He, however, took a second prize;
and next year promises to exhibit a whole litter
of the smallest pigs in the world, suckled
upon vials of aquafortis.
COWS.
The leap of the Cow that jumped over the
Moon was exhibited by the Duke of Richmond.
This Cow had been fed on the printer’s ink from
the Standard newspaper, which sufficiently accounts
for the daring altitude of its flight. The
Duke was proffered the gold medal, but resolutely
refused any such vanity.
In conclusion, we are happy to say that the
Exhibition was well attended. The thousands
of our countrymen who witnessed the wretched
condition of the cattle must have carried away
with them the profound conviction, that the
days of Free Trade are numbered; and that a
speedy return to Protection is called for by the
interests of man and brute—from Dukes to
steers, from Parliament men to pigs.
OUR GOLDEN OPPORTUNITIES.
There is so much precious ore being brought
from California, that people are beginning to
fear gold may become a drug as well as a metal.
Already gold fish are quoted at Hungerford
market lower than silver, the recent importations
having acted even upon the finny tribe, and
those with silver scales have had the balance
turned in their favor. In Europe, we go to
great expense in watering the road to lay the
dust; but the gold dust of California is so valuable,
that no watering carts are employed, and
when a man comes home from a dusty walk he
has only to shake his coat, to shake a good
round sum into his pocket. In California the
housemaids stipulate for the dust as a perquisite,
and the “regular dustman” of the place
pays an enormous sum for the privilege of acting
as “dust-contractor for the district.”
UNIVERSAL CONTEMPT OF COURT.
It seems that any person is liable to be committed
to prison for his lifetime by the Court of
Chancery, as guilty of contempt of Court, for
not paying that which he has not to pay, and
for not doing other impossibilities. What a
number of people might be committed for contempt
of the Court of Chancery, if we all expressed
our feelings!
STARTLING FACT!
Oxford Swell. “Do you make many of these Monkey-Jackets now?“
Snip. “Oh dear yes, Sir. There are more Monkeys in Oxford this
Term than ever, Sir.“
Early Spring Fashions.
Fig. 1.—Morning and Evening Costumes.
March is a fickle month; one day dallying
with Zephyrus in the warm sunlight, and
promising verdure and flowers, and the next playing
bo-peep with Boreas at every corner, and
spreading a mantle of frost or snow over the fields
where the early blossoms are venturing forth.
and the ladies should remember the trite maxim,
when preparing to lay aside their heavy garments,
that “one swallow does not make a Summer.” A
few sunny days, during this month, will allow a
change of out-of-door costume, and for these Fashion
has already provided; but generally the winter
fabrics and forms will be seasonable till near the
close of the month. The Promenade Costumes[Pg 576]
are the same as in February, and we omit an illustration
of them.
In the large plate, the larger figure on the left,
shows a beautiful and graceful style of Morning
Costume. It consists of a robe of blue brocade;
the high body opens in the front nearly to the waist.
The fronts of the skirt are lined with amber satin, and
a fulling of the same is placed on the edge of the
fronts, graduating in width toward the top, and carried
round the neck of the dress.
The sleeves are very wide from the elbow, and
lined with amber satin. The edge of the sleeve is
left plain, but there is a rûche of satin round the
middle of the sleeve, just below the elbow. Underdress
of jaconet muslin, trimmed with lace, or embroidery.
The cap is of tulle, with blue trimmings.
The larger figure on the right, exhibits an Evening
Dress of great elegance. A skirt of white satin,
the lower part trimmed with narrow folds of the
same, put on at equal distances. The sides are
decorated with an elongated puffing of satin, surrounded
with a fulling of narrow blonde. Over
this is worn a short round tunic of white tulle,
encircled with a frilling of blonde, and decorated
upon each side of the front with two small
white roses, surrounded with green leaves. The
body plain, pointed, draped with white tulle and
lace, forming short sleeves. The small figure in
the group shows a pretty style of dress for a little
Miss. It is of dark blue cashmere, the skirt trimmed
with two rows of ribbon-velvet. The cape is formed
of narrow folds, open in the front, and continued
across with bands of velvet. Pantaloons of embroidered
cambric. The bonnet is formed of narrow
pink fancy ribbon.
Fig. 2.—Morning Costume.
Figure 2 represents another pretty style of
Morning Costume. It is a high dress of pale blue
silk, opening in front nearly to the waist, which is
long and pointed. It has a small cape, vandyked
at the edge, and trimmed with a narrow fringe,
having a heading of velvet; the sleeves to correspond.
The skirt is long and full, with three broad
flounces deeply vandyked, and edged with two rows
of narrow fringe corresponding with those of the
capes. The top flounce is headed by a single row
of fringe. Underdress and undersleeves, jaconet
muslin, trimmed with lace or embroidery. The cap
is black lace, with a tie and falls of the same. A
full rûche of white tulle entirely surrounds the face.
Fig. 3.—Velvet Bonnet.
In bonnets there are a great variety of new and
elegant patterns. The front of the brims continue
very large and open, the crowns round, low, and
small. Figure 3 is rather an exception to the extreme
of fashion It shows a very neat style of
plain bonnets suitable for the closing winter. It
is of ultramarine velvet, with a broad black lace
turned back over the edge, and a deep curtain.
A very fashionable style is composed of Orient
gray pearl, half satin, half velours épinglé, having
a very rich effect, and decorated with touffés marquises
made of marabouts. Several very light and
elegant bonnets have appeared, made entirely of
blonde, and ornamented with pink marabouts, and
sablés with silver, which droops in touffés upon the
inclined side of the front, while the other side is
relieved with a bunch of pink velvet leaves. Another
style is very elegant for early Spring, represented
in Figure 4. It is made of light green
fluted ribbon, a plain foundation, over which, at the
edge of the front and toward the crown, is the same
material, vandyked in pattern. The bonnet front
is waved. Bonnets of white silk (Figure 5) trimmed
with lace, quite small and ornamented in the
front with small bunches of flowers, are fashionable
for a carriage costume.
Fig. 4.—Ribbon Bonnet.
Fig. 5.—White Silk Bonnet.
The season for balls is nearly over. Dresses for
these assemblies are made of light material, and
with two or three skirts. One charming model is
composed of white tulle, with three skirts trimmed
all round with a broad open-worked satin ribbon;
the third skirt being raised on one side, and attached
with a large bouquet of flowers, while the ribbon is
twisted, and ascends to the side of the waist, where
it finishes. The same kind of flowers ornament
the sleeves and centre of the corsage, which is also
trimmed with a deep drapery of tulle.
Feather trimmings are now much in vogue, disposed
on fringes of marabout, and placed at the
edge of the double skirts of tulle.
For Head Dresses, flowers and lace are in constant
request.
Fashionable Colors are of deep and mellow
hues; white predominates for evening use.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The centralizing party in the confederation is thus
denominated.
[2] This device is thus conceived: “Long live the Argentine
Confederation! Death to the savage, filthy, and
disgusting Unitarians!”
[3] From the “Irish Confederates,” by Henry M. Field,
in the press of Harper and Brothers.
[4] The Emperor Diocletian.
[5] The title of Excellency does not, in Italian, necessarily
express any exalted rank, but is often given by
servants to their masters.
[6] See “A History of British Fossil Mammals,” by our
great Zoologist, Professor Owen.
[7] The number of visitors to the Zoological Gardens,
Regent’s Park, during the past year, was very nearly
400,000.
[8] Butterworth—the Law Publisher in Fleet Street.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors have been repaired, other punctuations have
been left as printed in the paper book.
Obvious printer’s errors have been repaired, other inconsistent
spellings have been kept, including:
– use of hyphen (e.g. “moonlight” and “moon-light”);
– accents (e.g. “Nüremberg” and “Nuremberg”);
– proper names (e.g. “Leipsic” and “Leipzig”);
– any other inconsistent spellings (e.g. “Machiavelian” and
“Machiavellian”).
Pg 548, word “thing” removed (One thing [thing] only).