BLACKWOOD'S

 Edinburgh

 MAGAZINE. 

 VOL. LVI. 

 JULY-DECEMBER, 1844. 

 [Illustration]

 1844. 

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 BLACKWOOD'S

 EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. 

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 No. CCCXLV. JULY, 1844. VOL. LVI. 

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 CONTENTS. 

 CAUSES OF THE INCREASE OF CRIME THE HEART OF THE BRUCE MEMORANDUMS OF A MONTH'S TOUR IN SICILY THE LAST OF THE KNIGHTS POEMS AND BALLADS OF GOETHE. NO. I. MY FIRST LOVE. --A SKETCH IN NEW YORK HYDRO-BACCHUS MARTIN LUTHER. --AN ODE TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA. NO. II. THE FAIRY TUTOR PORTUGAL MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART XII. THE WEEK OF AN EMPEROR

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 EDINBURGH:

 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET; AND 22, PALL-MALL, LONDON. 

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 PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH. 

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 BLACKWOOD'S

 EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. 

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 No. CCCXLV. JULY, 1844. VOL. LVI. 

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CAUSES OF THE INCREASE OF CRIME. 

If the past increase and present amount of crime in the Britishislands be alone considered, it must afford grounds for the mostmelancholy forebodings. When we recollect that since the year 1805, that is, during a period of less than forty years, in the course ofwhich population has advanced about sixty-five _per cent_ in GreatBritain and Ireland, crime in England has increased seven hundred percent, in Ireland about eight hundred per cent, and in Scotland above_three thousand six hundred per cent_;[1] it is difficult to say whatis destined to be the ultimate fate of a country in which theprogress of wickedness is so much more rapid than the increase of thenumbers of the people. Nor is the alarming nature of the prospectdiminished by the reflection, that this astonishing increase in humandepravity has taken place during a period of unexampled prosperityand unprecedented progress, during which the produce of the nationalindustry had tripled, and the labours of the husbandman kept pacewith the vast increase in the population they were to feed--in whichthe British empire carried its victorious arms into every quarter ofthe globe, and colonies sprang up on all sides with unheard-ofrapidity--in which a hundred thousand emigrants came ultimately tomigrate every year from the parent state into the new regionsconquered by its arms, or discovered by its adventure. If this is theprogress of crime during the days of its prosperity, what is itlikely to become in those of its decline, when this prodigious ventfor superfluous numbers has come to be in a great measure closed, andthis unheard-of wealth and prosperity has ceased to gladden the land?

[Footnote 1: See No. 343, _Blackwood's Magazine_, p. 534, Vol. Lv. ]

To discover to what causes this extraordinary increase of crime is tobe ascribed, we must first examine the localities in which it hasprincipally arisen, and endeavour to ascertain whether it is to befound chiefly in the agricultural, pastoral, or manufacturingdistricts. We must then consider the condition of the labouringclasses, and the means provided to restrain them in the quarterswhere the progress of crime has been most alarming; and inquirewhether the existing evils are insurmountable and unavoidable, orhave arisen from the supineness, the errors, and the selfishness ofman. The inquiry is one of the most interesting which can occupy thethoughts of the far-seeing and humane; for it involves the temporaland eternal welfare of millions of their fellow-creatures;--it maywell arrest the attention of the selfish, and divert for a fewminutes the profligate from their pursuits; for on it depends whetherthe darling wealth of the former is to be preserved or destroyed, andthe exciting enjoyments of the other arrested or suffered tocontinue. 

To elucidate the first of these questions, we subjoin a table, compiled from the Parliamentary returns, exhibiting the progress ofserious crime in the principal counties, agricultural pastoral, andmanufacturing, of the empire, during the last fifteen years. We areunwilling to load our pages with figures, and are well aware howdistasteful they are to a large class of readers; and if thoseresults were as familiar to others as they are to ourselves, weshould be too happy to take them for granted, as they do firstprinciples in the House of Commons, and proceed at once to the meansof remedy. But the facts on this subject have been so oftenmisrepresented by party or prejudice, and are in themselves sogenerally unknown, that it is indispensable to lay a foundation inauthentic information before proceeding further in the inquiry. Thegreatest difficulty which those practically acquainted with thesubject experience in such an investigation, is to make peoplebelieve their statements, even when founded on the most extensivepractical knowledge, or the more accurate statistical inquiry. Thereis such a prodigious difference between the condition of mankind andthe progress of corruption in the agricultural or pastoral, andmanufacturing or densely peopled districts, that those accustomed tothe former will not believe any statements made regarding the latter. They say they are incredible or exaggerated; that the persons whomake them are _têtes montées_; that their ideas are very vague, andtheir suggestions utterly unworthy the consideration either of men ofsense or of government. With such deplorable illusions does ignorancerepel the suggestions of knowledge; theory, of experience;selfishness, of philanthropy; cowardice, of resolution. Thus nothingwhatever is done to remedy or avert the existing evils: the districtsnot endangered unite as one man to resist any attempt to form ageneral system for the alleviation of misery or diminution of crimein those that are, and the preponderance of the unendangereddistricts in the legislature gives them the means of effectuallydoing so. The evils in the endangered districts are such, that it isuniversally felt they are beyond the reach of local remedy oralleviation. Thus, between the two, nothing whatever is done toarrest, or guard against, the existing or impending evils. Meanwhile, destitution, profligacy, sensuality, and crime, advance withunheard-of rapidity in the manufacturing districts, and the dangerousclasses there massed together combine every three or four years insome general strike or alarming insurrection, which, while it lasts, excites universal terror, and is succeeded, when suppressed, by thesame deplorable system of supineness, selfishness, and infatuation. 

[Footnote 2: Table showing the number of committments for seriouscrimes, and population, in the year 1841, in the under-mentionedcounties of Great Britain;--

 I. --PASTORAL. 

 Names of Counties. Population Commitments Proportion of in 1841. For serious crime committments in 1841. To population. 

 Cumberland, 178, 038 151 1 in 1, 194 Derby, 272, 217 277 1 in 964 Anglesey, 50, 891 13 1 in 3, 900 Carnarvon, 81, 093 33 1 in 2, 452 Inverness-shire, 97, 799 106 1 in 915 Selkirkshire, 7, 990 4 1 in 1, 990 Argyleshire, 97, 371 96 1 in 1, 010

 Total, 785, 399 680 1 in 1, 155

 II. -AGRICULTURAL AND MANUFACTURING. 

 Commitments Proportion of Population for serious crime commitments Names of Counties. In 1841. In 1841. To population. 

 Shropshire, 239, 048 416 1 in 574 Kent, 548, 337 962 1 in 569 Norfolk, 412, 664 666 1 in 518 Essex, 344, 979 647 1 in 533 Northumberland, 250, 278 226 1 in 1, 106 East Lothian, 35, 886 38 1 in 994 Perthshire, 137, 390 116 1 in 1, 181 Aberdeenshire, 192, 387 92 1 in 2, 086

 Total, 2, 160, 969 3, 163 1 in 682

 III. -MANUFACTURING AND MINING. 

 Commitments Proportion of Population for serious crime commitments Names of Counties. In 1841. In 1841. To population. 

 Middlesex, 1, 576, 636 3, 586 1 in 439 Lancashire, 1, 667, 054 3, 987 1 in 418 Staffordshire, 510, 504 1, 059 1 in 482 Yorkshire, 1, 591, 480 1, 895 1 in 839 Glamorganshire, 171, 188 189 1 in 909 Lanarkshire, 426, 972 513 1 in 832 Renfrewshire 155, 072 505 1 in 306 Forfarshire, 170, 520 333 1 in 512

 Total, 6, 269, 426 12, 067 1 in 476

 --PORTER'S _Parl. Tables_, 1841, 163; and _Census_ 1841. ]

The table in the note exhibits the number of commitments for seriousoffences, with the population of each, of eight counties--pastoral, agricultural, and manufacturing--in Great Britain during the year1841[2]. We take the returns for that year, both because it was theyear in which the census was taken, and because the succeeding year, 1842, being the year of the great outbreak in England, and violentstrike in Scotland, the figures, both in that and the succeedingyear, may be supposed to exhibit a more unfavourable result for themanufacturing districts than a fair average of years. From thistable, it appears that the vast preponderance of crime is to be foundin the manufacturing or densely-peopled districts, and that theproportion per cent of commitments which they exhibit, as comparedwith the population, is generally three, often five times, whatappears in the purely agricultural and pastoral districts. Thecomparative criminality of the agricultural, manufacturing, andpastoral districts is not to be considered as accurately measured bythese returns, because so many of the agricultural counties, especially in England, are overspread with towns and manufactories orcollieries. Thus Kent and Shropshire are justly classed withagricultural counties, though part of the former is in fact a suburbof London, and of the latter overspread with demoralizing coal mines. The entire want of any police force in some of the greatestmanufacturing counties, as Lanarkshire, by permittingnineteen-twentieths of the crime to go unpunished, exhibits a farless amount of criminality than would be brought to light under amore vigilant system. But still there is enough in this table toattract serious and instructive attention. It appears that theaverage of seven pastoral counties exhibits an average of 1commitment for serious offences out of 1155 souls: of eight counties, partly agricultural and partly manufacturing, of 1 in 682: and ofeight manufacturing and mining, of 1 in 476! And the differencebetween individual counties is still more remarkable, especially whencounties purely agricultural or pastoral can be compared with thosefor the most part manufacturing or mining. Thus the proportion ofcommitment for serious crime in the pastoral counties of

 Anglesey, is 1 in 3900 Carnarvon, 1 in 2452 Selkirk, 1 in 1990 Cumberland, 1 in 1194

In the purely agricultural counties of

 Aberdeenshire, is 1 in 2086 East-Lothian, 1 in 994 Northumberland, 1 in 1106 Perthshire, 1 in 1181

While in the great manufacturing or mining counties of

 Lancashire, is 1 in 418 Staffordshire, 1 in 482 Middlesex, 1 in 439 Yorkshire, 1 in 839 Lanarkshire, 1 in 832[3] Renfrewshire, 1 in 306

[Footnote 3: Lanarkshire has no police except in Glasgow, or itsserious crime would be about 1 in 400, or 350. ]

Further, the statistical returns of crime demonstrate, not only thatsuch is the present state of crime in the densely peopled andmanufacturing districts, compared to what obtains in the agriculturalor pastoral, but that the tendency of matters is still worse;[4] andthat, great as has been the increase of population during the lastthirty years in the manufacturing and densely peopled districts, theprogress of crime has been still greater and more alarming. From theinstructive and curious tables below, constructed from the criminalreturns given in _Porter's Parliamentary Tables_, and the returns ofthe census taken in 1821, 1831, and 1841, it appears, that while insome of the purely pastoral counties, such as Selkirk and Anglesey, crime has remained during the last twenty years nearly stationary, and in some of the purely agricultural, such as Perth and Aberdeen, it has considerably _diminished_, in the agricultural and mining ormanufacturing, such as Shropshire and Kent, it has _doubled_ duringthe same period: and in the manufacturing and mining districts, suchas Lancashire, Staffordshire, Yorkshire, and Renfrewshire, more than_tripled_ in the same time. It appears, from the same authenticsources of information, that the progress of crime during the lasttwenty years has been much more rapid in the manufacturing anddensely peopled than in the simply densely peopled districts; for inMiddlesex, during the last twenty years, population has advancedabout fifty per cent, and serious crime has increased in nearly thesame proportion, having swelled from 2480 to 3514: whereas inLancashire, during the same period, population has advanced alsofifty per cent, but serious crime has considerably _more thandoubled_, having risen from 1716 to 3987. 

[Footnote 4: Table, showing the comparative population, andcommittals for serious crime, in the under-mentioned counties, in theyears 1821, 1831, and 1841. 

 I. --PASTORAL

 1821. 1831. 1841. Pop. Com. Pop. Com. Pop. Com. 

 Cumberland, 156, 124 66 169, 681 74 178, 038 151 Derby, 213, 333 105 237, 070 202 272, 217 277 Anglesey, 43, 325 10 48, 325 8 50, 891 13 Carnarvon, 57, 358 12 66, 448 36 81, 893 33 Inverness, 90, 157 ... 94, 797 35 97, 799 106 Selkirk, 6, 637 ... 6, 833 2 7, 990 4 Argyle, 97, 316 ... 100, 973 41 97, 321 96

 II. --AGRICULTURAL AND MANUFACTURING. 

 1821. 1831. 1841. Pop. Com. Pop. Com. Pop. Com. 

 Shropshire, 266, 153 159 222, 938 228 239, 048 416 Kent, 426, 916 492 479, 155 640 548, 337 962 Norfolk, 344, 368 356 390, 054 549 412, 664 666 Essex, 289, 424 303 317, 507 607 344, 979 647 Northumberland, 198, 965 70 222, 912 108 250, 278 226 East Lothian, 35, 127 ... 36, 145 23 35, 886 38 Perthshire, 139, 050 ... 142, 894 140 137, 390 116 Aberdeenshire, 155, 387 ... 177, 657 161 192, 387 92

 III. --MANUFACTURING AND MINING. 

 1821. 1831. 1841. Pop. Com. Pop. Com. Pop. Com. 

 Middlesex, 1, 144, 531 2, 480 1, 358, 330 3, 514 1, 576, 636 3, 586 Lancashire, 1, 052, 859 1, 716 1, 336, 854 2, 352 1, 667, 054 3, 987 Staffordshire, 345, 895 374 410, 512 644 510, 504 1, 059 Yorkshire, 801, 274 757 976, 350 1, 270 1, 154, 111 1, 895 Glamorgan, 101, 737 28 126, 612 132 171, 188 189 Lanark, 244, 387 ... 316, 849 470 426, 972 513 Renfrew, 112, 175 ... 133, 443 205 155, 072 505 Forfar, 113, 430 ... 139, 666 124 l70, 520 333

 --PORTER'S _Parl. Tables, and Census_ 1841. ]

Here, then, we are at length on firm ground in point of fact. Severalwriters of the liberal school who had a partiality for manufactures, because their chief political supporters were to be found among thatclass of society, have laboured hard to show that manufactures arenoways detrimental either to health or morals; and that the mortalityand crime of the manufacturing counties were in no respect greaterthan those of the pastoral or agricultural districts. The commonsense of mankind has uniformly revolted against this absurdity, socompletely contrary to what experience every where tells in alanguage not to be misunderstood; but it has now been completelydisproved by the Parliamentary returns. The criminal statistics haveexposed this fallacy as completely, in reference to the differentdegrees of depravity in different parts of the empire, as theregistrar-general's returns have, in regard to the different degreesof salubrity in employments, and mortality in rural districts andmanufacturing places. It now distinctly appears that crime is greatlymore prevalent in proportion to the numbers of the people in denselypeopled than thinly inhabited localities, and that it is making farmore rapid progress in the former situation than the latter. Statistics are not to be despised when they thus, at once anddecisively, disprove errors so assiduously spread, maintained bywriters of such respectability, and supported by such large andpowerful bodies in the state. 

Nor can it be urged with the slightest degree of foundation, thatthis superior criminality of the manufacturing and densely peopleddistricts is owing to a police force being more generally establishedthan in the agricultural or pastoral, and thus crime being morethoroughly detected in the former situation than the latter. For, inthe first place, in several of the greatest manufacturing counties, particularly Lanarkshire in Scotland, there is no police at all; andthe criminal establishment is just what it was forty years ago. Inthe next place, a police force is the _consequence_ of a previousvast accumulation or crime, and is never established till the risk tolife and insecurity to property had rendered it unbearable. Beingalways established by the voluntary assessment of the inhabitants, nothing can be more certain than that it never can be called intoexistence but by such an increase of crime as has rendered it amatter of necessity. 

We are far, however, from having approached the whole truth, if wehave merely ascertained, upon authentic evidence, that crime isgreatly more prevalent in the manufacturing than the rural districts. That will probably be generally conceded; and the preceding detailshave been given merely to show the extent of the difference, and therapid steps which it is taking. It is more material to inquire whatare the causes of this superior profligacy of manufacturing to ruraldistricts; and whether it arises unavoidably from the nature of theirrespective employments, or is in some degree within the reach ofhuman amendment or prevention. 

It is usual for persons who are not practically acquainted with thesubject, to represent manufacturing occupations as necessarily andinevitably hurtful to the human mind. The crowding together, it issaid, young persons, of different sexes and in great numbers, in thehot atmosphere and damp occupations of factories or mines, isnecessarily destructive to morality, and ruinous to regularity ofhabit. The passions are excited by proximity of situation or indecentexposure; infant labour early emancipates the young from parentalcontrol; domestic subordination, the true foundation for socialvirtue, is destroyed; the young exposed to temptation before theyhave acquired strength to resist it; and vice spreads the moreextensively from the very magnitude of the establishments on whichthe manufacturing greatness of the country depends. Such views aregenerally entertained by writers on the social state of the country;and being implicitly adopted by the bulk of the community, the nationhas abandoned itself to a sort of despair on the subject, andregarding manufacturing districts as the necessary and unavoidablehotbed of crimes, strives only to prevent the spreading of thecontagion into the rural parts of the country. 

There is certain degree of truth in these observations; but they aremuch exaggerated, and it is not in these causes that the principalsources of the profligacy of the manufacturing districts is to befound. 

The real cause of the demoralization of manufacturing towns is to befound, not in the nature of the employment which the people therereceive, so much as in the manner in which they are brought together, the unhappy prevalence of general strikes, and the prodigiousmultitudes who are cast down by the ordinary vicissitudes of life, orthe profligacy of their parents, into a situation of want, wretchedness, and despair. 

Consider how, during the last half century, the people have beenbrought together in the great manufacturing districts of England andScotland. So rapid has been the progress of manufacturing industryduring that period, that it has altogether out-stripped the powers ofpopulation in the districts where it was going forward, andoccasioned a prodigious influx of persons from different and distantquarters, who have migrated from their paternal homes, and settled inthe manufacturing districts, never to return. [5] Authentic evidenceproves, that not less than _two millions_ of persons have, in thisway, been transferred to the manufacturing counties of the north ofEngland within the last forty years, chiefly from the agriculturalcounties of the south of that kingdom, or from Ireland. Not less thanthree hundred and fifty thousand persons have, during the sameperiod, migrated into the two manufacturing counties of Lanark andRenfrew alone, in Scotland, chiefly from the Scotch Highlands, ornorth of Ireland. No such astonishing migration of the human speciesin so short a time, and to settle on so small a space, is on recordin the whole annals of the world. It is unnecessary to say that theincrease is to be ascribed chiefly, if not entirely, to immigration;for it is well known that such is the unhealthiness of manufacturingtowns, especially to young children, that, so far from being able toadd to their numbers, they are hardly ever able, without extraneousaddition, to maintain them. 

[Footnote 5: Table showing the Population in 1801, 1891, and 1841, inthe under-mentioned counties of Great Britain. 

 Increase in 1801 1821 1841 forty years. 

 Lancashire, 672, 731 1, 052, 859 1, 667, 054 994, 323 Yorkshire, W. R. , 565, 282 801, 274 1, 154, 101 588, 819 Staffordshire, 233, 153 343, 895 510, 504 277, 351 Nottingham, 140, 350 186, 873 249, 910 109, 560 Warwick, 208, 190 274, 322 401, 715 193, 155 Gloucester, 250, 809 335, 843 431, 383 180, 574

 2, 070, 515 2, 995, 066 4, 412, 667 2, 343, 782

 Lanark, 146, 699 244, 387 434, 972 288, 273 Renfrew, 78, 056 112, 175 155, 072 77, 016

 224, 755 356, 562 590, 044 365, 289

 --_Census of_ 1841. Preface, p. 8 and 9. ]

Various causes have combined to produce demoralization among the vastcrowd, thus suddenly attracted, by the alluring prospect of highwages and steady employment, from the rural to the manufacturingdistricts. In the first place, they acquired wealth before they hadlearned how to use it, and that is, perhaps, the most general causeof the rapid degeneracy of mankind. High wages flowed in upon thembefore they had acquired the artificial wants in the gratification ofwhich they could be innocently spent. Thence the general recourse tothe grosser and sensual enjoyments, which are powerful alike on thesavage and the sage. Men who, in the wilds of Ireland or themountains of Scotland, were making three or four shillings a-week, orin Sussex ten, suddenly found themselves, as cotton-spinners, iron-moulders, colliers, or mechanics, in possession of from twentyto thirty shillings. Meanwhile, their habits and inclinations hadundergone scarce any alteration; they had no taste for comfort indress, lodging, or furniture; and as to laying by money, the thing, of course, was not for a moment thought of. Thus, this vast additionto their incomes was spent almost exclusively on eating and drinking. The extent to which gross sensual enjoyment was thus spread amongthese first settlers in the regions of commercial opulence, isincredible. It is an ascertained fact, that above a million a-year isannually spent in Glasgow on ardent spirits;[6] and it has recentlybeen asserted by a respectable and intelligent operative inManchester, that, in that city, 750, 000 _more_ is annually spent onbeer and spirits, than on the purchase of provisions. Is itsurprising that a large part of the progeny of a generation which hasembraced such habits, should be sunk in sensuality and profligacy, and afford a never-failing supply for the prisons and transportships? It is the counterpart of the sudden corruption whichinvariably overtakes northern conquerors, when they settle in theregions of southern opulence. 

[Footnote 6: ALISON _on Population_, ii. Appendix A. ]

Another powerful cause which promotes the corruption of men, whenthus suddenly congregated together from different quarters in themanufacturing districts, is, that the restraints of character, relationship, and vicinity are, in a great measure, lost in thecrowd. Every body knows what powerful influence public opinion, orthe opinion of their relations, friends, and acquaintances, exerciseson all men in their native seats, or when living for any length oftime in one situation. It forms, in fact, next to religion, the mostpowerful restraint on vice, and excitement to virtue, that exists inthe world. But when several hundred thousand of the working classesare suddenly huddled together in densely peopled localities, thisinvaluable check is wholly lost. Nay, what is worse, it is rolledover to the other side; and forms an additional incentive tolicentiousness. The poor in these situations have no neighbours whocare for them, or even know their names; but they are surrounded bymultitudes who are willing to accompany them in the career ofsensuality. They are unknown alike to each other, and to any personsof respectability or property in their vicinity. Philanthropy seeksin vain for virtue amidst thousands and tens of thousands of unknownnames; charity itself is repelled by the hopelessness of all attemptsto relieve the stupendous mass of destitution which follows in thetrain of such enormous accumulation of numbers. Every individual orvoluntary effort is overlooked amidst the prodigious multitude, as itwas in the Moscow campaign of Napoleon. Thus the most powerfulrestraints on human conduct--character, relations, neighbourhood--arelost upon mankind at the very time when their salutary influence ismost required to enable them to withstand the increasing temptationsarising from density of numbers and a vast increase of wages. Multitudes remove responsibility without weakening passion. Isolationensures concealment without adding to resolution. This is the truecause of the more rapid deterioration of the character of the poorthan the rich, when placed in such dense localities. The latter havea neighbourhood to watch them, because their station renders themconspicuous--the former have none. Witness the rapid and generalcorruption of the higher ranks, when they get away from suchrestraint, amidst the profligacy of New South Wales. 

In the foremost rank of the causes which demoralize the urban andmining population, we must place the frequency of those strikes whichunhappily have now become so common as to be of more frequentoccurrence than a wet season, even in our humid climate. During thelast twenty years there have been six great strikes: viz. In 1826, 1828, 1834, 1837, 1842, and 1844. All of these have kept multitudesof the labouring poor idle for months together. Incalculable is thedemoralization thus produced upon the great mass of the workingclasses. We speak not of the actual increase of commitments duringthe continuance of a great strike, though that increase is soconsiderable that it in general augments them in a single year fromthirty to fifty per cent. [7] We allude to the far more general andlasting causes of demoralization which arise from the arraying of oneportion of the community in fierce hostility against another, thewretchedness which is spread among multitudes by months of compulsoryidleness, and the not less ruinous effect of depriving them of_occupation_ during such protracted periods. When we recollect thatsuch is the vehemence of party feeling produced by these disastrouscombinations, that it so far obliterates all sense of right and wrongas generally to make their members countenance contumely and insult, sometimes even robbery, fire-raising, and murder, committed oninnocent persons who are only striving to earn an honest livelihoodfor themselves by hard labour, but in opposition to the strike; andthat it induces twenty and thirty thousand persons to yield implicitobedience to the commands of an unknown committee, who have power toforce them to do what the Sultan Mahmoud, or the Committee of PublicSafety, never ventured to attempt--to abstain from labour, and endurewant and starvation for months together, for an object of which theyoften in secret disapprove--it may be conceived how wide-spread andfatal is the confusion of moral principle, and habits of idleness andinsubordination thus produced. Their effects invariably appear for acourse of years afterwards, in the increased roll of criminalcommitments, and the number of young persons of both sexes, who, loosened by these protracted periods of idleness, never afterwardsregain habits of regularity and industry. Nor is the evil lessened bythe blind infatuation with which it is uniformly regarded by theother classes of the community, and the obstinate resistance theymake to all measures calculated to arrest the violence of thesecombinations, in consequence of the expense with which they wouldprobably be attended--a supineness which, by leaving the coastconstantly clear to the terrors of such associations, and promisingimpunity to their crimes, operates as a continual bounty on theirrecurrence. 

[Footnote 7:

 Commitments:-- Lanarkshire. Lancashire. Staffordshire. Yorkshire. 1836 451 2, 265 686 1, 252 1837[8] 565 2, 809 909 1, 376 1841 513 3, 987 1, 059 1, 895 1842[9] 696 4, 497 1, 485 2, 598

 PORTER'S _Parl. Tables_, xi. 162. --_Parl. Paper of Crime_, 1843, p. 53. ]

[Footnote 8: Strike. ]

[Footnote 9: Strike. ]

Infant labour, unhappily now so frequent in all kinds of factories, and the great prevalence of female workers, is another evil of a veryserious kind in the manufacturing districts. We do not propose toenter into the question, recently so fiercely agitated in thelegislature, as to the practicability of substituting a compulsoryten-hours' bill for the twelve hours' at present in operation. Anxious to avoid all topics on which there is a difference of opinionamong able and patriotic men, we merely state this prevalence andprecocity of juvenile labour in the manufacturing and miningdistricts as _a fact_ which all must deplore, and which is attendedwith the most unhappy effects on the rising generation. The greatmajority, probably nine-tenths, of all the workers in cotton-mills orprintfields, are females. We have heard much of the profligacy andlicentiousness which pervade such establishments; but though that maybe too true in some cases, it is far from being universal, or evengeneral; and there are numerous instances of female virtue being asjealously guarded and effectually preserved in such establishments, as in the most secluded rural districts. The real evils--and theyfollow universally from such employment of juvenile females in greatnumbers in laborious but lucrative employment--are the emancipationof the young from parental control, the temptation held out toidleness in the parents from the possibility of living on theirchildren, and the disqualifying the girls for performing all thedomestic duties of wives and mothers in after life. 

These evils are real, general, and of ruinous consequence. Whenchildren--from the age of nine or ten in some establishments, ofthirteen or fourteen in all--are able to earn wages varying from 3s. 6d. To 6s. A-week, they soon become in practice independent ofparental control. The strongest of all securities for filialobedience--a sense of dependence--is destroyed. The children assertthe right of self-government, because they bear the burden ofself-maintenance. Nature, in the ordinary case, has effectuallyguarded against this premature and fatal emancipation of the young, by the protracted period of weakness during childhood andadolescence, which precludes the possibility of serious labour beingundertaken before the age when a certain degree of mental firmnesshas been acquired. But the steam-engine, amidst its other marvels, has entirely destroyed, within the sphere of its influence, thishappy and necessary exemption of infancy from labour. Steam is themoving power; it exerts the strength; the human machine is requiredonly to lift a web periodically, or damp a roller, or twirl a filmround the finger, to which the hands of infancy are as adequate asthose of mature age. Hence the general employment of children, andespecially girls, in such employments. They are equally serviceableas men or women, and they are more docile, cheaper, and less given tostrikes. But as these children earn their own subsistence, they soonbecome rebellious to parental authority, and exercise the freedom ofmiddle life as soon as they feel its passions, and before they haveacquired its self-control. 

If the effect of such premature emancipation of the young is hurtfulto them, it is, if possible, still more pernicious to their parents. Labour is generally irksome to man; it is seldom persevered in afterthe period of its necessity has passed. When parents find that, bysending three or four children out to the mills or into the mines, they can get eighteen or twenty shillings a-week without doing anything themselves, they soon come to abridge the duration and cost ofeducation, in order to accelerate the arrival of the happy periodwhen they may live on their offspring, not their offspring on them. Thus the purest and best affections of the heart are obliterated onthe very threshold of life. That best school of disinterestedness andvirtue, the _domestic hearth_, where generosity and self-control arecalled forth in the parents, and gratitude and affection in thechildren, from the very circumstance of the dependence of the latteron the former, is destroyed. It is worse than destroyed, it is madethe parent of wickedness: it exists, but it exists only to nourishthe selfish and debasing passions. Children come to be looked on, notas objects of affection, but as instruments of gain; not as formingthe first duty of life and calling forth its highest energies, but asaffording the first means of relaxing from labour, and permitting arelapse into indolence and sensuality. The children are, practicallyspeaking, sold for slaves, and--oh! unutterable horror!--_the sellersare their own parents_! Unbounded is the demoralization produced bythis monstrous perversion of the first principles of nature. Thenceit is that it is generally found, that all the beneficent provisionsof the legislature for the protection of infant labour are sogenerally evaded, as to render it doubtful whether any law, howstringent soever, could protect them. The reason is apparent. Theparents of the children are the chief violators of the law; for thesake of profit they send them out, the instant they can work, to themills or the mines. Those whom nature has made their protectors, havebecome their oppressors. The thirst for idleness, intoxication, orsensuality, has turned the strongest of the generous, into the mostmalignant of the selfish passions. 

The habits acquired by such precocious employment of young women, arenot less destructive of their ultimate utility and respectability inlife. Habituated from their earliest years to one undeviatingmechanical employment, they acquire great skill in it, but grow uputterly ignorant of any thing else. We speak not of ignorance ofreading or writing, but of ignorance in still more momentousparticulars, with reference to their usefulness in life as wives andmothers. They can neither bake nor brew, wash nor iron, sew nor knit. The finest London lady is not more utterly inefficient than they are, for any other object but the one mechanical occupation to which theyhave been habituated. They can neither darn a stocking nor sew on abutton. As to making porridge or washing a handkerchief, the thing isout of the question. Their food is cooked out of doors by persons whoprovide the lodging-houses in which they dwell--they are clothed fromhead to foot, like fine ladies, by milliners and dressmakers. This isnot the result of fashion, caprice, or indolence, but of the entireconcentration of their faculties, mental and corporeal, from theirearliest years, in one limited mechanical object. They are unfit tobe any man's wife--still more unfit to be any child's mother. We hearlittle of this from philanthropists or education-mongers; but it is, nevertheless, not the least, because the most generally diffused, evil connected with our manufacturing industry. 

But by far the greatest cause of the mass of crime of themanufacturing and mining districts of the country, is to be found inthe prodigious number of persons, especially in infancy, who arereduced to a state of destitution, and precipitated into the verylowest stations of life, in consequence of the numerous ills to whichall flesh--but especially all flesh in manufacturing communities--isheir. Our limits preclude the possibility of entering into all thebranches of this immense subject; we shall content ourselves, therefore, with referring to one, which seems of itself perfectlysufficient to explain the increase of crime, which at first sightappears so alarming. This is the immense proportion of _destitutewidows with families_, who in such circumstances find themselvesimmovably fixed in places where they can neither bring up theirchildren decently, nor get away to other and less peopled localities. 

From the admirable statistical returns of the condition of thelabouring poor in France, prepared for the _Bureau de l'Intérieure_, it appears that the number of widows in that country amounts to theenormous number of 1, 738, 000. [10] This, out of a population now ofabout 34, 000, 000, is as nearly as possible _one in twenty_ of theentire population! Population is advancing much more rapidly in GreatBritain than France; for in the former country it is doubling inabout 60 years, in the latter in 106. It is certain, therefore, thatthe proportion of widows must be greater in this country than inFrance, especially in the manufacturing districts, where earlymarriages, from the ready employment for young children, are sofrequent; and early deaths, from the unhealthiness of employment orcontagious disorders, are so common. But call the proportion thesame: let it be taken at a twentieth part of the existing population. At this rate, the two millions of strangers who, during the lastforty years, have been thrown into the four northern counties ofLancaster, York, Stafford, and Warwick, must contain at this moment_a hundred thousand widows_. The usual average of a family is two anda half children--call it two only. There will thus be found to be200, 000 children belonging to these 100, 000 widows. It is hardlynecessary to say, that the great majority, probably four-fifths ofthis immense body, must be in a state of destitution. We know in whatstate the fatherless and widows are in their affliction, and who hascommanded us to visit them. On the most moderate calculation, 250, 000, or an eighth of the whole population, must be in a state ofpoverty and privation. And in Scotland, where, during the same periodof forty years, 350, 000 strangers have been suddenly huddled togetheron the banks of the Clyde, the proportion may be presumed to be thesame; or, in other words, _thirty thousand_ widows and orphans areconstantly there in a state deserving of pity, and requiring support, hardly any of whom receive more from the parish funds than _ashilling a-week_, even for the maintenance of a whole family. 

The proportion of widows and orphans to the entire population, thoughwithout doubt in some degree aggravated by the early marriages andunhealthy employments incident to manufacturing districts, may besupposed to be not materially different in one age, or part of thecountry, from another. The widow and the orphan, as well as the poor, will be always with us; but the peculiar circumstance which renderstheir condition so deplorable in the dense and suddenly peopledmanufacturing districts is, that the poor have been brought togetherin such prodigious numbers that all the ordinary means of providingfor the relief of such casualties fails; while the causes ofmortality among them are periodically so fearful, as to produce avast and sudden increase of the most destitute classes altogetheroutstripping all possible means of local or voluntary relief. Duringthe late typhus fever in Glasgow, in the years 1836 and 1837, above30, 000 of the poor took the epidemic, of whom 3300 died. [11] In thefirst eight months of 1843 alone, 32, 000 persons in Glasgow wereseized with fever. [12] Out of 1000 families, at a subsequent period, visited by the police, in conjunction with the visitors for thedistribution of the great fund raised by subscription in 1841, 680were found to be widows, who, with their families, amounted to above2000 persons all in the most abject state of wretchedness andwant. [13] On so vast a scale do the causes of human destruction anddemoralization act, when men are torn up from their native seats bythe irresistible magnet of commercial wealth, and congregatedtogether in masses, resembling rather the armies of Timour andNapoleon than any thing else ever witnessed in the transactions ofmen. 

[Footnote 10: _Statistique de la France, publiée par leGouvernement_, viii. 371-4. A most splendid work. ]

[Footnote 11: Fever patients, Glasgow, 1836, 37. 

 Fever patients. Died. 1836, . . 10, 092 . 1187 1837, . . 21, 800 . 2180 ------ ---- 31, 892 3367

--COWAN'S _Vital Statistics of Glasgow_, 1388, p 8, the work of amost able and meritorious medical gentleman now no more. ]

[Footnote 12: Dr Alison on the Epidemic of 1843, p. 67. ]

[Footnote 13: Captain Millar's Report, 1841, p. 8. ]

Here, then, is the great source of demoralization, destitution, andcrime in the manufacturing districts. It arises from the suddencongregation of human beings in such fearful multitudes together, that all the usual alleviations of human suffering, or modes ofproviding for human indigence, entirely fail. We wonder at the rapidincrease of crime in the manufacturing districts, forgetting that asqualid mass of two or three hundred thousand human beings areconstantly precipitated to the bottom of society in a few counties, in such circumstances of destitution that recklessness and crimearise naturally, it may almost be said unavoidably, amongst them. Andit is in the midst of such gigantic causes of evil--of causes arisingfrom the extraordinary and unparalleled influx of mankind into themanufacturing districts during the last forty years, which can bear acomparison to nothing but the collection of the host with whichNapoleon invaded Russia, or Timour and Genghis Khan desolatedAsia--that we are gravely told that it is to be arrested by educationand moral training; by infant schools and shortened hours of labour;by multiplication of ministers and solitary imprisonment! All theseare very good things; each in its way is calculated to do a certainamount of good; and their united action upon the whole willdoubtless, in process of time, produce some impression upon theaspect of society, even in the densely peopled manufacturingdistricts. As to their producing any immediate effect, or in anysensible degree arresting the prodigious amount of misery, destitution, and crime which pervades them, you might as well havetried, by the schoolmaster, to arrest the horrors of the Moscowretreat. 

That the causes which have now been mentioned are the true sources ofthe rapid progress of crime and general demoralization of ourmanufacturing and mining districts, must be evident to all from thiscircumstance, well known to all who are practically conversant withthe subject, but to a great degree unattended to by the majority ofmen, and that is, --that the prodigious stream of depravity andcorruption which prevails, is far from being equally and generallydiffused through society, even in the densely peopled districts whereit is most alarming, but is in a great degree confined to the _verylowest class_. It is from that lowest class that nine-tenths of thecrime, and nearly all the professional crime, which is felt as sogreat an evil in society, flows. Doubtless in all classes there aresome wicked, many selfish and inhumane men; and a beneficent Deity, in the final allotment of rewards and punishments, will take largelyinto account both the opportunities of doing well which the betterclasses have abused, and the almost invincible causes which so oftenchain, as it were, the destitute to recklessness and crime. Butstill, in examining the classes of society on which the greater partof the crime comes, it will be found that at least three-fourths, probably nine-tenths, comes from the very lowest and the mostdestitute. It is incorrect to say crime is common among them; intruth, among the young at least, a tendency to it is there all butuniversal. If we examine who it is that compose this dismalsubstratum, this hideous _black band of society_, we shall find thatit is not made up of any one class more than another--not of factoryworkers more than labourers, carters, or miners--but is formed by anaggregate of the most unfortunate or improvident of _all classes_, who, variously struck down from better ways by disease, vice, orsensuality, are now of necessity huddled together by tens ofthousands in the dens of poverty, and held by the firm bond ofnecessity in the precincts of contagion and crime. Society in suchcircumstances resembles the successive bands of which the imaginationof Dante has framed the infernal regions, which contain oneconcentric circle of horrors and punishments within another, until, when you arrive at the bottom, you find one uniform mass of crime, blasphemy and suffering. 

We are persuaded there is no person practically acquainted with thecauses of immorality and crime in the manufacturing districts, whowill not admit that these are the true ones; and that the others, about which so much is said by theorists and philanthropists, thoughnot without influence, are nevertheless trifling in the balance. Andwhat we particularly call the public attention to is this--Supposeall the remedies which theoretical writers or practical legislatorshave put forth and recommended, as singly adequate to remove theevils of the manufacturing classes, were to be in _united_ operation, they would still leave these gigantic causes of evil untouched. LetLord Ashley obtain from a reluctant legislature his ten-hours' bill, and Dr Chalmers have a clergyman established for every 700inhabitants; let church extension be pushed till there is a chapel inevery village, and education till there is a school in every street;let the separate system be universal in prisons, and every criminalbe entirely secluded from vicious contamination; still the greatfountains of evil will remain unclosed; still 300, 000 widows andorphans will exist in a few counties of England amidst a newlycollected and strange population, steeped in misery themselves, andof necessity breeding up their children in habits of destitution anddepravity; still the poor will be deprived, from the suddenness oftheir collection, and the density of their numbers, of any effectivecontrol, either from private character or the opinion ofneighbourhood; still individual passion will be inflamed, andindividual responsibility lost amidst multitudes; still strikes willspread their compulsory idleness amidst tens of thousands, andperiodically array the whole working classes under the banners ofsedition, despotism, and murder; still precocious female labour willat once tempt parents into idleness in middle life, and disqualifychildren, in youth, for household or domestic duties. We wish well tothe philanthropists: we are far from undervaluing either theimportance or the utility of their labours; but as we have hithertoseen no diminution of crime whatever from their efforts, so weanticipate a very slow and almost imperceptible improvement insociety from their exertions. 

Strong, and in many respects just, pictures of the state of theworking classes in the manufacturing districts, have been lately putforth, and the _Perils of the Nation_ have, with reason, been thoughtto be seriously increased by them. Those writers, however, howobservant and benevolent soever, give a partial, and in many respectsfallacious view, of the _general_ aspect of society. After readingtheir doleful accounts of the general wretchedness, profligacy, andlicentiousness of the working classes, the stranger is astonished, ontravelling through England, to behold green fields and smilingcottages on all sides; to see in every village signs of increasingcomfort, in every town marks of augmented wealth, and the aspect ofpoverty almost banished from the land. Nay, what is still moregratifying, the returns of the sanatary condition of the wholepopulation, though still exhibiting a painful difference between thehealth and chances of life in the rural and manufacturing districts, present unequivocal proof of a general amelioration of the chances oflife, and, consequently, of the general wellbeing of the wholecommunity. 

How are these opposite statements and appearances to be reconciled?Both are true--the reconciliation is easy. The misery, recklessness, and vice exist chiefly in one class--the industry, sobriety, andcomfort in another. Each observer tells truly what he sees in his owncircle of attention; he does not tell what, nevertheless, exists, andexercises a powerful influence on society, of the good which existsin the other classes. If the evils detailed in Lord Ashley'sspeeches, and painted with so much force in the _Perils of theNation_, were universal, or even general, society could not holdtogether for a week. But though these evils are great, sometimesoverwhelming in particular districts, they are far from beinggeneral. Nothing effectual has yet been done to arrest them in thelocalities or communities where they arise; but they do not spreadmuch beyond them. The person engaged in the factories are stated byLord Ashley to be between four and five hundred thousand: thepopulation of the British islands is above 27, 000, 000. It is in thesteadiness, industry, and good conduct of a large proportion of thisimmense majority that the security is to be found. Observe thatindustrious and well-doing majority; you would suppose there is nodanger:--observe the profligate and squalid minority; you wouldsuppose there is no hope. 

At present about 60, 000 persons are annually committed, in theBritish islands, for serious offences[14] worthy of deliberate trial, and above double that number for summary or police offences. Ahundred and eighty thousand persons annually fall under the lash ofthe criminal law, and are committed for longer or shorter periods toplaces of confinement for punishment. The number is prodigious--it isfrightful. Yet it is in all only about 1 in 120 of the population;and from the great number who are repeatedly committed during thesame year, the individuals punished are not 1 in 200. Such as theyare, it may safely be affirmed that four-fifths of this 180, 000 comesout of two or three millions of the community. We are quite sure that150, 000 come from 3, 000, 000 of the lowest and most squalid of theempire, and not 30, 000 from the remaining 24, 000, 000 who live incomparative comfort. This consideration is fitted both to encouragehope and awaken shame--hope, as showing from how small a class insociety the greater part of the crime comes, and to how limited asphere the remedies require to be applied; shame, as demonstratinghow disgraceful has been the apathy, selfishness, and supineness inthe other more numerous and better classes, around whom the evil hasarisen, but who seldom interfere, except to RESIST all measurescalculated for its removal. 

It is to this subject--the ease with which the extraordinary andunprecedented increase of crime in the empire might be arrested byproper means and the total inefficiency of all the remedies hithertoattempted, from the want of practical knowledge on the part of thoseat the head of affairs, and an entirely false view of human nature insociety generally, that we shall direct the attention of our readersin a future Number. 

[Footnote 14: Viz. , in round numbers--

 England, 30, 000 Ireland, 26, 000 Scotland, 4, 000 60, 000]

THE HEART OF THE BRUCE. 

A BALLAD. 

 It was upon an April morn While yet the frost lay hoar, We heard Lord James's bugle-horn Sound by the rocky shore. 

 Then down we went, a hundred knights, All in our dark array, And flung our armour in the ships That rode within the bay. 

 We spoke not as the shore grew less, But gazed in silence back, Where the long billows swept away The foam behind our track. 

 And aye the purple hues decay'd Upon the fading hill, And but one heart in all that ship Was tranquil, cold, and still. 

 The good Earl Douglas walk'd the deck, And oh, his brow was wan! Unlike the flush it used to wear When in the battle van. --

 "Come hither, come hither, my trusty knight, Sir Simon of the Lee; There is a freit lies near my soul I fain would tell to thee. 

 "Thou knowest the words King Robert spoke Upon his dying day, How he bade me take his noble heart And carry it far away:

 "And lay it in the holy soil Where once the Saviour trod, Since he might not bear the blessed Cross, Nor strike one blow for God. 

 "Last night as in my bed I lay, I dream'd a dreary dream:-- Methought I saw a Pilgrim stand In the moonlight's quivering beam. 

 "His robe was of the azure dye, Snow-white his scatter'd hairs, And even such a cross he bore As good Saint Andrew bears. 

 "'Why go ye forth, Lord James, ' he said, 'With spear and belted brand? Why do ye take its dearest pledge From this our Scottish land?

 "'The sultry breeze of Galilee Creeps through its groves of palm, The olives on the Holy Mount Stand glittering in the calm. 

 "'But 'tis not there that Scotland's heart Shall rest by God's decree, Till the great angel calls the dead To rise from earth and sea!

 "'Lord James of Douglas, mark my rede That heart shall pass once more In fiery fight against the foe, As it was wont of yore. 

 "'And it shall pass beneath the Cross, And save King Robert's vow, But other hands shall bear it back, Not, James of Douglas, thou!'

 "Now, by thy knightly faith, I pray, Sir Simon of the Lee-- For truer friend had never man Than thou hast been to me--

 "If ne'er upon the Holy Land 'Tis mine in life to tread, Bear thou to Scotland's kindly earth The relics of her dead. "

 The tear was in Sir Simon's eye As he wrung the warrior's hand-- "Betide me weal, betide me woe, I'll hold by thy command. 

 "But if in battle front, Lord James, 'Tis ours once more to ride, Nor force of man, nor craft of fiend, Shall cleave me from thy side!"

 And aye we sail'd, and aye we sail'd, Across the weary sea, Until one morn the coast of Spain Rose grimly on our lee. 

 And as we rounded to the port, Beneath the watch-tower's wall, We heard the clash of the atabals, And the trumpet's wavering call. 

 "Why sounds yon Eastern music here So wantonly and long, And whose the crowd of armed men That round yon standard throng?'

 "The Moors have come from Africa To spoil and waste and slay, And Pedro, King of Arragon, Must fight with them to-day. "

 "Now shame it were, " cried good Lord James, "Shall never be said of me, That I and mine have turn'd aside, From the Cross in jeopardie!

 "Have down, have down my merry men all-- Have down unto the plain; We'll let the Scottish lion loose Within the fields of Spain!"--

 "Now welcome to me, noble lord, Thou and thy stalwart power; Dear is the sight of a Christian knight Who comes in such an hour!

 "Is it for bond or faith ye come, Or yet for golden fee? Or bring ye France's lilies here, Or the flower of Burgundie?'

 "God greet thee well, thou valiant King, Thee and thy belted peers-- Sir James of Douglas am I call'd, And these are Scottish spears. 

 "We do not fight for bond or plight, Nor yet for golden fee; But for the sake of our blessed Lord, That died Upon the tree. 

 "We bring our great King Robert's heart Across the weltering wave, To lay it in the holy soil Hard by the Saviour's grave. 

 "True pilgrims we, by land or sea, Where danger bars the way; And therefore are we here, Lord King, To ride with thee this day!"

 The King has bent his stately head, And the tears were in his eyne-- "God's blessing on thee, noble knight, For this brave thought of thine!

 "I know thy name full well, Lord James, And honour'd may I be, That those who fought beside the Bruce Should fight this day for me!

 "Take thou the leading of the van, And charge the Moors amain; There is not such a lance as thine In all the host of Spain!"

 The Douglas turned towards us then, Oh, but his glance was high!-- "There is not one of all my men But is as bold as I. 

 "There is not one of all my knights But bears as true a spear-- Then onwards! Scottish gentlemen, And think--King Robert's here!"

 The trumpets blew, the cross-bolts flew, The arrows flash'd like flame, As spur in side, and spear in rest, Against the foe we came. 

 And many a bearded Saracen Went down, both horse and man; For through their ranks we rode like corn, So furiously we ran!

 But in behind our path they closed, Though fain to let us through, For they were forty thousand men, And we were wondrous few. 

 We might not see a lance's length, So dense was their array, But the long fell sweep of the Scottish blade Still held them hard at bay. 

 "Make in! make in!" Lord Douglas cried, "Make in, my brethren dear! Sir William of St Clair is down, We may not leave him here!"

 But thicker, thicker, grew the swarm, And sharper shot the rain, And the horses rear'd amid the press, But they would not charge again. 

 "Now Jesu help thee, " said Lord James, "Thou kind and true St Clair! An' if I may not bring thee off, I'll die beside thee there!"

 Then in his stirrups up he stood, So lionlike and bold, And held the precious heart aloft All in its case of gold. 

 He flung it from him, far ahead, And never spake he more, But--"Pass thee first, thou dauntless heart, As thou were wont of yore!"

 The roar of fight rose fiercer yet, And heavier still the stour, Till the spears of Spain came shivering in And swept away the Moor. 

 "Now praised be God, the day is won! They fly o'er flood and fell-- Why dost thou draw the rein so hard, Good knight, that fought so well?"

 "Oh, ride ye on, Lord King!" he said, "And leave the dead to me, For I must keep the dreariest watch That ever I shall dree!

 "There lies beside his master's heart The Douglas, stark and grim; And woe is me I should be here, Not side by side with him!

 "The world grows cold, my arm is old, And thin my lyart hair, And all that I loved best on earth Is stretch'd before me there. 

 "O Bothwell banks! that bloom so bright, Beneath the sun of May, The heaviest cloud that ever blew Is bound for you this day. 

 "And, Scotland, thou may'st veil thy head In sorrow and in pain; The sorest stroke upon thy brow Hath fallen this day in Spain!

 "We'll bear them back into our ship, We'll bear them o'er the sea, And lay them in the hallow'd earth, Within our own countrie. 

 "And be thou strong of heart, Lord King, For this I tell thee sure, The sod that drank the Douglas' blood Shall never bear the Moor!"

 The King he lighted from his horse, He flung his brand away, And took the Douglas by the hand, So stately as he lay. 

 "God give thee rest, thou valiant soul, That fought so well for Spain; I'd rather half my land were gone, So thou wert here again!"

 We bore the good Lord James away, And the priceless heart he bore, And heavily we steer'd our ship Towards the Scottish shore. 

 No welcome greeted our return, Nor clang of martial tread, But all were dumb and hush'd as death Before the mighty dead. 

 We laid the Earl in Douglas Kirk, The heart in fair Melrose; And woful men were we that day-- God grant their souls repose! W. E. A. 

MEMORANDUMS OF A MONTH'S TOUR IN SICILY. 

THE MUSEUM OF PALERMO. 

The museum of Palermo is a small but very interesting collection ofstatues and other sculpture, gathered chiefly, they say, from theancient temples of Sicily, with a few objects bestowed out of thesuperfluities of Pompeii. In the lower room are some goodbas-reliefs, to which a story is attached. They were discoveredfifteen years ago at _Selinuntium_ by some young Englishmen, thereward of four months' labour. Our guide, who had been also theirs, had warned them not to stay after the month of June, when malariabegins. They did stay. All (four) took the fever; one died of it inPalermo, and the survivors were deprived by the government--that is, by the king--of the spoils for which they had suffered so much andworked so hard. No one is permitted to excavate without royallicense; _excavation_ is, like _Domitian's fish, res fisci_. Even MrFagan, who was consul at Palermo, having made some interestingunderground discoveries, was deprived of them. We saw here a fineEsculapius, in countenance and expression exceedingly like the _EcceHomo_ of Leonardo da Vinci, with all that god-like compassion whichthe great painter had imparted without any sacrifice of dignity. Heholds a poppy-head, which we do not recollect on his statue or gems, and the Epidaurian snake is at his side. Up-stairs we saw specimensof fruits from Pompeii, barley, beans, the carob pod, pine kernels, as well as bread, sponge, linen: and the sponge was obviously such, and so was the linen. A bronze Hercules treading on the back of astag, which he has overtaken and subdued, is justly considered as oneof the most perfect bronzes discovered at Pompeii. A head of ourSaviour, by Corregio, is exquisite in conception, and such as nonebut a person long familiar with the physiognomy of suffering couldhave accomplished. These are exceptions rather than specimens. Thepictures, in general, are poor in interest; and a long gallery of_casts_ of the _chef-d'oeuvres_ of antiquity possessed by thecapitals of Italy, Germany, England, and France, looks oddly here, and shows the poverty of a country which had been to the predatoryproconsuls of Rome an inexhaustible repertory of the highesttreasures of art. A VERRES REDIVIVUS would now find little to carryoff but toys made of amber, lava snuff-boxes, and WODEHOUSE'SMARSALA--one of which he certainly would not guess the _age_ of, andthe other of which he would not _drink_. 

LUNATIC ASYLUM. 

We saw nothing in this house or its arrangements to make us think itsuperior, or very different from others we had visited elsewhere. Themaking a lunatic asylum a show-place for strangers is to be censured;indeed, we heard Esquirol observe, that nothing was so bad as theadmission of many persons to see the patients at all; for that, although some few were better for the visits of friends, it wasinjurious as a general rule to give even friends admittance, and thatit ought to be left discretionary with the physician, _when_ toadmit, and _whom_. Cleanliness, good fare, a garden, and thesuppression of all violence--these have become immutable canons forthe conduct of such institutions, and fortunately demand little morethan ordinary good feeling and intelligence in the superintendent. But we could not fail to observe a sad want of suitable inducement to_occupation_, which was apparent throughout this asylum. That notabove one in ten could read, may perhaps be thought a light matter, for few can be the resources of insanity in books; yet we saw at_Genoa_ a case where it had taken that turn, and as it is occupationto read, with how much profit it matters not. Not one woman in four, as usually occurs in insanity, could be induced to _dress accordingto her sex_; they figured away in men's coats and hats! Thedining-room was hung with portraits of some merit, by one of thelunatics; and we noticed that every face, if indeed all are_portraits_, had some insanity in it. They have a dance every Sundayevening. What an exhibition it must be!

MISCELLANEA

That the vegetation of Palermo excels that of Naples, partly dependson the superior intelligence of the agriculturist, and partly uponsoil and climate: the fruits here are not only more advanced, butfiner in quality. We left a very meagre dessert of cherries beginningto ripen at Naples; the very next day, a superabundance of very fineand mature ones were to be had on all the stalls of Palermo. Thismust be the result of industry and care in a great measure; for onleaving that city, after a _séjour_ of three weeks, for Messina, Catania, and Syracuse, although summer was much further advanced, werelapsed into miserably meagre supplies of what we had eaten inperfection in the capital; yet Syracuse and Catania are much warmerthan Palermo. 

The vegetables here are of immense growth. The fennel root (and thereis no better test of your whereabouts in Italy) is nearly twice aslarge as at Naples, and weighs, accordingly, nearly double. Thecauliflowers are quite colossal; and they have a blue cabbage so bigthat your arms will scarcely embrace it. We question, however, whether this hypertrophy of fruit or vegetables improves theirflavour; give us _English vegetables_--ay, and _English fruit_. Though Smyrna's _fig_ is eaten throughout Europe, and Roman _brocoli_be without a rival; though the _cherry_ and the Japan _medlar_flourish only at Palermo, and the _cactus_ of Catania can be eatennowhere else; what country town in England is not better off on thewhole, if quality alone be considered? But we have one terribledrawback; for _whom_ are these fruits of the earth produced? Our_prices_ are enormous, and our supply scanty; could we _forget this_, and the artichoke, the asparagus, the peas and beans of London andParis, are rarely elsewhere so fine. To our palates the _gooseberry_and the _black currant_ are a sufficient indemnity to Britain for the_grape_, merely regarded as a fruit to _eat. Pine-apples_, those"illustrious foreigners, " are so successfully _petted_ at home, thatthey will scarcely condescend now to flourish out of England. _Nectarines_ refuse to ripen, and _apricots_ to have any tasteelsewhere. Our _pears_ and _apples_ are better, and of more variousexcellence, than any in the world. And we really prefer our veryfigs, grown on a fine _prebendal_ wall in the close of _Winchester_, or under _Pococke's_ window in a canon's garden at _chilly Oxford_. Thus has the kitchen-garden refreshed our patriotism, and made ushalf ashamed of our long forgetfulness of home. But there are goodthings abroad too for poor men; the rich may live any where. Anenormous salad, crisp, cold, white, and of delicious flavour, for ahalfpenny; olive oil, for fourpence a pound, to dress it with; andwine for fourpence a gallon to make it disagree with you;[15] fuelfor almost nothing, and bread for little, are not small advantages tofrugal housekeepers; but, when dispensed by a despotic government, where one must read those revolting words _motu proprio_ at the headof every edict, let us go back to our carrots and potatoes, our Peelsand our income-tax, our fogs and our frost. The country mouse came toa right conclusion, and did not like the fragments of the feast withthe cat in the cupboard--

 Give me again my hollow tree, My crust of bread, and liberty. "

[Footnote 15:

 ----_Lactuca_ innatat acri Post vinum stomacho. --HOR. ]

Fish, though plentiful and various, is not fine in any part of the_Mediterranean_; and as to _thunny_, one surfeit would put it out ofthe bill of fare for life. On the whole, though at Palermo and Naplesthe pauper starves not in the streets, the gourmand would be sadly ata loss in his requisition of delicacies and variety. Inferior bread, at a penny a pound, is here considered palatable by the sprinklingover of the crust with a small rich seed (_jugulena_) which has aflavour like the almond; it is also strewn, like our caraway seeds inbiscuits, _into_ the paste, and is largely cultivated for that singleuse. The _capsici_, somewhat similar in flavour to the pea, aredetached from the radicles of a plant with a flower strikingly likethe potatoe, and is used for a similar purpose to the jugulena. 

This island was the granary of Athens before it nourished Rome; andwheat appears to have been first raised in Europe on the plains ofeastern Sicily. In Cicero's time it returned eightfold; and to thisday one grain yields its eightfold of increase; which, however, is bya small fraction less than our own, as given by M'Culloch in his"Dictionary of Commerce. " We plucked some _siligo_, or bearded wheat, near Palermo, the beard of which was eight inches long, the earcontained sixty grains, eight being also in this instance the averageincrease; how many grains, then, must perish in the ground!

In Palermo, English gunpowder is sold by British sailors at the highprice of from five to seven shillings per English pound; the "Polvere_nostrale_" of the Sicilians only fetches 1s. 8d. ; yet such is thesuperiority of English gunpowder, that every one who has a passionfor popping at sparrows, and other _Italian sports_, (complimented bythe title of _La caccia_, ) prefers the dear article. When they havekilled off all the robins, and there is not a twitter in _the wholecountry_, they go to the river side and shoot _gudgeons_. 

The Palermo donkey is the most obliging animal that ever wore longears, and will carry you cheerfully four or five miles an hourwithout whip or other _encouragement_. The oxen, no longer white orcream-coloured, as in Tuscany, were originally importations fromBarbary, (to which country the Sicilians are likewise indebted forthe _mulberry_ and _silk-worm_. ) Their colour is brown. They rivalthe Umbrian breed in the herculean symmetry of their form, and in thepossession of horns of more than Umbrian dimensions, rising moreperpendicularly over the forehead than in that ancient race. Thelizards here are such beautiful creatures, that it is worth while tobring one away, and, to _pervert_ a quotation, "UNIUS _Dominum sesefecisse_ LACERTAE. " Some are all green, some mottled like a mosaicfloor, others green and black on the upper side, and orange-colouredor red underneath. Of snakes, there is a _Coluber niger_ from four tofive feet in length, with a shining coat, and an eye not pleasant towatch even through glass; yet the peasants here put them into theirPhrygian bonnets, and handle them with as much _sang-froid_ as onewould a walking-stick. 

The coarse earthen vessels, pitchers, urns, &c. , used by thepeasants, are of the most beautiful shapes, often that of the ancient_amphora_; and at every cottage door by the road-side you meet withthis vestige of the ancient arts of the country. 

The plague which visited Palermo in 1624 swept away 20, 000inhabitants; Messina, in 1743, lost 40, 000. The cholera, in 1837, destroyed 69, 253 persons. The present population of the whole islandis 1, 950, 000; the female exceeds the male by about three per cent, which is contrary to the general rule. It is said that nearlyone-half the children received into the foundling hospital of Palermodie within the first year. 

Formerly the barons of Sicily were rich and independent, like ourEnglish gentlemen; but they say that, since 1812, the king's wholepleasure and business, as before our _Magna Charta_ times, have beento lower their importance. In that year a revolt was the consequenceof an income-tax even of two per cent, for they were yet unbroken tothe yoke; but now that he has saddled property with a deduction, _said_ to be eventually equal to fifteen per cent, if not more; nowthat he doubles the impost on the native sulphur, which is thereforechecked in its sale; now that he keeps an army of 80, 000 men to playat soldiers with; now that he constitutes himself the only refereeeven in questions of commercial expediency, and _a fortiori_ in allother cases, which he settles _arbitrarily_, or does not settle atall; now that he sees so little the signs of the times, that he willnot let a professor go to a science-congress at Florence or Bolognawithout an express permission, and so ignorant as to have _refused_that permission for fear of a political bias; now that he diverts anation's wealth from works of charity or usefulness, to keep a set offoreigners in his pay--they no doubt here remember in their prayers, with becoming gratitude, "the holy alliance, " or, as we would callit, the _mutual insurance company of the kings of Europe_, of whichCastlereagh and Metternich were the honorary secretaries. 

In the midst of all the gloomy despotism, beautiful even asimagination can paint it, is Palermo beautiful! One eminent advantageit possesses over Naples itself--its vicinity presents more "drives;"and all the drives here might contest the name given to one of them, which is called "_Giro delle Grazie_, " (the Ring or Mall of theGraces. ) It has a _Marina_ of unrivaled beauty, to which the noblesseand the citizens repair and form a promenade of elegant equipages. Afine pavement for foot passengers is considerately raised three orfour feet above the carriage road; so that the walking populationhave nothing to annoy them. The sea is immediately below both, andyou see the little rock-encircled bays animated with groups of thosesturdy fishermen with bare legs; which you admire in Claude andSalvator, throwing before them, with admirable precision, their_épervier_ net, whose fine wrought meshes sometimes hang, veil-like, between you and the ruddy sunset, or plashing, as they fall nightlyinto the smooth sea, contribute the pleasure of an agreeable sound tothe magic of the scenery. Some take the air on donkeys, which go at agreat rate; some are mounted on Spanish mules, all mixed togetherfreely amidst handsome and numerous equipages; and the whole isbacked by a fine row of houses opposite the sea, built after thefashion of our terraces and crescents at watering-places. Andfinally, that blue _æquor_, as it now deserves to be termed, studdedover with thunny boats and coasting craft with the haze latine sail, that we should be sorry to trust in British hands, is walled in bycliffs so bold, so rugged, and standing out so beautifully in relief, that for a moment we cannot choose but envy the citizen of_Panormus_. But we may not tarry even here; _we have more things_ tosee, and every day is getting hotter than the last. 

JOURNEY TO SEGESTE. 

Leaving Palermo early, we pass _Monreale_ in our way to the Doriccolumns of _Segeste_, and find ourselves, before the heat of day hasreached its greatest intensity, at a considerable elevation above theplain on which the capital stands, amidst mountains which, except inthe difference of their vegetation, remind us not a little of theconfiguration of certain wild parts of the Highlands, where BenCroachin flings his dark shadow across Loch Awe. Indeed, we werethinking of this old and favourite fishing haunt with muchcomplacency, when two men suddenly came forth from behind the bristlyaloes and the impenetrable cactus--ill-looking fellows were they;but, moved by the kindest intentions for our safety, they offer toconduct us through the remainder of the defile. This service ourhired attendant from Palermo declined, and we push on unmolested toPartenico, our halting-place during the heat of the day. It is a townof some extent, large enough to afford two fountains of a certainpretension, but execrably dirty within. Twelve thousand inhabitantshas Partenico, and five churches. Out of its five locandas, who shalldeclare the worst? Of that in which we had first taken refuge, (as, in a snow-storm on the Alps, any _roof_ is Paradise, ) we were obligedto quit the shelter, and walk at _noon_, at _midsummer_, and in_Sicily_, a good mile _up_ a main street, which, beginning inhabitations of the dimensions of our almshouses, ends in a few hutsintolerably revolting, about which troops of naked children defyvermin, and encrust themselves in filth. At one door we could nothelp observing that worst form of _scabies_, the _gale à grossesbulles;_ so we had got, it appeared, from _Scylla_ into _Charybdis_, and were in the very preserves of Sicilian _itch_, and weprognosticate it will spread before the month expires wherever humanskin is to be found for its entertainment. Partenico lies in ascorching plain full of malaria. Having passed the three stiflinghours of the day here, we proceed on our journey to _Alcamo_, a townof considerable size, which looks remarkably well from the plain atthe distance of four miles--an impression immediately removed onpassing its high rampart gate. Glad to escape the miseries with whichit threatens the _détenu_, we pass out at the other end, and zigzagdown a hill of great beauty, and commanding such views of sea andland as it would be quite absurd to write about. Already a double rowof aloë, planted at intervals, marks what is to be your course afaroff, and is a faithful guide till it lands you in a Sicilian plain. This is the highest epithet with which any plain can be qualified. This is indeed the month for Sicily. The goddess of flowers now wearsa morning dress of the newest spring fashion; beautifully _made up_is that dress, nor has she worn it long enough for it to be sulliedever so little, or to require the washing of a shower. A delicatepink and a rich red are the colours which prevail in the tastefulpattern of her voluminous drapery; and as she _advances_ on you witha light and noiseless step, over a carpet which all the looms ofParis or of Persia could not imitate, scattering bouquets of coloursthe most happily contrasted, and impregnating the air with the mostgrateful fragrance, we at once acknowledge her beautifulimpersonation in that "_monument of Grecian art_, " the _FarneseFlora_, of which we have brought the fresh recollection from themuseum of Naples. 

The _Erba Bianca_ is a plant like southernwood, presenting a curioushoar-frosted appearance as its leaves are stirred by the wind. The_Rozzolo a vento_ is an ambitious plant, which grows beyond itsstrength, snaps short upon its overburdened stalk, and is borne awayby any zephyr, however light. Large crops of _oats_ are already cut;and oxen of the Barbary breed, brown and coal-black, are alreadydragging the simple aboriginal plough over the land. Some of thesefine cattle (to whom we are strangers, as they are to us) stoodgazing at us in the plain, their white horns glancing in the sun;others, recumbent and ruminating, exhibit antlers which, as we havesaid before, surpass the Umbrian cattle in their elk-like length andimposing majesty. Arrived at the bottom of our long hill, we pass abeautiful stream called _Fiume freddo_, whose source we track acrossthe plain by banks crowned with _Cactus_ and _Tamarisk_. Looking backwith regret towards _Alcamo_, we see trains of mules, which stilltransact the internal commerce of the country, with large packsaddleson their backs; and when a halt takes place, these animals duringtheir drivers' dinner obtain their own ready-found meal, and browseaway on three courses of vegetables and a dessert. 

SICILIAN INNS. 

"A beautiful place this _Segeste_ must be! One could undergo anything to see it!" Such would be the probable exclamation of more thanone reader looking over some _landscape annual_, embellished withperhaps _a view_ of the celebrated temple and its surroundingscenery; but find yourself at any of the inexpressibly horrid inns of_Alcamo_ or _Calatafrini_, (and these are the two principal stationsbetween Palermo and Segeste--one with its 12, 000, the other with its18, 000 inhabitants;) let us walk you down the main street of either, and if you don't wish yourself at Cheltenham, or some otherunclassical place which never had a Latin name, we are much mistaken!The "_Relievo dei Cavalli_" at Alcamo offers no _relief_ for you! The_Magpie_ may prate on her sign-post about _clean_ beds, for magpiescan be made to say any thing; but pray do not construe the "_CanovaDivina_" Divine Canova! _He_ never executed any thing for the _RedLion_ of Calatafrini, whose "Canova" is a low wine-shop, full ofwrangling Sicilian boors. Or will you place yourself under the_Eagle's_ wing, seduced by its _nuovi mobili e buon servizio_? Oh, weobtest those broken window-panes whether it be not _cruel_ to expose_new furniture_ to such perils! For us we put up at the "_Temple ofSegeste_, " attracted rather by its name than by any promise or decoyit offers. Crabbe has given to the inns at Aldborough each itscharacter: here all are equal in immundicity, and all equally withoutprovisions. Some yellow beans lie soaking to soften them. There issalt-cod from the north, moist and putrid. There is no milk; eggs arefew. The ham at the Pizzicarolo's is always bad, and the garlickedsausage repulsive. Nothing is painted or white-washed, let alonedusted, swept, or scoured. The walls have the appearance of havingbeen _pawed_ over by new relays of dirty fingers daily for ten years. This is a very peculiar appearance at many nasty places _out_ ofSicily, and we really do not know its _pathology_. You treadloathingly an indescribable earthen floor, and your eye, on enteringthe apartment, is arrested by a nameless production of the fictileart, certainly not of _Etruscan_ form, which is invariably placed onthe _bolster_ of the truck-bed destined presently for your devotedhead. Oh! to do justice to a Sicilian _locanda_ is plainly out ofquestion, and the rest of our task may as well be sung as said, verseand prose being alike incapable of the hopeless reality:--

 "Lodged for the night, O Muse! begin To sing the true Sicilian inn, Where the sad choice of six foul cells The least exacting traveller quells (Though crawling things, not yet in sight, Are waiting for the shadowy night, To issue forth when all is quiet, And on your feverish pulses riot;) Where one wood shutter scrapes the ground, By crusts, stale-bones, and garbage bound; Where unmolested spiders toil Behind the mirror's mildew'd foil; Where the cheap crucifix of lead Hangs o'er the iron tressel'd bed; Where the huge bolt will scarcely keep Its promise to confiding sleep, Till you have forced it to its goal In the bored brick-work's crumbling hole; Where, in loose flakes, the white-wash peeling From the bare joints of rotten ceiling, Give token sure of vermin's bower, And swarms of bugs that bide their hour! Though bands of fierce musquittos boom Their threatening bugles round the room, To bed! Ere wingless creatures crawl Across your path from yonder wall, And slipper'd feet unheeding tread We know not what! To bed! to bed! What can those horrid sounds portend? Some waylaid traveller near his end, From ghastly gash in mortal strife, Or blow of bandit's blood-stained knife? No! no! They're bawling to the _Virgin_, Like victim under hands of surgeon! From lamp-lit _daub_, proceeds the cry Of that unearthly litany! And now a train of mules goes by!

 "One wretch comes whooping up the street For whooping's sake! And now they beat Drum after drum for market mass, Each day's transactions on the _place!_ All things that go, or stay, or come, They herald forth by tuck of drum. Day dawns! a tinkling tuneless bell, Whate'er it be, has news to tell. Then twenty more begin to strike In noisy discord, all alike;-- Convents and churches, chapels, shrines, In quick succession break the lines. Till every gong in town, at last Its tongue hath loos'd, and sleep is past. So much for nights! New days begin, Which land you in another Inn. O! he that means to see _Girgenti_ Or _Syracuse!_--needs patience plenty!"

Crossing a rustic bridge, we pass through a garden (for it is noless, though man has had no spade in it) of pinks, marigolds, cyclamens, and heart's-ease, &c. &c. ; the moist meadow land below isa perfect jungle of lofty grasses, all fragrant and in flower, gemmedwith the unevaporated morning dew, and colonized with the _Aphides, Alticæ_, and swarms of the most beautiful butterflies clinging totheir stalks. _Gramina læta_ after Virgil's own heart, were these. Their elegance and unusual variety were sufficient to throw abotanist into a perfect HAY fever, and our own first paroxysm onlywent off, when, after an hour's hard collecting, we came to a placewhich demanded _another_ sort of enthusiasm; for THERE stood withouta veil the _Temple of Segeste_, with one or two glimpses of which wehad been already astonished at a distance, in all its Dorian majesty!This almost unmutilated and glorious memorial of past ages herereigns alone--the only building far or near visible in the wholehorizon; and what a position has its architect secured! In the midstof hills on a bit of table-land, apparently made such by smoothingdown the summit of one of them, with a greensward in front, and setoff behind by a mountain background, stands this eternal monument ofthe noblest of arts amidst the finest dispositions of nature. Thereis another antiquity of the place also to be visited at Segeste--its_theatre_; but we are too immediately below it to know any thingabout it at present, and must leave it in a parenthesis. To our left, at the distance of eight miles, this hill country of harmonious andgraceful undulation ends in beetling cliffs, beneath which the sea, now full in view, lies sparkling in the morning sunshine. We shallnever, never forget the impressions made upon us on first gettingsight of Segeste! _Pæstum_ we had seen, and thought that it exhaustedall that was possible to a temple, or the site of a temple. Awe-stricken had we surveyed those monuments of "immemorialantiquity" in that baleful region of wild-eyed buffaloes and birds ofprey--temples to death in the midst of his undisputed domains! We hadfully adopted Forsyth's sentiment, and held Pæstum to be probably themost impressive monument on earth; but here at Segeste a nature lessaustere, and more RIANTE in its wildness, lent a quite differentcharm to a scene which could scarcely be represented by art, and forwhich a reader could certainly not be _prepared_ by description. Wegave an antiquarian's devoutest worship to this venerable survivor of2000 years, and of many empires--we _felt_ the vast masses of itstime-tried Doric, and even the wild flowers within its precincts, itspink valerians; its _erba di vento_, its scented wallflower. Thewhole scene kept our admiration long tasked, but untired. A smartshower compelled us to seek shelter under the shoulder of one of thegrey entablatures: it soon passed away, leaving us a legacy of therichest fragrance, while a number of wild birds of the hawk kind, called "chaoli" from their shrill note, issued from theirhiding-places, and gave us wild music as they scudded by!

A few bits of wall scattered over the corn-fields are all that nowremains of the dwellings of the men who built this temple for theircity, and who, by its splendour, deluded the Athenians into a beliefof greater wealth than they possessed. 

Our ascent to the theatre, the day after, proved to be a very steepone, of half an hour on mule-back; in making which, we scared two ofthose prodigious birds, the _ospreys_, who, having reconnoitred us, forthwith began to wheel in larger and larger sweeps, and at lastmade off for the sea. We found the interior of the theatre occupiedby an audience ready for our arrival; it consisted of innummerable_hawks_, the chaoli just mentioned, which began to scream at ourintrusion. The ospreys soon returned, and were plainly only waitingour departure to subside upon their solitary domain. We would not bea soft-billed bird for something in this neighbourhood; no song wouldsave them from the hawks' supper. Having luxuriated on the 24th ofMay for full four hours in this enchanting neighbourhood, we weresorry to return to our inn--and such an inn! We departed abruptly, and probably never to return; but we shall think of Segeste in HydePark, or as we pass the candlestick Corinthians of Whitehall. Thucydides[16] relates that a prevailing notion in his time was, thatthe _Trojans_ after losing _Troy_ went first to _Sicily_, and foundedthere Egesta and Eryx. Now, as on the same authority the first_Greek_ colony was _Naxos_, also in Sicily, Greeks and Trojans(strange coincidence!) must have _met again_ on new ground after the_Iliad_ was all acted and done with, like a tale that is told. 

[Footnote 16: _Vide_ THUCYDIDES, Book iv. Chap. 15. ]

On our return towards Palermo, one of our party having a touch ofague, we crossed the street to the apothecary, (at Calatafrini, ournight's halt, ) and smelling about his musty galenicals, amidst alarge supply of _malvas_ which were drying on his counter, the onlywholesome-looking thing amidst his stores, we asked if he had any_quinine_. "_Sicuro!_" and he presented us with a white powder havinga slightly bitter taste, which, together with an ounce of green tea, to be dispensed in pinches of five grains on extraordinary occasions, comes, he says, from the East. On our observing that the quinine, ifsuch at all, was adulterated, and that this was too bad in a countryof malaria, where it was the poor man's only protection, he lookedangry; but we rose in the esteem of peasants in the shop, who said toeach other--"Ed ha ragione il Signor. " Wanting a little _soda_, wewere presented with sub-carbonate of potash as the nearest approachto it--a substitution which suggested to us a classical recollectionfrom Theocritus; namely, that in this same Sicily, 2000 years ago, aSyracusan husband is rated by his dame for sending her _soda_ for herwashing in place of potash, the very converse of what our olddrug-vender intended to have washed our inside withal. 

The Roman Catholic religion patronises painting oddly here; not acart but is adorned with some sacred subject. Every wretched vehiclethat totters under an unmerciful load, with one poor donkey to drawsix men, has its picture of _Souls in Purgatory_, who seem puttingtheir hands and heads out of the flames, and vainly calling on theruffians inside to _stop_. We read _Viva la Divina Providenza_, inflaming characters on the front board of a carriole, while the whipis goading the poor starved brute who drags it; for these barbariansin the rear of European civilization, plainly are of opinion that acart with a sacred device shall not _break down_, though its ownercommit every species of cruelty. 

The next day found us again installed at our old quarters in Palermo, where, during our brief remaining stay, we visit a conchologist, before which event we had no notion that Sicily was so rich inshells. Two sides of a moderately large room are entirely devoted tohis collection. Here we saw a piece of wood nearly destroyed by the_Teredo navalis_, or sailor's bore, who seems more active andindustrious here than elsewhere, and seldom allows himself to betaken whole. Out of hundreds of specimens, three or four perfect oneswere all that this collector could ever manage to extract, themolluscous wood-destroyer being very soft and fragile. His length isabout three inches, his thickness that of a small quill; he lodges ina shell of extreme tenuity, and the secretion which he ejects is, itseems, the agent which destroys the wood, and pushes on bit by bitthe winding tunnel. But his doings are nothing to the working ofanother wafer-shelled bivalve, whose tiny habitations are so thicklyimbedded in the body of a nodule of _flint_ as to render its exteriorlike a sieve, _diducit scopulos aceto_. What solvent can the chemistprepare in his laboratory comparable to one which, while it dissolvessilex, neither harms the insect nor injures its shell. Amongst the_fossils_ we notice cockles as big as ostrich eggs, clam-shells twicethe size of the largest of our Sussex coast, and those of oysterswhich rival soup-plates. We had indeed once before met with them ofequal size in the lime-beds at _Corneto_. Judging by the _oysters_, there must indeed have been _giants_ in those days. But thiscollection was chiefly remarkable for its curious fossil remains of_animals_ from _Monte Grifone_. In this same Monte Grifone, which wewent to visit, is one of the largest of the caves of bones of whichso many have been discovered--bones of various kinds, some of small, some of very large animals, mixed together pell-mell, andconstituting a fossil paste of scarcely any thing besides. None ofthe geologists, in attempting to explain these deposits, sufficientlyenter into the question of the origin of the enormous _quantity_, and_close juxtaposition_, of such heterogeneous specimens. 

By eight o'clock we are on board the _Palermo_ steamer, which is toconvey us hence to _Messina_. The baked deck, which has beensaturated with the sun's heat all day, is now cooling to a moremoderate warmth, and soothing would be the scene but for the noise ofwomen and children. Large liquid stars twinkle here and there, likeso many moons on a reduced scale, over the sea, and the night iswholly delightful! A bell rings, which diminishes our numbers, andsomewhat clears our deck. The boats which carry off the lastloiterers are gone, shaking phosphorus from their gills, and leavinga train of it in their tails; and the many-windowed Pharos of theharbour has all its panes lit up, and twinkles after its own fashion. Round the bay an interrupted crescent of flickering light isreflected in the water, strongest in the middle, where the town isthickest, and runs back; and far behind all lights comes the clearoutline of the darkly defined mountain rising over the city. Our ownlantern also is up, the authorities have disappeared, Monte Pelegrinobegins to change its position, we are in motion, and a mighty lightwe are making under us, as our leviathan, turning round her head and_snuffing_ the sea, begins to wind out of the harbour. A few minutesmore, and the luminous tracery of the receding town becomes more andmore indistinct; but the sky is _all stars_, and the water, savewhere we break its smoothness, a perfect mirror. Wherever the paddlesplay, there the sea foams up into yellow light and _gerbes_ ofamber-coloured fireballs, caught up by the wheels, and flung off inour track, to float past with incredible rapidity. Men are talkingthe language of Babel in the cabin; there is amateur singing and aguitar on deck--_Orion_ is on his dolphin--adieu, Palermo!

APPROACH TO MESSINA. 

The Italian morning presents a beautiful sight on deck to eyes wearyand sore with night, as night passes on board steamers. We pass alonga coast obviously of singular conformation, and to a geologist, wesuppose, full of interest. We encounter a herd of classical dolphinsout a-pleasuring. We ask about a pretty little town perched justabove the sea, and called _Giocosa_. By its side lies_Tyndaris_--classical enough if we spell it right. The snow on Etnais as good as an inscription, and to be read at any distance; butwhat a deception! they tell us it is thirty miles off, and it seemsto rise immediately from behind a ridge of hills close to the shore. The snow cone rises in the midst of other cones, which would appearequally high but for the difference of colour. _Patti_ is apicturesque little _borgo_, on the hillside, celebrated in Sicily forits manufacture of hardware. In the bay of _Melazzo_ are taken by farthe largest supplies of thunny in the whole Mediterranean. From theembayed town so named you have the choice of a cross-road to Messina, (twenty-four miles;) but who would abridge distance and miss thecelebrated straits towards which we are rapidly approaching, or loseone hour on land and miss the novelties of volcanic islands, and thefirst view of Scylla and Charybdis? It is but eight o'clock, but theawning has been stretched over our heads an hour ago. As tobreakfast--the meal which is associated with that particular hour ofthe four-and-twenty to all well regulated _minds_ and _stomachs_--itconsists here of thin _veneers_ of old mahogany-coloured thunny, varnished with oil, and relieved by an incongruous abomination ofcapers and olives. The cold fowls are infamous. The wine were adisgrace to the sorriest tapster between this and the Alps, and alsofiery, like every thing else in this district. Drink it, and doubtnot the old result--_de conviva Corybanta videbis_. (Oh, for muffinsand dry toast!) Never mind, we shall soon be at Messina. And now weapproach a point from which the lofty Calabrian coast opposite, andthe flinty wall of the formidable Scylla, first present themselves, but still as distant objects. In another half hour we are justopposite the redoubtable rock; and here we turn abruptly at rightangles to our hitherto course, and find ourselves _within_ thestraits, from either side of which the English and the French sooften tried the effect of cannon upon each other. It is now what itused to be--fishing ground. The Romans got their finest muræna fromthe whirlpools of _Charybdis_. [17] The shark (_cane di mare_)abounding here, would make bathing dangerous were the water smooth;but the rapid whirlpools through which our steam-boat dashes ondisdainfully, would, at the same time, make it impossible to anything but a fish. A passenger assured us he had once seen a man lostin the Vistula, who, from being a great swimmer, trusted imprudentlyto his strength, and was sucked down by a vortex of far lessimpetuosity, he thought, than this through which we were moving. Fromthis point till we arrived at Messina, as every body was ripe forbathing, the whole conversation turned naturally on the Messinashark, and his trick of snapping at people's legs carelessly left bythe owners dangling over the boat's side. We steam up the straits toour anchorage in about three-fourths of an hour. The approach isfine, very fine. A certain Greek, (count, he called himself, ) a greattraveller, and we afterwards found not a small adventurer, increasesthe interest of the approach, by telling us that the hills before us, bubbling up like blisters on chalcedony, have a considerableresemblance, though inferior in character, to those which embellishthe Bosphorus and the first view of Constantinople. Inferior, nodoubt, in the imposing accessories of mosque and minaret, and ofcypresses as big as obelisks, which, rising thickly on the heights, give to the city of Constantinople an altogether peculiar andinimitable charm. Messina is beautifully land-locked. The onlypossible winds that can affect its port are the north-west andsouth-east. In summer it is said to enjoy more sea breeze than anyother place on the Mediterranean. Our Greek friend, however, saysthat Constantinople is in this respect not only superior to Messina, but to any other place in the seas of Europe. Pity that the fellowsare Turks! We did not find much to interest us within the walls ofMessina. There was, to be sure, a fine collection of Sicilian birds, amongst which we were surprised to see several of very exotic shapeand plumage. One long-legged fellow, dressed in a dirty whiteAustrian uniform, with large web-feet, on which he seemed to restwith great complacency, particularly arrested our attention. He stoodas high as the _Venus di Medici_, but by no means so gracefully, andthrust his thick carved beak unceremoniously in your face. His cardof address was _Phoenicopterus antiquorum_. The ancients ate him, andhe looked as if he would break your nose if you disputed with him. Avery large finch, which we have seen for sale about the streets hereand elsewhere in Sicily, rejoices in the imposing name of _Fringillacocco thraustis_. He wears his black cravat like a bird ofpretension, as he evidently is. The puffin (_Puffinus Anglorum_) alsofrequents these rocks, though a very long way from the Isle of Wight. No! Messina, though very fine, is not equal to _Palermo_, with itsunrivaled _Marina_, compared to which Messina is poorly off indeed, in her straggling dirty commerce-doing quay. We went out to see alittle garden, which contains half a dozen zare-trees and as manybeautiful birds in cages. We are disappointed at the poverty of ourdessert in this region of fruitfulness--a few bad oranges, somemiserable cherries, and that abomination the green almond. Weobserve, for the first time, to-day folks eating in the streets thecrude contents of a little oval pod, which contains one or two verylarge peas, twice the size of any others. These are the true _cicer_, the proper Italian pea. Little bundles of them are tied up for saleat all the fruit stalls, and men are seen all the day long eatingthese raw peas, and offering them to each other as sugar-plums. 

[Footnote 17: "Virroni muræna datur, quo maxima venit Gurgite deSiculo: nam dum se continet Auster, Contemnunt mediam tem eraria linaCharybdim. " JUVENAL, _Sat. _ v. 99. ]

In the Corso we see a kind of temporary theatre, the deal sides ofwhich are gaudily lined with Catania silk, and on its stage a whole_dramatis personæ_ of sacred puppets. It is lighted by tapers of verytaper dimensions, and its _stalle_ are to be let for a humbleconsideration to the faithful or the curious. It turns out to be areligious spectacle, supported on the voluntary system--but there issomething for your money. A vast quantity of light framework, towhich fireworks, chiefly of the detonating kind, are attached, arealready going off, and folk are watching till it be completed. Thenthe evening's entertainment will begin, and a miser indeed must hebe, or beyond measure resourceless, who refuses halfpence for suchchoice festivities. Desirous to make out the particularrepresentation, we get over the fence in order to examine the figuresof the drama on a nearer view. A smartly dressed saint in a courtsuit, but whom mitre and crosier determine to be a bishop, kneels toa figure in spangles, a virgin as fond of fine clothes as the GreekPanageia; while on the other side, with one or two priests in histrain, is seen a crowd in civil costume. A paper cloud above, surrounded by glories of glass and tinsel, is supported by two solidcherubs equal to the occasion, and presents to the intelligent arepresentation of--we know not what! Fire-works here divide thepublic with the drum--to one or other all advertisement in Sicily iscommitted. A sale of fish and flesh, theatric entertainments, processions, and church invitations, are all by tuck of drum, or bysquib and cracker. How did they get on before the invention ofgunpowder? If a new coffeehouse is established, a couple of drumsstart it advantageously, and beat like a recruiting party up and downthe street, to the dismay of all _Forestieri_. The drum tells youwhen the thunny is at a discount, and _fire-works_ are let off at_fish stalls_ when customers are slack. 

An old tower, five miles off, is called the telegraph. People gothere for the panorama at the expense of three horses and two hours;but you are repaid by two sea views, either of which had beensufficient. Messina, its harbour, the straits, the opposite coast ofCalabria, Scylla, and _Rhegium_, (famed for its bergamot, ) are on theimmediate shore, and a most striking chain of hills for thebackground, which, at a greater distance, have for their backgroundthe imposing range of the _Abruzzi_. The Æolian islands rise out ofthe sea in the happiest positions for effect. _Stromboli_ on theextreme right detaches his grey wreath of smoke, which seems as if itproceeded out of the water, (for Stromboli is very low, ) staining fora moment the clear firmament, which rivals it in depth of colour. Some of the volcanic group are so nearly on a level with the water, that they look like the backs of so many leviathans at a halt. Thesea itself lies, a waveless mirror, smooth, shining, slippery, andtreacherous as a serpent's back--"miseri quibus intentata _nites_, "say we. 

JOURNEY TO TAORMINA. 

We left Messina under a sky which no painter would or could attempt;indeed, it would not have looked well on paper, or out of reality. There are certain unusual, yet magnificent appearances in nature, from which the artist conventionally abstains, not so much from theimpotence of art, as that the nearer his approach to success theworse the picture. At one time the colours were like shot or cloudedsilk, or the beautiful uncertainty of the Palamida of these shores, or the matrix of opal; at another, the Pacific Ocean above, of whichthe continuity is often for whole months _entire_, was broken intogigantic continents and a Polynesia of rose-coloured islands that noships might approach; while in this nether world the middle of theCalabro-Sicilian strait was occupied by a condensation of vapour, (one could never profane them by the term of _sea-mist_ or _fog_, )the most subtile and attenuated which ever came from the realms ofcloud-compelling Jove. This fleecy tissue pursued its deliberateprogress from coast to coast, like a cortege of cobwebs carrying adeputation from the power-looms of _Arachne_ in _Italy_ to the rivalsilk-looms at Catania. We pass the dry beds of mountain torrents atevery half mile, ugly gashes on a smooth road; and requiring too muchcaution to leave one's attention to be engaged by many objectsaltogether new and beautiful. The rich yellow of the _Cactus_, andthe red of the _Pomegranate_, and the most tender of all vegetablegreens, that of the young _mulberry_, together with a sweetwilderness of unfamiliar plants, are not to be perfectly enjoyed on afourfooted animal that stumbles, or on a road full of pitfalls. Weshall only say that the _Cynara cardunculus_, (a singularly finethistle or _wild artichoke_;) the prickly uncultivated _love-apple_, (a beautiful variety of the _Solanum_, ) of which the decoction is notinfrequently employed in nephritic complaints; the _Ferula_, sighingfor occupation all along the sea-shore, and shaking its scourge asthe wind blows; the _Rhododendron_, in full blossom, planted amongstthe shingles; the _Thapsia gargarica_, with its silver umbel, lookingat a short distance like mica, (an appearance caused by the shiningwhite fringe of the capsule encasing its seed, ) and many otherstrange and beautiful things, were the constant attendants of ourmarch. We counted six or seven varieties of the spurge, (_Euphorbium_, ) each on its milky stem, and in passing through thevillages had _Carnations_ as large as _Dahlias_ flung at us bysunburnt urchins posted at their several doors. The sandy shore formany miles is beautifully notched in upon by tiny bays like basins, on which boats lie motionless and baking in the sun, or oscillateunder a picturesque rock, immersed up to its shoulders in a green_hyaloid_, which reflects their forms from a depth of many fathoms. On more open stretches of the shore, long-drawn ripples of waves oftiny dimension are overrunning and treading on one another's heelsfor miles a-head, and tapping the anchored boat "with gentle blow. "The long-horned oxen already spoken of, toil along the seaside roadlike the horses on our canal banks, and tug the heavy felucca towardsMessina--a service, however, sometimes executed by men harnessed tothe towing-cord, who, as they go, offend the Sicilian muses by soundsand by words that have little indeed of the [Greek: Dôriz aoida]. Thegable ends of cottages often exhibit a very primitive windmill forsawing wood within doors. It is a large wheel, to the spokes of whichflappers are adjusted, made of coarse matting, and so placed as toprofit by the ordinary sea breeze; and, while the _wind_ is thus_sawing_ his planks for him, the carpenter, at his door, carries onhis craft. We pass below not a few fortresses abutting over the sea, or perched on the mountain tops. Many of these are of Englishconstruction, and date from the occupation of the island during theFrench war: in a word, the whole of this Sicilian road is sovariously lovely, that if we did not know the _cornice_ between_Nice_ and _Genoa_, we should say it was quite unrivaled, being atonce in lavish possession of all the grand, and most of the milderelements of landscape composition. It is long since it became nowonder to us that the greatest and in fact the only, real pastoralpoet should have been a Sicilian; but it is a marvel indeed, that, having forgotten to bring his _Eclogues_ with us, we cannot, throughthe whole of Sicily, find a copy of Theocitus for sale, though thereis a _Sicilian_ translation of him to be had at Palermo. As heprogresses thus delightfully, a long-wished for moment awaits thetraveller approaching towards _Giardini_--turning round a farprojecting neck of land, _Etna_ is at last before him! Adisappointment, however, on the whole is Etna himself, thusintroduced. He looks far below his stature, and seems so _near_, thatwe would have wagered to get upon his shoulders and pull his ears, and return to the little town to dine; the ascent also, to the eye, seems any thing but steep; nor can you easily be brought to believethat such an expedition is from Giardini a three days' affair, except, indeed, that yonder belt of snow in the midst of thisroasting sunshine, has its own interpretation, and cannot bemistaken. Alas! In the midst of all our flowers there was, as therealways is, the _amari aliquid_--it was occasioned here by the_flies_. They had tasked our _improved_ capacity for bearingannoyances ever since we first set foot in Sicily; but _here_ theyare perfectly incontrollable, stinging and buzzing at us withoutmercy or truce, not to be driven off for a second, nor persuaded todrown themselves on any consideration. Verily, the honey-pots ofHybla itself seem to please these troublesome insects less than the_flesh_-pots of Egypt. 

The next day begins inauspiciously for our ascent to Taormina; butthe attendants of the excursion are already making a great noise, without which nothing can be done in either of the two Sicilies. Asupply of shabby donkeys are brought and mounted, and, once astride, we begin to ascend, the poor beasts tottering under our weight, andby their constant stumbling affording us little inclination to lookabout. It takes about three-fourths of an hour of this donkey-ridingto reach the old notched wall of the town. Two Taorminian citizens atthis moment issue from under its arch, in their way down, andguessing what we are, offer some indifferent coins which do not suitus, but enable us to enter into conversation. We demand and obtain a_cicerone_, of whom we are glad to get rid after three hours'infliction of his stupidity and endurance of his ignorance, withoutacquiring one idea, Greek, Roman, Norman, or Saracen, out of all hiserudition. After going through the whole tour with such a fellow fora Hermes, we come at last upon the far-famed theatre, where we didnot want him. Here, however, a very intelligent attendant, supportedby the king of Naples on a suitable pension of five baiocchi a-day, takes us out of the hands of the Philistine, and with a plan of theground to aid us, proceeds to give an intelligible, and, as appearsto us, a true explanation of the different parts of the hugeconstruction, in the area of which we stand delighted. He directedour attention to a large arched tunnel, under and at right angles tothe pulpita, and we did not want direction to the thirty-six nichesplaced at equal distances all round the ellipse, and just over thelowest range of the CUNEI. All niches were, no doubt, for statues;but these might also have been, it pleases some to suppose, for thereverberation of applause; and they quote something about_"Resonantia Vasa"_ from Macrobius, adding, that such niches wereonce probably lined with brass. Of bolder speculatists, some believethe _kennel_ to have been made with a similar intention. Others holdthat it may have been a concealed way for introducing lions andtigers to the arena! Now, what if it were a _drain_ for the waters, which, in bad weather, soon collect to a formidable height in such asituation? Whether for voice, or wild beasts, or drainage, or none ofthese objects, there it is. As to the first, we cannot help beingsceptical. Did it ever occur to an audience to wish the noise theymake _greater_, and contrive expedients for _making it so?_

We are here high up amidst the mountains, where, we are to remember, as the ancients came not to spend, like ourselves, an idle hour, butto consume most of the day, _shelter_ would be wanted. Two largelateral spaces, or as it were, side chambers, have received thisdestination at the hands of the antiquary, and have been supposedlobbies for foul weather or for shade at noon. We were made to noticeby our guide, what we should else have overlooked, how the mainpassage described above communicates with several smaller ones in itsprogress, and that a small stair was a subsequent contrivance orafterthought meant to relieve, on emergency, the overcharged largeone; its workmanship and style showed it plainly to have been addedwhen the edifice had already become _an antiquity_. This altogetherpeculiar and most interesting building has also suffered still laterinterpolations: a Saracenic frieze runs round the wall; so that thehands of three widely different nations have been busy on themountain theatre, which received its _first audience_ twenty-fivecenturies ago! The view obtained from this spot has often beencelebrated, and deserves to be. Such mountains we had often seenbefore; such a sky is the usual privilege of Sicily; these indented_bays_, which break so beautifully the line of the coast, had been anobject of our daily admiration; the hoary side of the majestic Etna, and Naxos with its castellated isthmus, might be seen from _other_elevated situations; and the acuminated tops of Mola, with itsSaracenic tower, were commanded by neighbouring sites--Taormina_alone_, and for its _own_ sake, was the great and paramount objectin our eyes, and possessed us wholly! We had been following _Lyell_half the day in antediluvian remains; but what are the bones of_Ichthyosauri_ or _Megalotheria_ to this gigantic skeleton of Doricantiquity, round which lie scattered the sepulchres of its ancientaudiences, Greek, Roman, and Oriental--tombs which had become alreadyan object of speculation, and been rifled for arms, vases, or goldrings, before Great Britain had made the first steps beyond paintedbarbarism!

The eruptions of Etna have all been recorded. Thucydides mentions oneof them episodically in the Peloponesian war. From the cooled caldronthat simmers under all that snow, has proceeded all the lava that theancients worked into these their city walls. The houses ofTaurominium were built of and upon _lava_, which it requires athousand years to disintegrate. After dinner we walk to Naxos, saluting the statue of the patron of a London parish, _St Pancras_, on our way. He stands on the beach here, and claims, by inscriptionon his pedestal, to have belonged to the apostolic times, St Peterhimself having, he says, appointed him to his bishopric. He is patronof Taormina, where he has possessed himself of a Greek temple; and healso protects the faithful of Giardini. Lucky in his _architects_ hasbeen St Pancras; for many of our readers are familiar with his veryelegant modern church in the New Road, modelled, if we have notforgotten, on the Erechtheum, with its _Pandrosean Vestries_, itsupright tiles, and all the subordinate details of Athenianarchitecture. We _met_ here the subject of many an ancient _basrelief_ done into flesh and blood--a dozen men and boys trippingalong the road to the music of a bagpipe, one old _Silenus_ leadingthe jocund throng, and the whole of them, as the music, such as itwas, inspired, leaping about and gesticulating with incredibleactivity. It was a bacchanalian subject, which we had seen on many asarcophagus, only that the fellows here were not _quite_ naked, andthat we looked in vain for those nascent horns and tails by which thechildren of Pan and Faunus ought to be identified. We always look outfor _natural history_. Walking in a narrow street, we saw a tortoise, awake for the season, come crawling out to peep at the poultry; hishybernation being over, he wants to be social, and the hens inastonishment chuckle round him, and his tortoiseshell highness seemspleased at their kind enquiries, and keeps bobbing his head in andout of his _testudo_ in a very sentimental manner. Women who want hisshell for _combs_ do not frequent these parts, and so, unless a cartpass over him as he returns home, he is in clover. 

A bird frequents these parts with a blue chest, called _Passersolitarius;_ he abounds in the rocky crevices. The notes of one, which was shown to us in a cage, sounded sweetly; but, as he wascarnivorous, the weather was too hot for us to think of taking himaway. We saw two snakes put into the same box: the one, a viper, presently killed the other, and much the larger of the two. Serpents, then, like men, do _not_, as the _Satirist_ asserts, spare theirkind. We are disappointed at not finding any coins, nor any othergood _souvenirs_, to bring away with us. The height of Taormina issufficient to keep it from fever, which is very prevalent at Giardinibelow. Its bay was once a great place for catching _mullet_ for theRoman market. It seems to have been the _Torbay_ of Sicily. Some fishlove their ease, and rejoice not in turbulent waters. The _muræna_, or lamprey, on the contrary, was sought in the very whirlpools of_Charybdis_. The modern Roman, on his own side of Italy, has fewturbot, but very good ones are still taken off Ancona, in theAdriatic, where the _spatium admirabile Rhombi_, as the reader will, or ought to recollect, was taken and sent to Domitian at Albano by_Procaccio_ or _Estafetta_. Juvenal complains that the Tyrrhene seawas exhausted by the demand for fish, though there was no _Lent_ inthose times. If the Catholic clergy insist that there _was_, we begto object, that the keepers thereof were probably not in a conditionto compete with the _Apiciuses_ of the day, who bought fish for their_bodies'_, and not for their SOULS' SAKE. 

CATANIA. 

Tum Catane nimium ardenti vicina Typhæo. 

After a pleasant drive of twenty miles, we find ourselves at_Aci-Reale_, where a street, called "Galatea, " reminds usunexpectedly of a very classical place called Dean's Yard, where weonce had doings with _Acis_, as he figures in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_. We were here in luck, and, having purchased some fine coins ofseveral of the tyrants of Sicily from the apothecary, proceeded onour way to Catania. In half an hour we reach the basaltic Isles ofthe Cyclops, and the Castle of Acis, whom the peasants hereaboutstell you was their king, when Sicily was under the Saracenic yoke. The river _Lecatia_, now lost, is supposed formerly to have issuedhereabouts, in the port of Ulysses. Our next move placed us amidstthe silk-slops of Catania. We have hardly been five minutes in thetown, when offers abound to conduct us up Ætna, in whom, as so muchnational wealth, the inhabitants seem to take as much interest as inher useful and productive silk-looms. Standing fearless on thepavement of lava that buried their ancient city, they point up withcomplacency to its fountains above. The mischievous exploits of Ætna, in past times, are in every mouth, and children learn their Ætneancatechism as soon as they are breeched. Ætna here is all in all. Churches are constructed out of his quarried _viscera_--great men liein tombs, of which the stones once ran liquid down his flames--snuffis taken out of lava boxes--and devotion carves the crucifix on lava, and numbers its beads on a lava rosary--nay, the apothecary's mortarwas sent him down from the great mortar-battery above, and thevillage _belle_ wears fire-proof bracelets that were once too hot tobe meddled with. Go to the museum, and you will call it a museum ofÆtnean products. Nodulated, porous, condensed, streaked, spotted, clouded, granulated lava, here assumes the colour, rivals thecompactness, sustains the polish, of jasper, of agate, and of marble;indeed it sometimes surpasses, in beautiful veinage, the finest andrarest Marmorean specimens. You would hardly distinguish some of it, worked into jazza or vase, from _rosso antico_ itself. A very old andrusty armoury may, as here, be seen any where; but a row offormidable shark skulls, taken along the coast, and some in the veryport of Catania, are rarities on which the _ciceroni_ like toprelect, being furnished with many a story of bathers curtailed bythem, and secure a large portion of attention, especially if you werejust thinking of a dip. A rather fine collection of bronzes has beenmade from excavations in the neighbourhood, which, indeed, mustalways promise to reward research. A figure of Mercury, two and ahalf feet high, and so exactly similar to that of John of Bologna, that his one seemed an absolute plagiarism, particularly attractedour attention on that account. The great Italian artist, however, hadbeen dead one hundred and fifty years before this bronze was dug up. Next in importance to the bronzes, we esteem the collection ofSicilian, or Græco-Sicilian vases, though inferior in number andselectness to those of the Vatican, or Museo-Borbonico. There is alsosome ancient sculpture, and some pretty mosaic. Of this compositionis a bathfloor, where a family of Cupids, in the centre of thepavement, welcome you with a _utere feliciter_, (may it do you good. )Round the border, a circle of the personified _"months"_ isartistically chained together, each bearing his _Greek_ name, forfear of a mistake--names not half so good as Sheridan's translationof the Revolutionary calendar--snowy, flowy, blowy--showery, flowery, bowery--moppy, croppy, poppy--breezy, sneezy, freezy. In Catania, wefind no lack of coins, nor of sharp-eyed dealers, who know prettygenerally their value throughout Europe; but, in order to be quitesure of the price _current, _ ask double what they take from oneanother, and judge, by your abatement of it, of the state of themarket elsewhere. Now mind, sir, when they present you the mostimpudent forgeries, you are not to get into a passion; but, glancingfrom the object to the vender, quietly insinuate your want of_absolute_ conviction in a _"che vi pare di questa moneta. "_ He nowlooks at it again, and takes a squint at _you;_ and supposing yousmell a rat, probably replies that certainly he _bought_ it for_genuine;_ but you _have suggested a doubt, _ and the piece reallybegins, even to _him_, to look suspicious, _"anzi à me. "_ You replycoolly, and put it down--"That was just what I was thinking;" and sothe affair passes quietly off. And now you _may_, if you happen to betender-hearted, say something compassionate to the poor innocent whohas been _taken in_, and proceed to ask him about another; and whenyou see any thing you long to pocket, enquire what can he afford tolet a _brother collector_ (give him a step in rank) have _it_ for;and so go on feeling your way, and never "putting your arm so far outthat you cannot comfortably draw it back again. " He will probably askyou if you know Mr B---- or C----, (English collectors, ) with whom hehas had dealings, calling them "_stimabili signori;_" and, of course, you have no doubt of it, though you never heard of them before. It isalso always conciliative to congratulate him on the possession ofsuch and such rare and "_belle cose;_" and if you thus contrive toget into his good graces, he will deal with you at _fair prices_, andperhaps amuse you with an account of such tricks as he is not ashamedto have practised on _blockheads_, who will buy at any cost if thedie is fine. Indeed, it has passed into an aphorism among these_mezzo-galantuomini_, as their countrymen call them, that a fine coinis always worth _what you can get for it. _

We heard the celebrated organ of St Benedict, which has been praisingGod in tremendous hallelujahs ever since it was put up, and a hundredyears have only matured the richness of its tones. Its voice wasgushing out as we entered the church, and filling nave and aisle witha diapason of all that was soft and soothing, as if a choir ofGuido's angels had broke out in harmony. 

A stream of fresh water issues under the old town-wall, and animmense mass of incumbent lava, of at least ninety feet high, impendsjust above its source, the water struggling through a mass of rockonce liquefied by fire, in as limpid a rill as if it came fromlimestone, and so excellent in quality that no other is used inCatania. Women with buckets were ascending and descending to fetchsupplies out of the lava of the dead city below, for the use of theliving town above. Moreover, this is the only point in Catania wherethe accident of a bit of wall arresting for some time the progress ofthe lava current, has left the level of the old town to be rigidlyascertained. 

Here, as at _Aci-Reale_, balconies at windows, for the most partsupported by brackets, terminating in human heads, give a rich, though rather a heavy, appearance to the street. Much amber is foundand worked at Catania. It has been lately discovered in a fossilstate, and in contiguity with fossil wood; but we were quite_electrified_ at the price of certain little scent-bottles, and otherarticles made of this production. You see it in all its possiblevarieties of colour, opacity, or transparency. The green opalizedkind is the most prized, and four pounds was demanded for a pair ofpendants of this colour for earrings. Besides the yellow sort, whichis common every where, we see the ruby red, which is very rare: somevarieties are freckled, and some of the sort which afforded subjectsfor Martial, and for more than one of the Greek anthologists, withinsects in its matrix. _This_ kind, they say, is found exclusively onthe coast of Catania. There are such pieces the size of a hand, butit is generally in much smaller bits. Amber lies under, or is formed_upon_ the sand, and abounds most near the _embouchure_ of a smallriver in this neighbourhood. Many beautiful shells, fossils, andother objects of natural history, appear in the dealers' trays; andpolished knife-handles of Sicilian _agate_ may be had at five dollarsa dozen. 

THE LAST OF THE KNIGHTS. 

DON JOHN AND THE HERETICS OF FLANDERS. 

It would almost seem as though chivalry were one of the errors ofPopery; so completely did the spirit of the ancient orders ofknighthood evaporate at the Reformation! The blind enthusiasm ofignorance having engendered superstitions of every kind and colour, the blow struck at the altar of the master idol proved fatal to all. 

In Elizabeth's time, the forms and sentiment of chivalry were kept upby an effort. The parts enacted by Sidney and Raleigh, appear studiedrather than instinctive. At all events, the gallant Sir Philip wasthe last of English knights, as he was the first of his time. Thenceforward, the valour of the country assumed a character moreprofessional. 

But a fact thus familiar to us of England, is more remarkable of therest of Europe. The infallibility of Rome once assailed, every faithwas shaken. Loyalty was lessened, chivalry became extinct; expiringin France with Henri IV. And the League--in Portugal with DonSebastian of Braganza--and in Spain with Charles V. , exterminatedroot and branch by the pen of Cervantes. 

One of the most brilliant effervescences, however, of those crumblinginstitutions, is connected with Spanish history, in the person of DonJohn of Austria;--a prince who, if consecrated by legitimacy to theannals of the throne, would have glorified the historical page by athousand heroic incidents. But the sacrament of his baptism beingunhappily unpreceded by that of a marriage, he has bequeathed us oneof those anomalous existences--one of those incomplete destinies, which embitter our admiration with disappointment and regret. 

On both sides of royal blood, Don John was born with qualificationsto adorn a throne. It is true that when his infant son was entrustedby Charles V. To the charge of the master of his household, DonQuexada, the emperor simply described him as the offspring of a ladyof Ratisbon, named Barbara Blomberg. But the Infanta Clara Eugeniawas confidentially informed by her father Philip II. , andconfidentially informed her satellite La Cuea, that her uncle was"every way of imperial lineage;" and but that he was the offspring ofa crime, Don John had doubtless been seated on one of those thronesto which his legitimate brother Philip imparted so littledistinction. 

Forced by the will of Charles V. To recognize the consanguinity ofDon John, and treat him with brotherly regard, one of the objects ofthe hateful life of the father of Don Carlos seems to have been tothwart the ambitious instincts of his brilliant Faulconbridge. For inthe boiling veins of the young prince abided the whole soul ofCharles V. , --valour, restlessness, ambition; and his romantic lifeand mysterious death bear alike the tincture of his parentage. 

That was indeed the age of the romance of royalty! Mary atHolyrood, --Elizabeth at Kenilworth--Carlos at the feet of hismother-in-law, --the Béarnais at the gates of Paris, --have engravedtheir type in the book of universal memory. But Don John escapesnotice--a solitary star outshone by dazzling constellations. Commemorated by no medals, flattered by no historiographer, sung byno inspired "godson, " anointed by neither pope nor primate, his nookin the temple of fame is out of sight, and forgotten. 

Even his master feat, the gaining of the battle of Lepanto, bringschiefly to our recollection that the author of Don Quixote lost hishand in the action; and in the trivial page before us, we dare notcall our hero by the name of "Don Juan, " (by which he is known inSpanish history, ) lest he be mistaken for the popular libertine! Andthus, the last of the knights has been stripped of his name by thehero of the "Festin de Pierre, " and of his honours by Cervantes, asby Philip II. Of a throne. --

Hard fate for one described by all the writers of his time as a modelof manly grace and Christian virtue! How charming is the accountgiven by the old Spanish writers of the noble youth, extricated fromhis convent to be introduced on the high-road to a princely cavalier, surrounded by his retinue, whom he is first desired to salute as abrother, and then required to worship, as the king of Spain! We aretold of his joy on discovering his filial relationship to the greatemperor, so long the object of his admiration. We are told of hisdeeds of prowess against the Turks at Lepanto, at Tunis against theMoor. We are told of the proposition of Gregory XIII. That he shouldbe rewarded with the crown of Barbary, and of the desire of therevolted nobility of Belgium, to raise him to their tottering throne;nay, we are even assured that "la couronne d'Hibernie" was offered tohis acceptance. And finally, we are told of his untimely death andglorious funeral--mourned by all the knighthood of the land! But wehear and forget. Some mysterious counter-charm has stripped hislaurels of their verdure. Even the lesser incidents of the life ofDon John are replete with the interest of romance. When appointed byPhilip II. Governor of the Netherlands, in order that he might dealwith the heretics of the Christian faith as with the faithful ofMahomet, such deadly vengeance was vowed against his person by theProtestant party headed by Horn and the Prince of Orange, that it wasjudged necessary for his highness to perform his journey in disguise. Attired as a Moorish slave, he reached Luxembourg as the attendant ofOttavio Gonzaga, brother of Prince Amalfi, at the very moment thetroops of the king of Spain were butchering eight thousand citizensin his revolted city of Antwerp!--

The arrival of the new governor afforded the signal for more pacificmeasures. The dispositions of Don John were humane--his mannersfrank. Aware that the Belgian provinces were exhausted by ten yearsof civil war, and that the pay of the Spanish troops he had to leadagainst them was so miserably in arrear as to compel them to acts ofatrocious spoliation, the hero of Lepanto appears to have done hisbest to stop the effusion of blood; and, notwithstanding thecounteraction of the Prince of Orange, the following spring, peaceand an amnesty were proclaimed. The treaty signed at Marche, (knownby the name of the Perpetual Edict, ) promised as much tranquillity aswas compatible with the indignation of a country which had seen theblood of its best and noblest poured forth, and the lives andproperty of its citizens sacrificed without mercy or calculation. 

But, though welcomed to Brussels by the acclamations of the peopleand the submission of the States, Don John appears to have been fullysensible that his head was within the jaws of the lion. The blood ofEgmont had not yet sunk into the earth; the echoes of the edicts ofAlva yet lingered in the air; and the very stones of Brusselsappeared to rise up and testify against a brother of Philip II. !

Right thankful, therefore, was the young prince when an excuse wasafforded for establishing himself in a more tenable position, by anincident which must again be accounted among the romantic adventuresof his life. For the sudden journey of the fascinating Margaret ofValois to the springs of Spa, on pretence of indisposition, wasgenerally attributed to a design against the heart of the hero ofLepanto. 

A prince so remarkable for his gallantry of knighthood, could do noless than wait upon the sister of the French king, on her passagethrough Namur; and, once established in the citadel of thatstronghold of the royalists, he quitted it no more. In process oftime, a camp was formed in the environs, and fortresses erected onthe banks of the Meuse under the inspection of Don John; nor was itat first easy to determine whether his measures were actuated bymistrust of the Protestants, or devotion to the worst and mostCatholic of wives of the best and most Huguenot of kings. 

The blame of posterity, enlightened by the journal of QueenMargaret's proceedings in Belgium, (bequeathed for our edification bythe alienated queen of Henri IV. , ) has accused Don John of blindness, in the right-loyal reception bestowed on her, and the absoluteliberty accorded her during her residence at Spa, where she wasopening a road for the arrival of her brother the Duke of Alençon. Itis admitted, indeed, that her attack upon his heart met with defeat. But the young governor is said to have made up in chivalrouscourtesies for the disappointment of her tender projects; andMargaret, if she did not find a lover at Namur, found the mostassiduous of knights. 

Many, indeed, believe that his attentions to the French princess wereas much a feint as her own illness; and that he was as completelyabsorbed in keeping at bay his heretic subjects, as her highness bythe desire of converting them into the subjects of France. It wasonly those admitted into the confidence of Don John who possessed theclue to the mystery. 

Ottavio Gonzaga, on his return from a mission to Madrid with which hehad been charged by Don John, was the first to acquaint him with thesuspicions to which the sojourn of Margaret had given rise. 

"I own I expected to find your highness in better cheer, " said he, when the first compliments had been exchanged. "Such marvels havebeen recounted in Spain of your fêtes and jousts of honour, that Ihad prepared myself to hear of nothing at headquarters but the silkenpastimes of a court. "

"Instead of which, " cried Don John, "you find me, as usual, in mysteel jerkin, with no milder music at command than the trumpets of mycamp; my sole duty, the strengthening of yonder lines, " continued he, (pointing from a window of the citadel, near which they werestanding, commanding the confluence of the Sambre and Meuse, ) "and myutmost diversion, an occasional charge against the boars in yonderforest of Marlagne!"

"I cannot but suppose it more than _occasional_, " rejoined Gonzaga;"for I must pay your highness the ill compliment of avowing, that youappear more worn by fatigue and weather at this moment, and in thissunless clime, than at the height of your glorious labours in theMediterranean! Namur has already ploughed more wrinkles on your browthan Barbary or Lepanto. "

"Say rather in my _heart_!" cried the impetuous prince. "Since youquitted me, six months ago, my dear Gonzaga, I have known nothing butcares! To you I have no scruple in avowing, that my position in thiscountry is hateful. So long accustomed to war against a barbarousenemy, I could almost fancy myself as much a Moor at heart, as Iappeared in visage, when in your service on my way to Luxembourg, whenever I find my sword uplifted against a Christian breast!--Civilwar, Ottavio, is a hideous and repugnant thing!"--

"The report is true, then, that your highness has become warmlyattached to the people of these rebel provinces?" demanded Gonzaga, not choosing to declare the rumour prevalent in Spain, that anopportunity had been afforded to the prince by the Barlaimontfaction, of converting his viceroyalty into the sway of absolutesovereignty. 

"So much the reverse, that the evil impression they made on me at myarrival, has increased a hundred-fold! I abhor them yet more andmore. Flemings or Brabançons, Hainaulters or Walloons, Catholic orCalvinist, the whole tribe is my aversion; and despite our bestendeavours to conceal it, I am convinced the feeling is reciprocal!"

"If your highness was equally candid in your avowals to the Queen ofNavarre, " observed Gonzaga gravely, --"I can scarcely wonder at thehopes she is said to entertain of having won over the governor ofMons to the French interest, during her transit through Flanders. "

"Ay, indeed? Is such her boast?" cried the prince, laughing. "It mayindeed be so!--for never saw I a woman less scrupulous in the choiceor use of arms to fight her battles. But, trust me, whatever hermajesty may have accomplished, is through no aiding or abetting ofmine. "

"Yet surely the devoted attentions paid her by your highness"--

"My highness made them _appear_ devoted in proportion to hisconsciousness of their hollowness! But I promise you, my dearOttavio, there is no tenderer leaning in my heart towards Margaret deValois, than towards the most thicklipped of the divinities whocompeted for our smiles at Tunis. "

Gonzaga shrugged his shoulders. He was convinced that, for once, DonJohn was sinking the friend in the prince. His prolonged absence hadperhaps discharged him from his post as confidant. 

"Trust me, " cried the young soldier, discerning his misgivings--"I amas sincere in all this as becomes our friendship. But that God hasgifted me with a happy temperament, I should scarcely support thedisgusts of my present calling. It is much, my dear Gonzaga, toinherit as a birthright the brand of such an ignominy as mine. But aslong as I trusted to conquer a happier destiny--to carve out formyself fortunes as glorious as those to which my blood all butentitles me--I bore my cross without repining. It was this ardenthope of distinction that lent vigour to my arm in battle--that taughtprudence to my mind in council. I was resolved that even thebase-born of Charles V. Should die a king!"--

Gonzaga listened in startled silence. To hear the young viceroy thusbold in the avowal of sentiments, which of late he had been hearingimputed to him at the Escurial as the direst of crimes, filled himwith amazement. 

"But these hopes have expired!" resumed Don John. "The harshness withwhich, on my return triumphant from Barbary, my brother refused toratify the propositions of the Vatican in my favour, convinced methat I have nothing to expect from Philip beyond the perpetualservitude of a satellite of the King of Spain. "

Gonzaga glanced mechanically round the chamber at the emission ofthese treasonable words. But there was nothing in its rude stonewalls to harbour an eavesdropper. 

"Nor is this all!" cried his noble friend. "My discovery of theunbrotherly sentiments of Philip has tended to enlighten me towardsthe hatefulness of his policy. The reserve of his nature--theharshness of his soul--the austerity of his bigotry--chill me to themarrow!--The Holy Inquisition deserves, in my estimation, a name thevery antithesis of holy. "

"I _beseech_ your highness!" cried Ottavio Gonzaga--clasping hishands together in an irrepressible panic. 

"Never fear, man! There be neither spies nor inquisitors in our camp;and if there _were_, both they and you must even hear me out!" criedDon John. "There is some comfort in discharging one's heart ofmatters that have long lain so heavy on it; and I swear to you, Gonzaga, that, instead of feeling surprised to find my cheeks solank, and my eyes so hollow, you would rather be amazed to find anounce of flesh upon my bones, did you know how careful are my days, and how sleepless my nights, under the perpetual harassments of civilwar!--The haughty burgesses of Ghent, whom I could hate from my soulbut that they are townsmen of my illustrious father, the low-mindedWalloons, the morose Brugeois, the artful Brabançons--all the variedtribes, in short, of the old Burgundian duchy, seem to vie with eachother which shall succeed best in thwarting and humiliating me. Andfor what do I bear it? What honour or profit shall I reap on mypatience? What thanks derive for having wasted my best days and bestenergies, in bruising with my iron heel the head of the serpent ofheresy? Why, even that Philip, for some toy of a mass neglected or anave forgotten, will perchance give me over to the tender questioningof his grand inquisitor, as the shortest possible answer to mypretensions to a crown, --while the arrogant nobility of Spain, whenroused from their apathy towards me by tidings of another Lepanto, afresh Tunis, will exclaim with modified gratification--'_There_ spokethe blood of Charles the Fifth! Not so ill fought for a bastard!'"

Perceiving that the feelings of his highness were chafed, thecourtier, as in vocation bound, assured him he underrated the loyaltytowards him of his fellow countrymen of the Peninsula; and that hisservices as governor of the Low Countries were fully appreciated. 

"So fully, that I should be little surprised to learn the axe wasalready sharpened that is to take off my head!" cried Don John, witha scornful laugh. "And such being the exact state of my feelings andopinions, my trusty Gonzaga, I ask you whether I am likely to haveproved a suitable Petrarch for so accomplished a Laura as the sisterof Henry III?"--

"I confess myself disappointed, " replied the crafty Italian. --"I wasin hopes that your highness had found recreation as well as glory inBelgium. During my sojourn at the court of Philip, I supported withpatience the somewhat ceremonious gravity of the Escurial, in thebelief that your highness was enjoying meanwhile those festalenlivenments, which none more fully understand how to organize andadorn. "

"If such an expectation really availed to _enliven_ the Escurial, "cried Don John recklessly, "your friendship must indeed possessmiraculous properties! However, you may judge with your own eyes thepleasantness of my position; and every day that improves youracquaintance with the ill blood and ill condition of this accursedarmy of the royalists, ill-paid, ill-disciplined, andill-intentioned, will inspire you with stronger yearnings after ourdays of the Mediterranean, where I was master of myself and of mymen. "

"And all this was manifested to Margaret, and all this will serve tocomfort the venomous heart of the queen mother!"--ejaculated Gonzaga, shrugging his shoulders. 

"Not a syllable, not a circumstance! The Queen of Navarre was far toomuch engrossed by the manoeuvres of her own bright eyes, to take heedof those of my camp. "

"Your highness is perhaps less well aware than might be desirable, ofhow many things a woman's eyes are capable of doing, at one and thesame time!"--retorted the Italian. 

"I only wish, " cried Don John impatiently, "that instead of havingoccasion to read me those Jeremiads, you had been here to witness thefriendship you so strangely exaggerate! A ball, an excursion on theMeuse, a boar hunt in the forest of Marlagne, constitute the pastimesyou are pleased to magnify into an imperial ovation. "

"Much may be confided amid the splendour of a ball-room, --much in onepoor half hour of a greenwood rendezvous!"--persisted the provokingOttavio. 

"Ay--_much_ indeed!" responded Don John, with a sigh so deep that itstartled by its significance the attention of his brother in arms. "But not to such a woman as the Queen of Henri the Béarnais!"returned the Prince. "By our Lady of Liesse! I wish no worse to thatheretic prince, than to have placed his honour in the keeping of the_gente Margot_. "

Fain would Gonzaga have pursued the conversation, which had taken aturn that promised wonders for the interest of the despatches he hadundertaken to forward to the Escurial, in elucidation of the designsand sentiments of Don John, --towards whom his allegiance was as thekisses of Judas! But the imperial scion, (who, when he pleased, couldassume the unapproachability of the blood royal, ) made it apparentthat he was no longer in a mood to be questioned. Having proposed tothe new-comer (to whom, as an experienced commander, he destined thecolonelship of his cavalry, ) that they should proceed to a survey ofthe fortifications at Bouge, they mounted their horses, and, escortedby Nignio di Zuniga, the Spanish aide-de-camp of the prince, proceeded to the camp. 

The affectionate deference testified towards the young governor byall classes, the moment he made his appearance in public, appeared toGonzaga strangely in contradiction with the declarations of Don Johnthat he was no favourite in Belgium. The Italian forgot that the Dukeof Arschot, the Counts of Mansfeld and Barlaimont, while doffingtheir caps to the representative of the King of Spain, had as muchright to behold in him the devoted friend of Don John of Austria, as_he_ to regard _them_ as the faithful vassals of his government. 

A fair country is the country of Namur!--The confluent streams--theimpending rocks--the spreading forests of its environs, comprehendthe finest features of landscape; nor could Ottavio Gonzaga feelsurprised that his prince should find as much more pleasure in thosebreesy plains than in the narrow streets of Brussels, as he foundsecurity and strength. 

On the rocks overhanging the Meuse, at some distance from the town, stands the village of Bouge, fortified by Don John; to attain whichby land, hamlets and thickets were to be traversed; and it waspleasant to see the Walloon peasant children run forth from thecottages to salute the royal train, making their heavy Flemishchargers swerve aside and perform their lumbering cabrioles far moredeftly than the cannonading of the rebels, to which they were almostaccustomed. 

As they cut across a meadow formed by the windings of the Meuse, theysaw at a distance a group formed, like most groups congregated justthen in the district, of soldiers and peasants; to which theattention of the prince being directed, Nignio di Zuniga, hisaide-de-camp, was dispatched to ascertain the cause of the gathering. 

"A nothing, if it please your highness!" was the reply of theSpaniard--galloping back, hat in hand, with its plumes streaming inthe breeze;--that the Prince's train, which had halted, might resumeits pace. 

"But a nothing of what sort?" persisted Don John, who appreciated thetrivialties of life very differently from those by whom he wassurrounded. 

"A village grievance!--An old woman roaring her lungs out for a cowwhich has been carried off by our troopers!"--grumbled theaide-de-camp, with less respect than was usual to him. 

"And call you that a _nothing_?"--exclaimed his master. "By our ladyof Liesse, it is an act of cruelty and oppression--a thing calculatedto make us hateful in the eyes of the village!--And many villages, mygood Nignio, represent districts, and many districts provinces, andprovinces a country; and by an accumulation of such resentments asthe indignation of this old crone, will the King of Spain and theCatholic faith be driven out of Flanders!--See to it! I want nofurther attendance of you this morning! Let the cow be restoredbefore sunset, and the marauders punished. "

"But if, as will likely prove the case, the beast is no longer in itsskin?"--demanded the aide-de-camp. "If the cow should have beenalready eaten, in a score of messes of pottage?"

"Let her have compensation. "

"The money chest at headquarters, if it please your highness, is allbut empty, " replied Nignio, glancing with a smile towardsGonzaga, --as though they were accustomed to jest together over thereckless openness of heart and hand of their young chief. 

"Then, by the blessed shrine of St Jago, give the fellows at leastthe strappado, " cried Don John, out of all patience. "Sincerestitution may not be, be the retribution all the heavier. "

"It is ever thus, " cried he, addressing himself to Gonzaga, as theaide-de-camp resumed his plumed beaver, and galloped off with animprecation between his lips, at having so rustic a duty on hishands, instead of accompanying the parade of his royal master. "Itgoes against my conscience to decree the chastisement of thesefellows. For i' faith, they that fight, must feed; and hunger, thateats through stone walls, is apt to have a nibble at honesty. Myroyal brother, or those who have the distribution of his graces, isso much more liberal of edicts and anathemas than of orders on thetreasury of Spain, that money and rations are evermore wanting. Ifthese Protestants persist in their stand against us, I shall have togo forth to all the Catholic cities of the empire, preaching, likePeter the hermit, to obtain contributions from the pious!"

"His Majesty is perhaps of opinion, " observed Gonzaga, "that rebelsand heretics ought to supply the maintenance of the troops sent toreduce them to submission. "

"A curious mode of engaging their affections towards either the creedor prince from which they have revolted!" cried Don John. "But yousay true, Ottavio. Such are precisely the instructions of my royalbrother; whom the Almighty soften with a more Christian spirit in hisupholding of the doctrines of Christianity!--I am bidden to regardmyself as in a conquered country. I am bidden to feel myself as I mayhave felt at Modon or Lepanto. It may not be, it may not be!--Thesepeople were the loyal subjects of my forefathers. These people arethe faithful followers of Christ. "

"Let us trust that the old woman may get back her cow, and yourhighness's tender conscience stand absolved, "--observed Gonzaga witha smile of ill-repressed derision. "I fear, indeed, that the Court ofthe Escurial is unprepared with sympathy for such grievances. "

"Gonzaga!"--exclaimed Don John, suddenly reining up his horse, andlooking his companion full in the face, "these are black and bittertimes; and apt to make kings, princes, nobles, ay, and even prelates, forget that they are men; or rather that there be men in the worldbeside themselves. "--Then allowing his charger to resume itscaracolling, to give time to his startled friend to recover from theglow of consciousness burning on his cheek, --he resumed with a lessstern inflexion. "It is the vexation of this conviction that hathbrought my face to the meagreness and sallow tint that accused thescorching sun of Barbary. I love the rush of battle. The clash ofswords or roaring of artillery is music to me. There is joy incontending, life for life, with a traitor, and marshaling the fiercebattalions on the field. But the battle done, let the sword besheathed! The struggle over, let the blood sink into the earth, andthe deadly smoke disperse, and give to view once more the peace ofheaven!--The petty aggravations of daily strife, --the cold-bloodedoppressions of conquest, --the contest with the peasant for his morselof bread, or with his chaste wife for her fidelity, --are so revoltingto my conscience of good and evil, that as the Lord liveth there aremoments when I am tempted to resign for ever the music I love so wellof drum and trumpet, and betake myself, like my royal father, to somedrowsy monastery, to listen to the end of my days to the snuffling ofCapuchins!"

Scarce could Ottavio Gonzaga, so recently emancipated from theEscurial, refrain from making the sign of the cross at this heinousdeclaration!--But he contained himself. --It was his object to workhis way still further into the confidence of his royal companion. 

"The chief pleasure I derived from the visit of the French princessto Namur, " resumed Don John, "was the respite it afforded from thecontemplation of such miseries and such aggressions. I was sick atheart of groans and murmurs, --weary of the adjustment of grievances. To behold a woman's face, whereof the eyes were not red with weeping, was _something_!"--

"And the eyes of the fair Queen of Navarre are said to be of thebrightest!" observed Gonzaga with a sneer. 

"As God judgeth my soul, I noted not their hue or brightness!"exclaimed Don John. "Her voice was a woman's--her bearing awoman's--her tastes a woman's. And it brought back the memory ofbetter days to hear the silken robes of her train rustling around me, instead of the customary clang of mail; and merry laughs instead ofperpetual moans, or the rude oaths of my Walloons!"

An incredulous smile played on the handsome features of theItalian. --

"Have out your laugh!" cried Don John. "You had not thought to seethe lion of Lepanto converted into so mere a lap-dog!--Is it not so?"

"As little so as I can admit without the disrespect of denial to yourhighness, "--replied Gonzaga, with a low obeisance. "My smile wasoccasioned by wonder that one so little skilled in feigning as theroyal lion of Lepanto, should even hazard the attempt. There, atleast--and there alone--is Don John of Austria certain of defeat!"

"I might, perhaps, waste more time in persuading you that the air ofFlanders hath not taught me lying as well as compassion, " replied theInfant; "but that yonder green mound is our first redoubt. The linesof Bouge are before you. "

Professional discussion now usurped the place of friendlyintercourse. On the arrival of the prince, the drums of headquartersbeat to arms; and a moment afterwards, Don John was surrounded by hisofficers; exhibiting, in the issuing of his orders of the day, theable promptitude of one of the first commanders of his time, temperedby the dignified courtesy of a prince of the blood. 

Even Ottavio Gonzaga was too much engrossed by the tactical debatescarrying on around him, to have further thought of the mysteries intowhich he was resolved to penetrate. 

It was not till the decline of day, that the prince and his _étatmajor_ returned to Namur; invitations having been frankly given byDon John to a score of his officers, to an entertainment in honour ofthe return of his friend. 

Amid the jovialty of such an entertainment, Gonzaga entertainedlittle doubt of learning the truth. The rough railleries of such menwere not likely to respect so slight a circumvallation as the honourof female reputation; and the glowing vintage of the Moselle andRhine would bring forth the secret among the bubbles of their flowingtides. And, in truth, scarcely were the salvers withdrawn, when thepotations of these mailed carousers produced deep oaths anduproarious laughter; amid which was toasted the name of Margaret, with the enthusiasm due to one of the originators of the massacre ofSt Bartholomew, from the most Catholic captains of the founder of theInquisition of Spain. 

The admiration due to her beauty, was, however, couched in termsscarcely warranted on the lips of men of honour, even by suchfrailties as Margaret's; and, to the surprise of Gonzaga, norestraint was imposed by the presence of her imputed lover. It seemedan established thing, that the name of Margaret was a matter ofindifference in the ears of Don John!

That very night, therefore, (the banquet being of short continuanceas there was to be a field-day at daybreak, under the reviewal of theprince, ) Ottavio Gonzaga, more than ever to seek in his conjectures, resolved to address himself for further information to Nignio; towhom he had brought confidential letters from his family in Spain, and who was an ancient brother in arms. 

Having made out without much difficulty, the chamber occupied by theSpanish captain, in a tower of the citadel overlooking the valley ofthe Sambre, there was some excuse for preventing his early rest witha view to the morrow's exercises, in the plea of news from Madrid. 

But as the Italian anticipated, ere he had half disburdened hisbudget of Escurial gossip, Nignio de Zuniga had his own grievances toconfide. Uppermost in his mind, was the irritation of having beenemployed that morning in a cow-hunt; and from execrations on the nameof the old woman, enriched with all the blasphemies of a trooper'svocabulary, --it was no difficult matter to glide to the generalmisdemeanours and malefactions of the sex. For Gabriel Nignio was aman of iron, --bred in camps, with as little of the milk of humankindness in his nature as his royal master King Philip; and it washis devout conviction, that no petticoat should be allowed within tenleagues of any Christian encampment, --and that women were inflictedupon this nether earth, solely for the abasement and contamination ofthe nobler sex. 

"As if that accursed Frenchwoman, and the nest of jays, her maids ofhonour, were not enough for the penance of an unhappy sinner for thespace of a calendar year!"--cried he, still harping upon the oldwoman. 

"The visit of Queen Margaret must indeed have put you to some troubleand confusion, " observed Gonzaga carelessly. "From as much as is_apparent_ of your householding, I can scarce imagine how you managedto bestow so courtly a dame here in honour; or with what pastimes youmanaged to entertain her. "

"The sequins of Lepanto and piastres of his holiness were not yetquite exhausted, " replied Nignio. "Even the Namurrois came downhandsomely. The sister of two French kings, and sister-in-law of theDuke of Lorraine, was a person for even the thick-skulled Walloons torespect. It was not _money_ that was wanting--it was patience. O, these Parisians! Make me monkey-keeper, blessed Virgin, to the beastgarden of the Escurial; but spare me for the rest of my days thehonour of being seneschal to the finikin household of a queen on hertravels!"

Impossible to forbear a laugh at the fervent hatred depicted in thewarworn features of the Castilian captain, "I' faith, my clearNignio, " said Gonzaga, "for the squire of so gallant a knight as DonJohn of Austria, your notions are rather those of Mahound orTermagaunt! What would his highness say, were he to hear you thusbitter against his Dulcinea?"

"_His_ Dulcinea!"--ejaculated the aide-de-camp with a air of disgust. "God grant it! For a princess of Valois blood, reared under theteaching of a Medici, had at least the recommendations of nobilityand orthodoxy in her favour. "

"As was the case when Anna di Mendoça effected the conquest over hisboyish affections, so generously pardoned by his royal brother!--Butafter such proof of the hereditary aspirings of Don John, it would bedifficult to persuade me of his highness's derogation. "

"Would _I_ could say as much!"--exclaimed Nignio, with a groan. "Butsuch a cow-hunt as mine of this morning, might convince thescepticism of St Thomas!"

"What, in the name of the whole calendar, have the affections of theprince in common with your exploit?" said Gonzaga. "Would you have meinfer that the son of Charles V. Is enamoured of a dairy wench?"--

"Of _worse_! of a daughter of the Amalekites!"--criedNignio--stretching out his widely booted legs, as though it were arelief to him to have disburthened himself of his mystery. 

"I have not the honour of understanding you, " replied theItalian, --no further versed in Scripture history than was thepleasure of his almoner. 

"You are his highness's _friend_, Gonzaga!" resumed the Spanishcaptain. "Even among his countrymen, none so near his heart! I havetherefore no scruple in acquainting you with a matter, wherein, fromthe first, I determined to seek your counteraction. Though seeminglybut a straw thrown up into the air, I infer from it a most evilpredilection on the part of Don John;--fatal to himself, to us, hisfriends, and to the country he represents in Belgium. "

"Nay, now you are serious indeed!" cried his companion, delighted tocome to the point. "I was in hopes it was some mere matter of a pairof rosy lips and a flaunting top-knot!"

"At the time Queen Margaret visited Namur, " began the aide-de-camp--

"I knew it!" interrupted Gonzaga, "I was as prepared for it as forthe opening of a fairy legend--'On a time their lived a king andqueen'--"

"Will _you_ tell the story, then, or shall I?"--cried Nignio, impatient of his interruption. 

"_Yourself_, my pearl of squires! granting me in the first place yourpardon for my ill manners. "--

"When Margaret de Valois visited Namur, " resumed Nignio, "the bestdiversions we had to offer to so fair and pious a princess were, first a _Te Deum_ in the cathedral for her safe journey; next, anentertainment of dancing and music at the town hall--and a gallantaffair it was, as far as silver draperies, and garlands of roses, anda blaze of light that seemed to threaten the conflagration of thecity, may be taken in praise. The queen had brought with her, as with_malice prepense_, six of the loveliest ladies of honour gracing thecourt of the Louvre"--

"I _knew_ it!"--again interrupted Gonzaga;--and again did Nigniogravely enquire of him whether (since so well informed) he would bepleased to finish the history in his own way?

"Your pardon! your pardon!" cried the Italian, laying his finger onhis lips. "Henceforward I am mute as a carp of the Meuse. "

"It afforded, therefore, some mortification to this astutiousprincess, --this daughter of Herodias, with more than all her mother'scunning and cruelty in her soul, --to perceive that the Spanishwarriors, who on that occasion beheld for the first time theassembled nobility of Brabant and Namur, were more struck by theTeutonic charms of these fair-haired daughters of the north, (soantipodal to all we are accustomed to see in our sunburnedprovinces, ) than by the mannered graces of her pleasure-worn Parisianbelles. "--

"Certain it is, " observed Gonzaga, (despite his recent pledge, ) "thatthere is no greater contrast than between our wild-eyed, glowingAndalusians, and the slow-footed, blue-eyed daughters of thesenorthern mists, whose smiles are as moonshine to sunshine!"

"After excess of sunshine, people sometimes prefer the calmer andmilder radiance of the lesser light. And I promise you that, at thismoment, if there be pillows sleepless yonder in the camp for the sakeof the costly fragile toys called womankind, those jackasses oflovelorn lads have cause to regret the sojourn of Queen Margaret inBelgium, only as having brought forth from their castles in theArdennes or the froggeries of the Low Country, the indigenousdivinities that I would were at this moment at the bottom of theirmuddy moats, or of the Sambre flowing under yonder window!"--

"It is one of these Brabançon belles, then, who"--

Gabriel Nignio de Zuniga half rose from his chair, as a signal forbreaking off the communication he was not allowed to pursue in hisown way. --Taking counsel of himself, however, he judged that theshorter way was to tell his tale in a shorter manner, so as to setfurther molestation at defiance. 

"In one word, " resumed he, with a vivacity of utterance foreign tohis Spanish habits of grandiloquence, "at that ball, there appearedamong the dancers of the Coranto, exhibited before the tent of stateof Queen Margaret, a young girl whose tender years seemed to renderthe exhibition almost an indiscretion; and whose aerial figureappeared to make her sojourn there, or any other spot on earth amatter of wonder. Her dress was simple, her fair hair streamed on hershoulders. It was one of the angels of your immortal Titian, _minus_the wings! Such was, at least, the description given me by Don John, to enable me to ascertain among the Namurrois her name and lineage, for the satisfaction (he said) of the queen, whose attention had beenfascinated by her beauty. "

"And you proceeded, I doubt not, on your errand with all the graceand good-will I saw you put into your commission of thismorning?"--cried Gonzaga, laughing. 

"And nearly the same result!--My answer to the enquiry of hishighness was _verbatim_ the same; that the matter was not worthasking after. This white rose of the Meuse was not so much as of achapteral-house. Some piece of provincial obscurity that had issuedfrom the shade, to fill a place in the royal Coranto, in consequenceof the indisposition of one of the noble daughters of the house ofCroy. Still, as in the matter of the cow-hunt, his highness had themalice to persist! And next day, instead of allowing me to attend himin his barging with the royal Cleopatra of this confounded Cydnus ofBrabant, I was dispatched into all quarters of Namur to seek out apretty child with silken hair and laughing eyes, whom some sillygrandam had snatched out of its nursery to parade at a royalfête. --Holy St Laurence! how my soul grilled within my skin!--I did, as you may suppose, as much of his highness's pleasure as squaredwith my own; and had the satisfaction of informing him, on hisreturn, that the bird had fled. "--

"And there was an end of the matter?"--

"I hoped so! But I am not precisely the confessor his highness islikely to select when love constitutes the sin. At all events, thebustle of Margaret's departure for Spa, the care of the royal escort, and the payment of all that decency required us to take uponourselves of the cost of our hospitality, engrossed my time andthoughts. But the first time the Infant beset me, (as he hasdoubtless done yourself, ) with his chapter of lamentations over thesufferings of Belgium, --the lawlessness of the camp--the formerloyalty of the provinces--the tenderness of conscience of theheretics, --and the eligibility of forbearance and peace, --I saw asplain as though the word were inscribed by the burning finger ofSatan, that the turkois eyes and flaxen ringlets were the text of allthis snivelling humanity!'

"Blessings on the tender consciences of the heretics, who wereburning Antwerp and Ghent, and plundering the religious houses andputting their priests to the sword!" ejaculated Gonzaga. 

"The exigencies of the hour, however, left little leisure to Don Johnfor the nursing of his infant passion; and a few weeks past, Ientertained hopes that, Queen Margaret being safe back at her Louvre, the heart of the Prince was safe back in its place; more especiallywhen he one day proposed to me an exploit savouring more of his daysof Lepanto than I had expected at his hands again. Distracted by thefalse intelligence wherewith we were perpetually misled by theBrabançon scouts, Don John determined on a sortie in disguise, towards the intrenchments of the enemy, betwixt the Sambre and Dyle. Rumour of the reinforcements of English troops dispatched to theheretics by Queen Elizabeth at the instance of the diet of Worms, rendered him anxious; and bent upon ascertaining the exactcantonments of Colonel Norris and his Scottish companies, we setforward before daybreak towards the forest of Marlagne, as for ahunting expedition; then exchanging our dresses for the simple suitsof civilians at the house of the verderer, made our way across theSambre towards Gembloux. "

"A mad project!--But such were ever the delight of ourQuixote!"--cried Gonzaga. 

"In this instance, all prospered. We crossed the country withoutobstacle, mounted on two powerful Mecklenburgers; and before noon, were deep in Brabant. The very rashness of the undertaking seemed torestore to Don John his forgotten hilarity of old! He was like atruant schoolboy, that has cheated his pedagogue of a day'sbird-nesting; and eyes more discerning than those of the stultifiednatives of these sluggish provinces, had been puzzled to detect underthe huge patch that blinded him of an eye, and the slashed sleeve ofhis sad-coloured suit that showed him wounded of an arm, the gallanthost of Queen Margaret! 'My soul comes back into me with this gallopacross the breezy plain, unencumbered by the trampling of a guard!'cried the Prince. 'There is the making in me yet of another Lepanto!But two provinces remain faithful to our standard: his highness ofOrange and the Archduke having filched, one by one, from theirallegiance the hearts of these pious Netherlanders; who can no betterprove their fear of God than by ceasing to honour the king he hathbeen pleased to set over them. Nevertheless, with Luxembourg andNamur for our vantage-ground, and under the blessing of his holiness, the banner under which I conquered the infidel, shall, sooner orlater, float victorious under this northern sky!'

"Such was the tenour of his discourse as we entered a wood, halfwaythrough which, the itinerary I had consulted informed me we had tocross a branch of the Dyle. But on reaching the ferry-house of thisunfrequented track, we found only two sumpter-mules tied to a treenear the hovel, and a boat chained to its stump beside the stream. Inanswer to our shouts, no vestige of a ferryman appeared; and beholdthe boat-chain was locked, and the current too deep and strong forfording. 

"Where there is smoke there is fire! No boat without a boatman!"cried the Prince; and leaping from his horse, which he gave me tohold, and renewing his vociferations, he was about to enter theferry-house, when, just as he reached the wooden porch, a young girl, holding her finger to her lips in token of silence, appeared on thethreshold!"

"She of the turkois eyes and flaxen ringlets, for a hundredpistoles!"--cried Gonzaga. "Such then was the bird's nest that madehim so mad a truant!"

"As she retreated into the house, " resumed Nignio, without noticingthe interruption, "his highness followed, hat in hand, with thedeference due to a gouvernante of Flanders. But as the house waslittle better than a shed of boards, by drawing a trifle nearer theporch, not a syllable of their mutual explanation escaped me. 

"'Are you a follower of Don John?'--was the first demand of thedamsel. 'Do you belong to the party of the States?'--the next; toboth which questions, a negative was easily returned. After listeningto the plea, fluently set forth by the prince, that he was simply aZealand burgess, travelling on his own errand, and sorely in fear offalling in (God wot) with either Protestants or Papists, the damselappeared to hail the arrival of so congenial an ally as a blessing;acquainted him with a rash frankness of speech worthy of his own, that she was journeying from the Ardennes towards the frontier ofBrabant, where her father was in high command; that the duenna hercompanion, outwearied by the exercise, was taking her siesta within;for that her pacing nag, having cast a shoe on reaching the wood, theferryman had undertaken to conduct to the nearest smithy thevenerable chaplain and serving-man constituting her escort. 

"'Half a league from hence, ' said she, 'my father's people are inwaiting to escort me during the rest of my journey. '

"'Yet surely, gentle lady, ' observed the prince, 'considering themilitary occupation of the province, your present protection issomewhat of the weakest?'--

"'It was expressly so devised by my father, ' replied the open-heartedgirl. 'The Spanish cavaliers are men of honour, who war not againstwomen and almoners. A more powerful attendance were more likely toprovoke animosity. Feebleness is sometimes the best security. '

"'_Home_ is a woman's only security in times like these!'--cried theprince with animation. 

"'And therefore to my home am I recalled, ' rejoined the young girl, with a heavy sigh. 'Since my mother's death, I have been residingwith her sister in the Ardennes. But my good aunt having had theweakness to give way to my instances, and carry me to Namur lastsummer, to take part in the entertainments offered to the Queen ofNavarre, my father has taken offence at both of us; and I am sent forhome to be submitted to sterner keeping. '

"You will believe that, ere all this was mutually explained, moretime had elapsed than I take in the telling it; and I could perceiveby the voices of the speakers that they had taken seats, and wereawaiting, without much impatience, the return of the ferryman. Thecompassion of the silly child was excited by the severe accidentwhich the stranger described as the origin of his fractures andcontusions; nor need I tell you that the persuasive voice anddeportment of Don John are calculated to make even a more experiencedone than this pretty Ulrica forget his unseemly aspect and indigentapparel. "

"And all this time the careful gouvernante snored within, and theobsequious aide-de-camp held at the door the bridles of theMecklenburgers"--

"Precisely. Nor found I the time hang much heavier than the prince;for at first mistrustful, like yourself, that the reconnaissance intowhich he had beguiled me was a mere pretext, I was not sorry toascertain, sigh by sigh, and word by word, the grounds on which hestood with the enemy. And you should have heard how artfully hecontrived to lead her back to the fêtes of Namur; asking, as with thecuriosity of a bumpkin, the whole details of the royalentertainments! No small mind had I to rush in and chuck the hussyinto the torrent before me, when I heard the little fiend burst forthinto the most genuine and enthusiastic praises of the royal giver ofthe feast, --'So young, so handsome, so affable, so courteous, sopassing the kingliness of kings. ' She admitted, moreover, that it washer frantic desire of beholding face to face the hero of Lepanto, which had produced the concession on the part of her kinswoman soseverely visited by her father. 

"'But surely, ' pleaded this thoughtless prattler, 'one may admire thenoble deportment of a Papist, and perceive the native goodnessbeaming in his eyes, without peril of salvation? This whole morninghath my father's chaplain (who will be here anon) been givingscripture warrant that I have no right to importune heaven with myprayers for the conversion of Don John:--Yet, as my good aunt justlyobserves, the great grandson of Mary of Burgundy has his pedestalfirm in our hearts, beyond reach of overthrow from all thepreachments of the Reformers'"--

"And you did not fling the bridles to the devil, and rush in to therescue of the unguarded soldier thus mischievously assailed?"--criedGonzaga. 

"It needed not! The old lady could not sleep for ever; and I had thecomfort to hear her rouse herself, and suitably reprehend the want ofdignity of her charge in such strange familiarity with strangers. Towhich the pretty Ulrica replied, 'That it was no fault of hers ifpeople wanted to convert a child into a woman!' A moment afterwardsand the ferryman and cortège arrived together; and a more gloriousfigure of fun than the chaplain of the heretic general hath seldombestridden a pacing nag! However, I was too glad of his arrival to beexceptious; and the whole party were speedily embarked in the ferry, taking their turn as the first arrived at the spot, which we twainabided, watching the punt across the stream, which, in consequence ofthe strength of the current, it was indispensable to float down somehundred yards, in order to reach the opposite shore. 

"Hat in hand stood the prince, his eyes fixed upon the preciousfreight, and those of Ulrica fixed in return upon her new andpleasant acquaintance; when, Jesu Maria!--as every thing that is evilordained it, --behold, the newly-shod palfrey of the prettyBrabançonne, irritated, perhaps, by the clumsy veterinaryship of avillage smithy, began suddenly to rear and plunge, and set atdefiance the old dunderhead by whom it was held!--The ass of aferryman, in his eagerness to lend his aid, let go his oar into thestream; and between the awkwardness of some and the rashness ofothers, in a moment the whole party were carried round by the eddy ofthe Dyle!--The next, and Ulrica was struggling in the waters"--

"And the next, in the arms of the prince, who had plunged in to herrescue!"--

"You know him too well not to foresee all that follows. Take forgranted, therefore, the tedious hours spent at the ferry-house, inrestoring to consciousness the exhausted women, half-dead with coldand fright. Under the unguarded excitement of mind produced by suchan incident, I expected indeed every moment the self-betrayal of mycompanion; but _that_ evil we escaped. And when, late in the evening, the party was sufficiently recovered to proceed, I was agreeablysurprised to find that Don John was alive to the danger of escortingthe fair Ulrica even so far as the hamlet, where her father's peoplewere in waiting. "

"And where he had been inevitably recognized!"--

"The certainty of falling in with the troopers of Horn, rendered itexpedient for us to return to Namur with only half the object of hishighness accomplished. But the babble of the old chaplain hadacquainted us with nearly all we wanted to know, -- namely, the numberand disposal of the Statists, and the position taken up by theEnglish auxiliaries. "

"And this second parting from Ulrica?"--

"Was a parting as between friends for life! The first had been thelaughing farewell of pleasant acquaintance. But now, ere she badeadieu to the gallant preserver of her life, she shred a tress of hersilken hair, still wet with the waters of the Dyle, which sheentreated him to keep for her sake. In return, he placed upon herfinger the ruby presented to him by the Doge of Venice, bearing thearms of the republic engraved on the setting; telling her that chancehad enabled him to confer an obligation on the governor of theNetherlands; and that, in any strait or peril, that signet, dispatched in his name to Don John of Austria, would command hisprotection. "

"As I live, a choice romance!--almost worthy the pages of ourmatchless Boccaccio!" cried the Italian. "A thousand pities but thatthe whole batch of Orangeists had been carried down theDyle!--However, the enemy's lines lie between them. They will meet nomore. The Calvinist colonel has doubtless his daughter under lock andkey; and his highness has too much work cut out for him by hisrebels, to have time for peeping through the keyhole. --So now, good-night. --For love-tales are apt to beget drowsiness; and i'faithwe must be a-foot by break of day. "

And having betaken himself to the chamber provided for him, OttavioGonzaga lost not an hour or a syllable, in transcribing all he hadlearned from the Spanish aide-de-camp; that the state of mind andfeeling of the young viceroy might be speedily laid open to the fulland uncongenial investigation of his royal brother of the Escurial. 

Part II. 

A fortnight afterwards, was fought that famous battle of Gembloux, which added a new branch to the laurels of Don John of Austria; andconstitutes a link of the radiant chain of military glories whichbinds the admiration of Europe to the soil of one of the obscurest ofits countries!--Gembloux, Ramillies, Nivelle, Waterloo, lie withinthe circuit of a morning's journey, as well as within the circle ofeternal renown. 

By this brilliant triumph of the royalists, six thousand men-at-arms, their standards, banners, and artillery, were lost to the States. Thecavalry of Spain, under the command of Ottavio Gonzaga, performedprodigies of valour; and the vanguard, under that of Gaspardo Nignio, equally distinguished itself. But the heat of the action fell uponthe main body of the army, which had marched from Namur under thecommand of Don John; being composed of the Italian reinforcementsdispatched to him from Parma by desire of the Pope, under the commandof his nephew, Prince Alexander Farnese. 

It was noticed, however, with surprise, that when the generals of theStates--the Archduke Matthias, and Prince of Orange--retreated indismay to Antwerp, Don John, instead of pursuing his advantage withthe energy of his usual habits, seemed to derive little satisfactionor encouragement from his victory. It might be, that the difficultyof controlling the predatory habits of the German and Burgundiantroops wearied his patience; for scarce a day passed but there issuedsome new proclamation, reproving the atrocious rapacity and lawlessdesperation of the army. But neither Gonzaga nor Nignio had muchopportunity of judging of the real cause of his cheerlessness; for, independent of the engrossing duties of their several commands, theleisure of Don John was entirely bestowed upon his nephew, AlexanderFarnese, who, only a few years his junior in age, was almost abrother in affection. 

To him alone were confided the growing cares of his charge--theincreasing perplexities of his mind. To both princes, the name ofUlrica had become, by frequent repetition, a sacred word; and thoughDon John had the comfort of knowing that her father, the Count deCergny, was unengaged in the action of Gembloux, his highness hadreason to fear that the regiment of Hainaulters under his command, constituted the garrison of one or other of the frontier fortressesof Brabant, to which it was now his duty to direct the conqueringarms of his captains. 

The army of the States having taken refuge within the walls ofAntwerp, the royalists, instead of marching straight to Brussels, according to general expectation, effected in the first instance thereduction of Tirlemont, Louvain, D'Arschot, Sichem, andDiest, --Nivelle, the capital of Walloon Brabant, next succumbed totheir arms--Maubeuge, Chimay, Barlaimont;--and, after a severestruggle, the new and beautiful town of Philippeville. 

But these heroic feats were not accomplished without a tremendouscarnage, and deeds of violence at which the soul sickened. At Sichem, the indignation of the Burgundians against a body of French troopswhich, after the battle of Gembloux, had pledged itself never againto bear arms against Spain, caused them to have a hundred soldiersstrangled by night, and their bodies flung into the moat at the footof the citadel; after which the town was given up by Prince Alexanderto pillage and spoliation! Terrified by such an example, Diest andLeeuw hastened to capitulate. And still, at every fresh conquest, andwhile receiving day after day, and week after week, the submission offortresses, and capitulation of vanquished chiefs, the anxiousexpectation entertained by Don John of an appeal to his clemencyaccompanying the Venetian ring, was again and again disappointed!--

At times, his anxieties on Ulrica's account saddened him into utterdespondency. He felt convinced that mischance had overtaken her. Allhis endeavours to ascertain the position of the Count de Cergnyhaving availed him nothing, he trusted that the family must be shutup in Antwerp, with the Prince of Orange and Archduke; but when everynight, ere he retired to a soldier's rugged pillow, and pressed hislips to that long fair tress which seemed to ensure the blessings ofan angel of purity and peace, the hopes entertained by Don John oftidings of the gentle Ulrica became slighter and still more slight. 

He did not the more refrain from issuing such orders and exactingsuch interference on the part of Alexander Farnese, as promised tosecure protection and respect to the families of all such officers ofthe insurgent army as might, in any time or place, fall into thehands of the royalists. 

To Alexander, indeed, to whom his noble kinsman was scarcely lessendeared by his chivalrous qualities than the ties of blood, and whowas fully aware of the motive of these instructions, the charge wasalmost superfluous. So earnest were, from the first, his orders tohis Italian captains to pursue in all directions their enquiriesafter the Count de Cergny and his family, that it had become a matterof course to preface their accounts of the day's movementswith--"_No_ intelligence, may it please your highness, of the Countde Cergny!"

The siege of Limbourg, however, now wholly absorbed his attention;for it was a stronghold on which the utmost faith was pinned by themilitary science of the States. But a breach having been made in thewalls by the Spanish artillery under the command of Nicolo di Cesi, the cavalry, commanded in person by the Prince Alexander, and theWalloons under Nignio di Zuniga, speedily forced an entrance; when, in spite of the stanch resistance of the governor, the garrison laiddown their arms, and the greater portion of the inhabitants took theoath of fealty to the king. 

Of all his conquests, this was the least expected and most desirable;in devout conviction of which, the Prince of Parma commanded a _TeDeum_ to be sung in the churches, and hastened to render thanks tothe God of Battles for an event by which further carnage was sparedto either host. 

Escorted by his _état major_, he had proceeded to the cathedral tojoin in the august solemnization; when, lo! just as he quitted thechurch, a way-worn and heated cavalier approached, bearingdespatches; in whom the prince recognised a faithful attendant of hishousehold, named Paolo Rinaldo, whom he had recently sent withinstructions to Camille Du Mont, the general charged with thereduction of the frontier fortresses of Brabant. 

"Be their blood upon their head!" was the spontaneous ejaculation ofthe prince, after perusing the despatch. Then, turning to theofficers by whom he was escorted, he explained, in a few words, thatthe fortress of Dalem, which had replied to the propositions tosurrender of Du Mont only by the scornful voice of its cannon, hadbeen taken by storm by the Burgundians, and its garrison put to thesword. 

"Time that some such example taught a lesson to these braggarts ofBrabant!"--responded Nignio, who stood at the right hand of PrinceAlexander. "The nasal twang of their chaplains seems of late to haveovermastered, in their ears, the eloquence of the ordnance of Spain!Yet, i'faith, they might be expected to find somewhat more unction inthe preachments of our musketeers than the homilies of either Lutheror Calvin!"

He spoke unheeded of the prince; for Alexander was now engaged apartin a colloquy with his faithful Rinaldo, who had respectfully placedin his hands a ring of great cost and beauty. 

"Seeing the jewel enchased with the arms of the Venetian republic, may it please your highness, " said the soldier, "I judged it betterto remit it to your royal keeping. "

"And from whose was it plundered?" cried the prince, with a suddenflush of emotion. 

"From hands that resisted not!" replied Rinaldo gravely. "I took itfrom the finger of the dead!"

"And when, and where?"--exclaimed the prince, drawing him stillfurther apart, and motioning to his train to resume their march tothe States' house of Limbourg. 

"The tale is long and grievous, may it please your highness!" saidRinaldo. "To comprise it in the fewest words, know that, after seeingthe governor of Dalem cut down in a brave and obstinate defence ofthe banner of the States floating from the walls of his citadel, Idid my utmost to induce the Baron de Cevray, whose Burgundianscarried the place, to proclaim quarter. For these fellows ofHainaulters, (who, to do them justice, had fought like dragons, )having lost their head, were powerless; and of what use hacking topieces an exhausted carcass?--But our troops were too muchexasperated by the insolent resistance and defiance they hadexperienced, to hear of mercy; and soon the conduits ran blood, andshrieks and groans rent the air more cruelly than the previous roarof the artillery. In accordance, however, with the instructions Ihave ever received from your highness, I pushed my way into allquarters, opposing what authority I might to the brutality of thetroopers. "

"Quick, quick!"--cried Prince Alexander in anxious haste--"Let me notsuppose that the wearer of this ring fell the victim of such anhour?"--

It was in passing the open doors of the church that my ears wereassailed with cries of female distresses:--nor could I doubt thateven _that_ sanctuary (held sacred by our troops of Spain!) had beeninvaded by the impiety of the German or Burgundian legions!--Asusual, the chief ladies of the town had placed themselves under theprotection of the high altar. But there, even there, had they beenseized by sacrilegious hands!--The fame of the rare beauty of thedaughter of the governor of Dalem, had attracted, among the rest, twodaring ruffians of the regiment of Cevray. "

"You sacrificed them, I trust in GOD, on the spot?"--demanded theprince, trembling with emotion. "You dealt upon them the vengeancedue?"

"Alas! sir, the vengeance they were mutually dealing, had alreadycruelly injured the helpless object of the contest! Snatched from thearms of the Burgundian soldiers by the fierce arm of a Germanmusketeer, a deadly blow, aimed at the ruffian against whom she waswildly but vainly defending herself; had lighted on one of thefairest of human forms! Cloven to the bone, the blood of thisinnocent being, scarce past the age of childhood, was streaming onher assailants; and when, rushing in, I proclaimed, in the name ofGod and of your highness, quarter and peace, it was an insensiblebody I rescued from the grasp of pollution!"

"Unhappy Ulrica!" faltered the prince, "and oh! my more unhappykinsman!"

"Not altogether hopeless, " resumed Rinaldo; "and apprized, by thesorrowful ejaculations of her female companions when relieved fromtheir personal fears, of the high condition of the victim, I bore theinsensible lady to the hospital of Dalem; and the utmost skill of oursurgeons was employed upon her wounds. Better had it beenspared!--The dying girl was roused only to the endurance of moreexquisite torture; and while murmuring a petition for 'mercy--mercyto her _father_!' that proved her still unconscious of her familymisfortunes, she attempted in vain to take from her finger the ring Ihave had the honour to deliver to your highness:--faltering with herlast breath, 'for _his_ sake, Don John will perhaps show mercy to mypoor old father!'"--

Prince Alexander averted his head as he listened to these mournfuldetails. 

"She is at rest, then?"--said he, after a pause. 

"Before nightfall, sir, she was released. "--

"Return in all haste to Dalem, Rinaldo, " rejoined the prince, "andcomplete your work of mercy, by seeing all honours of interment thatthe times admit, bestowed on the daughter of the Comte de Cergny!"

Weary and exhausted as he was, not a murmur escaped the lips of thefaithful Rinaldo as he mounted his horse, and hastened to thedischarge of his new duty. For though habituated by the details ofthat cruel and desolating warfare to spectacles of horror--theyouth--the beauty--the innocence--the agonies of Ulrica, had touchedhim to the heart; nor was the tress of her fair hair worn next theheart of Don John of Austria, more fondly treasured, than the onethis rude soldier had shorn from the brow of death, in the ward of apublic hospital, albeit its silken gloss was tinged with blood!--

Scarcely a month had elapsed after the storming of Dalem, when aterrible rumour went forth in the camp of Bouge, (where Don John hadintrenched his division of the royalist army, ) that the governor ofthe Netherlands was attacked by fatal indisposition!--For some weekspast, indeed, his strength and spirit had been declining. When at thevillage of Rymenam on the Dyle, near Mechlin, (not far from the ferryof the wood, ) he suffered himself to be surprised by the Englishtroops under Horn, and the Scotch under Robert Stuart, the unusualcircumstance of the defeat of so able a general was universallyattributed to prostration of bodily strength. 

When it was soon afterwards intimated to the army that he had cededthe command to his nephew, Prince Alexander Farnese, regret for theorigin of his secession superseded every other consideration. 

For the word had gone forth that he was to die!--In the full vigourof his manhood and energy of his soul, a fatal blow had reached DonJohn of Austria!--

A vague but horrible accusation of poison was generallyprevalent!--For his leniency towards the Protestants had engendered asuspicion of heresy, and the orthodoxy of Philip II. Was known to beremorseless; and the agency of Ottavio Gonzaga at hand!--

But the kinsman who loved and attended him knew better. From themoment Prince Alexander beheld the ring of Ulrica glittering on hiswasted hand, he entertained no hope of his recovery; and every timehe issued from the tent of Don John, and noted the groups of veteranspraying on their knees for the restoration of the son of theiremperor, and heard the younger soldiers calling aloud in loyalaffection upon the name of the hero of Lepanto, tears came into hiseyes as he passed on to the discharge of his duties. For he knew thattheir intercessions were in vain--that the hours of the sufferer werenumbered. In a moment of respite from his sufferings, the sacramentsof the church were administered to the dying prince; having receivedwhich with becoming humility, he summoned around him the captains ofthe camp, and exhorted them to zeal in the service of Spain, andfidelity to his noble successor in command. 

It was the 1st of October, the anniversary of the action of Lepanto, and on a glorious autumnal day of golden sunshine, that, towardsevening, he ordered the curtains of his tent to be drawn aside, thathe might contemplate for the last time the creation of God!--

Raising his head proudly from a soldier's pillow, he uttered inhoarse but distinct accents his last request, that his body might beborne to Spain, and buried at the feet of his father. For his eyeswere fixed upon the glories of the orb of day, and his mind upon theglories of the memory of one of the greatest of kings. 

But that pious wish reflected the last flash of human reason in histroubled mind. His eyes became suddenly inflamed with fever, hiswords incoherent, his looks haggard. Having caused them to sound thetrumpets at the entrance of his tent, as for an onset, he ranged hisbattalions for an imaginary field of battle, and disposed hismanoeuvres, and gave the word to charge against the enemy. [18] Then, sinking back upon his pillow, he breathed in subdued accents, "Let meat least avenge her innocent blood. Why, why could I not save thee, my Ulrica!"--

[Footnote 18: The foregoing details are strictly historical. ]

It was thus he died. When Nignio de Zuniga (cursing in his heart witha fourfold curse the heretics whom he chose to consider the murderersof his master) stooped down to lay his callous hand on the heart ofthe hero, the pulses of life were still!--

There was but one cry throughout the camp--there was but one thoughtamong his captains:--"Let the bravest knight of Christendom be laidnobly in the grave!" Attired in the suit of mail in which he hadfought at Lepanto, the body was placed on a bier, and borne forthfrom his tent on the shoulders of the officers of his household. Then, having been saluted by the respect of the whole army, it wastransmitted from post to post through the camp, on those of thecolonels of the regiments of all nations constituting the forces ofSpain. --And which of them was to surmise, that upon the heart of thedead lay the love-token of a heretic?--A double line of troops, infantry and cavalry in alternation, formed a road of honour from thecamp of Bouge to the gates of the city of Namur. And when the peoplesaw, borne upon his bier amid the deferential silence of those ironsoldiers, bareheaded and with their looks towards the earth, thegallant soldier so untimely stricken, arrayed in his armour of gloryand with a crown upon his head, after the manner of the princes ofBurgundy, and on his finger the ruby ring of the Doge of Venice, theythought upon his knightly qualities--his courtesy, generosity, andvalour--till all memory of his illustrious parentage became effaced. They forgot the prince in the man, --"and behold all Israel mournedfor Jonathan!"

A regiment of infantry, trailing their halberts, led the march, tillthey reached Namur, where the precious deposit was remitted by theroyalist generals, Mansfeldt, Villefranche, and La Cros, to the handsof the chief magistrates of Namur. By these it was bourne in state tothe cathedral of St Alban; and during the celebration of a solemnmass, deposited at the foot of the high altar till the pleasure ofPhilip II. Should be known concerning the fulfilment of the lastrequest of Don John. 

It was by Ottavio Gonzaga the tidings of his death were conveyed toSpain. It was by Ottavio Gonzaga the king intimated, in return, hispermission that the conqueror of Lepanto should share the sepultureof Charles V. , and all that now remains to Namur in memory of one ofthe last of Christian knights, the Maccabeus of the Turkish hosts, who expired in its service and at its gates, is an inscription placedon its high altar by the piety of Alexander Farnese, intimating thatit afforded a temporary resting place to the remains of DON JOHN ofAUSTRIA. [19]

[Footnote 19: Thus far the courtesies of fiction. But for those whoprefer historical fact, it may be interesting to learn the authenticdetails of the interment of one whose posthumous destinies seemed toshare the incompleteness of his baffled life. In order to avoid thecontestations arising from the transit of a corpse through a foreignstate, Nignio di Zuniga (who was charged by Philip with the duty ofconveying it to Spain, under sanction of a passport from Henri III. )caused it to be _dismembered_, and the parts packed in three budgets, (_bougettes_, ) and laid upon packhorses!--On arriving in Spain, theparts were _readjusted with wires!--"On remplit le corps de bourre_, "says the old chronicler from which these details are derived, "_etainsi la structure en aiant été comme rétablie, on le revétit de sesarmes, et le fit voir au roi, tout debout apuyé sur son bâton degénéral, de sorte qu'il semblait encore vivant. L'aspect d'un mort siillustre ayant excité quelques larmes, on le porta à l'Escurial dansl'Eglise de St Laurens auprez de son père_. "

Such is the account given in a curious old history (supplementary tothose of D'Avila and Strada) of the wars of the Prince of Parma, published at Amsterdam early in the succeeding century. But a stillgreater insult has been offered to the memory of one of the last ofChristian knights, in Casimir Delavigne's fine play of "Don Juand'Autriche, " where he is represented as affianced to a Jewess!]

POEMS AND BALLADS OF GOETHE. 

No. I. 

It may be as well to state at the outset, that we have not the mostdistant intention of laying before the public the whole mass ofpoetry that flowed from the prolific pen of Goethe, betwixt the daysof his student life at Leipsic and those of his final courtlyresidence at Weimar. It is of no use preserving the whole wardrobe ofthe dead; we do enough if we possess ourselves of hisvaluables--articles of sterling bullion that will at any time commandtheir price in the market--as to worn-out and threadbarepersonalities, the sooner they are got rid of the better. Far be itfrom us, however, to depreciate or detract from the merit of any ofGoethe's productions. Few men have written so voluminously, and stillfewer have written so well. But the curse of a most fluent pen, andof a numerous auditory, to whom his words were oracles, was upon him;and seventy volumes, more or less, which Cotta issued from hiswareroom, are for the library of the Germans now, and for theselection of judicious editors hereafter. A long time must elapseafter an author's death, before we can pronounce with perfectcertainty what belongs to the trunk-maker, and what pertains toposterity. Happy the man--if not in his own generation, yet mostassuredly in the time to come--whose natural hesitation orfastidiousness has prompted him to weigh his words maturely, beforelaunching them forth into the great ocean of literature, in the midstof which is a Maelstrom of tenfold absorbing power!

From the minor poems, therefore, of Goethe, we propose, in thepresent series, to select such as are most esteemed by competentjudges, including, of course, ourselves. We shall not follow theexample of dear old Eckermann, nor preface our specimens by anycritical remarks upon the scope and tendency of the great German'sgenius; neither shall we divide his works, as characteristic of hisintellectual progress, into eras or into epochs; still less shall weattempt to institute a regular comparison between his merits andthose of Schiller, whose finest productions (most worthilytranslated) have already enriched the pages of this Magazine. We aredoubtless ready at all times to back our favourite against the field, and to maintain his intellectual superiority even against hisgreatest and most formidable rival. We know that he is the showiest, and we feel convinced that he is the better horse of the two; buttalking is worse than useless when the course is cleared, and thestart about to commence. 

Come forward, then, before the British public, O many-sided, ambidextrous Goethe, as thine own Thomas Carlyle might, or could, orwould, or should have termed thee, and let us hear how themellifluous Teutonic verse will sound when adapted to another tongue. And, first of all--for we yearn to know it--tell us how thyinspiration came? A plain answer, of course, we cannot expect--thatwere impossible from a German; but such explanation as we can drawfrom metaphor and oracular response, seems to be conveyed in thatfavourite and elaborate preface to the poems, which accordingly wemay term the

INTRODUCTION. 

 The morning came. Its footsteps scared away The gentle sleep that hover'd lightly o'er me; I left my quiet cot to greet the day And gaily climb'd the mountain-side before me. The sweet young flowers! how fresh were they and tender, Brimful with dew upon the sparkling lea; The young day open'd in exulting splendour, And all around seem'd glad to gladden me. 

 And, as I mounted, o'er the meadow ground A white and filmy essence 'gan to hover; It sail'd and shifted till it hemm'd me round, Then rose above my head, and floated over. No more I saw the beauteous scene unfolded-- It lay beneath a melancholy shroud; And soon was I, as if in vapour moulded, Alone, within the twilight of the cloud. 

 At once, as though the sun were struggling through, Within the mist a sudden radiance started; Here sunk the vapour, but to rise anew, There on the peak and upland forest parted. O, how I panted for the first clear gleaming, That after darkness must be doubly bright! It came not, but a glory round me beaming, And I stood blinded by the gush of light. 

 A moment, and I felt enforced to look, By some strange impulse of the heart's emotion; But more than one quick glance I scarce could brook, For all was burning like a molten ocean. There, in the glorious clouds that seem'd to bear her, A form angelic hover'd in the air; Ne'er did my eyes behold vision fairer, And still she gazed upon me, floating there. 

 "Do'st thou not know me?" and her voice was soft As truthful love, and holy calm it sounded. "Know'st thou not me, who many a time and oft, Pour'd balsam in thy hurts when sorest wounded? Ah well thou knowest her, to whom for ever Thy heart in union pants to be allied! Have I not seen the tears--the wild endeavour That even in boyhood brought thee to my side?"

 "Yes! I have felt thy influence oft, " I cried, And sank on earth before her, half-adoring; "Thou brought'st me rest when Passion's lava tide Through my young veins like liquid fire was pouring. And thou hast fann'd, as with celestial pinions, In summer's heat my parch'd and fever'd brow; Gav'st me the choicest gifts of earth's dominions, And, save through thee, I seek no fortune now. 

 "I name thee not, but I have heard thee named, And heard thee styled their own ere now by many; All eyes believe at thee their glance is aim'd, Though thine effulgence is too great for any. Ah! I had many comrades whilst I wander'd-- I know thee now, and stand almost alone: I veil thy light, too precious to be squander'd, And share the inward joy I feel with none. "

 Smiling, she said--"Thou see'st 'twas wise from thee To keep the fuller, greater revelation: Scarce art thou from grotesque delusions free, Scarce master of thy childish first sensation; Yet deem'st thyself so far above thy brothers, That thou hast won the right to scorn them! Cease. Who made the yawning gulf 'twixt thee and others? Know--know thyself--live with the world in peace. "

 "Forgive me!" I exclaim'd, "I meant no ill, Else should in vain my eyes be disenchanted; Within my blood there stirs a genial will-- I know the worth of all that thou hast granted. That boon I hold in trust for others merely, Nor shall I let it rust within the ground; Why sought I out the pathway so sincerely, If not to guide my brothers to the bound?"

 And as I spoke, upon her radiant face Pass'd a sweet smile, like breath across a mirror; And in her eyes' bright meaning I could trace What I had answer'd well and what in error, She smiled, and then my heart regain'd its lightness, And bounded in my breast with rapture high: Then durst I pass within her zone of brightness, And gaze upon her with unquailing eye. 

 Straightway she stretch'd her hand among the thin And watery haze that round her presence hover'd; Slowly it coil'd and shrunk her grasp within, And lo! the landscape lay once more uncover'd-- Again mine eye could scan the sparkling meadow, I look'd to heaven, and all was clear and bright; I saw her hold a veil without a shadow, That undulated round her in the light. 

 "I know thee!--all thy weakness, all that yet Of good within thee lives and glows, I've measured;" She said--her voice I never may forget-- "Accept the gift that long for thee was treasured. Oh! happy he, thrice-bless'd in earth and heaven, Who takes this gift with soul serene and true, The veil of song, by Truth's own fingers given, Enwoven of sunshine and the morning dew. 

 "Wave but this veil on high, whene'er beneath The noonday fervour thou and thine are glowing, And fragrance of all flowers around shall breathe, And the cool winds of eve come freshly blowing. Earth's cares shall cease for thee, and all its riot; Where gloom'd the grave, a starry couch be seen; The waves of life shall sink in halcyon quiet; The days be lovely fair, the nights serene. "

 Come then, my friends, and whether 'neath the load Of heavy griefs ye struggle on, or whether Your better destiny shall strew the road With flowers, and golden fruits that cannot wither, United let us move, still forwards striving; So while we live shall joy our days illume, And in our children's hearts our love surviving Shall gladden them, when we are in the tomb. 

This is a noble metaphysical and metaphorical poem, but purely Germanof its kind. It has been imitated, not to say travestied, at leastfifty times, by crazy students and purblind professors--each of whom, in turn, has had an interview with the goddess of nature upon ahill-side. For our own part, we confess that we have no greatpredilection for such mysterious intercourse, and would rather drawour inspiration from tangible objects, than dally with a visionaryEgeria. But the fault is both common and national. 

 * * * * *

The next specimen we shall offer is the far-famed _Bride of Corinth_. Mrs Austin says of this poem very happily--"An awful and undefinedhorror breathes throughout it. In the slow measured rhythm of theverse, and the pathetic simplicity of the diction, there is asolemnity and a stirring spell, which chains the feelings like a deepmysterious strain of music. " Owing to the peculiar structure anddifficulty of the verse, this poem has hitherto been supposedincapable of translation. Dr Anster, who alone has rendered it intoEnglish, found it necessary to depart from the original structure;and we confess that it was not without much labour, and afterrepeated efforts, that we succeeded in vanquishing the obstacle ofthe double rhymes. If the German scholar should perceive, that inthree stanzas some slight liberties have been taken with theoriginal, we trust that he will perceive the reason, and at leastgive us credit for general fidelity and close adherence to the text. 

THE BRIDE OF CORINTH. 

 I. 

 A youth to Corinth, whilst the city slumber'd, Came from Athens: though a stranger there, Soon among its townsmen to be number'd, For a bride awaits him, young and fair: From their childhood's years They were plighted feres, So contracted by their parents' care. 

 II. 

 But may not his welcome there be hinder'd? Dearly must he buy it, would he speed. He is still a heathen with his kindred, She and her's wash'd in the Christian creed. When new faiths are born, Love and troth are torn Rudely from the heart, howe'er it bleed. 

 III. 

 All the house is hush'd. To rest retreated Father, daughters--not the mother quite; She the guest with cordial welcome greeted, Led him to a room with tapers bright; Wine and food she brought Ere of them he thought, Then departed with a fair good-night. 

 IV. 

 But he felt no hunger, and unheeded Left the wine, and eager for the rest Which his limbs, forspent with travel, needed, On the couch he laid him, still undress'd. There he sleeps--when lo! Onwards gliding slow, At the door appears a wondrous guest. 

 V. 

 By the waning lamp's uncertain gleaming There he sees a youthful maiden stand, Robed in white, of still and gentle seeming, On her brow a black and golden band. When she meets his eyes, With a quick surprise Starting, she uplifts a pallid hand. 

 VI. 

 "Is a stranger here, and nothing told me? Am I then forgotten even in name? Ah! 'tis thus within my cell they hold me, And I now am cover'd o'er with shame! Pillow still thy head There upon thy bed, I will leave thee quickly as I came. "

 VII. 

 "Maiden--darling! Stay, O stay!" and, leaping From the couch, before her stands the boy: "Ceres--Bacchus, here their gifts are heaping, And thou bringest Amor's gentle joy! Why with terror pale? Sweet one, let us hail These bright gods--their festive gifts employ. "

 VIII. 

 "Oh, no--no! Young stranger, come not nigh me; Joy is not for me, nor festive cheer. Ah! such bliss may ne'er be tasted by me, Since my mother, in fantastic fear, By long sickness bow'd, To heaven's service vow'd Me, and all the hopes that warm'd me here. 

 IX. 

 "They have left our hearth, and left it lonely-- The old gods, that bright and jocund train. One, unseen, in heaven, is worshipp'd only, And upon the cross a Saviour slain; Sacrifice is here, Not of lamb nor steer, But of human woe and human pain. "

 X. 

 And he asks, and all her words cloth ponder-- "Can it be, that, in this silent spot, I behold thee, thou surpassing wonder! My sweet bride, so strangely to me brought? Be mine only now-- See, our parents' vow Heaven's good blessing hath for us besought. "

 XI. 

 "No! thou gentle heart, " she cried in anguish; "'Tis not mine, but 'tis my sister's place; When in lonely cell I weep and languish, Think, oh think of me in her embrace! I think but of thee-- Pining drearily, Soon beneath the earth to hide my face!"

 XII. 

 "Nay! I swear by yonder flame which burneth, Fann'd by Hymen, lost thou shalt not be; Droop not thus, for my sweet bride returneth To my father's mansion back with me! Dearest! tarry here! Taste the bridal cheer, For our spousal spread so wondrously!"

 XIII. 

 Then with word and sign their troth they plighted. Golden was the chain she bade him wear; But the cup he offer'd her she slighted, Silver, wrought with cunning past compare. "That is not for me; All I ask of thee Is one little ringlet of thy hair. "

 XIV. 

 Dully boom'd the midnight hour unhallow'd, And then first her eyes began to shine; Eagerly with pallid lips she swallow'd Hasty draughts of purple-tinctured wine; But the wheaten bread, As in shuddering dread, Put she always by with loathing sign. 

 XV. 

 And she gave the youth the cup: he drain'd it, With impetuous haste he drain'd it dry; Love was in his fever'd heart, and pain'd it, Till it ached for joys she must deny. But the maiden's fears Stay'd him, till in tears On the bed he sank, with sobbing cry. 

 XVI. 

 And she leans above him--"Dear one, still thee! Ah, how sad am I to see thee so! But, alas! these limbs of mine would chill thee: Love, they mantle not with passion's glow; Thou wouldst be afraid, Didst thou find the maid Thou hast chosen, cold as ice or snow. "

 XVII. 

 Round her waist his eager arms he bended, Dashing from his eyes the blinding tear: "Wert thou even from the grave ascended, Come unto my heart, and warm thee here!" Sweet the long embrace-- "Raise that pallid face; None but thou and are watching, dear!"

 XVIII. 

 Was it love that brought the maiden thither, To the chamber of the stranger guest? Love's bright fire should kindle, and not wither; Love's sweet thrill should soothe, not torture, rest. His impassion'd mood Warms her torpid blood, Yet there beats no heart within her breast. 

 XIX. 

 Meanwhile goes the mother, softly creeping, Through the house, on needful cares intent, Hears a murmur, and, while all are sleeping, Wonders at the sounds, and what they meant. Who was whispering so?-- Voices soft and low, In mysterious converse strangely blent. 

 XX. 

 Straightway by the door herself she stations, There to be assured what was amiss; And she hears love's fiery protestations, Words of ardour and endearing bliss: "Hark, the cock! 'Tis light! But to-morrow night Thou wilt come again?"--and kiss on kiss. 

 XXI. 

 Quick the latch she raises, and, with features Anger-flush'd, into the chamber hies. "Are there in my house such shameless creatures, Minions to the stranger's will?" she cries. By the dying light, Who is't meets her sight? God! 'tis her own daughter she espies!

 XXII. 

 And the youth in terror sought to cover, With her own light veil, the maiden's head, Clasp'd her close; but, gliding from her lover, Back the vestment from her brow she spread, And her form upright, As with ghostly might, Long and slowly rises from the bed. 

 XXIII. 

 "Mother! mother! wherefore thus deprive me Of such joy as I this night have known? Wherefore from these warm embraces drive me? Was I waken'd up to meet thy frown? Did it not suffice That, in virgin guise, To an early grave you brought me down?

 XXIV. 

 "Fearful is the weird that forced me hither, From the dark-heap'd chamber where I lay; Powerless are your drowsy anthems, neither Can your priests prevail, howe'er they pray. Salt nor lymph can cool Where the pulse is full; Love must still burn on, though wrapp'd in clay. 

 XXV. 

 "To this youth my early troth was plighted, Whilst yet Venus ruled within the land; Mother! and that vow ye falsely slighted, At your new and gloomy faith's command. But no God will hear, If a mother swear Pure from love to keep her daughter's hand. 

 XXVI. 

 "Nightly from my narrow chamber driven, Come I to fulfil my destined part, Him to seek for whom my troth was given, And to draw the life blood from his heart. He hath served my will; More I yet must kill, For another prey I now depart. 

 XXVII. 

 "Fair young man! thy thread of life is broken, Human skill can bring no aid to thee. There thou hast my chain--a ghastly token-- And this lock of thine I take with me. Soon must thou decay, Soon wilt thou be gray, Dark although to-night thy tresses be. 

 XXVIII. 

 "Mother! hear, oh hear my last entreaty! Let the funeral pile arise once more; Open up my wretched tomb for pity, And in flames our souls to peace restore. When the ashes glow, When the fire-sparks flow, To the ancient gods aloft we soar. "

 * * * * *

After this most powerful and original ballad, let us turn tosomething more genial. The three following poems are exquisitespecimens of the varied genius of our author; and we hardly knowwhether to prefer the plaintive beauty of the first, or the light andsportive brilliancy of the other twain. 

FIRST LOVE. 

 Oh, who will bring me back the day, So beautiful, so bright! Those days when love first bore my heart Aloft on pinions light? Oh, who will bring me but an hour Of that delightful time, And wake in me again the power That fired my golden prime?

 I nurse my wound in solitude, I sigh the livelong day, And mourn the joys, in wayward mood, That now are pass'd away. Oh, who will bring me back the days Of that delightful time, And wake in me again the blaze That fired my golden prime?

WHO'LL BUY A CUPID?

 Of all the wares so pretty That come into the city, There's none are so delicious, There's none are half so precious, As those which we are binging. O, listen to our singing! Young loves to sell! young loves to sell! My pretty loves who'll buy?

 First look you at the oldest, The wantonest, the boldest! So loosely goes he hopping, From tree and thicket dropping, Then flies aloft as sprightly-- We dare but praise him lightly! The fickle rogue! Young loves to sell! My pretty loves who'll buy?

 Now see this little creature-- How modest seems his feature! He nestles so demurely, You'd think him safer surely; And yet for all his shyness, There's danger in his slyness! The cunning rogue! Young loves to sell! My pretty loves who'll buy?

 Oh come and see this lovelet, This little turtle-dovelet! The maidens that are neatest, The tenderest and sweetest, Should buy it to amuse 'em, And nurse it in their bosom. The little pet! Young loves to sell! My pretty loves who'll buy?

 We need not bid you buy them, They're here, if you will try them. They like to change their cages; But for their proving sages No warrant will we utter-- They all have wings to flutter. The pretty birds! Young loves to sell! Such beauties! Come and buy!

 * * * * *

 SECOND LIFE. 

 After life's departing sigh, To the spots I loved most dearly, In the sunshine and the shadow, By the fountain welling clearly, Through the wood and o'er the meadow, Flit I like a butterfly. 

 There a gentle pair I spy. Round the maiden's tresses flying, From her chaplet I discover All that I had lost in dying, Still with her and with her lover. Who so happy then as I?

 For she smiles with laughing eye; And his lips to hers he presses, Vows of passion interchanging, Stifling her with sweet caresses, O'er her budding beauties ranging; And around the twain I fly. 

 And she sees me fluttering nigh; And beneath his ardour trembling, Starts she up--then off I hover. "Look there, dearest!" Thus dissembling, Speaks the maiden to her lover-- "Come and catch that butterfly!"

 * * * * *

In the days of his boyhood, and of Monk Lewis, Sir Walter Scotttranslated the Erl King, and since then it has been a kind ofassay-piece for aspiring German students to thump and hammer at will. We have heard it sung so often at the piano by soft-voiced maidens, and hirsute musicians, before whose roaring the bull of Phalarismight be dumb, that we have been accustomed to associate it withstiff white cravats, green tea, and a superabundance of lemonade. Butto do full justice to its unearthly fascination, one ought to hear itchanted by night in a lonely glade of the Schwartzwald or Spessartforest, with the wind moaning as an accompaniment, and the ghostlyshadows of the branches flitting in the moonlight across the path. 

THE ERL KING. 

 Who rides so late through the grisly night? 'Tis a father and child, and he grasps him tight; He wraps him close in his mantle's fold, And shelters the boy from the biting cold. 

 "My son, why thus to my arm dost cling?" "Father, dost thou not see the Erlie-king? The king with his crown and long black train!" "My son, 'tis a streak of the misty rain! "

 "Come hither, thou darling! come, go with me! Fair games know I that I'll play with thee; Many bright flowers my kingdoms hold! My mother has many a robe of gold!"

 "O father, dear father and dost thou not hear What the Erlie-king whispers so low in mine ear?" "Calm thee, my boy, 'tis only the breeze Rustling the dry leaves beneath the trees!"

 "Wilt thou go, bonny boy! wilt thou go with me? My daughters shall wait on thee daintilie; My daughters around thee in dance shall sweep, And rock thee, and kiss thee, and sing thee to sleep!"

 "O father, dear father! and dost thou not mark Erlie-king's daughters move by in the dark?" "I see it, my child; but it is not they, 'Tis the old willow nodding its head so grey!"

 "I love thee! thy beauty charms me quite; And if thou refusest, I'll take thee by might!" "O father, dear father! he's grasping me-- My heart is as cold as cold can be!"

 The father rides swiftly--with terror he gasps-- The sobbing child in his arms he clasps; He reaches the castle with spurring and dread; But, alack! in his arms the child lay dead!

 * * * * *

Who has not heard of Mignon?--sweet, delicate little Mignon?--thewoman-child, in whose miniature, rather than portrait, it is easy totrace the original of fairy Fenella? We would that we couldadequately translate the song, which in its native German is soexquisitely plaintive, that few can listen to it without tears. Thispoem, it is almost needless to say, is anterior in date to Byron'sBride of Abyos

 MIGNON. 

 Know'st thou the land where the pale citron grows, And the gold orange through dark foliage glows? A soft wind flutters from the deep blue sky, The myrtle blooms, and towers the laurel high. Know'st thou it well? O there with thee! O that I might, my own beloved one, flee!

 Know'st thou the house? On pillars rest its beams, Bright is its hall, in light one chamber gleams, And marble statues stand, and look on me-- What have they done, thou hapless child, to thee? Know'st thou it well? O there with thee! O that I might, my loved protector, flee!

 Know'st thou the track that o'er the mountain goes, Where the mule threads its way through mist and snows, Where dwelt in caves the dragon's ancient brood, Topples the crag, and o'er it roars the flood. Know'st thou it well? O come with me! There lies our road--oh father, let us flee!

 * * * * *

In order duly to appreciate the next ballad, you must fancy yourself(if you cannot realize it) stretched on the grass, by the margin of amighty river of the south, rushing from or through an Italian lake, whose opposite shore you cannot descry for the thick purple haze ofheat that hangs over its glassy surface. If you lie there for an houror so, gazing into the depths of the blue unfathomable sky, till thefanning of the warm wind and the murmur of the water combine to throwyou into a trance, you will be able to enjoy

THE FISHER. 

 The water rush'd and bubbled by-- An angler near it lay, And watch'd his quill, with tranquil eye, Upon the current play. And as he sits in wasteful dream, He sees the flood unclose, And from the middle of the stream A river-maiden rose. 

 She sang to him with witching wile, "My brood why wilt thou snare, With human craft and human guile, To die in scorching air? Ah! didst thou know how happy we Who dwell in waters clear, Thou wouldst come down at once to me, And rest for ever here. 

 "The sun and ladye-moon they lave Their tresses in the main, And breathing freshness from the wave, Come doubly bright again. The deep blue sky, so moist and clear, Hath it for thee no lure? Does thine own face not woo thee down Unto our waters pure?"

 The water rush'd and bubbled by-- It lapp'd his naked feet; He thrill'd as though he felt the touch Of maiden kisses sweet. She spoke to him, she sang to him-- Resistless was her strain-- Half-drawn, he sank beneath the wave, And ne'er was seen again. 

 * * * * *

Our next extract smacks of the Troubadours, and would have bettersuited good old King René of Provence than a Paladin of the days ofCharlemagne. Goethe has neither the eye of Wouverman nor Borgognone, and sketches but an indifferent battle-piece. Homer was a starkmoss-trooper, and so was Scott; but the Germans want the cry of "bootand saddle" consumedly. However, the following is excellent in itsway. 

THE MINSTREL. 

 "What sounds are those without, along The drawbridge sweetly stealing? Within our hall I'd have that song, That minstrel measure, pealing. " Then forth the little foot-page hied; When he came back, the king he cried, "Bring in the aged minstrel!"

 "Good-even to you, lordlings all; Fair ladies all, good-even. Lo, star on star within this hall I see a radiant heaven. In hall so bright with noble light, 'Tis not for thee to feast thy sight, Old man, look not around thee!"

 He closed his eyne, he struck his lyre In tones with passion laden, Till every gallant's eye shot fire, And down look'd every maiden. The king, enraptured with his strain, Held out to him a golden chain, In guerdon of his harping. 

 "The golden chain give not to me, For noble's breast its glance is, Who meets and beats thy enemy Amid the shock of lances. Or give it to thy chancellere-- Let him its golden burden bear, Among his other burdens. 

 "I sing as sings the bird, whose note The leafy bough is heard on. The song that falters from my throat For me is ample guerdon. Yet I'd ask one thing, an I might, A draught of brave wine, sparkling bright Within a golden beaker!"

 The cup was brought. He drain'd its lees, "O draught that warms me cheerly! Blest is the house where gifts like these Are counted trifles merely. Lo, when you prosper, think on me, And thank your God as heartily As for this draught I thank you!"

 * * * * *

We intend to close the present Number with a very graceful, thoughsimple ditty, which Goethe may possibly have altered from theMorlachian, but which is at all events worthy of his genius. Previously, however, in case any of the ladies should like somethingsentimental, we beg leave to present them with as nice a little_chansonette_ as ever was transcribed into an album. 

THE VIOLET. 

 A violet blossom'd on the lea, Half hidden from the eye, As fair a flower as you might see; When there came tripping by A shepherd maiden fair and young, Lightly, lightly o'er the lea; Care she knew not, and she sung Merrily!

 "O were I but the fairest flower That blossoms on the lea; If only for one little hour, That she might gather me-- Clasp me in her bonny breast!" Thought the little flower. "O that in it I might rest But an hour!"

 Lack-a-day! Up came the lass, Heeded not the violet; Trod it down into the grass; Though it died, 'twas happy yet. "Trodden down although I lie, Yet my death is very sweet-- For I cannot choose but die At her feet!"

 * * * * *

THE DOLEFUL LAY OF THE NOBLE WIFE OF ASAN AGA. 

 What is yon so white beside the greenwood? Is it snow, or flight of cygnets resting? Were it snow, ere now it had been melted; Were it swans, ere now the flock had left us. Neither snow nor swans are resting yonder, 'Tis the glittering tents of Asan Aga. Faint he lies from wounds in stormy battle; There his mother and his sisters seek him, But his wife hangs back for shame, and comes not. 

 When the anguish of his hurts was over, To his faithful wife he sent this message-- "Longer 'neath my roof thou shalt not tarry, Neither in my court nor in my household. "

 When the lady heard this cruel sentence, 'Reft of sense she stood, and rack'd with anguish: In the court she heard the horses stamping, And in fear that it was Asan coming, Fled towards the tower, to leap and perish. 

 Then in terror ran her little daughters, Calling after her, and weeping sorely, "These are not the steeds of Father Asan; 'Tis thy brother Pintorovich coming!"

 And the wife of Asan turn'd to meet him; Sobbing, threw her arms around her brother. "See the wrongs, O brother, of thy sister! These five babes I bore, and must I leave them?"

 Silently the brother from his girdle Draws the ready deed of separation, Wrapp'd within a crimson silken cover. She is free to seek her mother's dwelling-- Free to join in wedlock with another. 

 When the woful lady saw the writing, Kiss'd she both her boys upon the forehead, Kiss'd on both the cheeks her sobbing daughters; But she cannot tear herself for pity From the infant smiling in the cradle!

 Rudely did her brother tear her from it, Deftly lifted her upon a courser, And in haste, towards his father's dwelling, Spurr'd he onward with the woful lady. 

 Short the space; seven days, but barely seven-- Little space I ween--by many nobles Was the lady--still in weeds of mourning-- Was the lady courted in espousal. 

 Far the noblest was Imoski's cadi; And the dame in tears besought her brother-- "I adjure thee, by the life thou bearest, Give me not a second time in marriage, That my heart may not be rent asunder If again I see my darling children!"

 Little reck'd the brother of her bidding, Fix'd to wed her to Imoski's cadi. But the gentle lady still entreats him-- "Send at least a letter, O my brother! To Imoski's cadi, thus imploring-- I, the youthful widow, greet thee fairly, And entreat thee, by this selfsame token, When thou comest hither with thy bridesmen, Bring a heavy veil, that I may shroud me As we pass along by Asan's dwelling, So I may not see my darling orphans. "

 Scarcely had the cadi read the letter, When he call'd together all his bridesmen, Boune himself to bring the lady homewards, And he brought the veil as she entreated. 

 Jocundly they reach'd the princely mansion, Jocundly they bore her thence in triumph; But when they drew near to Asan's dwelling, Then the children recognized their mother, And they cried, "Come back unto thy chamber-- Share the meal this evening with thy children;" And she turn'd her to the lordly bridegroom-- "Pray thee, let the bridesmen and their horses Halt a little by the once-loved dwelling, Till I give these presents to my children. "

 And they halted by the once-loved dwelling, And she gave the weeping children presents, Gave each boy a cap with gold embroider'd, Gave each girl a long and costly garment, And with tears she left a tiny mantle For the helpless baby in the cradle. 

 These things mark'd the father, Asan Aga, And in sorrow call'd he to his children-- "Turn again to me, ye poor deserted; Hard as steel is now your mother's bosom; Shut so fast, it cannot throb with pity!"

 Thus he spoke; and when the lady heard him, Pale as death she dropp'd upon the pavement, And the life fled from her wretched bosom As she saw her children turning from her. 

MY FIRST LOVE. 

A SKETCH IN NEW YORK. 

"Margaret, where are you?" cried a silver-toned voice from a passageoutside the drawing-room in which I had just seated myself. The nextinstant a lovely face appeared at the door, its owner tripped intothe room, made a comical curtsy, and ran up to her sister. 

"It is really too bad, Margaret; pa' frets and bustles about, nearlyruns over me upon the stairs, and then goes down the street as if'Change were on fire. Ma' yawns, and will not hear of our goingshopping, and grumbles about money--always money--that horrid money!Ah! dear Margaret, our shopping excursion is at an end for to-day!"

Sister Margaret, to whom this lamentation was addressed, wasreclining on the sofa, her left hand supporting her head, her rightholding the third volume of a novel. She looked up with a languishingand die-away expression--

"Poor Staunton will be in despair, " said her sister. "This is atleast his tenth turn up and down the Battery. Last night he was aperfect picture of misery. I could not have had the heart to refuseto dance with him. How could you be so cruel, Margaret?"

"Alas!" replied Margaret with a deep sigh, "how could I help it?Mamma was behind me, and kept pushing me with her elbow. Mamma issometimes very ill-bred. " And another sigh burst from the overchargedheart of the sentimental fair one. 

"Well, " rejoined her sister, "I don't know why she so terriblydislikes poor Staunton; but to say the truth, our gallopade lostnothing by his absence. He is as stiff as a Dutch doll when hedances. Even our Louisianian backwoodsman here, acquits himself muchmore creditably. "

And the malicious girl gave me such an arch look, that I could not beangry with the equivocal sort of compliment paid to myself. 

"That is very unkind, Arthurine, " said Margaret, her checks glowingwith anger at this attack upon the graces of her admirer. 

"Don't be angry, sister, " cried Arthurine, running up to her, throwing her arms round her neck, and kissing and soothing her tillshe began to smile. They formed a pretty group. Arthurine especially, as she skipped up to her sister, scarce touching the carpet with hertiny feet, looked like a fairy or a nymph. She was certainly a lovelycreature, slender and flexible as a reed, with a waist one couldeasily have spanned with one's ten fingers; feet and hands on thevery smallest scale, and of the most beautiful mould; featuresexquisitely regular; a complexion of lilies and roses; a smallgraceful head, adorned with a profusion of golden hair; and thenlarge round clear blue eyes, full of mischief and fascination. Shewas, as the French say, _à croquer_. 

"Heigho!" sighed the sentimental Margaret. "To think of this vulgar, selfish man intruding himself between me and such a noble creature asStaunton! It is really heart-breaking. "

"Not quite so bad as that!" said Arthurine. "Moreland, as you know, has a good five hundred thousand dollars; and Staunton has nothing, or at most a couple of thousand dollars a-year--a mere feather in thebalance against such a golden weight. "

"Love despises gold, " murmured Margaret. 

"Nonsense!" replied her sister; "I would not even despise silver, ifit were in sufficient quantity. Only think of the balls and parties, the fêtes and pic-nics! Saratoga in the summer--perhaps even Londonor Paris! The mere thought of it makes my mouth water. "

"Talk not of such joys, to be bought at such a price!" criedMargaret, quoting probably from some of her favourite novels. 

"Well, don't make yourself unhappy now, " said Arthurine. "Morelandwill not be here till tea-time; and there are six long hours to that. If we had only a few new novels to pass the time! I cannot imaginewhy Cooper is so lazy. Only one book in a year! What if you were tobegin to write, sister? I have no doubt you would succeed as well asMrs Mitchell. Bulwer is so fantastical; and even Walter Scott isgetting dull. "

"Alas, Howard!" sighed Margaret, looking to me for sympathy with hersorrows. 

"Patience, dear Margaret, " said I. "If possible, I will help you toget rid of the old fellow. At any rate, I will try. "

Rat-tat-tat at the house door. Arthurine put up her finger to enjoinsilence, and listened. Another loud knock. "A visit!" exclaimed shewith sparkling eyes. "Ha! ladies; I hear the rustle of their gowns. "And as she spoke the door opened, and the Misses Pearce came swimminginto the room, in all the splendour of violet-coloured silks, coveredwith feathers, lace, and embroideries, and bringing with them anatmosphere of perfume. 

The man who has the good fortune to see our New York belles in theirmorning or home attire, must have a heart made of quartz or graniteif he resists their attractions. Their graceful forms, theirintellectual and somewhat languishing expression of countenance, their bright and beaming eyes, their slender figures, which make oneinclined to seize and hold them lest the wind should blow them away, their beautifully delicate hands and feet, compose a sum ofattraction perfectly irresistible. The Boston ladies are perhapsbetter informed, and their features are usually more regular; butthey have something Yankeeish about them, which I could never fancy, and, moreover, they are dreadful blue-stockings. The fairPhiladelphians are rounder, more elastic, more Hebe-like, andunapproachable in the article of small-talk; but it is amongst thebeauties of New York that romance writers should seek for theirJulias and Alices. I am certain that if Cooper had made theiracquaintance whilst writing his books, he would have torn up hismanuscripts, and painted his heroines after a less wooden fashion. Hecan only have seen them on the Battery or in Broadway, where they areso buried and enveloped in finery that it is impossible to guess whatthey are really like. The two young ladies who had just entered theroom, were shining examples of that system of over-dressing. Theyseemed to have put on at one time the three or four dresses worn inthe course of the day by a London or Paris fashionable. 

It was now all over with my _tête-à-tête_. I could only be _de trop_in the gossip of the four ladies, and I accordingly took my leave. AsI passed before the parlour door on my way out, it was opened, andMrs Bowsends beckoned me in. I entered, and found her husband alsothere. 

"Are you going away already, my dear Howard?" said the lady. 

"There are visitors up stairs. "

"Ah, Howard!" said Mrs Bowsends. 

"The workies[20] have carried the day, " growled her husband. 

[Footnote 20: The slang term applied to the mechanics and labourers, a numerous and (at elections especially) a most important class inNew York and Philadelphia. ]

"That horrid Staunton!" interrupted his better half. "Only thinknow'--

"Our side lost--completely floored. But you've heard of it, Isuppose, Mister Howard?"

I turned from one to the other in astonished perplexity, not knowingto which I ought to listen first. 

"I don't know how it is, " whined the lady, "but that Mr Stauntonbecomes every day more odious to me. Only think now, of his havingthe effrontery to persist in running after Margaret! Hardly twothousand a-year "--

"Old Hickory is preparing to leave Hermitage already. [21] Bank shareshave fallen half per cent in consequence, " snarled her husband. 

[Footnote 21: The name of General Jackson's country-house andestate. ]

They were ringing the changes on poor Staunton and the new president. 

"He ought to remember the difference of our positions, " said Mrs B. , drawing herself up with much dignity. 

"Certainly, certainly!" said I. 

"And the governor's election is also going desperate bad, " said MrBowsends. 

"And then Margaret, to think of her infatuation! Certainly she is agood, gentle creature; but five hundred thousand dollars!" This wasMrs Bowsends. 

"By no means to be despised, " said I. 

The five hundred thousand dollars touched a responsive chord in theheart of the papa. 

"Five hundred thousand, " repeated he. "Yes, certainly; but what's theuse of that? All nonsense. Those girls would ruin a Croesus. "

"You need not talk, I'm sure, " retorted mamma. "Think of all yourbets and electioneering. "

"You understand nothing about that, " replied her husband angrily. "Interests of the country--congress--public good--must be supported. Who would do it if we"--

"Did not bet, " thought I. 

"You are a friend of the family, " said Mrs Bowsends, "and I hope youwill"--

"Apropos, " interrupted her loving husband. "How has your cotton cropturned out? You might consign it to me. How many bales?"

"A hundred; and a few dozen hogsheads of tobacco. "

"Some six thousand dollars per annum, " muttered the papa musingly;"hm, hm. "

"As to that, " said I negligently, "I have sufficient capital in myhands to increase the one hundred bales to two hundred another year. "

"Two hundred! two hundred!" The man's eyes glistened approvingly. "That might do. Not so bad. Well, Arthurine is a good girl. We'llsee, my dear Mr Howard--we'll see. Yes, yes--come here everyevening--whenever you like. You know Arthurine is always glad to seeyou. "

"And Mr and Mrs Bowsends?" asked I. 

"Are most delighted, " replied the couple, smiling graciously. 

I bowed, agreeably surprised, and took my departure. I wasnevertheless not over well pleased with a part of Mr Bowsends' lastspeech. It looked rather too much as if my affectionate father-in-lawthat was to be, wished to balance his lost bets with my cotton bales;and, as I thought of it, my gorge rose at the selfishness of myspecies, and more especially at the stupid impudent egotism ofBowsends and the thousands who resemble him. To all such, even theirchildren are nothing but so many bales of goods, to be bartered, bought, and sold. And this man belongs to the _haut-ton_ of New York!Five-and-twenty years ago he went about with a tailor's measure inhis pocket--now a leader on 'Change, and member of twenty committeesand directorships. 

But then Arthurine, with her seventeen summers and her lovely face, the most extravagant little doll in the whole city, and that is notsaying a little, but the most elegant, charming--a perfect sylph! Itwas now about eleven months since I had first become acquainted withthe bewitching creature; and, from the very first day, I had been hervassal, her slave, bound by chains as adamantine as those of Armida. She had just left the French boarding-school at St John's. That, bythe by, is one of the means by which our mushroom aristocracy pushesitself upwards. A couple of pretty daughters, brought up at afashionable school, are sure to attract a swarm of young fops anddanglers about them; and the glory of the daughters is reflected uponthe papa and mamma. And this little sorceress knew right well how towork her incantations. Every heart was at her feet; but not one outof her twenty or more adorers could boast that he had received asmile or a look more than his fellows. I was the only one who hadperhaps obtained a sort of passive preference. I was allowed toescort her in her rides, walks, and drives; to be her regular partnerwhen no other dancer offered, and suchlike enviable privileges. Sheflirted and fluttered about me, and hung familiarly on my arm, as shetripped along Broadway or the Battery by my side. In addition to allthese little marks of preference, it fell to my share of duty tosupply her with the newest novels, to furnish her with EnglishKeepsakes and American Tokens and Souvenirs, and to provide the lastfashionable songs and quadrilles. All this had cost me no small sum;but I consoled myself with the reflection, that my presents were madeto the prettiest girl in New York, and that sooner or later she mustreward my assiduities. Twice had fortune smiled upon me; in oneinstance, when we were standing on the bridge at Niagara, lookingdown on the foaming waters, and I was obliged to put my arm round herwaist, for fear she should become dizzy and fall in--in doing which, by the by, I very nearly fell in myself. A similar thing occurred ona visit we made to the Trenton falls. That was all I had got for mypains, however, during the eleven months that I had trifled away inNew York--months that had served to lighten my purse prettyconsiderably. It is the fashion in our southern states to choose ourwives from amongst the beauties of the north. I had been bitten bythe mania, and had come to New York upon this important business; buthaving been there nearly a year, it was high time to make an end ofmatters, if I did not wish to be put on the shelf as stale goods. 

This last reflection occurred to me very strongly as I was walkingfrom the Bowsends' house towards Wall Street, when suddenly I caughtsight of my fellow-sufferer Staunton. The Yankee's dolorouscountenance almost made me smile. Up he came, with the double objectof informing me that the weather was very fine, and of offering me abite at his pigtail tobacco. I could not help expressing myastonishment that so sensitive and delicate a creature as Margaretshould tolerate such a habit in the man of her choice. 

"Pshaw!" replied the simpleton. "Moreland chews also. "

"Yes, but he has got five hundred thousand dollars, and that sweetensthe poison. "

"Ah!" sighed Staunton. 

"Keep up your courage, man; Bowsends is rich. "

The Yankee shook his head. 

"Two hundred thousand, they say; but to-morrow he may not have afarthing. You know our New Yorkers. Nothing but bets, elections, shares, railways, banks. His expenses are enormous; and, if he oncegot his daughters off his hands, he would perhaps fail next week. "

"And be so much the richer next year, " replied I. 

"Do you think so?" said the Yankee, musingly. 

"Of course it would be so. Mean time you can marry the languishingMargaret, and do like many others of your fellow citizens; go outwith a basket on your arm to the Greenwich market, and whilst yourdelicate wife is enjoying her morning slumber, buy the potatoes andsalted mackerel for breakfast. In return for that, she will perhapscondescend to pour you out a cup of bohea. Famous thing that bohea!capital antidote to the dyspepsia!"

"You are spiteful, " said poor Staunton. 

"And you foolish, " I retorted. "To a young barrister like you, thereare hundreds of houses open. "

"And to you also. "

"Certainly. "

"And then I have this advantage--the girl likes me. "

"I am liked by the papa and the mamma, and the girl too. "

"Have you got five hundred thousand dollars?"

"No. "

"Poor Howard!" cried Staunton, laughing. 

"Go to the devil!" replied I, laughing also. 

We had been chatting in this manner for nearly a quarter of an hour, when a coach drove out of Greenwich Street, in which I saw a facethat I thought I knew. One of the Philadelphia steamers had justarrived. I stepped forward. 

"Stop!" cried a well-known voice. 

"Stop!" cried I, hastening to the coach door. 

It was Richards, my school and college friend, and my neighbour, after the fashion of the southern states; for he lived only about ahundred and seventy miles from me. I said good-by to poor simpleStaunton, got into the coach, and we rattled off through Broadway tothe American hotel. 

"For heaven's sake, George!" exclaimed my friend, as soon as we wereinstalled in a room, "tell me what you are doing here. Have you quiteforgotten house, land, and friends? You have been eleven monthsaway. "

"True, " replied I; "making love--and not a step further advanced thanthe first. "

"The report is true, then, that you have been harpooned by theBowsends? Poor fellow! I am sorry for you. Just tell me what you meanto do with the dressed-up doll when you get her? A young lady who hasnot enough patience even to read her novels from beginning to end, and who, before she was twelve years old, had Tom Moore and Byron, _Don Juan_ perhaps excepted, by heart. A damsel who has geography andthe globes, astronomy and Cuvier, Raphael's cartoons and Rossini'soperas, at her finger-ends; but who, as true as I am alive, does notknow whether a mutton chop is cut off a pig or a cow--who would boiltea and cauliflowers in the same manner, and has some vague idea thateggs are the principal ingredient in a gooseberry pie. "

"I want her for my wife, not for my cook, " retorted I, rathernettled. 

"Who does not know, " continued Richards, "whether dirty linen oughtto be boiled or baked. "

"But she sings like St Cecilia, plays divinely, and dances like afairy. "

"Yes, all that will do you a deal of good. I know the family; bothfather and mother are the most contemptible people breathing. "

"Stop there!" cried I; "they are not one iota better or worse thantheir neighbours. "

"You are right. "

"Well, then, leave them in peace. I have promised to drink tea thereat six o'clock. If you will come, I will take you with me. "

"Know then already, man. I will go, on one condition; that you leaveNew York with me in three days. "

"If my marriage is not settled, " replied I. 

"D----d fool!" muttered Richards between his teeth. 

Six o'clock struck as we entered the drawing-room of my futuremother-in-law. The good lady almost frightened me as I went in, byher very extraordinary appearance in a tremendous grey gauze turban, fire-new, just arrived by the Henri Quatre packet-ship from Havre, and that gave her exactly the look of one of our Mississippinight-owls. Richards seemed a little startled; and Moreland, who wasalready there, could not take his eyes off this remarkablehead-dress. Miss Margaret was costumed in pale green silk, her hairflattened upon each side of her forehead _a la Marguerite_, (see the_Journal des Modes, _) and looking like Jephtha's daughter, pale andresigned, but rather more lackadaisical, with a sort of"though-absent-not-forgot" look about her, inexpressibly sentimentaland interesting. The contrast was certainly rather strong between oldMoreland, who sat there, red-faced, thickset, and clumsy, and theairy slender Staunton, who, for fear of spoiling his figure, livedupon oysters and macaroon, and drank water with a rose leaf in it. 

I had brought the languishing beauty above described, Scott's _Talesof my Grandfather_, which had just appeared. 

"Ah! Walter Scott!" exclaimed she, in her pretty melting tones. Then, after a moment's pause, "The vulgar man has not a word to say forhimself;" said she to me, in a low tone. 

"Wait a little, " replied I; "he'll improve. It is no doubt his modesttimidity that keeps his lips closed. "

Margaret gave me a furious look. 

"Heartless mocker!" she exclaimed. 

Meanwhile Richards had got into conversation with Bowsends. Theunlucky dog, who did not know that his host was a violent Adams-ite, and had lost a good five thousand dollars in bets and subscriptionsto influence the voices of the sovereign people at the recentelection, had fallen on the sore subject. He began by informing hishost that Old Hickory would shortly leave the Hermitage to assume hisduties as president. 

"The blood-thirsty backwoodsman, half horse, half alligator"interrupted Mr Bowsends. 

"Costs you dear, his election, " said Moreland laughing. 

"Smokes out of a tobacco pipe like a vulgar German, " ejaculated MrsBowsends. 

"Not so very vulgar for that, " said blundering Moreland; "tobacco hasquite another taste out of a pipe. "

I gave him a tremendous dig in the back with my elbow. 

"Do you smoke out of a tobacco pipe, Mr Moreland?" enquired Margaretin her flute-like tones. 

Moreland stared; he had a vague idea that he had got himself into ascrape, but his straightforward honesty prevented him fromprevaricating, and he blurted out--"Sometimes, miss. "

I thought the sensitive creature would have swooned away at thisadmission; and I had just laid my arm over the back of her chair tosupport her, when Arthurine entered the room. She gave a quick glanceto me; it was too late to draw back my arm. She did not seem tonotice any thing, saluted the company gaily and easily, tripped up toMoreland, wished him good evening--asked after his bets, his ships, his old dog Tom--chattered, in short, full ten minutes in a breath. Before Moreland knew what she was about, she had taken one of hishands in both of hers. But they were old acquaintances, and he mighteasily have been her grandfather. Meanwhile Margaret had somewhatrecovered from the shock. 

"He smokes out of a pipe!" lisped she to Arthurine, in a tone ofmelancholy resignation. 

"Old Hickory is very popular in Pennsylvania, " said Richards, resuming the conversation that had been interrupted, and perfectlyunconscious, as Moreland would have said, of the shoals he wassailing amongst. "A Bedford County farmer has just sent him a presentof a cask of Monongahela. "

"I envy him that present, " cried Moreland. "A glass of genuineMonongahela is worth any money. "

This second shock was far too violent to be resisted by Margaret'sdelicate nerves. She sank back in her chair, half fainting, halfhysterical. Her maids were called in, and with their help she managedto leave the room. 

"Have you brought her a book?" said Arthurine to me. 

"Yes, one of Walter Scott's. "

"Oh! then she will soon be well again, " rejoined the affectionatesister, apparently by no means alarmed. 

Now that this nervous beauty was gone, the conversation became muchmore lively. Captain Moreland was a jovial sailor, who had made tenvoyages to China, fifteen to Constantinople, twenty to St Petersburg, and innumerable ones to Liverpool and through his exertions hadamassed the large fortune which he was now enjoying. He was amerry-hearted man, with excellent sound sense on all points exceptone--that one being the fair sex, with which he was about as wellacquainted as an alligator with a camera-obscure. The attentions paidto him by Arthurine seemed to please the old bachelor uncommonly. There was a mixture of kindness, malice, and fascination in hermanner, which was really enchanting; even the matter-of-fact Richardscould not take his eyes off her. 

"That is certainly a charming girl!" whispered he to me. 

"Did not I tell you so?" said I. "Only observe with what sweetnessshe gives in to the old man's humours and fancies!"

The hours passed like minutes. Supper was long over, and we rose todepart; when I shook hands with Arthurine, she pressed mine gently. Iwas in the ninety-ninth heaven. 

"Now, boys, " cried worthy Moreland, as soon as we were in thestreets, "it would really be a pity to part so early on so joyous anevening. What do you say? Will you come to my house, and knock thenecks off half a dozen bottles?"

We agreed to this proposal; and, taking the old seaman between us, steered in the direction of his cabin, as he called his magnificentand well-furnished house. 

"What a delightful family those Bowsends are!" exclaimed Moreland, assoon as we were comfortably seated beside a blazing fire, with theLafitte and East India Madeira sparkling on the table beside us. "Andwhat charming girls! 'You're getting oldish, ' says I to myself theother day, 'but you're still fresh and active, sound as a dolphin. Better get married. ' Margaret pleased me uncommonly, so I"--

"Yes, my dear Moreland, " interrupted I, "but are you sure that youplease her?"

"Pshaw! Five times a hundred thousand dollars! I tell you what, mylad, that's not to be met with every day. "

"Fifty years old, " replied I. 

"Certainly, fifty years old, but stout and healthy; none of yourspindle-shanked dandies--your Stauntons"--

But Staunton smokes cigars, and not Dutch pipes. "

"I give that up. For Miss Margaret's sake, I'll burn my nose andmouth with those damned stumps of cigars. "

"Drinks no whisky, " continued I. "He is president of a temperancesociety. "

"The devil fly away with him!" growled Moreland; "I wouldn't give upmy whisky for all the girls in the world. "

"If you don't, she'll always be fainting away, " replied I, laughing. 

"Ah! It's because I talked of the Monongahela that she began with herhystericals, and went away for all the evening! That's where the windsits, is it? Well, you may depend I ain't to be done out of my grogat any rate. "

And he backed his assertion with an oath, swallowing off the contentsof his glass by way of a clincher. We sat joking and chatting tillpast midnight during which time I flattered myself that I gaveevidence of considerable diplomatic talents. As we were returninghome, however, Richards doubted whether I had not driven the old boyrather too hard

"No matter, " replied I, "if I have only succeeded in ridding poorMargaret of him. "

Cool, calculating Richards shook his head. 

"I don't know what may come of it, " said he; "but I do not think youare likely to find much gratitude for your interference. "

The next day was taken up in arranging matters of business consequenton the arrival of Richards. At least ten times I tried to go and seeArthurine, but was always prevented by something or other; and it waspast tea-time when I at last got to the Bowsends' house. I foundMargaret in the drawing-room, deep in a new novel. 

"Where is Arthurine?" I enquired. 

"At the theatre, with mamma and Mr Moreland, " was the answer. 

"At the theatre!" repeated I in astonishment. They were playing Tomand Jerry, a favourite piece with the enlightened Kentuckians. I hadseen the first scene or two at the New Orleans theatre, and had hadquite enough of it. 

"That really _is_ sacrificing herself!" said I, considerably out ofhumour. 

"The noble girl!" exclaimed Margaret. "Mr Moreland came to tea, andurged us so much to go"--

"That she could not help going, to be bored and disgusted for acouple of hours. "

"She went for my sake, " said Margaret sentimentally. "Mamma wouldhave one of us go. "

"Yes, that is it, " thought I. Jealousy would have been ridiculous. Hefifty years old, she seventeen. I left the house, and went to findRichards. 

"What! Back so early?" cried he. 

"She is gone to the theatre with her mamma and Moreland. "

Richards shook his head. 

"You put a wasp's nest into the old fellow's brain-pan yesterday, "said he. "Take care you do not get stung yourself. "

"I should like to see how she looks by his side, " said I. 

"Well, I will go with you. The sooner you are cured the better. Butonly for ten minutes. "

There was certainly no temptation to remain longer in that atmosphereof whisky and tobacco fumes. It was at the Bowery theatre. The lightswam as though seen through a thick fog; and a perfect shower oforange and apple peel, and even less agreeable things, rained downfrom the galleries. Tom and Jerry were in all their glory. I lookedround the boxes, and soon saw the charming Arthurine, apparentlyperfectly comfortable, chatting with old Moreland as gravely, andlooking as demure and self-possessed, as if she had been a marriedwoman of thirty. 

"That is a prudent young lady, " said Richards; "she has an eye to thedollars, and would marry Old Hickory himself, spite of whisky andtobacco pipe, if he had more money, and were to ask her. "

I said nothing. 

"If you weren't such an infatuated fool, " continued my plain-spokenfriend, I would say to you, let her take her own way, and the dayafter to-morrow we will leave New York. "

"One week more, " said I, with an uneasy feeling about the heart. 

At seven the next evening I entered what had been my Elysium, but wasnow, little by little, becoming my Tartarus. Again I found Margaretalone over a romance. "And Arthurine?" enquired I, in a voice thatmight perhaps have been steadier. 

"She is gone with mamma and Mr Moreland to hear Miss Fanny Wright. "

"To hear Miss Fanny Wright! the atheist, the revolutionist! What amad fancy! Who would ever have dreamed of such a thing!"

This Miss Fanny Wright was a famous lecturess, of the Owenite school, who was shunned like a pestilence by the fashionable world of NewYork. 

"Mr Moreland, " answered Margaret, "said so much about her eloquencethat Arthurine's curiosity was roused. "

"Indeed!" replied I. 

"Oh! you do not know what a noble girl she is. For her sister shewould sacrifice her life. My only hope is in her. "

I snatched up my hat, and hurried out of the house. 

The next morning I got up, restless and uneasy; and eleven o'clockhad scarcely struck when I reached the Bowsends' house. This timeboth sisters were at home; and as I entered the drawing-room, Arthurine advanced to meet me with a beautiful smile upon her face. There was nevertheless a something in the expression of hercountenance that made me start. I pressed her hand. She lookedtenderly at me. 

"I hope you have been amusing yourself these last two days, " said Iafter a moment's pause. 

"Novelty has a certain charm, " replied Arthurine. "Yet I certainlynever expected to become a disciple of Miss Fanny Wright, " added she, laughing. 

"Really! I should have thought the transition from Tom and Jerryrather an easy one. "

"A little more respect for Tom and Jerry, whom _we_ patronize--thatis to say, Mr Moreland and our high mightiness, " replied Arthurine, trying, as I fancied, to conceal a certain confusion of manner undera laugh. 

"I should scarcely have thought my Arthurine would have become aparty to such a conspiracy against good taste, " replied I gravely. 

"_My_ Arthurine!" repeated she, laying a strong accent on the pronounpossessive. "Only see what rights and privileges the gentleman isusurping! We live in a free country, I believe?"

There was a mixture of jest and earnest in her charming countenance. I looked enquiringly at her. 

"Do you know, " cried she, "I have taken quite a fancy to Moreland? Heis so good-natured, such a sterling character, and his roughnesswears off when one knows him well. "

"And moreover, " added I, "he has five hundred thousand dollars. "

"Which are by no means the least of his recommendations. Only thinkof the balls, Howard! I hope you will come to them. And thenSaratoga; next year London and Paris. Oh! it will be delightful. "

"What, so far gone already?" said I, sarcastically. 

"And poor Margaret is saved!" added she, throwing her arms round hersister's neck, and kissing and caressing her. I hardly knew whetherto laugh or to cry. 

"Then, I suppose, I may congratulate you?" said I, forcing a laugh, and looking, I have no doubt, very like a fool. 

You may so, " replied Arthurine. "This morning Mr Moreland beggedpermission to transfer his addresses from Margaret to your veryhumble servant. "

"And you?"--

"We naturally, in consideration of the petitioner's many amiablequalities, have promised to take the request into our seriousconsideration. For decorum's sake, you know, one must deliberate acouple of days or so. "

"Are you in jest or earnest, Arthurine?"

"Quite in earnest, Howard. "

"Farewell, then!"

 "'Fare-thee-well! and if for ever Still for ever fare-thee-well!'"

said Arthurine, in a half-laughing, half-sighing tone. The nextinstant I had left the room. 

On the stairs I met the beturbaned Mrs Bowsends, who led the waymysteriously into the parlour. 

"You have seen Arthurine?" said she. "What a dear, darling child!--isshe not? Oh! that girl is our joy and consolation. And MrMoreland--the charming Mr Moreland! Now that things are arranged sodelightfully, we can let Margaret have her own way a little. "

"What I have heard is true, then?" said I. 

"Yes; as an old friend I do not mind telling you--though it muststill remain a secret for a short time. Mr Moreland has made a formalproposal to Arthurine. "

I do not know what reply I made, before flinging myself out of theroom and house, and running down the street as if I had just escapedfrom a lunatic asylum. 

"Richards, " cried I to my friend, "shall we start tomorrow?"

"Thank God!" exclaimed Richards. "So you are cured of the New Yorkfever? Start! Yes, by all means, before you get a relapse. You mustcome with me to Virginia for a couple of months. "

"I will so, " was my answer. 

As we were going down to the steam-boat on the following morning, Staunton overtook us, breathless with speed and delight. 

"Wish me joy!" cried he. "I am accepted!"

"And I jilted!" replied I with a laugh. "But I am not such a fool asto make myself unhappy about a woman. "

Light words enough, but my heart was heavy as I spoke them. Fiveminutes later, we were on our way to Virginia. 

 * * * * *

HYDRO-BACCHUS. 

 Great Homer sings how once of old The Thracian women met to hold To "Bacchus, ever young and fair, " Mysterious rites with solemn care. For now the summer's glowing face Had look'd upon the hills of Thrace; And laden vines foretold the pride Of foaming vats at Autumn tide. There, while the gladsome Evöe shout Through Nysa's knolls rang wildly out, While cymbal clang, and blare of horn, O'er the broad Hellespont were borne; The sounds, careering far and near, Struck sudden on Lycurgus' ear-- Edonia's grim black-bearded lord, Who still the Bacchic rites abhorr'd, And cursed the god whose power divine Lent heaven's own fire to generous wine. Ere yet th' inspired devotees Had half performed their mysteries, Furious he rush'd amidst the band, And whirled an ox-goad in his hand. Full many a dame on earth lay low Beneath the tyrant's savage blow; The rest, far scattering in affright, Sought refuge from his rage in flight. 

 But the fell king enjoy'd not long The triumph of his impious wrong: The vengeance of the god soon found him, And in a rocky dungeon bound him. There, sightless, chain'd, in woful tones He pour'd his unavailing groans, Mingled with all the blasts that shriek Round Athos' thunder-riven peak. O Thracian king! how vain the ire That urged thee 'gainst the Bacchic choir The god avenged his votaries well-- Stern was the doom that thee befell; And on the Bacchus-hating herd Still rests the curse thy guilt incurr'd. For the same spells that in those days Were wont the Bacchanals to craze-- The maniac orgies, the rash vow, Have fall'n on thy disciples now. Though deepest silence dwells alone, Parnassus, on thy double cone; To mystic cry, through fell and brake, No more Cithaeron's echoes wake; No longer glisten, white and fleet, O'er the dark lawns of Taÿgete, The Spartan virgin's bounding feet: Yet Frenzy still has power to roll Her portents o'er the prostrate soul. Though water-nymphs must twine the spell Which once the wine-god threw so well-- Changed are the orgies now, 'tis true, Save in the madness of the crew. Bacchus his votaries led of yore Through woodland glades and mountains hoar; While flung the Maenad to the air The golden masses of her hair, And floated free the skin of fawn, From her bare shoulder backward borne. Wild Nature, spreading all her charms, Welcomed her children to her arms; Laugh'd the huge oaks, and shook with glee, In answer to their revelry; Kind Night would cast her softest dew Where'er their roving footsteps flew; So bright the joyous fountains gush'd, So proud the swelling rivers rush'd, That mother Earth they well might deem, With honey, wine, and milk, for them Most bounteously had fed the stream. The pale moon, wheeling overhead, Her looks of love upon them shed, And pouring forth her floods of light, With all the landscape blest their sight. Through foliage thick the moonshine fell, Checker'd upon the grassy dell; Beyond, it show'd the distant spires Of skyish hills, the world's grey sires; More brightly beam'd, where far away, Around his clustering islands, lay, Adown some opening vale descried, The vast Aegean's waveless tide. What wonder then, if Reason's power Fail'd in each reeling mind that hour, When their enraptured spirits woke To Nature's liberty, and broke The artificial chain that bound them, With the broad sky above, and the free winds around them! From Nature's overflowing soul, That sweet delirium on them stole; She held the cup, and bade them share In draughts of joy too deep to bear. 

 Not such the scenes that to the eyes Of water-Bacchanals arise; Whene'er the day of festival Summons the Pledged t' attend its call-- In long procession to appear, And show the world how good they are. Not theirs the wild-wood wanderings, The voices of the winds and springs: But seek them where the smoke-fog brown Incumbent broods o'er London town; 'Mid Finsbury Square ruralities Of mangy grass, and scrofulous trees; 'Mid all the sounds that consecrate Thy street, melodious Bishopsgate! Not by the mountain grot and pine, Haunts of the Heliconian Nine: But where the town-bred Muses squall Love-verses in an annual; Such muses as inspire the grunt Of Barry Cornwall, and Leigh Hunt. Their hands no ivy'd thyrsus bear, No Evöe floats upon the air: But flags of painted calico Flutter aloft with gaudy show; And round then rises, long and loud, The laughter of the gibing crowd. 

 O sacred Temp'rance! mine were shame If I could wish to brand thy name. But though these dullards boast thy grace, Thou in their orgies hast no place. Thou still disdain'st such sorry lot, As even below the soaking sot. Great was high Duty's power of old The empire o'er man's heart to hold; To urge the soul, or check its course, Obedient to her guiding force. These own not her control, but draw New sanction for the moral law, And by a stringent compact bind The independence of the mind-- As morals had gregarious grown, And Virtue could not stand alone. What need they rules against abusing? They find th' offence all in the using. Denounce the gifts which bounteous Heaven To cheer the heart of man has given; And think their foolish pledge a band More potent far than God's command. On this new plan they cleverly Work morals by machinery; Keeping men virtuous by a tether, Like gangs of negroes chain'd together. 

 Then, Temperance, if thus it be, They know no further need of thee. This pledge usurps thy ancient throne-- Alas! thy occupation's gone! From earth thou may'st unheeded rise, And like Astræa--seek the skies. 

MARTIN LUTHER. 

AN ODE. 

 Who sits upon the Pontiff's throne? On Peter's holy chair Who sways the keys? At such a time When dullest ears may hear the chime Of coming thunders--when dark skies Are writ with crimson prophecies, A wise man should be there; A godly man, whose life might be The living logic of the sea; One quick to know, and keen to feel-- A fervid man, and full of zeal, Should sit in Peter's chair. 

 Alas! no fervid man is there, No earnest, honest heart; One who, though dress'd in priestly guise, Looks on the world with worldling's eyes; One who can trim the courtier's smile, Or weave the diplomatic wile, But knows no deeper art; One who can dally with fair forms, Whom a well-pointed period warms-- No man is he to hold the helm Where rude winds blow, and wild waves whelm, And creaking timbers start. 

 In vain did Julius pile sublime The vast and various dome, That makes the kingly pyramid's pride, And the huge Flavian wonder, hide Their heads in shame--these gilded stones (O heaven!) were very blood and bones Of those whom Christ did come To save--vile grin of slaves who sold Celestial rights for earthy gold, Marketing grace with merchant's measure, To prank with Europe's pillaged treasure The pride of purple Rome. 

 The measure of her sins is full, The scarlet-vested whore! Thy murderous and lecherous race Have sat too long i' the holy place; The knife shall lop what no drug cures, Nor Heaven permits, nor earth endures, The monstrous mockery more. Behold! I swear it, saith the Lord: Mine elect warrior girds the sword-- A nameless man, a miner's son, Shall tame thy pride, thou haughty one, And pale the painted whore!

 Earth's mighty men are nought. I chose Poor fishermen before To preach my gospel to the poor; A pauper boy from door to door That piped his hymn. By his strong word The startled world shall now be stirr'd, As with a lion's roar! A lonely monk that loved to dwell With peaceful host in silent cell; This man shall shake the Pontiff's throne: Him Kings and emperors shall own, And stout hearts wince before

 The eye profound and front sublime Where speculation reigns. He to the learned seats shall climb, On Science' watch-tower stand sublime; The arid doctrine shall inspire Of wiry teachers with swift fire; And, piled with cumbrous pains, Proud palaces of sounding lies Lay prostrate with a breath. The wise Shall listen to his word; the youth Shall eager seize the new-born truth Where prudent age refrains. 

 Lo! when the venal pomp proceeds From echoing town to town! The clam'rous preacher and his train, Organ and bell with sound inane, The crimson cross, the book, the keys, The flag that spreads before the breeze, The triple-belted crown! It wends its way; and straw is sold-- Yea! deadly drugs for heavy gold, To feeble hearts whose pulse is fear; And though some smile, and many sneer, There's none will dare to frown. 

 None dares but one--the race is rare-- One free and honest man: Truth is a dangerous thing to say Amid the lies that haunt the day; But He hath lent it voice; and, lo! From heart to heart the fire shall go, Instinctive without plan; Proud bishops with a lordly train, Fierce cardinals with high disdain, Sleek chamberlains with smooth discourse, And wrangling doctors all shall force, In vain, one honest man. 

 In vain the foolish Pope shall fret, It is a sober thing. Thou sounding trifler, cease to rave, Loudly to damn, and loudly save, And sweep with mimic thunders' swell Armies of honest souls to hell! The time on whirring wing Hath fled when this prevail'd. O, Heaven! One hour, one little hour, is given, If thou could'st but repent. But no! To ruin thou shalt headlong go, A doom'd and blasted thing. 

 Thy parchment ban comes forth; and lo! Men heed it not, thou fool! Nay, from the learned city's gate, In solemn show, in pomp of state, The watchmen of the truth come forth, The burghers old of sterling worth, And students of the school: And he who should have felt thy ban Walks like a prophet in the van; He hath a calm indignant look, Beneath his arm he bears a book, And in his hand the Bull. 

 He halts; and in the middle space Bids pile a blazing fire. The flame ascends with crackling glee; Then, with firm step advancing, He Gives to the wild fire's wasting rule The false Decretals, and the Bull, While thus he vents his ire:-- "Because the Holy One o' the Lord Thou vexed hast with impious word, Therefore the Lord shall thee consume, And thou shalt share the Devil's doom In everlasting fire!"

 He said; and rose the echo round "In everlasting fire!" The hearts of men were free; one word Their inner depths of soul had stirr'd; Erect before their God they stood A truth-shod Christian brotherhood, And wing'd with high desire. And ever with the circling flame Uprose anew the blithe acclaim:-- "The righteous Lord shall thee consume, And thou shalt share the Devil's doom In everlasting fire!"

 Thus the brave German men; and we Shall echo back the cry; The burning of that parchment scroll Annull'd the bond that sold the soul Of man to man; each brother now Only to one great Lord will bow, One Father-God on high. And though with fits of lingering life The wounded foe prolong the strife, On Luther's deed we build our hope, Our steady faith--the fond old Pope Is dying, and shall die. 

TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA. 

No. II

THE FAIRY TUTOR. 

Discreet Reader!

You have seen--and 'tis no longer ago than YESTERDAY!--you must wellremember the picture--which showed you from the rough yetdelicate--the humorous yet sympathetic and picturesque--the originalyet insinuating pencil of a shrewd and hearty Lusatianmountaineer--the aerial, brilliant, sensitive, subtle, fascinating, enigmatical, outwardly--mirth-given, inwardly--sorrow-touched, congregated folk numberless--of the Fairies Proper!--showed them atthe urgency of a rare and strange need--clung, in DEPENDENCY, to onefair, kind, good and happily-born Daughter of Man!--And whatwonder?--The once glorious, but now forlorn spirits, leaning for onefate-burthened instant their trust upon the spirits ineffablyfavoured!--What wonder! that often as the revolution of ages bringson the appointed hour, the rebellious and outcast children of heavenmust sue--to their keen emergency--help--oh! speak up to the heightof the want, of the succour! and call it _a lent ray of grace_, fromthe rebellious and REDEEMED children of the earth!--And see, where, in the serene eyes of the soft Christian maiden, the hallowinginfluence shines!--Auspiciously begun, the awed though aspiring Rite, the still, the multitudinous, the mystical, prospers!--_Gratefully_, as for the boon inexpressibly worth--_easily_, as of their owntranscending power--_promptly_, as though fearing that a benefitreceived could wax cold, the joyful Elves crown upon the bright hairof their graciously natured, but humanly and womanly weakbenefactress--the wedded felicity of pure love!

And the imaginary curtain has dropped! Lo, where it rises again, discovering to view our stage, greatly changed, and, a littleperhaps, our actors!--Once more, attaching to the HUMAN DRAMA, slight, as though it were structured of cloud, of air, the same lightand radiant MACHINERY! Once more, only that They, whom you lately sawtranquil, earnest even to pathos--"now are frolic"--enough and tospare!--Once more--THE FAIRIES. 

And see, too--where, centring in herself interest and action of therapidly shifting scenery--ever again a beautiful granddaughter of Evesteps--free and fearless, and bouyant and bounding--our fancy-laidboards!--Ah! but how much unresembling the sweet maid!--_Outwardly_, for lofty-piled is the roof that ceils over the superb head of themodern Amazon, Swanhilda--more unlike _within_. Instead of the cleartruth, the soul's gentle purity, the "plain and holy Innocence" ofthe poor fairy-beloved mountain child--SHE, in whose person andfortunes you are invited--for the next fifty minutes--to forget yourown--harbours, fondly harbours, ill housemates of her virginalbreast! a small, resolute, well-armed and well confederated garrisonof unwomanly faults. Pride is there!--The iron-hard and theiron-cold! There Scorn--edging repulse with insult!--and envenominginsult with despair!--leaps up, in eager answer to the beseechingsighs, tears, and groans of earth-bent Adoration. And there is theindulged Insolency of a domineering--and as you will precipitatelyaugur--an _indomitable_ Will! And there is exuberant SELF-POWER, that, from the innermost mind, oozing up, out, distilling, circulating along nerve and vein, effects a magical metamorphosis!turns the nymph into a squire of arms; usurping even the clamorousand blood-sprinkled joy of man--the tempestuous and terrible CHASE, which, in the bosom of peace, imaging war, shows in the rougher lordof creation himself, as harsh, wild, and turbulent! Oh, how muchother than yon sweet lily of the high Lusatian valleys, theshade-loving Flower, the good Maud--herself looked upon with love bythe glad eyes of men, women, children, Fairies, and Angels! oh, otherindeed! And yet, have you, in this thickly clustered enumeration ofunamiable qualities, implicitly heard the CALL which must fasten, which has fastened, upon the gentle Maud's _haughty_ antithesis--theserviceable regard, and--the FAVOUR, even of THE FAIRIES. 

The FAVOUR!!

Hear, impatient spectator, the simple plot and its brief process. Youare, after a fashion, informed with what studious, persevering, andunmerciful violation of all gentle decorum and feminine pity, thelovely marble-souled tyranness has, in the course of the last threeor four years, turned back from her beetle-browed castle-gate, one byone, as they showed themselves there--a hundred, all worthilyborn--otherwise more and less meritorious--petitioners for thatwhip-and-javelin-bearing hand. You are NOW to know, that upon thisvery morning, an embassy from the willow-wearers all--or, to speakindeed more germanely to the matter, of the BASKET-BEARERS[22], waited upon their beautiful enemy with an ultimatum and manifesto inone, importing first a requisition to surrender; then, in case ofrefusal to capitulate, the announcement that HYMEN having found inCUPID an inefficient ally, he was about associating with himself, inleague offensive, the god MARS, with intent of carrying theMaiden-fortress by storm, and reducing the aforesaid wild occupantsof the stronghold into captivity--whereunto she made answer--

 ----our castle's strength Will laugh a siege to scorn--

herself laughing outrageously to scorn the senders and the sent Thiscrowning of wrong upon wrong will the Fairies, in the first place, wreak and right. 

[Footnote 22: To German ears--to SEND A BASKET--is to REFUSE APROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE. ]

But further, later upon the same unlucky day, the Kingdom of Elves, being in full council assembled in the broad light of the sun, uponthe fair greensward; ere the very numerous, but not widely sittingdiet had yet well opened its proceedings--"tramp, tramp, across theland, " came, flying at full speed, boar-spear in hand, our madcaphuntress; and without other note of preparation sounded than theirown thunder, her iron-grey's hoofs were in the thick of the sageassembly, causing an indecorous trepidation, combined withdevastation dire to persons and--wearing apparel. 

This wrong, in the second place, the Fairies will wreak and right. 

And all transgression and injury, under one procedure, whichis--_summary_; as, from the character of the judges and executioners, into whose hands the sinner has fallen, you would expect;sufficiently prankish too. With one sleight of their magical handthey turn the impoverished heiress of ill-possessed acres forth uponthe highway, doomed to earn, with strenuous manual industry, herlivelihood; until, from the winnings of her handicraft, she ismoreover able to make good, as far as this was liable to pecuniaryassessment, the damage sustained under foot of her fiery barb by theFairy realm; comfort with handsome presents the rejected suitors; anduntil, thoroughly tame, she yields into her softened and openedbosom, now rid of its intemperate inmates, an entrance to the oncedebarred and contemned visitant--LOVE. 

As to the way and style of the Fairy operations that carry out thisdrift, comparing the Two Tales, you will see, that omitting, as amatter that is related merely, not presented, that misadventure underthe oak-tree--there is, in the chamber of Swanhilda, but a Fairydelegation active, whilst under the Sun's hill whole Elfdom is inpresence; in that resplendent hollow, wearing their own lovelyshapes; within the German castle-walls, in apt masquerade. There theywere grave. Here, we have already said, that they are merry. Theretheir office was to feel and to think. Here, if there be any trust inapparitions, they drink, and what is more critical for an Elfinlip--they eat!

Lastly, to end the comparisons for our well-bred, well-dressed, andright courtly cavalier, who transacted between the Fairy Queen andthe stonemason's daughter, him you shall presently see turned into asort of Elfin cupbearer or court butler; not without fairy grace ofperson and of mind assuredly; not without a due innate sense of thebeautiful, as his perfumed name (SWEETFLOWER) at the outset warnsyou; and, as the proximity of his function to her Majesty'sperson--for we do not here fall in with any thing like mention of aking--would suggest, independently of the delicately responsible partborne by him in the action, the chief stress of which you will findincumbent upon his capable shoulders. 

Such, in respect of the subject, is, thrice courteous and intelligentreader, the second piece of art, which we are glad to have theopportunity of placing before you, from our clever friend ErnstWillkomm's apparently right fertile easel. The second, answering tothe first, LIKE and UNLIKE, you perceive, as two companion picturesshould be. 

But it would be worse than useless to tell you that which you haveseen and that which you will see, unless, from the juxtaposition ofthe two fables, there followed--a moral. They have, as we apprehend, a moral--_i. E. _ one moral, and that a grave one, in common betweenthem. 

Hitherto we have superficially compared THE FAIRIES' SABBATH and theFAIRY TUTOR. We now wish to develope a profounder analogy connectingthem. We have compared them, as if ESTHETICALLY; we would now comparethem MYTHOLOGICALLY--for, in our understanding, there lies at thevery foundation of both tales A MYTHOLOGICAL ROOT--by whomsoever set, whether by Ernst Willkomm to-day, or by the population of theLusatian mountains--three, six, ten centuries ago; or, in unreckonedantiquity, by the common Ancestors of the believers, who, in stillunmeasured antiquity, brought the superstition of the Fairies out ofcentral Asia to remote occidental Europe. 

This ROOT we are bold to think is--"A DEEPLY SEATED ATTRACTION, ALLYING THE FAIRY MIND TO THE PURITY AND INTEGRITY OF THE MORAL WILLIN THE MIND OF MEN. " And first for the Tale which presently concernsus:--THE FAIRY TUTOR. 

SWEETFLOWER will beguile us into believing that the interposition ofthe Fairies in our Baroness's domestic arrangements, grows up, if oneshall so hazardously speak, from TWO seeds, each bearing twobranches--namely, from two wrongs, the one hitting, the otherstriking from, themselves--BOTH which wrongs they will AVENGE andAMEND. We take up a strenuous theory; and we deny--and wedefy--SWEETFLOWER. Nay, more! Should our excellent friend, ERNSTWILLKOMM, be found taking part, real or apparent, with SWEETFLOWER, we defy and we deny Ernst Willkomm. For in this mixed case of theFairy wrong, we distinguish, first, INJURIES which shall beretaliated, and, as far as may be, compensated; and secondly, aSHREW, who is to be turned _into_ a WIFE, being previously turned_out of_ a shrew. 

We dare to believe that this last-mentioned end is the thinguppermost, and undermost, and middlemost in the mind of the Fairies;is, in fact, the true and _the sole final cause_ of all theirproceedings. 

Or that the _moral heart_ of the poem--that root in the human breastand will, from which every true poem springs heavenward--is here thezeal of the spirits for _morally reforming Swanhilda_; is, therefore, that deep-seated attraction, which, as we have averred, essentiallyallies the inclination of the Fairies to the moral conscience in ourown kind. 

One end, therefore, grounds the whole story, although two and moreare proposed by _Sweetflower_. It is one that _satisfies_ the moralreason in man; for it is no less than to cleanse and heal the will, wounded with error, of a human creature. That other, which hedisplays, with mock emphasis, of restitution to the downtroddenfairyhood, is an exotic, fair and slight bud, grafted into thesturdier indigenous stock. For let us fix but a steady look upon thething itself, and what is there before us? a whim, a trick of thefancy, tickling the fancy. We are amused with a quaint calamity--apanic of caps and cloaks. We laugh--we cannot help it--as the pigmyassembly flies a thousand ways at once--grave councillors andall--throwing terrified somersets--hiding under stones, roots--divinginto coney-burrows--"any where--any where"--vanishing out ofharm's--if not out of dismay's--reach. In a tale of the Fairies, THEFANCY rules:--and the interest of such a misfortune, definite and notinfinite, is congenial to the spirit of the gay faculty which hoversover, lives upon surfaces, and which flees abysses; which thence, likewise, in the moral sphere, is equal to apprehending resentment ofa personal wrong, and a judicial assessment of damages--but NOT ADISINTERESTED MORAL END. 

What is our conclusion then? plainly that the dolorous overthrow ofthe fairy divan is no better than an invention--the device of anesthetical artist. We hold that Ernst Willkomm has _gratuitously_bestowed upon us the disastrous catastrophe; that he has done this, knowing the obligation which lies upon Fancy within her own chosendomain to _create_, because--there, Fancy listens and reads. Theadroit Fairy delineator must wile over and reconcile the mostsportive, capricious, and self-willed spirit of our understanding, toaccept a purpose foreign to that spirit's habitual sympathies--apurpose solemn and austere--THE MORAL PURPOSE OF RESCUING ASIN-ENTANGLED HUMAN SOUL. 

Or, if Ernst Willkomm shall guarantee to us, that the reminiscencesof his people have furnished him with the materials of this tale; ifhe is, as we must needs hope, who have freely dealt with you tobelieve that he is--honest: honest both as to the general character, and the particular facts of his representations--if, in short, theLusatian Highlanders do, sitting by the bench and the stove, aver andprotest that the said Swanhilda did overturn both council-board andcouncillors--then we say, upon this occasion, that which we must all, hundreds of times, declare--namely, that _The Genius of Tradition_ isthe foremost of artists; and further, that in this instance _anunwilled fiction_, determined by a necessity of the human bosom, hasrisen up _to mantle seriousness with grace_, as a free woodbineenclasps with her slender-gadding twines, and bedecks with her sweetbright blossoms, a towering giant of the grove. 

It will perhaps be objected, that the moral purity and goodness thatare so powerful to draw to themselves the regard and care of thespiritual people, are wanting in the character of the over-boldSwanhilda. We have said that her _faults_ are the CALL to the Fairiesfor help and reformation: but we may likewise guess that Virtue andTruth first won their love. It must be recollected that the faultswhich are extirpated from the breast of our heroine, are not such as, in our natural understanding of humanity, dishonour or sully. Takenaway, the character may stand clear. It is quite possible that thisgone, there shall be left behind a kind, good, affectionate, generous, noble nature. 

We are free, or, more properly speaking, we are bound to believe, that thus the Fairies left Swanhilda. 

As for Maud, we know--for she was told--that the Fairies loved herfor herself ere they needed her aid. Hanging as it were upon thatwondrous power to help which dwelt within her--her simplegoodness--may we not say that the Fairies discover an ENFORCEDattraction, when they afterwards approach the maiden for their ownsuccour and salvation; as they do, a FREE attraction, when, in theperson of Swanhilda, they disinterestedly attach themselves toreforming a fault for the welfare and happiness of her whom itaggrieves?

 * * * * *

We will now proceed, as in our former communication, to adduceinstances from other quarters, confirming the fairy delineationsoffered by our tale; or which may tend generally to bring out itsmythological and literary character. 

Two points would suggest themselves to us in the tale of the FairyTutor, as chiefly provoking comparison. The first is:--_The affirmedPresidency of the Fairies over human morals_, viewed as _a Shape ofthe Interest_ which they take in the uprightness and purity of thehuman will. 

The second is:--

_The Manner and Style of their operations_: or, THE FAIRY WAYS. Inwhich we chiefly distinguish--1, The active presence of the Spritesin a human habitation. 2, Their masquerading. 3, Their dispatch ofhuman victuals. 4, The liability of Elfin limbs to human casualties. 5, The personality of that saucy Puck, our tiny ambassador elf. 

We are at once tempted and restrained by the richness ofillustration, which presents itself under all these heads. Thenecessity of limitation is, however, imperious. This, and a wish forsimplicity, dispose us to throw all under one more comprehensivetitle. 

Perhaps the reader has not entirely forgotten that in the remarksintroductory to THE FAIRIES' SABBATH, having launched thequestion--what is a Fairy?--we offered him in the way of answer, _eight_ elements of the Fairy Nature. Has he quite forgotten that forone of these--it was the third--we represented the Spirit underexamination, as ONE WHICH AT ONCE SEEKS AND SHUNS MANKIND?

The cursory treatment of this Elfin criterion will now compendiouslyplace before the reader, as much illustration of the two above-givenheads as we dare impose upon him. 

The popular Traditions of entire Western Europe variously attest forall the kinds of the Fairies, and for some orders of Spiritspartaking of the Fairy character, the singularly composed, and almostself-contradictory traits of a _seeking_ implicated and attemperedwith a _shunning_; of a shunning with a seeking. The inclination ofour Quest will be to evidences of the _seeking_. The shunning will, it need not be doubted, take good care of itself. 

The attraction of the Fairy Species towards our own is, 1. Recognised--in their GENERIC DESIGNATIONS. 2. Apparent--in their GOOD NEIGHBOURHOOD with us. 3. IN THEIR FREQUENTING AND ESTABLISHING THEMSELVES in the places of our habitual occupancy and resort. 4. IN THEIR CALLING OR CARRYING US into the places of their Occupancy and Resort; whether to return _hither_, or to remain _there_. 5. BY THEIR ALIGHTING UPON THE PATH, worn already with some blithe or some weary steps, OF A HUMAN DESTINY;--as friendly, or as unfriendly Genii. 

We collect the proofs: and--

1. Of their GENERIC APPELLATIVES, a Word!

One is tempted to say that THE NATIONS, as if conscious of the kindlydisposition inhering in the spiritual existences toward ourselves, have simultaneously agreed in conferring upon them titles ofendearment and affection. The brothers Grimm write--"In Scotland they[The Fairies] are called _The Good People, Good Neighbours, Men ofPeace;_ in Wales--_The Family, The Blessing of their Mothers, TheDear Ladies;_ in the old Norse, and to this day in the Faroe islands, _Huldufolk_ (_The Gracious People;_) in Norway, _Huldre_;[23] and, inconformity with these denominations, discover a striving to be in theproximity of men, and to keep up a good understanding with them. "[24]

[Footnote 23: May we for HULDRE read HULDREFOLK; and understand the_following_, or the _Folk_ of HULDRE? Huldre _means_ the GraciousLady: she is a sort of Danish and Norwegian Fairy-Queen. --See GRIMM'S_German Mythology_, p. 168. First edition. ]

[Footnote 24: The Brothers GRIMM: _Introduction to the Irish FairyTales_. ]

2. THIS GOOD NEIGHBOURHOOD, to which these last words point, isinterestingly depicted by the Traditions. 

In Scotland and Germany the Fairies plant their habitation_adjoining_ that of man--"_under the threshold_"--and in suchattached Fairies an alliance is unfolded with us of a mostextraordinary kind. "The closest connexion" (_id est_, of the Fairyspecies with our own) "is expressed, " say the Brothers Grimm, "by thetradition, agreeably to which the family of the Fairies ORDEREDITSELF ENTIRELY AFTER THE HUMAN to which it belonged; and OF WHICH ITWAS AS IF A COPY. These domestic Fairies _kept their marriages uponthe same day_ as the Human Beings; _their children were born upon thesame day_; and _upon the same day they wailed for their dead. _"[25]

[Footnote 25: The Brothers GRIMM: _Introduction to the Irish FairyTales. _]

Two artlessly sweet breathings of Elfin Table, from the HelvetianDales, [26] lately revived to your fancy the sinless--blissful years, when gods with men set fellowing steps upon one and the same fragrantand unpolluted sward, until transgression, exiling those to their owncelestial abodes, left these lonely--a nearer, dearer, BARBARIANGolden Age--wherein the kindly Dwarf nation stand representing thegreat deities of Olympus. 

[Footnote 26: See _The Dwarfs upon the Maple-Tree_, and _The Dwarfsupon the Crag-Stone_, in the former paper. ]

The healthful pure air fans restoration again to us. We lay beforeyou--

GERMAN TRADITIONS

No. CXLIX _The Dwarfs' Feet_. 

"In old times the men dwelt in the valley, and round about them, incaves and clefts of the rock, the Dwarfs, _in amity and goodneighbourhood_ with the people, for whom they performed by night manya heavy labour. When the country folk, betimes in the morning, camewith wains and implements, and wondered that all was ready done, theDwarfs were hiding in the bushes, and laughed out loud. Frequentlythe peasants were angry when they saw their yet hardly ripe cornlying reaped upon the field; but when presently after hail and stormcame on, and they could well know that probably not a stalk shouldhave escaped perishing, they were then heartily thankful to theprovident Dwarfs. At last, however, the inhabitants, by their sin, fooled away the grace and favour of the Dwarfs. These fled, and sincethen has no eye ever again beheld them. The cause was thisfollowing:--A herdsman had upon the mountain an excellentcherry-tree. One summer, as the fruit grew ripe, it befell that thetree was, for three following nights, picked, and the fruit carried, and fairly spread out in the loft, in which the herdsman had use tokeep his cherries. The people said in the village, that doth no oneother than the honest dwarflings--they come tripping along by night, in long mantles, with covered feet, softly as birds, and performdiligently for men the work of the day. Already often have they beenprivily watched, but one may not interrupt them, only let them, comeand go at their listing. By such speeches was the herdsman madecurious, and would fain have wist wherefore the Dwarfs hid socarefully their feet, and whether these were otherwise shapen thanmen's feet. When, therefore, the next year, summer again came, andthe season that the Dwarfs did stealthily pluck the cherries, andbear them into the garner, the herdsman took a sackful of ashes, which he strewed round about the tree. The next morning, withdaybreak, he hied to the spot; the tree was regularly gotten, and hesaw beneath in the ashes the print of many geese's feet. Thereat theherdsman fell a-laughing, and made game, that the mystery of theDwarfs was bewrayed; but these presently after brake down and laidwaste their houses, and fled deeper away into their mountain. Theyharbour ill-will toward men, and withhold from them their help. Thatherdsman which had betrayed the Dwarfs turned sickly and half-witted, and so continued until his dying day!"

There! Plucked amidst the lap of the Alps from its own hardily-nursedwild-brier, by the same tenderly-diligent hand[27] that brought hometo us those other half-disclosed twin-buds of Helvetian tradition, you behold a third, like pure, more expanded blossom. Twine thethree, young poet! into one soft-hued and "odorous chaplet, " readyand meet for binding the smooth clear forehead of a Swiss Maud!--orfix it amidst the silken curls of thine own dove-eyed, innocent, nature-loving--Ellen or Margaret. 

[Footnote 27: Of Professor Wyes. ]

These old-young things--bequests, as they look to be--from theloving, singing childhood of the earth, may lawfully make children, lovers, and songsters of us all; and _will_, if we are _fond_, andhearken to them. 

In that same "hallowed and gracious time, " lying YON-SIDE ourchronologies, "When the world and love were young, And truth on every shepherd's tongue, "

the men and the Dwarfs had unbroken intercourse of _borrowing andlending_. Many traditions touch the matter. Here is one resting uponit. 

No. CLIV. _The Dwarfs near Dardesheim_. 

"Dardesheim is a little town betwixt Halberstadt and Brunswick. Closeto the north-east side, a spring of the clearest water flows, whichis called the Smansborn, [28] and wells from a hill wherein formerlythe Dwarfs dwelled. When the ancient inhabitants of the place neededa holiday dress, or any rare utensil for a marriage, they betook themto this Dwarf's Hill, knocked thrice, and with a well audible voice, told their occasion, adding--

 'Early a-morrow, ere sun-light, At the hill's door, lieth all aright. '

[Footnote 28: For LESSMANSBORN, _i. E. _ LESSMANN'S WELL. ]

The Dwarfs held themselves for well requited if somewhat of thefestival meats were set for them by the hill. Afterward gradually didbickerings interrupt the good understanding that was betwixt theDwarfs' nation and the country folk. At the beginning for a shortseason; but, in the end, the Dwarfs departed away; because the floutsand gibes of many boors grew intolerable to them, as likewise theiringratitude for kindnesses done. Thenceforth none seeth or hearethany Dwarfs more. "

In _Auvergne_, Miss Costello has just now learned, how the men andthe Fairies anciently lived upon the friendliest footing, nigh oneanother: how the _knowledge_ and _commodious use_ of the _HealingSprings_ was owed by the former to these Good Neighbours: how, ofyore, the powerful sprites, by rending athwart a huge rocky mound, opened an _innocuous channel_ for _the torrent_, which used with itsoverflow to lay desolate arable ground and pasturage: how they werelooked upon as being, in a general sense, _the protectors_ againstharm of the country: and, in fine, how the two orders of neighbourslived in long and happy communion of kind offices with one another;until, upon one unfortunate day, the ill-renowned freebooter, Aymerigot Marcel, with his ruffianly men-at-arms, having approached, by stealth, from his near-lying hold, stormed the romantically seatedrock-mansion of the bountiful pigmies: who, scared, and in anger, forsook the land. Ever since the foul outrage, only a straggler may, now and then, be seen at a distance. 

Thus, too, the late _Brillat-Savarin_, from a sprightly, acute, brilliant Belles-letteriste, turned, for an hour, honest antiquary, lets us know how, upon the southern bank of the Rhone, flowing outfrom Switzerland, in the narrowly-bounded and, when he first quittedit, yet hidden valley of his birth:--The FAIRIES--elderly, notbeautiful, but benevolent unmarried ladies--kept, while time was, open school in THE GROTTO, which was their habitation, for the younggirls of the vicinity, whom they taught--SEWING. 

3. We go on to exemplifying--ELFIN _Frequentation of, and Settlementwith, _ MAN. 

The Fairies are drawn into the houses and to the haunts of men bymanifold occasions and impulses. They halt on a journey. Theycelebrate marriages. They use the implements of handicraft. Theypurchase at the Tavern--from the Shambles, or in open Market. They_steal_ from oven and field. They go through a house, blessing therooms, the marriage-bed--and stand beside the unconscious cradle. They give dreams. They take part in the evening mirth. They pray inthe churches. They seem to work in the mines. Drawn by magicalconstraint into the garden, they invite themselves within doors. Theydance in the churchyard. [29] They make themselves the wives and theparamours of men; or the serviceable hobgoblin fixes himself, like acat, in the house--once and for ever. 

We present traditions for illustrating some of these points, as theyoffer themselves to us. 

[Footnote 29:

 "Part fenced by man, part by the ragged steep That curbs a foaming brook, a GRAVE-YARD lies; The hare's best couching-place for fearless sleep! Where MOONLIT FAYS, far seen by credulous eyes, ENTER, IN DANCE!"

WORDSWORTH. --_Sonnet upon an_ ABANDONED _Cemetery. _]

THEY HALT ON A JOURNEY. 

No. XXXV. _The Count of Hoia_. 

"There did appear once to a count of Hoia, a little mauling in thenight, and, as the count was alarmed, said to him he should have nofear: he had a word to sue unto him, and begged that he should not bedenied. The count answered, if it were a thing possible to do, andshould be never burthensome to him and his, he will gladly do it. Themanling said--'There be some that desire to come to thee this ensuingnight, into thy house, and to make their stopping. Wouldst thou solong lend them kitchen and hall, and bid thy domestics that they goto bed, and none look after their ways and works, neither any knowthereof, save only thou? They will show them, therefore, grateful. Thou and thy line shall have cause of joy, and in the very leastmatter shall none hurt happen unto thee, neither to any that belongto thee. ' Whereunto the count assented. Accordingly, upon thefollowing night, they came like a cavalcade, marching over thedrawbridge to the house; one and all--tiny folk, such as they use todescribe the hill manlings. They cooked in the kitchen, fell too, andrested, and nothing seemed otherwise than as if a great repast werein preparing. Thereafter, nigh unto morn, as they will again depart, comes the little manling a second time to the count, and afterconning him thanks, handed him a _sword_, a _salamander cloth_, and a_golden ring_, in which was RED LION set above--advertising him, withal, that he and his posterity shall well keep these three pieces, and so long as they had them all together, should it go with fairaccordance and well in the county; but so soon as they shall beparted from one another, shall it be a sign that nothing goodimpendeth for the county. Accordingly, the red lion ever after, whenany of the stem is near the point of dying, hath been seen to waxwan. 

"Howsoever, at the time that Count Job and his brothers were minors, and Francis of Halle governor in the country, two of thepieces--viz. , the Sword and the Salamander Cloth, were taken away;but the Ring remained with the lordship unto an end. Whither itafterwards went is not known. "

THEY HOLD A WEDDING. 

No. XXXI. _The Small People's Wedding Feast. _

"The small people of the Eulenberg in Saxony would once hold amarriage, and for this purpose slipped in, in the night, through thekeyhole and the window-chinks into the Hall, and came leaping downupon the smooth floor, like peas tumbled out upon thethreshing-floor. The old Count, who slept in the high canopy bed inthe Hall, awoke, and marvelled at the number of tiny companions; oneof whom, in the garb of a herald, now approached him, and in well-setphrase, courteously prayed him to bear part in their festivity. 'Yetone thing, ' he added, 'we beg of you. Ye shall alone be present; noneof your court shall be bold to gaze upon our mirth--yea, not so muchas with a glance. ' The old Count answered pleasantly--'Since ye haveonce for all waked me up, I will e'en make one among you. ' Hereuponwas a little wifikin led up to him, little torch-bearers took theirstation, and a music of crickets struck up. The Count had much ado tosave losing his little partner in the dance; she capered about sonimbly, and ended with whirling him round and round, until hardlymight he have his breath again. But, in the midst of the jocundmeasure, all stood suddenly still; the music ceased, and the wholethrong hurried to the cracks in the doors, mouse-holes, andhiding-places of all sorts. The newly-married couple only, theheralds, and the dancers, looked upward towards an orifice that wasin the hall ceiling, and there descried the visage of the oldCountess, who was curiously prying down upon the mirthful doings. Herewith they made their obeisance to the Count; and the same whichhad bidden him, again stepping forward, thanked him for hishospitality. 'But, ' continued he, 'because our pleasure and ourwedding hath been in such sort interrupted, that yet another eye ofman hath looked thereon, henceforward shall your house number nevermore than seven Eulenbergs. ' Thereupon, they pressed fast forth, oneupon another. Presently all was quiet, and the old Count once againalone in the dark Hall. The curse hath come true to this hour, so asever one of the six living knights of Eulenberg hath died ere theseventh was born. "

THEY JOIN THE EVENING MIRTH. 

No. Xxxix. _The Hill-Manling at the Dance_. 

"Old folks veritable declared, that some years ago, at Glass, inDorf, an hour from the Wunderberg, and an hour from the town ofSalzburg, a wedding was kept, to which, towards evening, aHill-Manling came out of the Wunderberg. He exhorted all the gueststo be in honour, gleesome, and merry, and requested leave to join thedancers, which was not refused him. He danced accordingly, withmodest maidens, one and another; evermore, three dances with each, and that with a singular featness; insomuch that the wedding guestslooked on with admiration and pleasure. The dance over, he made histhanks, and bestowed upon either of the young married people threepieces of money that were of an unknown coinage; whereof each washeld to be worth four kreuzers; and therewithal _admonished them todwell in peace and concord, live Christianly, and piously walking, tobring up their children in all goodness_. These coins they should putamongst their money, and constantly remember him--so should theyseldom fall into hardship. _But they must not therewithal growarrogant, but, of their superfluity, succour their neighbours_. 

"This Hill-Manling stayed with them into the night, and took of everyone to drink and to eat what they proffered; but from every one onlya little. He then paid his courtesy, and desired that one of thewedding guests might take him over the river Salzbach toward themountain. Now, there was at the marriage a boatman, by name JohnStandl, who was presently ready, and they went down together to theferry. During the passage, the ferryman asked his meed. TheHill-Manling tendered him, in all humility, three pennies. Thewaterman scorned at such mean hire; but the Manling gave him foranswer--'He must not vex himself, but safely store up the threepennies; for, so doing, he should never suffer default of hishaving--_if only he did restrain presumptousness_--at the same timehe gave the boatman a little pebble, saying the words--'If thou shalthang this about thy neck, thou shalt not possibly perish in thewater. ' Which was proved in that same year. Finally, _he persuadedhim to a godly and humble manner of life_, and went swiftly away. "

ANOTHER OF THE SAME. 

No. CCCVI. _The Three Maidens from the Mere. _

"At Epfenbach, nigh Sinzheim, within men's memory, three wondrouslybeautiful damsels, attired in white, visited, with every evening, thevillage spinning-room. They brought along with them ever new songsand tunes, and new pretty tales and games. Moreover, their distaffsand spindles had something peculiar, and no spinster might so finelyand nimbly spin the thread. But upon the stroke of eleven, theyarose; packed up their spinning gear, and for no prayers might bemoved to delay for an instant more. None wist whence they came, norwhither they went. Only they called them, The Maidens from the Mere;or, The Sisters of the Lake. The lads were glad to see them there, and were taken with love of them; but most of all, the schoolmaster'sson. He might never have enough of hearkening and talking to them, and nothing grieved him more than that every night they went so earlyaway. The thought suddenly crossed him, and he set the village clockan hour back; and, in the evening, with continual talking andsporting, not a soul perceived the delay of the hour. When the clockstruck eleven--but it was properly twelve--the three damsels arose, put up their distaffs and things, and departed. Upon the followingmorrow, certain persons went by the Mere; they heard a wailing, andsaw three bloody spots above upon the surface of the water. Sincethat season, the sisters came never again to the room. Theschoolmaster's son pined, and died shortly thereafter. "

AN ELFIN IS BOUND, IN UNLAWFUL CHAINS, TO A HUMAN LOVER. 

No. LXX. _The Bushel, the Ring, and the Goblet. _

"In the duchy of Lorraine, when it belonged, as it long did, toGermany, the last count of Orgewiler ruled betwixt Nanzig andLuenstadt. [30] He had no male heir of his blood, and upon hisdeathbed, shared his lands amongst his three daughters andsons-in-law. Simon of Bestein had married the eldest daughter, thelord of Crony the second, and a German Rhinegrave the youngest. Beside the lordships, he also distributed to his heirs threepresents; to the eldest daughter a BUSHEL, to the middle one aDRINKING-CUP, and to the third a jewel, which was a RING, with anadmonition that they and their descendants should carefully hoard upthese pieces, so should their houses be constantly fortunate. "

[Footnote 30: LUNEVILLE. ]

The tradition, how the things came into the possession of the count, the Marshal of Bassenstein, [31] great-grandson of Simon, does himselfrelate thus:--[32]

[Footnote 31: BASSOMPIERRE. ]

[Footnote 32: _Mémoires du Maréchal de_ BASSOMPIERRE: Cologne, 1666. Vol. I. PP. 4-6. The Marshal died in 1646. ]

"The count was married: but he had beside a secret amour with amarvellous beautiful woman, which came weekly to him every Monday, into a summer-house in the garden. This commerce remained longconcealed from his wife. When he withdrew from her side, he pretendedto her, that he went, by night, into the Forest, to the Stand. 

"But when a few years had thus passed, the countess took a suspicion, and was minded to learn the right truth. One summer morning early, she slipped after him, and came to the summer bower. She there sawher husband, sleeping in the arms of a wondrous fair female; butbecause they both slept so sweetly, she would not awaken them; butshe took her veil from her head, and spread it over the feet of both, where they lay asleep. 

"When the beautiful paramour awoke, and perceived the veil, she gavea loud cry, began pitifully to wail, and said:--

"'Henceforwards, my beloved, we see one another never more. Now mustI tarry at a hundred leagues' distance away, and severed from thee. '

"Therewith she did 1eave the count, but presented him first withthose afore-named three gifts for his three daughters, which theyshould never let go from them. 

"The House of Bassenstein, for long years, had a toll, to draw infruit, from the town of Spinal, [33] whereto this Bushel wasconstantly used. "

[Footnote 33: EPINAL. ]

THE HOUSEHOLD SPIRIT DOES HOUSEHOLD SERVICE IN A MILL. 

No. LXXIII. _The Kobold in the Mill. _

"Two students did once fare afoot from Rintel. They purposed puttingup for the night in a village; but for as much as there did a violentrain fall, and the darkness grew upon them, so as they might nofurther forward, they went up to a near-lying mill, knocked, andbegged a night's quarters. The miller was, at the first, deaf, butyielded, at the last, to their instant entreaty, opened the door, andbrought them into a room. They were hungry and thirsty both; andbecause there stood upon a table a dish with food, and a mug of beer, they begged the miller for them, being both ready and willing to pay;but the miller denied them--would not give them even a morsel ofbread, and only the hard bench for their night's bed. 

"'The meat and the drink, ' said he, 'belong to the Household Spirit. If ye love your lives, leave them both untouched. But else have ye noharm to fear. If there chance a little din in the night, be ye butstill and sleep. '

"The two students laid themselves down to sleep; but after the spaceof an hour or the like, hunger did assail the one so vehemently thathe stood up and sought after the dish. The other, a Master of Arts, warned him to leave to the Devil what was the Devil's due; but heanswered, 'I have a better right than the Devil to it'--seatedhimself at the table, and ate to his heart's content, so that littlewas left of the cookery. After that, he laid hold of the can, took agood Pomeranian pull, and having thus somewhat appeased his desire, he laid himself again down to his companion; but when, after a time, thirst anew tormented him, he again rose up, and pulled a second sohearty draught, that he left the Household Spirit only the bottoms. After he had thus cheered and comforted himself, he lay down and fellasleep. 

"All remained quiet on to midnight; but hardly was this well by, whenthe Kobold came banging in with so loud coil, [34] that both sleepersawoke in great fright. He bounced a few times to and fro about theroom, then seated himself as if to enjoy his supper at the table, andthey could plainly hear how he pulled the dish to him. Immediately heset it, as though in ill humour, hard down again, laid hold of thecan, pressed up the lid, but straightway let it clap sharply toagain. He now fell to his work; he wiped the table, next the legs ofthe table, carefully down, and then swept, as with a besom, the doordiligently. When this was done, he returned to visit once more thedish and the beercan, if his luck might be any better this turn, butonce more pushed both angrily away. Thereupon he proceeded in hislabour, came to the benches, washed, scoured, rubbed them, below andabove. When he came to the place where the two students lay, hepassed them over, and worked on beyond their feet. When this wasdone, he began upon the bench a second time above their heads; and, for the second time likewise, passed over the visitants. But thethird time, when he came to them, he stroked gently the one which hadnothing tasted, over the hair and along the whole body, without anywhit hurting him; but the other he griped by the feet, dragged himtwo or three times round the room upon the floor, till at the last heleft him lying, and ran behind the stove, whence he laughed himloudly to scorn. The student crawled back to the bench; but in aquarter of an hour the Kobold began his work anew, sweeping, cleaning, wiping. The two lay there quaking with fear:--the one hefelt quite softly over, when he came to him; but the other he flungagain upon the ground, and again broke out, at the back of the stove, into a flouting horse-laugh. 

[Footnote 34: Exactly so, the hairy THRESHING Goblin of Milton--at_going out_, again:--

 "Till, cropful, out o' door HE FLINGS. " He, too, is paid for his work, with ----"_his_ CREAM-BOWL, duly set. "

"The students now no longer chose to lie upon the bench, rose, andset up, before the closed and locked door, a loud outcry; but nonetook any heed to it. They were at length resolved to lay themselvesdown close together upon the flat floor; but the Kobold left them notin peace. He began, for the third time, his game:--came and luggedthe guilty one about, laughed, and scoffed him. He was now fairly madwith rage, drew his sword, thrust and cut into the corner whence thelaugh rang, and challenged the Kobold with bravadoes, to come on. Hethen sat down, his weapon in his hand, upon the bench, to await whatshould further befall; but the noise ceased, and all remained still. 

"The miller upbraided them upon the morrow, for that they had notconformed themselves to his admonishing, neither had left thevictuals untouched. It was as much as their two lives were worth. "

 * * * * *

Three heads only of the ATTRACTION, above imputed to the Fairiestowards our own kind, have been here imperfectly brought out; andalready the narrowness of our limits warns us--with a sigh given tothe traditions crowding upon us from all countries, and which weperforce leave unused--to bring these preliminary remarks to a close. 

_Still_, something has been gained for illustrating our Tale. TheHill-Manling at the dance diligently warns against PRIDE--the rankROOT evil which the Fairies will weed out from the bosom of ourheroine, whilst throughout a marked feature of the Fairy ways--"THEACTIVE PRESENCE OF THE SPIRITS IN A HUMAN HABITATION" has forceditself upon us, in diverse, and some, perhaps, unexpected forms. 

And _still_, our fuller examples, coming to us wholly from theCollection of the Two Brothers, and expressing the habitudes of_various_ WIGHTS and ELVES, may furnish, for comparison with ErnstWillkomm's Upper Lusatian, an EXTRA Lusatian picture of the TEUTONICFAIRYHOOD. 

THE FAIRY TUTOR. 

"In days of yore there lived, alone in her castle, a maiden namedSwanhilda. She was the only child of a proud father, lately deceased. Her mother she had lost when she was but a child; so that theeducation of the daughter had fallen wholly into the hands of thefather. 

"During the lifetime even of the old knight, many suitors had offeredthemselves for Swanhilda; but she seemed to be insensible to everytender emotion, and dismissed with disdainful haughtiness the wholebody of wooers. Meanwhile she hunted the stag and the board, andperformed squire's service for her gradually declining parent. Thismanner of life was so entirely to the taste of the maiden, notwithstanding that in delicacy of frame, and in bewitchinggracefulness of figure, she gave place to none of her sex, that whenat length her father died, she took upon herself the management ofthe castle, and lived aloof in pride and independence, in the veryfashion of an Amazon. Maugre the many refusals which Swanhilda hadalready distributed on every side, there still flocked to her lovingknights, eager to wed; but, like their predecessors, they were allsent drooping home again. The young nobility could at last bear thistreatment no longer; and they, one and all, resolved either toconstrain the supercilious damsel to wedlock, or to make her smartfor a refusal. An embassy was dispatched, charged with notifying thisresolution to the mistress of the castle. Swanhilda heard thespeakers quietly to the end; but her answer was tuned as before, orindeed rang harsher and more offensive than ever. Turning her backupon the embassy, she left them to depart, scorned and ashamed. 

"In the night following the day upon which this happened, Swanhildawas disturbed out of her sleep by a noise which seemed to her toascend from her chamber floor; but let her strain her eyes as shemight, she could for a long while discern nothing. At length sheobserved, in the middle of the room, a straying sparkle of light, that threw itself over and over like a tumbler, tittering, at thesame time, like a human being. Swanhilda for a while kept herselfquiet; but as the luminous antic ceased not practising hisharlequinade, she peevishly exclaimed--'What buffoon is carrying onhis fooleries here? I desire to be left in peace. ' The light vanishedinstantly, and Swanhilda already had congratulated herself upongaining her point, when suddenly a loud shrilly sound was heard--thefloor of the apartment gave way, and from the gap there arose a tableset out with the choicest viands. It rested upon a lucid body of air, upon which the tiny attendants skipped with great agility to and fro, waiting upon seated guests. At first Swanhilda was so amazed that herbreath forsook her; but becoming by degrees somewhat collected, sheobserved, to her extreme astonishment, that an effigy of herself satat the strange table, in the midst of the numerous train of suitors, whom she had so haughtily dismissed. The attendants presented to theyoung knights the daintiest dishes, the savour of which camesweetly-smelling enough to the nostrils of the proud damsel. Asoften, however, as the knights were helped to meat and drink, thefigure of Swanhilda at the board was presented by an ill-favouredDwarf, who stood as her servant behind her, with an empty basket, whereat the suitor's broke out into wild laughter. She also soonbecame aware, that as many courses were served up to the guests asshe had heretofore dispensed refusals, and the amount of these wascertainly not small. 

"Swanhilda, weary of the absurd phantasmagoria, was going to speakagain; but to her horror she discovered that the power of speech hadleft her. She had for some time been struck with a kind of whisperingand tittering about her. In order to make out whence this proceeded, she leaned out of her bed, and, peering between the silk curtains, perceived two smart diminutive cupbearers, in garments of blue, withgreen aprons, and small yellow caps. She had scarcely got sight ofthe little gentlemen when their whispering took the character ofaudible words; and the dumb Swanhilda was enabled to overhear thefollowing discourse:

"'But, I pri'thee, tell me, Sweetflower, how this show shall end?'said one of the two cupbearers, --'thou art, we know, the confidant ofour queen, and, certes, canst disclose to me somewhat of her plans?'

"'That can I, my small-witted Monsieur Silverfine, ' answeredSweetflower. 'Know, therefore, that this sweet and lovely to beholdbrute of a girl, is now beginning to suffer the castigation due toher innumerable offences. Swanhilda has sinned against all maidenlymodesty, has borne herself proud and overbearing towards honourablegentlemen, and, besides, has most seriously offended our queen. '

"'How so?' enquired Silverfine. 

"'By storming on her Barbary steed, like the devil himself, throughthe thick of our States' Assembly, pounding the arms and legs of Idon't know how many of our sapient representatives. What makes thematter worse is, that this happened at the very opening of the diet, and whilst the grand prelusive symphony of the whole hidden peoplewas in full burst. We were sitting by hundreds of thousands uponblades, stalks, and leaves; some of us still actively busiedarranging comfortable seats for the older people in the blueharebells. For this we had stripped the skins of sixty thousand redfield spiders, and wrought them into canopies and hangings. All ourtalented performers had tuned their instruments, scraped, fluted, twanged, jingled, and shawmed to their hearts' content, and hadresined their fiddlesticks upon the freshest of dewdrops. All atonce, tearing out of the wood, with your leave, or without yourleave, comes this monster of a girl, plump upon upper house and lowerhouse together. Ah, lack-a-daisy! what a massacre it was! The firsthoof struck a thousand of our prime orators dead upon the spot, theother three hoofs scattered the Imperial diet in all directions, and, what is worse than all, tore to pieces a multitude of our exquisitecaps. Our queen was almost frantic at the breach of the peace--shestamped with her foot, and cried out, "LIGHTNING!" and what thatmeans we all pretty well know. Just at this time, too, she receivedinformation of the maiden's arrogant behaviour towards her suitors, and on the instant she determined to put the sinner to her prayers. We began by devouring every thing clean up, giving her the pleasureof looking on. '

"'Silly, absurd creatures!' _thought_ Swanhilda, as the little butleradvanced to the table to put on some fresh wine. During his absenceshe had time to note how perhaps a dozen other Fairies drew upthrough the floor whole pailfuls of wine and smoking meats, whichwere conveyed immediately to the table, and there consumed as if bythe wind. She was heartily longing for the day to dawn, that the sunmight dissipate her dream, when the sprightly little speaker came tohis place again. 

"'Now we can gossip a little longer, ' said Sweetflower. 'My guestsare provided for, and between this and cock-crow--when house andcellar will be emptied--there's some time yet. '

"Swanhilda uttered (_mentally_) a prodigious imprecation, and turnedherself so violently in the bed, that the little gentlemen wereabsolutely terrified. 

"'I verily believe we are going to have an earthquake!' saidSilverfine. 

"'No such thing!' answered Sweetflower. 'The amiable young lady inbed there has seen the sport perhaps, and is very likely notaltogether pleased with it. '

"'Don't you think she would speak, if she saw all this wastefulnessgoing on?' asked Silverfine. 

"'Yes, if she could!' chuckled Sweetflower. 'But our queen has beencruel enough to strike her dumb, whilst she looks upon thisheartbreaking spectacle. If she once wakes, she won't be troubledagain with sleep before cock-crow. '

"'A pretty business!' _thought_ Swanhilda, once more tossing herselfpassionately about in her bed. 

"'Quite right!' said Sweetflower triumphantly. 'The imp of a girl haswaked up. '

"'Insolent wretches!' said Swanhilda (internally. ) 'Brute and imp tome! Oh, if I could only speak!'

"'Why, the whole fun of the thing is, ' said Sweetflower, almostbursting with laughter, 'just that that wish won't be gratified. Doesthe fool of a woman think that she is to trample down our orchestrawith impunity, to put our States' Assembly to flight, and to crushour very selves into a jelly!'

"'And the unbidden guests divine my very thoughts!' _thought_Swanhilda. 'Upon my life, it looks as if a spice of omniscience hadreally crept under their caps!'

"'Why, of course!' answered Sweetflower. 

"'Then will I think no more!' _resolved_ Swanhilda. 

"'And there, my prudent damsel, you show a good discretion, ' returnedSweetflower, saluting her with an ironical bow. 

"'How will it be, then, with our caps?' enquired Silverfine. 'Arethey to be repaired?'

"'Oh, certainly, ' returned Sweetflower; 'and that will cost ourAmazon here more than all. Indeed, the conditions of her punishmentare, to make good the caps, to pledge her troth to one of herdespised suitors, to compensate the rest with magnificent gifts, and, for the future, never to mount hunter more, but to amble upon agentle palfrey, as a lady should. And, till all this is done, am I tohave the teaching of her. '

"'Pretty conditions truly!' thought Swanhilda. 'I would rather diethan keep them. '

"'Just as you please, most worthy madam, ' answered Sweetflower; 'butyou'll think better of it yet, perhaps. '

"'It will fall heavy enough upon her, ' said Silverfine, 'seeing thatwe have it in command to seize upon all the lady's treasures. '

"'Capital, capital!' shouted Sweetflower. 'That's peppering thepunishment truly! For now must this haughty man-hating creature goabout begging, catching and carrying fish to market, and sosubmitting herself to the scorn and laughter of all her formerlovers, till her trade makes her rich again. Nothing but luck infishing will our queen vouchsafe the audacious madam. Three years areallowed her. But, in the interim, she must starve and famish like awhite mouse learning to dance. '

"At this moment a monstrous burst of laughter roared from the table. The guests sang aloud--

 "'The last flagon we end, Swanhilda shall mend; Huzza, knights, and drink To the last dollar's chink!'

"As the song ceased, the table descended, the floor closed up, andstillness was in the room again, as when the lady had first retiredto her couch. The cock crew, and Swanhilda fell into a deep sleep. 

 * * * * *

"When it left her, the sun already shone high and bright, and playedon her silken bed-curtains. She rubbed her eyes, and seeing everything about her in its usual state, she concluded that what hadhappened was nothing worse than a feverish dream. She now arose, began dressing herself, and would have allayed her waking thirst, butshe could find neither glass nor water-pitcher. She called angrily toher waiting-woman. 

"'How come you to forget water, blockhead?' she exclaimed; 'get somequickly, and then--Breakfast!'

"The attendant departed, shaking her head; for she knew well enoughthat every thing had been put in order as usual on the eveningbefore. She very quickly returned, frightened out of her wits, andhardly able to speak. 

"'Oh my lady! my lady! my lady!' she stammered out. 

"'Well, where is the water?'

"'Gone! all drained and dried up! Tub, brook, well--all empty anddry!'

"'Is it possible?' said Swanhilda. 'Your eyes have surely deceivedyou! But never mind--bring up my breakfast. A ham and two Pomeraniangeese-breasts. '

"'Alack! gracious lady!' answered the girl, sobbing, 'every thing inthe house is gone too! The wine-casks lie in pieces on the cellarfloor; the stalls are empty; your favourite horse is away--hay andcorn rotted through. It is shocking!'

"Swanhilda dismissed her, and broke out at first into words wild andvehement. She checked them; but tears of disappointment and bitterrage forced their way in spite of her. A visit to her cellar, store-rooms, and granaries, convinced her of the horribletransformation which a night had effected in every thing thatbelonged to her. She found nothing every where but mould andsickly-smelling mildew; and was too soon aware that the hideousimages of the night were nothing less than frightful realities. Herhardened heart stood proof; and since the whole region for leaguesround was turned into a blighted brown heath, she at one resolved todie of hunger. Ere noon her few servants had deserted the castle, andSwanhilda herself hungered till her bowels growled again. 

"This laudable self-castigation she persevered in for three dayslong, when her hunger had increased to such a pitch that she could nolonger remain quiet in the castle. In a state of half consciousness, she staggered down to the lake, known far and wide by the name of theCastle mere. Here, on the glassy surface, basked the liveliestfishes. Swanhilda for a while watched in silence the disport of thehappy creatures, then snatched up a hazel wand lying at her feet, round the end of which a worm had coiled, and, half maddened by thejoyance of the finny tribe, struck with it into the water. A greedyfish snapped at the switch. The famishing Swanhilda clutchedhungeringly at it, but found in her hand a piece of offensivecarrion, and nothing more; whilst around, from every side, there rangsuch a clatter of commingled mockery and laughter, that Swanhildavented a terrible imprecation, and shed once more--a scorching tear. 

"'Oh! we shall soon have you tame enough!' said a voice straightbefore her, and she recognized it at once for the speaker of thatmiserable night. Looking about her, she perceived a moss-rose thatluxuriated upon the rock. In one of the expanded buds sat a littlekicking fellow, with green apron, sky-blue vest, and yellow bonnet. He was laughing right into the face of the angry miss; and, quaffingoff one little flower-cup after another, filled them bravely again, and jingled with his tiny bunch of keys, as if he had been grandbutler to the universe. 

"'A flavour like a nosegay!' said the malicious rogue. 'Wilt hob-nobwith me, maiden? What do you say? Are we adepts at sacking a house?'Twill give thee trouble to fill thy cellars again as we found them. Take heart, girl. If you will come to, and take kindly to yourangling, and do the thing that's handsome by your wooers, you shallhave an eatable dinner yet up at the castle. '

"'Infamous pigmy!' exclaimed Swanhilda, lashing with her rod, as shespoke, at the little rose. The small buffeteer meanwhile had leapeddown, and, in the turning of a hand, had perched himself upon thelady's nose, where he drummed an animating march with his heels. 

"'Thy nose, I do protest, is excellently soft, thou wicked witch!'said the rascal. 'If thou wilt now try thy hand at fishing for thetown market, thou shalt be entertained the while with the finest bandof music in the world. Be good and pretty, and take up thyangling-rod. Trumpets and drums, flutes and clarinets, shall allstrike up together. '

"Swanhilda tried hard to shake the jocular tormentor off, but he kepthis place on the bridge as if he had grown to it. She made a snatchat him, and he bit her finger. 

"'Hark'e, my damsel!' quoth Sweetflower; 'if you are so unmannerly, 'tis time for a lesson. You smarted too little when you were a youngone. We must make all that good now;' and forthwith he settledhimself properly upon her nose, dangling a leg on either side, like acavalier in saddle. 'Come, my pretty, be industrious, ' continued he;'get to work, and follow good counsel. ' And then he whistled a blitheand gamesome tune. 

"Swanhilda, not heedlessly to prolong her own vexation, dipped therod into the water, and immediately saw another gleaming fishwriggling at its end. A basket, delicately woven of flowers, stoodbeside her, half filled with clear water. The fish dropped into it ofthemselves. The wee companion beat meanwhile with his feet upon thewings of the lady's nose, played ten instruments or more at once, andextemporized a light rambling rhyme, wherein arch gibes and playfulderision of her present forlorn estate were not unmingled withauguries of a friendlier future. 

"'There, you see! where's the distress?' said the urchin, laughing. 'The basket is as full as it can hold. Off with you to the town, andwhen your fish are once sold, you may make yourself--somewater-gruel. ' With these words the elf leaped into the fish-basket, crept out again on the other side, plucked a king-cup, took seat init, and gave the word--'Forwards!' The flower, on the instant, displayed its petals. There appeared sail and rudder to the small anddelicate ship, which at once took motion, and sailed gaily throughthe air. 

"'A prosperous market to you, Swanhilda!' cried Sweetflower, 'behavediscreetly now, and do your tutor justice!'

"Swanhilda, perforce, resigned herself to her destiny. She took herbasket, and carried it home, intending to disguise herself ascompletely as possible before making for the town. But all herclothes lay crumbling into dust. Needs must she then, harassed byhunger and thirst, begin her weary walk, equipped, as she was, in hervelvet riding-habit. 

"Without fatigue, surprised at her celerity--she was in themarket-place. The eyes of all naturally took the direction of thewell-born fisherwoman. Still pity held the tongue of scorn in thrall, and Swanhilda saw her basket speedily emptied. Once more within hercastle walls, she beheld a running spring in the courtyard, and nearit an earthen pitcher. She filled--drank--and carried the remainderto the hall, where she found a small fire burning, a pipkin, and aloaf. She submissively cooked herself a meagre pottage of bread andwater, appeased the cravings of nature, and fell into a sound sleep. 

"Morning came, and she awoke with thirst burning afresh. She hastenedto the spring, but fountain and pitcher were no loner there. In theirstead a hoarse laugh greeted her; and in the next instant sheperceived the tiny butler, astride upon a cork, galloping before heracross the courtyard, and addressing his pupil with another snatch ofhis derisive song. 

"The courage of Swanhilda surmounted her wrath, and she carried herfish-basket to the lake. It was soon filled, and she again on her wayto market. An amazing multitude of people were already in motionhere, who presently thronged about the market-woman. The basket wasnearly emptied, when two of her old suitors approached. Swanhilda wasconfounded, and a blush of deep shame inflamed her countenance. Curiosity and the pleasure of malice spurred them to accost her; butthe sometime-haughty damsel cast her eyes upon the ground, and inanswer tendered her fish for sale. The knights bought; mixing, however, ungentle gibes with their good coin. Swanhilda, at themoment, caught sight of her tutor peeping from a daisy--saluting herwith his little cap, and nodding approbation. 

"'I would you were in the kingdom of pepper!' thought Swanhilda, andin the next instant the fairy was running upon her nose and cheeks, most unmercifully stamping, and tickling her with a little hair tillshe sneezed again. 

"'Stay, stay, I must teach thee courtesy, if I can. What! a profaneswearer too! Wish me in the kingdom of pepper! We'll have peppergrowing on thy soft cheeks here. There, there--is that pepper? Thouart rouged, my lady, ready for a ball!'

"Swanhilda turned upon her homeward way, the adhesive Elf stilltripping ceaselessly about her face, and bore her infliction with avirtuous patience. In her court and hall she found, as before, thespring, the bread, and the fire. As before, she satisfied hunger andthirst, and slept--the sweeter already for her punishment and pain. 

"And so passed day after day. The tricky Elf became a less severe, still trusty schoolmaster. The profits of her trading, under fairyguardianship, were great to marvelling; and it must be owned that heraversion to angling craft did not increase in proportion. As time ranon, she had encountered all her discarded knights, now singly and nowin companies. A year and a half elapsed, and left the relationbetween suitors and maiden as at the beginning. At length a chivalricand gentle knight, noble in person as in birth, ventured to accosther, loving and reverently as in her brighter days of yore. Abashed, overcome with shame, the maiden was at the mercy of the light-winged, blithe, and watchful god, who seized his hour to enthrone himselfupon her heart. She bought the fairy caps and mantles--she madehonourable satisfaction to the knights, and to him whose generousconstancy had won her heart, she gave a willing and a softened hand. 

"Upon her wedding day, the QUIET PEOPLE did not fail to adorn thefestival with their radiant presence; albeit the merry creaturesplayed a strange cross-game on the occasion. The blissful day over, and the happy bride and bridegroom withdrawing from the banquet andthe dance, the well-pleased chirping, able little tutor hopped beforethem, and led them to the hymeneal bower with floral flute, andgratulatory song!"

PORTUGAL. [35]

[Footnote 35: _Memoirs of the Marquis of Pombal_. By J. SMITH, Esq. , Private Secretary to the Marquis of Saldanha. Two vols. ]

The connexion of Portugal with England has been continued for so longa period, and the fortunes of Portugal have risen and fallen soconstantly in the exact degree of her more intimate or more relaxedalliance with England that a knowledge of her interests, her habits, and her history, becomes an especial accomplishment of the Englishstatesman. The two countries have an additional tie, in thesimilitude of their early pursuits, their original character forenterprise, and their mutual services. Portugal, like England, with anarrow territory, but that territory largely open to the sea, wasmaritime from her beginning; like England, her early power wasderived from the discovery of remote countries; like England, shethrew her force into colonization, at an era when all other nationsof Europe were wasting their strength in unnecessary wars; likeEngland, without desiring to enlarge her territory, she has preservedher independence; and, so sustain the similitude to its full extent, like England, she founded an immense colony in the western world, with which, after severing the link of government, she retains thelink of a common language, policy, literature, and religion. 

The growth of the great European powers at length overshadowed theprosperity of Portugal, and the usurpation of her government by Spainsank her into a temporary depression. But the native gallantry of thenation at length shook off the yoke; and a new effort commenced forher restoration to the place which she was entitled to maintain inthe world. It is remarkable that, at such periods in the history ofnations, some eminent individual comes forward, as if designated forthe especial office of a national guide. Such an individual was theMarquis of Pombal, the virtual sovereign of Portugal for twenty-sevenyears--a man of talent, intrepidity, and virtue. His services werethe crush of faction and the birth of public spirit, the fall of theJesuits and the peace of his country. His inscription should be, "TheRestorer of his Country. "

The Marquis of Pombal was born on the 13th of May 1699, at Soure, aPortuguese village near the town of Pombal. His father, ManoelCarvalho, was a country gentleman of moderate fortune, of the rank of_fidalgo de provincia_--a distinction which gave him the privilegesattached to nobility, though not to the title of a grandee, thathonour not descending below dukes, marquises, and counts. His motherwas Theresa de Mendonca, a woman of family. He had two brothers, Francis and Paul. His own names were Sebastian Joseph, to which wasadded that of Mello, from his maternal ancestor. 

Having, like the sons of Portuguese gentlemen in general, studied fora period in the university of Coimbra, he entered the army as aprivate, according to the custom of the country, and rose to the rankof corporal, which he held until circumstances, and an introductionto Cardinal Motta, who was subsequently prime-minister, induced himto devote himself to the study of history, politics, and law. Thecardinal, struck with his ability, strongly advised him to perseverein those pursuits, appointed him, in 1733, member of the RoyalAcademy of History, and shortly after, the king proposed that heshould write the history of certain of the Portuguese monarchs; butthis design was laid aside, and Pombal remained unemployed for sixyears, until, in 1739, he was sent by the cardinal to London, asPortuguese minister. He retained his office until 1745; yet it isremarkable, and an evidence of the difficulty of acquiring a newlanguage, that Pombal, though thus living six active years in thecountry, was never able to acquire the English language. It must, however, be recollected, that at this period French was the universallanguage of diplomacy, the language of the court circles, and thepolished language of all the travelled ranks of England. Thewritings, too, of the French historians, wits, and politicians, werethe study of every man who pretended to good-breeding, and the onlystudy of most; so that, to a stranger, the acquisition of thevernacular tongue could be scarcely more than a matter of curiosity. Times, however, are changed; and the diplomatist who should now cometo this country without a knowledge of the language, would bedespised for his ignorance of an essential knowledge, and had betterremain at home. Soon after his return, he was employed in anegotiation to reconcile the courts of Rome and Vienna on anecclesiastical claim. His reputation had already reached Vienna; andit is surmised that Maria Theresa, the empress, had desired hisappointment as ambassador. His embassy was successful. At Vienna, Pombal, who was a widower, married the Countess Ernestein Daun, bywhom he had two sons and three daughters. Pombal was destined to be afavourite at courts from his handsome exterior. He was above themiddle size, finely formed, and with a remarkably intellectualcountenance; his manners graceful, and his language animated andelegant. His reputation at Vienna was so high, that on a vacancy inthe Foreign office at Lisbon, Pombal was recalled to take theportfolio in 1750. Don John, the king, died shortly after, and DonJoseph, at the age of thirty-five, ascended the throne, appointingPombal virtually his prime-minister--a rank which he held, unshakenand unrivaled, for the extraordinary period of twenty-seven years. 

The six years of unemployed and private life, which the greatminister had spent in the practical study of his country, were of themost memorable service to his future administration. His six years'residence in England added practical knowledge to theoretical; andwith the whole machinery of a free, active, and popular government inconstant operation before his eyes, he returned to take thegovernment of a dilapidated country. The power of the priesthood, exercised in the most fearful shape of tyranny; the power of thecrown, at once feeble and arbitrary; the power of opinion, whollyextinguished; and the power of the people, perverted into theinstrument of their own oppression--were the elements of evil withwhich the minister had to deal; and he dealt with them vigorously, sincerely, and successfully. 

The most horrible tribunal of irresponsible power, combined with themost remorseless priestcraft, was the Inquisition; for it not merelypunished men for obeying their own consciences, but tried them indefiance of every principle of enquiry. It not only made a lawcontradictory of every other law, but it established a tribunalsubversive of every mode by which the innocent could be defended. Itwas a murderer on principle. Pombal's first act was a bold and nobleeffort to reduce this tribunal within the limits of national safety. By a decree of 1751, it was ordered that thenceforth no judicialburnings should take place without the consent and approval of thegovernment, taking to itself the right of enquiry and examination, and confirming or reversing the sentence according to its ownjudgment. This measure decided at once the originality and theboldness of the minister: for it was the first effort of the kind ina Popish kingdom; and it was made against the whole power of Rome, the restless intrigues of the Jesuits, and the inveteratesuperstition of the people. 

Having achieved this great work of humanity, the minister's nextattention was directed to the defences of the kingdom. He found allthe fortresses in a state of decay, he appropriated an annual revenueof L. 7000 for their reparation; he established a national manufactoryof gunpowder, it having been previously supplied by contract, andbeing of course supplied of the worst quality at the highest rate. Heestablished regulations for the fisheries, he broke up iniquitouscontracts, he attempted to establish a sugar refinery, and directedthe attention of the people largely to the cultivation of silk. Hisnext reformation was that of the police. The disorders of the latereign had covered the highways with robbers. Pombal instituted apolice so effective, and proceeded with such determined justiceagainst all disturbers of the peace, that the roads grew suddenlysafe, and the streets of Lisbon became proverbial for security, at atime when every capital of Europe was infested with robbers andassassins, and when even the state of London was so hazardous, as tobe mentioned in the king's speech in 1753 as a scandal to thecountry. The next reform was in the collection of the revenue. Animmense portion of the taxes had hitherto gone into the pockets ofthe collectors. Pombal appointed twenty-eight receivers for thevarious provinces, abolished at a stroke a host of inferior officers, made the promisers responsible for the receivers, and restored therevenue to a healthy condition. Commerce next engaged his attention;he established a company to trade to the East and China, the oldsources of Portuguese wealth. In the western dominions of Portugal, commerce had hitherto languished. He established a great company forthe Brazil trade. But his still higher praise was his humanity. Though acting in the midst of a nation overrun with the most violentfollies and prejudices of Popery, he laboured to correct the abusesof the convents; and, among the rest, their habit of retaining asnuns the daughters of the Brazilian Portuguese who had been sent overfor their education. By a wise and humane decree, issued in 1765, theIndians, and a large portion of Brazil, were declared free. Expedients were adopted to civilize them, and privileges were grantedto the Portuguese who should contract marriage among them. Of coursethose great objects were not achieved without encountering seriousdifficulties. The pride of the idle aristocracy, the sleeplessintriguing of the Jesuits, the ignorant enthusiasm of the people, andthe sluggish supremacy of the priests, were all up in arms againsthim. But his principle was pure, his knowledge sound, and hisresolution decided. Above all, he had, in the person of the king, aman of strong mind, convinced of the necessities of change, anddetermined to sustain the minister. The reforms soon vindicatedthemselves by the public prosperity; and Pombal exercised all thepowers of a despotic sovereign, in the benevolent spirit of aregenerator of his country. 

But a tremendous physical calamity was now about to put to the testat once the fortitude of this great minister, and the resources ofPortugal. 

On the morning of All-Saints' day, the 1st of November 1755, Lisbonwas almost torn up from the foundations by the most terribleearthquake on European record. As it was a high Romish festival, thepopulation were crowding to the churches, which were lighted up inhonour of the day. About a quarter before ten the first shock wasfelt, which lasted the extraordinary length of six or seven minutes;then followed an interval of about five minutes, after which theshock was renewed, lasting about three minutes. The concussions wereso violent in both instances that nearly all the solid buildings weredashed to the ground, and the principal part of the city almostwholly ruined. The terror of the population, rushing through thefalling streets, gathered in the churches, or madly attempting toescape into the fields, may be imagined; but the whole scene ofhorror, death, and ruin, exceeds all description. The ground splitinto chasms, into which the people were plunged in their fright. Crowds fled to the water; but the Tagus, agitated like the land, suddenly rose to an extraordinary height, burst upon the land, andswept away all within its reach. It was said to have risen to theheight of five-and-twenty or thirty feet above its usual level, andto have sunk again as much below it. And this phenomenon occurredfour times. 

The despatch from the British consul stated, that the especial forceof the earthquake seemed to be directly under the city; for whileLisbon was lifted from the ground, as if by the explosion of agunpowder mine, the damage either above or below was not soconsiderable. One of the principal quays, to which it was said thatmany people had crowded for safety, was plunged under the Tagus, andtotally disappeared. Ships were carried down by the shock on theriver, dashes to pieces against each other, or flung upon the shore. To complete the catastrophe, fires broke out in the ruins, whichspread over the face of the city, burned for five or six days, andreduced all the goods and property of the people to ashes. For fortydays the shocks continued with more or less violence, but they hadnow nothing left to destroy. The people were thus kept in a constantstate of alarm, and forced to encamp in the open fields, though itwas now winter. The royal family were encamped in the gardens of thepalace; and, as in all the elements of society had been shakentogether, Lisbon and its vicinity became the place of gathering forbanditti from all quarters in the kingdom. A number of Spanishdeserters made their way to the city, and robberies and murders ofthe most desperate kind were constantly perpetrated. 

During this awful period, the whole weight of government fell uponthe shoulders of the minister; and he bore it well. He adopted themost active measures for provisioning the city, for repressingplunder and violence, and for enabling the population to supportthemselves during this period of suffering. It was calculated thatseven millions sterling could scarcely repair the damage of the city;and that not less than eighty thousand lives had been lost, eithercrushed by the earth or swallowed up by the waters. Some conceptionof the native mortality may be formed from that of the English: ofthe comparatively small number of whom, resident at that time inLisbon, no less than twenty-eight men and fifty women were among thesufferers. 

The royal family were at the palace of Belem when this tremendouscalamity occurred. Pombal instantly hastened there. He found everyone in consternation. "What is to be done, " exclaimed the king, as heentered "to meet this infliction of divine justice?" The calm andresolute answer of Pombal was--"Bury the dead, and feed the living. "This sentence is still recorded, with honour, in the memory ofPortugal. 

The minister then threw himself into his carriage, and returned tothe ruins. For several days his only habitation was his carriage; andfrom it he continued to issue regulations for the public security. Those regulations amounted to the remarkable number of two hundred;and embraced all the topics of police, provisions, and the burial ofthe sufferers. Among those regulations was the singular, butsagacious one, of prohibiting all persons from leaving the citywithout a passport. By this, those who had robbed the people, orplundered the church plate, were prevented from escaping to thecountry and hiding their plunder, and consequently were obliged toabandon, or to restore it. But every shape of public duty was met bythis vigorous and intelligent minister. He provided for the cure ofthe wounded, the habitancy of the houseless, the provision of thedestitute. He brought troops from the provinces for the protection ofthe capital, he forced the idlers to work, he collected the inmatesof the ruined religious houses, he removed the ruins of the streets, buried the dead, and restored the services of the national religion. 

Another task subsequently awaited him--the rebuilding of the city. Hebegan boldly; and all that Lisbon now has of beauty is due to thetaste and energy of Pombal. He built noble squares. He did more: hebuilt the more important fabric of public sewers in the new streets, and he laid out a public garden for the popular recreation. But hefound, as Wren found, even in England, the infinite difficulty ofopposing private interest, even in public objects; and Lisbon lostthe opportunity of being the most picturesque and stately of Europeancities. One project, which would have been at once of the highestbeauty and of the highest benefit--a terrace along the shore of theTagus from Santa Apollonia to Belem, a distance of nearly six miles, which would have formed the finest promenade in the world--he waseither forced to give up or to delay, until its execution washopeless. It was never even begun. 

The vigour of Pombal's administration raised bitter enemies to himamong those who had lived on the abuses of government, or the plunderof the people. The Jesuits hated alike the king and his minister. They even declared the earthquake to have been a divine judgment forthe sins of the administration. But they were rash enough, in theintemperance of their zeal, to threaten a repetition of theearthquake at the same time next year. When the destined day came, Pombal planted strong guards at the city gates, to prevent the panicof the people in rushing into the country. The earthquake did notfulfil the promise; and the people first laughed at themselves, andthen at the Jesuits. The laugh had important results in time. 

There are few things more remarkable in diplomatic history, than thelong connexion of Portugal with England. It arose naturally from thecommerce of the two nations--Portugal, already the most adventurousof nations, and England, growing in commercial enterprise. Theadvantages were mutual. In the year 1367, we have a Portuguese treatystipulating for protection to the Portuguese traders in England. In1382, a royal order of Richard II. Permits the Portuguese ambassadorto bring his baggage into England free of duty--perhaps one of theearliest instances of a custom which marked the progress ofcivilization, and which has since been generally adopted throughoutall civilized nations. A decree of Henry IV. , in 1405, exonerates thePortuguese resident in England, and their ships, from being maderesponsible for the debts contracted by their ambassadors. In 1656, the important privilege was conceded to the English in Portugal, ofbeing exempted from the native jurisdiction, and being tried by ajudge appointed by England. This, in our days, might be aninadmissible privilege; but two centuries ago, in the disturbedcondition of the Portuguese laws and general society, it might havebeen necessary for the simple protection of the strangers. 

The theories of domestic manufactures and free trade have latelyoccupied so large a portion of public interest, that it is curious tosee in what light they were regarded by a statesman so far in advanceof his age as Pombal. The minister's theory is in strikingcontradiction to his practice. He evidently approved of monopoly andprohibitions, but he exercised neither the one nor the other--natureand necessity were too strong against him. We are, however, torecollect, that the language of complaint was popular in Portugal, asit always will be in a poor country, and that the minister who wouldbe popular must adopt the language of complaint. In an eloquent andalmost impassioned memoir by Pombal, he mourns over the poverty ofhis country, and hastily imputes it to the predominance of Englishcommerce. He tells us that, in the middle of the eighteenth century, Portugal scarcely produced any thing towards her own support. Twothirds of her physical necessities were supplied from England. Hecomplains that England had become mistress of the entire commerce ofPortugal, and in fact that the Portuguese trade was only an Englishtrade; that the English were the furnishers and retailers of all thenecessaries of life throughout the country, and that the Portuguesehad nothing to do but look on; that Cromwell, by the treaty whichallowed the supply of Portugal with English cloths to the amount oftwo million sterling, had utterly impoverished the country; and inshort, that the weakness and incapacity of Portugal, as an Europeanstate, were wholly owing, to her being destitute of trade, and thatthe destitution was wholly owing to her being overwhelmed by Englishcommodities. 

We are not about to enter into detail upon this subject, but it is tobe remembered, that Portugal obtained the cloth, even if she paid forit, cheaper from England than she could have done from any othercountry in Europe; that she had no means of making the cloth forherself, and that, after all, man must be clothed. Portugal, withoutflocks or fire, without coals or capital, could never havemanufactured cloth enough to cover the tenth part of her population, at ten times the expense. This has occurred in later days, and inmore opulent countries. We remember, in the reign of the EmperorPaul, when he was frantic enough to declare war against England, apair of broadcloth pantaloons costing seven guineas in St Peterburg. This would have been severe work for the purse of a Portuguesepeasant a hundred years ago. The plain fact of domestic manufacturesbeing this, that no folly can be more foolish than to attempt to formthem where the means and the country do not give them a naturalsuperiority. For example, coals and iron are essential to the productof all works in metal. France has neither. How can she, therefore, contest the superiority of our hardware? She contests it simply bydoing without it, and by putting up with the most intolerable cutlerythat the world has ever seen. If, where manufactures are alreadyestablished, however ineffectual, it may become a question with thegovernment whether some privations must not be submitted to by thepeople in general, rather than precipitate those unlucky manufacturesinto ruin; there can be no question whatever on the subject wheremanufactures have not been hitherto established. Let the people go tothe best market, let no attempt be made to force nature, and let nomoney be wasted on the worst article got by the worst means. Onething, however, is quite clear with respect to Portugal, that, by theEnglish alliance, she has gained what is worth all the manufacturesof Europe--independence. When, in 1640, she threw off the Spanishusurpation, and placed the Braganza family on the national throne, she threw herself on the protection of England; and that protectionnever has failed her to this hour. In the Spanish invasion ofPortugal in 1762, England sent her ten thousand men, and the firstofficer of his day, Count La Lippe, who, notwithstanding his Germanname, was an Englishman born, and had commenced his service in theGuards. The Spaniards were beaten in all directions, and Portugal wasincluded in the treaty of Fontainbleau in 1763. The deliverance ofPortugal in the Peninsular war is too recent to be forgotten, and toomemorable to be spoken of here as it deserves. And to understand thefull value of this assistance, we are to recollect, that Portugal isone of the smallest kingdoms of Europe, and at the same time the mostexposed; that its whole land frontier is open to Spain, and its wholesea frontier is open to France; that its chief produce is wine andoranges, and that England is incomparably its best customer for both. 

Pombal, in his memoir, imputes a portion of the poverty of Portugalto her possession of the gold mines of Brazil. This is one of theparadoxes of the last century; but nations are only aggregates ofmen, and what makes an individual rich, cannot make a nation poor. The true secret is this--that while the possession of the gold minesinduced an indolent government to rely upon them for the expenses ofthe state, that reliance led them to abandon sources of profit in theagriculture and commerce of the country, which were of ten times thevalue. This was equally the case in Spain. The first influx from themines of Peru, enabled the government to disregard the revenuesarising from the industry of the people. In consequence of the wantof encouragement from the government, the agriculture and commerce ofSpain sank rapidly into the lowest condition, whilst the governmentindolently lived on the produce of the mines. But the more gold andsilver exist in circulation, the less becomes their value. Withinhalf a century, the imports from the Spanish and Portuguese mines, had reduced the value of the precious metals by one half; and thoseimports thus became inadequate to the ordinary expenses ofgovernment. Greater efforts were then made to obtain them from themines. Still, as the more that was obtained the less was the generalvalue, the operation became more profitless still; and at length bothSpain and Portugal were reduced to borrow money, which they had nomeans to pay--in other words, were bankrupt. And this is the truesolution of the problem--why have the gold and silver mines of thePeninsula left them the poorest nations of Europe? Yet this wascontrary to the operation of new wealth. The discovery of the minesof the New World appears to have been a part of that providentialplan, by which a general impulse was communicated to Europe in thefifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Europe was preparing for a newvigour of religion, politics, commerce, and civilization. Nothingstimulates national effort of every kind with so much power andrapidity, as a new general accession of wealth, or, as the politicaleconomist would pronounce it, a rise of wages, whether industrial orintellectual; and this rise was effected by the new influx of themines. If Peru and Mexico had belonged to England, she would haveconverted their treasures into new canals and high-roads, newharbours, new encouragements to agriculture, new excitements topublic education, new enterprises of commerce, or the colonization ofnew countries in the productive regions of the globe; and thus shewould at once have increased her natural opulence, and saved herselffrom suffering under the depreciation of the precious metals, or morepartially, by her active employment of them, have almost whollyprevented that depreciation. But the Peninsula, relying wholly on itsimported wealth, and neglecting its infinitely more importantnational riches, was exactly in the condition of an individual, whospends the principal of his property, which is continually sinkinguntil it is extinguished altogether. 

Another source of Peninsular poverty existed in its religion. Theperpetual holidays of Popery made even the working portion of thepeople habitually idle. Where labour is prohibited for nearly afourth of the year by the intervention of holidays, and thus idlenessis turned into a sacred merit, the nation must prepare for beggary. But Popery goes further still. The establishment of huge communitiesof sanctified idlers, monks and nuns by the ten thousand, in everyprovince and almost in every town, gave a sacred sanction toidleness--gave a means of escaping work to all who preferred thelounging and useless life of the convent to regular labour, and evenprovided the means of living to multitudes of vagabonds, who werecontent to eat their bread, and drink their soup, daily at theconvent gates, rather than to make any honest decent effort tomaintain themselves. Every country must be poor in which a largeportion of the public property goes to the unproductive classes. Thesoldiery, the monks, the state annuitants, the crowds of domestics, dependent on the families of the grandees, all are necessarilyunproductive. The money which they receive is simply consumed. Itmakes no return. Thus poverty became universal; and nothing but thesingular fertility of the peopled districts of Spain and Portugal, and the fortune of having a climate which requires but few of thecomforts essential in a severer temperature, could have saved themboth from being the most pauperized of all nations, or even fromperishing altogether, and leaving the land a desert behind them. Itstrangely illustrates these positions, that, in 1754, the Portuguesetreasury was so utterly emptied, that the monarch was compelled toborrow 400, 000 crusadoes (L. 40, 000) from a private company, for thecommon expenses of his court. 

Wholly and justly disclaiming the imputation which would pronouncePortugal a dependent on England, it is impossible to turn a page ofher history without seeing the measureless importance of her Englishconnexion. Every genuine source of her power and opulence has eitheroriginated with, or been sustained by, her great ally. Among thefirst of these has been the wine trade. In the year 1756--the yearfollowing that tremendous calamity which had sunk Lisbon intoruins--the wine-growers in the three provinces of Beira, Minho, andTras-os-Montes, represented that they were on the verge of ruin. Theadulteration of the Portuguese wines by the low traders had destroyedtheir character in Europe, and the object of the representation wasto reinstate that character. Pombal immediately took up their cause;and, in the course of the same year, was formed the celebrated OportoWine Company, with a capital of £120, 000. The declared principles ofthe establishment were, to preserve the quality of the wines, tosecure the growers by fixing a regular price, and to protect themfrom the combinations of dealers. The company had the privilege ofpurchasing all the wines grown within a particular district at afixed price, for a certain period after the vintage. When that periodhad expired, the growers were at liberty to sell the wines whichremained unpurchased in whatever market they pleased. Monopolies, inthe advanced and prosperous career of commercial countries, generallysink into abuse; but they are, in most instances, absolutelynecessary to the infant growth of national traffic. All the commerceof Europe has commenced by companies. In the early state of Europeantrade, individuals were too poor for those large enterprises whichrequire a large outlay, and whose prospects, however promising, aredistant. What one cannot do, must be done by a combination of many, if it is to be done at all. Though when individual capital, by thevery action of that monopoly, becomes powerful enough for thoseenterprises, then the time is at hand when the combination may bedissolved with impunity. The Oporto Wine Company had no sooner comeinto existence, than its benefits were felt in every branch ofPortuguese revenue. It restored and extended the cultivation of thevine, which is the staple of Portugal. It has been abolished in therevolutionary changes of late years. But the question, whether thecountry is yet fit to bear the abolition, is settled by the fact, that the wine-growers are complaining of ruin, and that the necessityof the case is now urging the formation of the company once more. 

The decision of Pombal's character was never more strongly shown thanon this occasion. The traders into whose hands the Portuguese wineshad fallen, and who had enjoyed an illegal monopoly for so manyyears, raised tumults, and serious insurrection was threatened. AtOporto, the mob plundered the director's house, and seized on thechief magistrate. The military were attacked, and the government wasendangered. The minister instantly ordered fresh troops to Oporto;arrests took place; seventeen persons were executed; five-and-twentysent to the galleys; eighty-six banished, and others subjected tovarious periods of imprisonment. The riots were extinguished. In astriking memoir, written by Pombal after his retirement from office, he gives a brief statement of the origin of this company--a topic atall times interesting to the English public, and which is about toderive a new interest from its practical revival in Portugal. Wequote a fragment. 

"The unceasing and urgent works which the calamitous earthquake ofNovember 1st, 1755, had rendered indispensable, were still vigorouslypursued, when, in the following year, one Mestre Frei Joao deMansilla presented himself at the Giunta at Belem, on the part of theprincipal husbandmen of Upper Douro, and of the respectableinhabitants of Oporto, in a state of utter consternation. 

"In the popular outcry of the time, the English were represented asmaking themselves the sole managers of every thing. The fact being, that, as they were the only men who had any money, they were almostthe sole purchasers in the Portuguese markets. But the English herecomplained of were the low traffickers, who, in conjunction with theLisbon and Oporto vintners, bought and managed the wines at theirdiscretion. It was represented to the king, that, by those means, theprice of wine had been reduced to 7200 rios a pipe, or less, untilthe expense of cultivation was more than the value of the produce;that those purchasers required one or two years' credit; that theprice did not pay for the hoeing of the land, which was consequentlydeserted; that all the principal families of one district had beenreduced to poverty, so much so as to be obliged to sell their knivesand forks; that the poor people had not a drop of oil for theirsalad, so that they were obliged, even in Lent, to season theirvegetables with the fat of hogs. " The memoir mentions even gross viceas a consequence of their extreme poverty. 

We quote this passage to show to what extremities a people may bereduced by individual mismanagement, and what important changes maybe produced by the activity of an intelligent directing power. Theking's letters-patent of 1756, establishing the company, provided atonce for the purity of the wine, its extended sale in England, andthe solvency of the wine provinces. It is only one among a thousandinstances of the hazards in which Popery involves all regulargovernment, to find the Jesuits inflaming the populace against thismost salutary and successful act of the king. At confession, theyprompted the people to believe "that the wines of the company werenot fit for the celebration of mass. " (For the priests drink wine inthe communion, though the people receive only the bread. ) To givepractical example to their precept, they dispersed narratives of agreat popular insurrection which had occurred in 1661; and bothincentives resulted in the riots in Oporto, which it required all thevigour of Pombal to put down. 

But the country and Europe was now to acknowledge the services of thegreat minister on a still higher scale. The extinction of the Jesuitswas the work of his bold and sagacious mind. The history of thisevent is among the most memorable features of a century finishingwith the fall of the French monarchy. 

The passion of Rome for territory has been always conspicuous, andalways unsuccessful. Perpetually disturbing the Italian princes inthe projects of usurpation, it has scarcely ever advanced beyond theoriginal bounds fixed for it by Charlemagne. Its spirit of intrigue, transfused into its most powerful order the Jesuits, was employed forthe similar purpose of acquiring territorial dominion. But Europe wasalready divided among powerful nations. Those nations were governedby jealous authorities, powerful kings for their leaders, andpowerful armies for their defence. All was full; there was no roomfor the contention of a tribe of ecclesiastics, although the mostdaring, subtle, and unscrupulous of the countless slaves and soldiersof Rome. The world of America was open. There a mighty power mightgrow up unseen by the eye of Europe. A population of unlimitedmultitudes might find space in the vast plains; commerce in theendless rivers; defence in the chains of mountains; and wealth in therocks and sands of a region teeming with the precious metals. Theenterprise was commenced under the pretext of converting the Indiansof Paraguay. Within a few years the Jesuits formed an independentrepublic, numbering thirty-one towns, with a population of a hundredthousand souls. To render their power complete, they prohibited allcommunication between the natives and the Spaniards and Portuguese, forbidding them to learn the language of either country, andimplanting in the mind of the Indians an implacable hatred of bothSpain and Portugal. At length both courts became alarmed, and orderswere sent out to extinguish the usurpation. Negotiations were in themean time opened between Spain and Portugal relative to an exchangeof territory, and troops were ordered to effect the exchange. Measures of this rank were unexpected by the Jesuits. They hadreckoned upon the proverbial tardiness of the Peninsular councils;but they were determined not to relinquish their prize without astruggle. They accordingly armed the natives, and prepared for acivil war. 

The Indians, unwarlike as they have always been, now headed by theirJesuit captains, outmanoeuvred the invaders. The expedition failed;and the baffled invasion ended in a disgraceful treaty. Theexpedition was renewed in the next year, 1755, and again baffled. ThePortuguese government of the Brazils now made renewed efforts, and in1756 obtained some advantages; but they were still as far as everfrom final success, and the war, fruitless as it was, had begun todrain heavily the finances of the mother country. It had already costthe treasury of Lisbon a sum equal to three millions sterling. Butthe minister at the head of the Portuguese government was of adifferent character from the race who had, for the last hundredyears, wielded the ministerial sceptres of Spain and Portugal. Hisclear and daring spirit at once saw where the evil lay, and defiedthe difficulties that lay between him and its cure. He determined toextinguish the order of the Jesuits at a blow. The boldness of thisdetermination can be estimated only by a knowledge of the time. Inthe middle of the eighteenth century, the Jesuits were theecclesiastical masters of Europe. They were the confessors of thechief monarchs of the Continent; the heads of the chief seminariesfor national education; the principal professors in all theuniversities;--and this influence, vast as it was by its extent andvariety, was rendered more powerful by the strict discipline, theunhesitating obedience, and the systematic activity of their order. All the Jesuits existing acknowledged one head, the general of theirorder, whose constant residence was at Rome. But their influence, powerful as it was by their open operation on society, derivedperhaps a superior power from its secret exertions. Its name waslegion--its numbers amounted to thousands--it took every shape ofsociety, from the highest to the lowest. It was the noble and thepeasant--the man of learning and the man of trade--the lawyer and themonk--the soldier and the sailor--nay, it was said, that such was theextraordinary pliancy of its principle of disguise, the Jesuit wassuffered to assume the tenets of Protestantism, and even to act as aProtestant pastor, for the purpose of more complete deception. Thegood of the church was the plea which purified all imposture; thepower of Rome was the principle on which this tremendous system ofartifice was constructed; and the reduction of all modes of humanopinion to the one sullen superstition of the Vatican, was thetriumph for which those armies of subtle enthusiasm and fraudulentsanctity were prepared to live and die. 

The first act of Pombal was to remove the king's confessor, theJesuit Moreira. The education of the younger branches of the royalfamily was in the hands of Jesuits. Pombal procured a royal orderthat no Jesuit should approach the court, without obtaining theexpress permission of the king. He lost no time in repeating theassault. Within a month, on the 8th of October 1767, he sentinstructions to the Portuguese ambassador at Rome, to demand aprivate audience, and lay before the pope the misdemeanours of theorder. 

Those instructions charged the Jesuits with the most atrociouspersonal profligacy, with a design to master all public power, togather opulence dangerous to the state, and actually to plot againstthe authority of the crowns of Europe. He announced, that the king ofPortugal had commanded all the Jesuit confessors of the prince andprincesses to withdraw to their own convents; and this importantmanifesto closed by soliciting the interposition of the papal see toprevent the ruin, by purifying an order which had given scandal toChristianity, by offences against the public and private peace ofsociety, equally unexampled, habitual, and abominable. In 1758, therepresentation to the pope was renewed, with additional proofs thatthe order had determined to usurp every function, and thwart everyact of the civil government; that the confessors of the royal family, though dismissed, continued to conspire; that they resisted theformation of royal institutions for the renewal of the nationalcommerce; and that they excited the people to dangerous tumults, indefiance of the royal authority. 

Their intrigues comprehended every object by which influence was tobe obtained, or money was to be made. The "Great Wine Company, " onwhich the chief commerce of Portugal, and almost the existence of itsnorthern provinces depended, was a peculiar object of theirhostility, for reasons which we can scarcely apprehend, except theywere general jealousy of all lay power, and hostility to all theworks of Pombal. They assailed it from their pulpits; and one oftheir popular preachers made himself conspicuous by impiouslyexclaiming, "that whoever joined that company, would have no part inthe company of Jesus Christ. "

The intrigues of this dangerous and powerful society had long beforebeen represented to the popes, and had drawn down upon them thoseremonstrances by which the habitual dexterity of Rome at once savesappearances, and suffers the continuance of the delinquency. TheJesuits were too useful to be restrained; yet their crimes were toopalpable to be passed over. In consequence, the complaints of themonarchs of Spain and Portugal were answered by bulls issued fromtime to time, equally formal and ineffective. Yet even from thesedocuments may be ascertained the singularly gross, worldly, andillegitimate pursuits of an order, professing itself to be supremelyreligious, and the prime sustainer of the "faith of the gospel. " Thebull of Benedict the XIV. , issued in 1741, prohibited from "trade andcommerce, all worldly dominion, and the _purchase_ and _sale_ ofconverted Indians. " The bull extended the prohibition generally tothe monkish orders, to avoid branding the Jesuits especially. But abull of more direct reprehension was published at the close of theyear, expressly against the Jesuits in their missions in the east andwest. The language of this document amounts to a catalogue of themost atrocious offences against society, humanity, and morals. Bythis bull, "all men, and especially _Jesuits_, " are prohibited, underpenalty of excommunication, from "making slaves of the Indians; fromselling and bartering them; from separating them from their wives andchildren; from robbing them of their property; from transporting themfrom their native soil, " &c. 

Nothing but the strongest necessity, and the most ample evidence, would ever have drawn this condemnation from Rome, whether sincere orinsincere. But the urgencies of the case became more evident from dayto day. In 1758, the condemnation was followed by the practicalmeasure of appointing Cardinal Saldanha visitor and reformer of theJesuits in Portugal, and the Portuguese settlements in the east andwest. 

Within two months of this appointment the following decree wasissued:--"For just reasons known to us, and which concern especiallythe service of God and the public welfare, we suspend from the powerof confessing and preaching, in the whole extent of our patriarchate, the fathers of the Society of Jesus, from this moment, and untilfurther notice. " Saldanha had been just raised to the patriarchate. 

We have given some observations on this subject, from its peculiarimportance to the British empire at this moment. The order of theJesuits, extinguished in the middle of the last century by theunanimous demand of Europe, charged with every crime which could makea great association obnoxious to mankind, and exhibiting the mostatrocious violations of the common rules of human morality, has, within this last quarter of a century, been revived by the papacy, with the express declaration, that its revival is for the exclusivepurpose of giving new effect to the doctrines, the discipline, andthe power of Rome. The law which forbids the admission of Jesuitsinto England, has shared the fate of all laws feebly administered;and Jesuits are active by hundreds or by thousands in every portionof the empire. They have restored the whole original system, sustained by all their habitual passion for power, and urging theirway, with all their ancient subtlety, through all ranks ofProtestantism. 

The courage and intelligence of Pombal placed him in the foremostrank of Europe, when the demand was the boldest and most essentialservice which a great minister could offer to his country; he brokethe power of Jesuitism. But an order so numerous--for even within thelife of its half-frenzied founder it amounted to 19, 000--sovindictive, and flung from so lofty a rank of influence, could notperish without some desperate attempts to revenge its ruin. The lifeof Pombal was so constantly in danger, that the king actuallyassigned him a body guard. But the king himself was exposed to one ofthe most remarkable plots of regicide on record--the memorable Aveiroand Tavora conspiracy. 

On the night of the 3d of September 1758, as the king was returningto the palace at night in a cabriolet, attended only by his valet, two men on horseback, and armed with blunderbusses, rode up to thecarriage, and leveled their weapons at the monarch. One of themmissed fire, the other failed of its effect. The royal postilion, inalarm, rushed forward, when two men, similarly waiting in the road, galloped after the carriage, and both fired their blunderbusses intoit behind. The cabriolet was riddled with slugs, and the king waswounded in several places. By an extraordinary presence of mind, DonJoseph, instead of ordering the postilion to gallop onward, directedhim instantly to turn back, and, to avoid alarming the palace, carryhim direct to the house of the court surgeon. By this fortunateorder, he escaped the other groups of the conspirators, who werestationed further on the road, and under whose repeated discharges hewould probably have fallen. 

The public alarm and indignation on the knowledge of this desperateatrocity were unbounded. There seemed to be but one man in thekingdom who preserved his composure, and that one was Pombal. Exhibiting scarcely even the natural perturbation at an event whichhad threatened almost a national convulsion, he suffered the whole tobecome a matter of doubt, and allowed the king's retirement from thepublic eye to be considered as merely the effect of accident. Thepublic despatch of Mr Hay, the British envoy at Lisbon, alludes toit, chiefly as assigning a reason for the delay of a courtmourning--the order for this etiquette, on the death of the Spanishqueen, not having been put in execution. The envoy mentions that ithad been impeded by the king's illness, --"it being the custom of thecourt to put on _gala_ when any of the royal family are blooded. WhenI went to court to enquire after his majesty's health, I was thereinformed that the king, on Sunday night the 3d instant, passingthrough a gallery to go to the queen's apartment, had the misfortuneto fall and bruise his right arm; he had been blooded eight differenttimes; and, as his majesty is a fat bulky man, to prevent any humoursfixing there, his physicians have advised that he should not use hisarm, but abstain from business for some time. In consequence, thequeen was declared regent during Don Joseph's illness. "

This was the public version of the event. But appended to thedespatch was a postscript, in _cipher_, stating the reality of thetransaction. Pombal's sagacity, and his self control, perhaps a stillrarer quality among the possessors of power, were exhibited in thestrongest light on this occasion. For three months not a single stepappeared to be taken to punish, or even to detect the assassins. Thesubject was allowed to die away; when, on the 9th of December, allPortugal was startled by a royal decree, declaring the crime, andoffering rewards for the seizure of the assassins. Some daysafterwards Lisbon heard, with astonishment, an order for the arrestof the Duke of Aveira, one of the first nobles, and master of theroyal household; the arrest of the whole family of the Marquis ofTavora, himself, his two sons, his four brothers, and his twosons-in-law. Other nobles were also seized; and the Jesuits wereforbidden to be seen out of their houses. 

The three months of Pombal's apparent inaction had been incessantlyemployed in researches into the plot. Extreme caution was evidentlynecessary, where the criminals were among the highest officials andnobles, seconded by the restless and formidable machinations of theJesuits. When his proofs were complete, he crushed the conspiratorsat a single grasp. His singular inactivity had disarmed them; andnothing but the most consummate composure could have prevented theirflying from justice. On the 12th of January 1759, they were foundguilty; and on the 13th they were put to death, to the number ofnine, with the Marchioness of Tavora, in the square of Belem. Thescaffold and the bodies were burned, and the ashes thrown into thesea. 

Those were melancholy acts; the works of melancholy times. But as nohuman crime can be so fatal to the security of a state as regicide, no imputation can fall on the memory of a great minister, compelledto exercise justice in its severity, for the protection of all ordersof the kingdom. In our more enlightened period, we must rejoice thatthose dreadful displays of judicial power have passed away; and thatlaws are capable of being administered without the tortures, or thewaste of life, which agonize the feelings of society. Yet, whileblood for blood continued to be the code; while the sole preventionof crime was sought for in the security of judgment; and while eventhe zeal of justice against guilt was measured by the terribleintensity of the punishment--we must charge the horror of suchsweeping executions to the ignorance of the age, much more than tothe vengeance of power. 

This tragedy was long the subject of European memory; and all theextravagance of popular credulity was let loose ill discovering thecauses of the conspiracy. It was said, in the despatches of theEnglish minister, that the Marquis of Tavora, who had been Portugueseminister in the East, was irritated by the royal attentions to hisson's wife. Ambition was the supposed ground of the Duke of Aveira'sperfidy. The old Marchioness of Tavora, who had been once thehandsomest woman at court, and was singularly vein and haughty, waspresumed to have received some personal offence, by the rejection ofthe family claim to a dukedom. All is wrapped in the obscuritynatural to transactions in which individuals of rank are involved inthe highest order of crime. It was the natural policy of the ministerto avoid extending the charges by explaining the origin of the crime. The connexions of the traitors were still many and powerful; andfurther disclosures might have produced only further attempts at theassassination of the minister or the king. 

It was now determined to act with vigour against the Jesuits, whowere distinctly charged with assisting, if not originating, thetreason. A succession of decrees were issued, depriving them of theirprivileges and possessions; and finally, on the 5th of October 1759, the cardinal patriarch Saldanha issued the famous mandate, by whichthe whole society was expelled from the Portuguese dominions. Thosein the country were transported to Civita Vecchia; those in thecolonies were also conveyed to the Papal territory; and thus, by theintrepidity, wisdom, and civil courage of one man, the realm wasrelieved from the presence of the most powerful and most dangerousbody which had ever disturbed the peace of society. 

Portugal having thus the honour of taking the lead, Rome herself atlength followed; and, on the accession of the celebrated Ganganelli, Clement XIV. , a resolution was adopted to suppress the Jesuits inevery part of the world. On the 21st of July 1773, the memorable bull"Dominus ac Redemptor, " was published, and the order was at an end. The announcement was received in Lisbon with natural rejoicing. _TeDeum_ was sung, and the popular triumph was unbounded and universal. 

We now hasten to the close of this distinguished minister's career. His frame, though naturally vigorous, began to feel the effects ofhis incessant labour, and an apoplectic tendency threatened toshorten a life so essential to the progress of Portugal; for thatwhole life was one of _temperate_ and _progressive_ reform. His firstapplication was to the finances; he found the Portuguese exchequer onthe verge of bankruptcy. A third of the taxes was embezzled in thecollection. In 1761, his new system was adopted, by which thefinances were restored; and every week a balance-sheet of the wholenational expenditure was presented to the king. His next reform wasthe royal household, where all unnecessary expenses--and they werenumerous--were abolished. Another curious reform will be longerremembered in Portugal. The nation had hitherto used _only_ the_knife_ at dinner! Pombal introduced the _fork_. He brought thisnovel addition to the table with him from England in 1745!

The nobility were remarkably ignorant. Pombal formed the "College ofNobles" for their express education. There they were taught everything suitable to their rank. The only prohibition being, "that theyshould _not converse in Latin_, " the old pedantic custom of themonks. The nobles were directed to converse in English, French, Italian, or their native tongue; Pombal declaring, that the custom ofspeaking Latin was only "to teach them to barbarize. "

Another custom, though of a more private order, attracted the noticeof this rational and almost universal improver. It had been adoptedas a habit by the widows of the nobility, to spend the first years oftheir widowhood in the most miserable seclusion; they shut up theirwindows, retired to some gloomy chamber, slept on the floor, and, suffering all kinds of voluntary and absurd mortifications, forbadethe approach of the world. As the custom was attended with danger tohealth, and often with death, besides its general melancholyinfluence on society, the minister publicly "enacted, " that everypart of it should be abolished; and, moreover, that the widows shouldalways remove to another house; or, where this was not practicable, that they "should _not_ close the shutters, nor '_mourn_' for morethan a week, nor remain at home for more than a month, nor sleep onthe ground. " Doubtless, tens of thousands thanked him, and thank himstill, for this war against a popular, but most vexatious, absurdity. 

His next reform was the army. After the peace of 1763, he fixed it at30, 000 men, whom he equipped effectually, and brought into practicaldiscipline. 

A succession of laws, made for the promotion of European and colonialtrade, next opened the resources of Portugal to an extent unknownbefore. Pombal next abolished the "Index Expurgitorius"--anextraordinary achievement, not merely beyond his age, but against thewhole superstitious spirit of his age. He was not content withabolishing the restraint; he attempted to _restore_ the PRESS inPortugal. Hitherto nearly all Portuguese books had been printed inforeign counties. He established a "Royal Press, " and gave itssuperintendence to Pagliarini, a Roman printer, who had beenexpatriated for printing works against the Jesuits. Such, in valueand extent, were the acts which Portugal owed to this indefatigableand powerful mind, that when, in 1766, he suffered a paralyticstroke, the king and the people were alike thrown into consternation. 

At length Don Joseph, the king, and faithful friend of Pombal, died, after a reign of twenty-seven years of honour and usefulness. Pombalrequested to resign, and the Donna Maria accepted the resignation, and conferred various marks of honour upon him. He now retired to hiscountry-seat, where Wraxall saw him in 1772, and thus describes hisappearance. "At this time he had attained his seventy-third year, butage seemed to have diminished neither the freshness nor the activityof his faculties. In his person he was very tall and slender, hisface long, pale, and meagre, but full of intelligence. "

But Pombal had been too magnanimous for the court and nobles; and theloss of his power as minister produced a succession of intriguesagainst him, by the relatives of the Tavora family, and doubtlessalso by the ecclesiastical influence, which has always been at onceso powerful and so prejudicial in Portugal. He was insulted by atrial, at which, however, the only sentence inflicted was an order toretire twenty leagues from the court. The Queen was, at that time, probably suffering under the first access of that derangement, which, in a few years after, utterly incapacitated her, and condemned theremainder of her life to melancholy and total solitude. But the lastpraise is not given to the great minister, while his personaldisinterestedness is forgotten. One of the final acts of his life wasto present to the throne a statement of his public income, when itappeared that, during the twenty-seven years of his administration, he had received no public emolument but his salary as secretary ofstate, and about L. 100 a-year for another office. But he was rich;for, as his two brothers remained unmarried, their incomes werejoined with his own. He lived, held in high respect and estimation bythe European courts, to the great age of eighty-three, dying on the5th of May without pain. A long inscription, yet in which thepanegyric did not exceed the justice, was placed on his tomb. Yet asingle sentence might have established his claim to the perpetualgratitude of his country and mankind--

 "Here lies the man who banished the Jesuits from Portugal. "

Mr Smith's volume is intelligently written, and does much credit tohis research and skill. 

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. 

PART XII. 

 Have I not in my time heard lions roar? Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind, Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field, And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in the pitched battle heard Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"

SHAKSPEARE. 

Elnathan was a man of many cares, and every kind of wisdom, butone--the wisdom of knowing when he had wealth enough. He evidentlyloved accumulation; and the result was, that every hour of hisexistence was one of terror. Half the brokers and chief traders inFrance were already in prison; and yet he carried on the perilousgame of commerce. He was known to be immensely opulent; and he musthave regarded the day which passed over his head, without seeing hisstrong boxes put under the government seal, and himself thrown intosome _oubliette_, as a sort of miracle. But he was now assailed by anew alarm. War with England began to be rumoured among the beardedbrethren of the synagogue; and Elnathan had ships on every sea, fromPeru to Japan. Like Shakspeare's princely merchant--

 "His mind was tossing on the ocean, There where his argosies with portly sail, Like signiors, and rich burghers of the flood. Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea, Did overpower the petty traffickers, As they flew by them with their woven wings. "

The first shot fired would inevitably pour out the whole naval forceof England, and his argosies would put their helms about, and steerfor Portsmouth, Plymouth, and every port but a French one. If thisformidable intelligence had awakened the haughtiness of the Frenchgovernment to a sense of public peril, what effect must it not havein the counting-house of a man whose existence was trade? While I wason my pillow, luxuriating in dreams of French fêtes, Paul andVirginia carried off to the clouds, and Parisian _belles_ dancingcotillons in the bowers and pavilions of a Mahometan paradise, Elnathan spent the night at his desk, surrounded by his bustlinggeneration of clerks, writing to correspondents at every point of thecompass, and preparing insurances with the great Londonestablishments; which I was to carry with me, though unacquaintedwith the transaction on which so many millions of francs hungtrembling. 

His morning face showed me, that whatever had been his occupationbefore I met him at the breakfast-table, it had been a most uneasyone. His powerful and rather handsome physiognomy had shrunk to halfthe size; his lips were livid, and his hand shook to a degree whichmade me ask, whether the news from Robespierre was unfavourable. Buthis assurance that all still went on well in that delicate quarter, restored my tranquility, which was beginning to give way; and my onlystipulation now was, that I should have an hour or two to spend atVincennes before I took my final departure. The Jew was allastonishment; his long visage elongated at the very sound; he shookhis locks, lifted up his large hands, and fixed his wide eyes on mewith a look of mingled alarm and wonder, which would have beenludicrous if it had not been perfectly sincere. 

"In the name of common sense, do you remember in what a country, andin what times, we live? Oh, those Englishmen! always thinking thatthey are in England. My young friend, you are clearly not fit forFrance, and the sooner you get out of it the better. "

I still remonstrated. "Do you forget yesterday?" he exclaimed. "Canyou forget the man before whom we both stood? A moment's hesitationon your part to set out, would breed suspicion in that mostsuspicious brain of all mankind. Life is here as uncertain as in afield of battle. Begone the instant your passports arrive, and neverbehind you. --For my part, I constantly feel as if my head were in thelion's jaws. Rejoice in your escape. "

But I was still unconvinced, and explained "that my only motive was, to relieve my friends in the fortress from the alarm which they hadevidently felt for my fate, and to relieve myself from the charge ofingratitude, which would inevitably attach to me if I left Pariswithout seeing them. "

Never was man more perplexed with a stubborn subject. He representedto me the imminent hazard of straying a hair's-breadth to the rightor left of the orders of Robespierre! "I was actually undersurveillance, and he was responsible for me. To leave his roof; evenfor five minutes, until I left it for my journey, might forfeit thelives of both before evening. "

I still remonstrated; and pronounced the opinion, perhaps tooflattering a one, of the dictator, that "he could not condescend toforbid a mere matter of civility, which still left me entirely at hisservice. " The Jew at last, in despair, rushed from the room, leavingme to the unpleasing consciousness that I had distressed an honestand even a friendly man. 

Two hours thus elapsed, when a _chaise de poste_ drew up at the door, with an officer of the police in front, and from it came Varnhorstand the doctor, both probably expecting a summons to the scaffold;but the Prussian bearing his lot with the composure of a manaccustomed to face death, and the doctor evidently in measurelessconsternation, colourless and convulsed with fear. His rapture wasequally unbounded when Elnathan, ushering them both into theapartment where I sat--

 Chewing the cud of sweet and bitter thought"--

explained, that finding me determined on my point, he had adopted theold proverb--of bringing Mahomet to the mountain, if he could notbring the mountain to Mahomet; had procured an order for theirattendance in Paris, through his influence with the chief of thepolice, and now hoped to have the honour of their company at dinner. This was, certainly, a desirable exchange for the Place de Grève; andwe sat down to a sumptuous table, where we enjoyed ourselves with thezest which danger escaped gives to luxurious security. 

All went on well. The doctor was surprised to find in the frowningbanker, who had repulsed him so sternly from his desk, the hospitableentertainer; and Varhorst's honest and manly friendship was gratifiedby the approach of my release from a scene of perpetual danger. 

I had some remembrances to give to my friends in Prussia; and atlength, sending away the doctor to display his connoisseurship onElnathan's costly collection of pictures, Varnhorst was left to myquestioning. My first question naturally was, "What had involved himin the ill-luck of the Austrians. "

"The soldier's temptation every where, " was the answer; "havingnothing to do at home, and expecting something to do abroad. When thePrussian army once crossed the Rhine, I should have had no betteremployment than to mount guard, escort the court dowagers to theballs, and finish the year and my life together, by dying of _ennui_. In this critical moment, when I was in doubt whether I should turnTartar, or monk of La Trappe, Clairfait sent to offer me the commandof a division. I closed with it at once, went to the king, obtainedhis leave, put spurs to my horse, and reached the Austrian campbefore the courier. "

I could not help expressing my envy at a profession in which all thehonours of earth lay at the feet of a successful soldier! He smiled, and pointed to the police-officer, who was then sulkily pacing infront of the house. 

"You see, " said he, "the first specimen of my honours. Yet, from themoment of my arrival within the Austrian lines, I could havepredicted our misfortune. Clairfait was, at least, as long-sighted asmyself; and nothing could exceed his despondency but his indignation. His noble heart was half broken by the narrowness of his resourcesfor defending the country, and the boundless folly by which the warcouncil of Vienna expected to make up for the weakness of theirbattalions by the absurdity of their plans. 'I write for regiments, 'the gallant fellow used to say; 'and they send me regulations! I tellthem that we have not troops enough for an advanced guard; and theysend me the plan of a pitched battle! I tell then that the Frenchhave raised their army in front of me to a hundred thousand strong;and they promise me reinforcements next year. ' After all, his chiefperplexity arose from their orders--every despatch regularlycontradicting the one that came before. 

"Something in the style, " said I, "of Voltaire's caricature of theAustrian courier in the Turkish war, with three packs strapped on hisshoulders, inscribed, 'Orders'--'Counter-orders'--and 'Disorders. '

"Just a case in point. Voltaire would have been exactly the historianfor our campaign. What an incomparable tale he would have made of it!Every thing that was done was preposterous. We were actually beatenbefore we fought; we were ruined at Vienna before a shot was fired atJemappes. The Netherlands were lost, not by powder and ball, but bypen and ink; and the consequence of our "march to Paris" is, that onehalf of the army is now scattered from Holland to the Rhine, and theother half is, like myself, within French walls. "

I enquired how Clairfait bore his change of fortune. 

"Like a man superior to fortune. I never saw him exhibit higherability than in his dispositions for our last battle. He has become amagnificent tactician. But Alexander the Great himself could notfight without troops: and such was our exact condition. 

"Dumourier, at the head of a hundred thousand men, had turned shortfrom the Prussian retreat, and flung himself upon the Netherlands. How many troops do you think the wisdom of the Aulic Council hadprovided to protect the provinces? Scarcely more than a third of thenumber, and those scattered over a frontier of a hundred miles; in acountry, too, where every Man spoke French, where every man was halfRepublican already, where the people had actually begun a revolution, and where we had scarcely a friend, a fortress in repair, orammunition enough for _feu de joie_. The French, of course, burst inlike an inundation, sweeping every thing before them. I was at dinnerwith Clairfait and his staff on the day when the intelligencearrived. The map was laid upon the table, and we had a kind of debateon the course which the Frenchman would take. That evening completedmy opinion of him as a general. He took the clearest view among allour conjectures, as the event proved, so far as the enemy's movementswere concerned; though I still retain my own idea of an originalerror in the choice of our field of battle. Before the twilight fell, we mounted our horses, and rode to the spot where Clairfait hadalready made up his mind to meet the French. It was certainly acapital position for defence--a range of heights not too high forguns, surmounted by a central plateau; the very position for abattery and a brigade; but the very worst that could be taken againstthe new enemy whom we had to oppose. "

"Yet, what could an army of French recruits be expected to do againsta disciplined force so strongly posted?" was my question. 

"My answer to that point, " said Varnhorst, "must be a quotation frommy old master of tactics. If the purpose of a general is simply todefend himself, let him keep his troops on heights; if his purpose issimply to make an artillery fight, let him keep behind his guns; butif it is his purpose to beat the enemy, he must leave himself able tofollow them--and this he can do only on a plain. In the end, afterbeating the enemy in a dozen attempts to carry our batteries, butwithout the power of striking a blow in retaliation, we saw themcarried all at once, and were totally driven from the field. "

"So much for bravery and discipline against bravery and enthusiasm, "said I. "Yet the enemy's loss must have been tremendous. Everyassault must have torn their columns to pieces. " Even this attempt atreconciling him to his ill fortune failed. 

"Yes, " was the cool reply; "but they could afford it, which was morethan we could do. Remember the maxim, my young friend, when you shallcome to be a general, that the only security for gaining battles is, to have good troops, and a good many of them. --The French recruitsfought like recruits, without knowing whether the enemy were beforeor behind them; but they fought, and when they were beaten theyfought again. While we were fixed on our heights, they were formedinto column once more, and marched gallantly up to the mouth of ourguns. Then, we had but 18, 000 men to the Frenchman's 60, 000. Suchodds are too great. Whether our great king would have fought at allwith such odds against him, may be a question; but there can be none, whether he would have fixed himself where he could not manoeuvre. TheFrenchman attacked us on flanks and centre, just when and where hepleased; there stood we, mowing down his masses from our fourteenredoubts, and waiting to be attacked again. To do him justice, hefought stoutly; and to do us justice, we fought sturdily. But stillwe were losing men; the affair looked unpromising from the first halfhour; and I pronounced that, if Dumourier had but perseveranceenough, he must carry the field. "

I made some passing remark on the singular hazard of bringing untriedtroops against the proverbial discipline of a German army, and theprobability that the age of the wild armies of peasantry in Europewould be renewed, by the evidence of its success. 

"Right, " said Varnhorst. "The thing that struck me most was, the newcharacter of the whole engagement. It was Republicanism in the field;a bold riot, a mob battle. Nor will it be the last of its kind. Ourwhole line was once attacked by the French demi-brigades, coming tothe charge, with a general chorus of the _Marseillaise_ hymn. Theeffect was magnificent, as we heard it pealing over the field throughall the roar of cannon and musketry. The attack was defeated. It wasrenewed, under a chorus in honour of their general, and 'ViveDumourier' was chanted by 50, 000 voices, as they advanced against ourbatteries. This charge broke in upon our position, and took five ofour fourteen redoubts. Even Clairfait now acknowledged that all waslost; two-thirds of our men were _hors de combat_, and orders weregiven for a retreat. My turn now came to act, and I moved forwardwith my small brigade of cavalry--but I was not more lucky than therest. "

I pressed to hear the particulars, but his mind was still overwhelmedwith a sense of military calamity, always the most reluctant topic toa brave and honest soldier; and he simply said--"the whole was a_mêlée_. Our rear was threatened in force by a column which hadstormed the heights under a young _brave_, whom I had observed, during the day, exposing himself gallantly to all the risks of thefield. To stop the progress of the enemy on this point was essential;for the safety of the whole army was compromised. We charged them, checked them, but found the brigade involved in a force of ten timesour number; fought our way out again with heavy loss; and after all, a shot, which brought my charger to the ground, left me wounded andbruised in the hands of the French. I was taken up insensible, wascarried to the tent of the young commander of the column, whom Ifound to be a Duc de Chartres, the son of the late Duke of Orleans. His kindness to his prisoner was equal to his gallantry in the field. Few and hurried as our interviews were, while his army remained inits position he gave me the idea of a mind of great promise, anddestined for great things, unless the chances of war should stop hiscareer. But, though a Republican soldier, to my surprise he was noRepublican. His enquiries into the state of popular opinion inEurope, showed at once his sagacity, and the turn which his thoughts, young as he was, were already taking. --But the diadem is trampledunder foot in France for ever; and with cannon-shot in his frontevery day of his life, and the guillotine in his rear, who can answerfor the history of any man for twenty-four hours together?"

My time in Paris had now come to a close. All my enquiries for thefate of Lafontaine had been fruitless; and I dreaded the still moreanxious enquiries to which I should be subjected on my arrival; but Ihad at least the intelligence to give, that I had not left him in thefangs of the jailers of St Lazare. I took leave of my bold andopen-hearted Prussian friend with a regret, which I had scarcelyexpected to feel for one with whom I had been thrown into contactsimply by the rough chances of campaigning; but I had thegratification of procuring for him, through the mysterious interestof Elnathan, an order for his transmission to Berlin in the firstexchange of prisoners. This promise seemed to compensate all theservices which he had rendered to me. "I shall see the Rhine again, "said he, "which is much more than I ever expected since the day ofour misfortune. "I shall see the Rhine again!--and thanks to you forit. " He pressed my hand with honest gratitude. 

The carriage which was to convey me to Calais was now at the door. Still, one thought as uppermost in his mind; it was, that I shouldgive due credit to the bravery of the Austrian general and his army. "If I have spoken of the engagement at all, " said he, "it was merelyto put you in possession of the facts. You return to England; youwill of course hear the battle which lost the Netherlands discussedin various versions. The opinion of England decides the opinion ofEurope. Tell, then, your countrymen, in vindication of Clairfait andhis troops, that after holding his ground for nine hours againstthree times his force, he retreated with the steadiness of a movementon parade, without leaving behind him a single gun, colour, orprisoner. Tell them, too, that he was defeated only through themarvellous negligence of a government which left him to fight battleswithout brigades, defend fortresses without guns, and protectinsurgent provinces with a fugitive army. "

My answer was--"You may rely upon my fighting your battles over theLondon dinner-tables, as perseveringly, if not as much against odds, as you fought it in the field. But the fortune of war is proverbial, and I hope yet to pour out a libation to you as GeneralissimoVarnsdorf, the restorer of the Austrian laurels. "

"Well, Marston, may you be a true prophet! But read that letter fromGuiscard; our long-headed friend not merely crops our German laurels, but threatens to root up the tree. " He handed me a letter from thePrussian philosopher: it was a curious _catalogue raisonné_ of the_im_probabilities of success in the general war of Europe against theRepublic; concluding with the words, so characteristic of his solemnand reflective views of man and the affairs of man--

"War is the original propensity of human nature, and civilization isthe great promoter of war. The more civilized all nations become, themore they fight. The most civilized continent of the world has spentthe fourth of its modern existence in war. Every man of common sense, of course, abhors its waste of life, of treasure, and of time. Stillthe propensity is so strong, that it continues the most prodigalsacrifice of them all. I think that we are entering on a period, whenwar, more than ever, will be the business of nations. I should not besurprised if the mania of turning nations into beggars, and thepopulation into the dust of the field, should last for half acentury; until the whole existing generation are in their graves, anda new generation shall take their places, astonished at the fondnessof their fathers for bankruptcy and bloodshed. " After some sharpcensures of the unpurposed conduct of the German cabinets, hefinished by saying--"If the French continue to fight as they havejust fought, Jemappes will be the beginning of a new era. In thehistory of the world, every great change of human supremacy has beenthe result of a change in the principles of war; and the nation whichhas been the first to adopt that change, has led the triumph for itstime. France has now found out a new element in war--the force ofmultitude, the charge of the masses; and she will conquer, until thekings of Europe follow her example, and call their nations to thefield. Till then she will be invincible, but then her conquests willvanish; and the world, exhausted by carnage, will be quiet for awhile. But the wolfish spirit of human nature will again hunger forprey; some new system of havoc will be discovered by some greatgenius, who ought to be cursed to the lowest depths of human memory;but who will be exalted to the most rapturous heights of humanpraise. Then again, when one half of the earth is turned into a fieldof battle, and the other into a cemetery, mankind will cry out forpeace; and again, when refreshed, will rush into still more ruinouswar:--thus all things run in a circle. But France has found out thesecret for this age, and--_vae victis!_--the pestilence will be tameto the triumph of her frenzy, her rapine, and her revenge. "

"Exactly what I should have expected from Guiscard, " was my remark;"he is always making bold attempts to tear up the surface of thetime, and look into what is growing below. "

"Well, well, " replied my honest fellow soldier, "I never perplex mybrain with those things. I dare say your philosophers may be right;at least once in a hundred years. But take my word for it, thatmusket and bayonet will be useful matters still; and that disciplineand my old master Frederick, will be as good as Dumourier anddesperation, when we shall have brigade for brigade. "

The postillions cracked their whips, the little Norman horses toretheir way over the rough pavement; the sovereign people scattered offon every side, to save their lives and limbs; and the plan of StDenis, rich with golden corn, and tracked by lines of stately trees, opened far and wide before me. From the first ascent I gave a_parting_ glance at Paris--it was mingled of rejoicing and regret. What hours of interest, of novelty, and of terror, had I not passedwithin the circuit of those walls! Yet, how the eye cheatsreality!--that city of imprisonment and frantic liberty, of royalsorrow and of popular exultation, now looked a vast circle of calmand stately beauty. How delusive is distance in every thing! Acrossthat plain, luxuriant with harvest, surrounded with those soft hills, and glittering in the purple of this glorious evening, it looked aparadise. I knew it--a pendemonium!

I speeded on--every thing was animated and animating in my journey. It was the finest season of the year; the roads were good; theprospects--as I swept down valley and rushed round hill, with theinsolent speed of a government _employé_, leaving all meanervehicles, travellers, and the whole workday world behind--seemed tobe to redeem the character of French landscape. But how much of itscolouring was my own! Was _I_ not _free?_ was I not _returning toEngland?_ was I not approaching scenes, and forms, and the realitiesof those recollections, which, even in the field of battle, and atthe foot of the scaffold, had alternately cheered and pained, delighted and distressed me?--yet which, even with all theiranxieties, were dearer than the most gilded hopes of ambition. Was Inot about to meet the gay smile and poignant vivacity of Mariamne?was I not about to wander in the shades of my paternal castle? to seethose relatives who were to shape so large a share of my futurehappiness; to meet in public life the eminent public men, with whoserenown the courts and even the camps of Europe were already ringing:and last, proudest, and most profound feeling of all--was I not toventure near the shrine on which I had placed my idol; to offer herthe solemn and distant homage of the heart; perhaps to hear of herfrom day to day; perhaps to see her noble beauty; perhaps even to_hear_ that voice, of which the simplest accents sank to mysoul. --But I must not attempt to describe sensations which are intheir nature indescribable; which dispose the spirit of man tosilence; and which, in their true intensity, suffer but one facultyto exist, absorbing all the rest in deep sleep and delicious reverie. 

I drove with the haste of a courier to London; and after havingdeposited my despatches with one of the under-secretaries of theForeign office, I flew to Mordecai's den in the city. London appearedto me more crowded than ever; the streets longer, and buildingsdingier; and the whole, seen after the smokeless and light-colouredtowns of the Continent, looked an enormous manufactory, where menwore themselves out in perpetual blackness and bustle, to make theirbread, and die. But my heart beat quickly as I reached the door ofthat dingiest of all its dwellings, where the lord of hundreds ofthousands of pounds burrowed himself on the eyes of mankind. 

I knocked, but was long unanswered; at last a meagre clerk, evidentlyof the "fallen people, " and who seemed dug up from the depths of thedungeon, gave me the intelligence that "his master and family hadleft England. " The answer was like an icebolt through my frame. Thiswas the moment to which I had looked forward with, I shall not saywhat emotions. I could scarcely define them; but they had a share ofevery strong, every faithful, and every touching remembrance of mynature. My disappointment was a pang. My head grey dizzy, I reeled;and asked leave to enter the gloomy door, and rest for a moment. Butthis the guardian of the den was too cautious to allow, and I shouldhave probably fainted in the street, but for the appearance of anancient Rebecca, the wife of the clerk, who, feeling the compassionwhich belongs to the sex in all instances, and exerting the authoritywhich is so generally claimed by the better-halves of men, pushed herhusband back, and led the way into the old cobwebbed parlour where Ihad so often been. A glass of water, the sole hospitality of thehouse, revived me; and after some enquiries alike fruitless with thepast, I was about to take my leave, when the clerk, in his removal ofsome papers, not to be trusted within reach of a stranger, dropped aletter from the bundle, on which was my name. From the variety ofaddresses it had evidently travelled far, and had been returned fromhalf the post-offices of the Continent. It was two months' old, butits news was to me most interesting. It was from Mordecai; and afteralluding to some pecuniary transactions with his foreign brethren, always the first topic, he hurried on in his usual abruptstrain:--"Mariamne has insisted on my leaving England for a while. This is perplexing; as the war must produce a new loan, and Londonis, after all, the only place where those affairs can be transactedwithout trouble. --My child is well, and yet she looks pallid fromtime to time, and sheds tears when she thinks herself unobserved. Allthis may pass away, but it makes me uneasy; and, as she has evidentlymade up her mind to travel, I have only to give way--for, with allher caprices, she is my child, my only child, and my beloved child!

"I have heard a good deal of your proceedings from my correspondentand kinsman in Paris. You have acquitted yourself well, and it shallnot be unknown in the quarter where it may be of most service toyou. --I have been stopped by Mariamne's singing in the next room, andher voice has almost unmanned me; she is melancholy of late, and heronly music now is taken from those ancestral hymns which our nationregard as the songs of the Captivity. Her tones at this moment aresingularly touching, and I have been forced to lay down my pen, forshe has melted me to tears. Yet her colour has not altogether fadedlately, and I think sometimes that her eyes look brighter than ever!Heaven help me, if I should lose her. I should then be alone in theworld. 

"You may rely on my intelligence--a war is _inevitable_. You may alsorely on my conjecture--that it will be the most desperate war whichEurope has yet seen. One that will break up _foundations_, as well asbreak down superstructures; not a war of politics but of principles;not a war for conquest but for ruin. All the treasuries of Europewill be bankrupt within a twelvemonth of its commencement; unlessEngland shall become their banker. This will be the harvest of themen of money. --It is unfortunate that your money is all lodged foryour commission; otherwise, in the course of a few operations, youmight make cent per cent, which I propose to do. _Apropos_ ofcommissions. I had nearly omitted, in my own family anxieties, tomention the object for which I began my letter. I have _failed_ inarranging the affair of your commission! This was not for want ofzeal. But the prospect of a war has deranged and inflamed everything. The young nobility have actually besieged the Horse-guards. All the weight of the aristocracy has pressed upon the minister, andminor influence has been driven from the field. The spirit is toogallant a one to be blamed;--and yet--are there not a hundred otherpursuits, in which an intelligent and active mind, like your own, might follow on the way to fortune? You have seen enough ofcampaigning to know, that it is not all a flourish of trumpets. Hasthe world but one gate, and that the Horse-guards? If my personaljudgment were to be asked, I should feel no regret for adisappointment which may have come only to turn your knowledge andability to purposes not less suitable to an ambitious spirit, norless likely to produce a powerful impression on the world--the onlything, after all, worth living for! You may laugh at this languagefrom a man of my country and my trade. But even _I_ have my ambition;and you may yet discover it to be not less bold than if I carried thelamp of Gideon, or wielded the sword of the Maccabee. --I must stopagain; my poor restless child is coming into the room at this moment, complaining of the chill, in one of the finest days of summer. Shesays that this villa has grown sunless, airless, and comfortless. Finding that I am writing to you, she sends her best wishes; and bidsme ask, what is the fashionable colour for mantles in Paris, and alsowhat is become of that 'wandering creature, ' Lafontaine, if youshould happen to recollect such a personage. "

"P. S. --My daughter insists on our setting out from Brightonto-morrow, and crossing the Channel the day after. She has a whim forrevisiting Switzerland; and in the mean time begs that if, during ourabsence, _you_ should have a whim for sea air and solitude, you maymake of the villa any use you please. --Yours sincerely, "J. V. MORDECAI. "

After reading this strange and broken letter, I was almost glad thatI had not seen Mariamne. Lafontaine was in her heart still, in spiteof absence. At this I did not wonder, for the heart of woman, whenonce struck, is almost incapable of change: but the suspense waskilling her; and I had no doubt that her loss would sink even herstrong-headed parent to the grave. Yet, what tidings had I to give?Whether her young soldier was shot in the attempt to escape from StLazare, or thrown into some of those hideous dungeons, where so manythousands were dying in misery from day to day, was entirely beyondmy power to tell. It was better that she should be roving over thebright hills, and breathing the fresh breezes of Switzerland, thanlistening to my hopeless conjectures at home; trying to reconcileherself to all the chances which passion is so painfully ingenious increating, and dying, like a flower in all its beauty, on the spotwhere it had grown. 

But the letter contained nothing of the _one_ name, for which myfirst glance had looked over every line with breathless anxiety. There was not a syllable of Clotilde! The father's cares had absorbedall other thoughts; and the letter was to me a blank in thatknowledge for which I panted, as the hart pants for the fountains. Still, I was not dead to the calls of friendship; and that night'smail carried a long epistle to Mordecai, detailing my escapes, andthe services of his kindred in France; and for Mariamne's ear, allthat I could conceive cheering in my hopes of that "wanderingcreature, Lafontaine. "

But I was forced to think of sterner subjects. I had arrived inEngland at a time of the most extraordinary public excitement. Everyman felt that some great trial of England and of Europe was at hand;but none could distinctly define either its nature or its cause. France, which had then begun to pour out her furious declamationsagainst this country, was, of course, generally looked to as thequarter from which the storm was to come; but the higher mindsevidently contemplated hazards nearer home. Affiliated societies, corresponding clubs, and all the revolutionary apparatus, from whosecrush and clamour I had so lately emerged, met the ear and the eye onall occasions; and the fiery ferocity of French rebellion was nearlyrivalled by the grave insolence of English "Rights of Man. " But I amnot about to write the history of a time of national fever. Therepublicanism, which Cicero and Plutarch instil into us all at ourschools, had been extinguished in me by the squalid realities ofFrance. I had seen the dissecting-room, and was cured of my love forthe science. My spirit, too, required rest. I could have exclaimedwith all the sincerity, and with all the weariness too, of thepoet:--

 Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumour of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war, Might never reach me more!"

But, perhaps fortunately for my understanding, if not for my life, Iwas not suffered to take refuge in the wilderness. London was aroundme; rich and beggared, splendid and sullen, idle and busy London. Iwas floating on those waves of human being, in which the strugglermust make for the shore, or sink. I was in the centre of that hugewhispering gallery, where every sound of earth was echoed andre-echoed with new power; and where it was impossible to dream. Mydays were now spent in communication with the offices of government, and a large portion of my nights in carrying on thosecorrespondences, which, though seldom known in the routine of DowningStreet, form the essential part of its intercourse with thecontinental cabinets. But a period of suspense still remained. Parliament had been already summoned for the 13th of December. Up tonearly the last moment, the cabinet had been kept in uncertainty asto the actual intents of France. There had been declamation inabundance in the French legislature and the journals; but with thisunsubstantial evidence the cabinet could not meet the country. Couriers were sent in all directions; boats were stationed along thecoast to bring the first intelligence of actual hostilities suddenly;every conceivable expedient was adopted; but all in vain. The day ofopening the Session was within twenty-four hours. After lingeringhour by hour, in expectancy of the arrival of despatches from ourambassador at the Hague, I offered to cross the sea in the firstfishing-boat which I could find, and ascertain the facts. My offerwas accepted; and in the twilight of a winter's morning, and in themidst of a snow-storm, I was making my shivering way homeward throughthe wretched lanes which, dark as pitch and narrow as footpaths, thenled to the centre of the diplomatic world; when, in my haste, I hadnearly overset a meagre figure, which, half-blinded by the storm, wastottering towards the Foreign office. After a growl, in the mostangry jargon, the man recognized me; he was the clerk whom I had seenat Mordecai's house. He had, but an hour before, received, by one ofthe private couriers of the firm, a letter, with orders to deliver itwith all expedition. He put it into my hand: it was not fromMordecai, but from Elnathan, and was simply in these words:--"Mykinsman and your friend has desired me to forward to you the firstintelligence of hostilities. I send you a copy of the bulletin whichwill be issued at noon this day. It is yet unknown; but I have itfrom a source on which you may perfectly rely. Of this make what useyou think advantageous. Your well-wisher. "

With what pangs the great money-trafficker must have consigned to myuse a piece of intelligence which must have been a mine of wealth toany one who carried it first to the Stock Exchange, I could easilyconjecture. But I saw in it the powerful pressure of Mordecai, whichnone of his tribe seemed even to have the means of resisting. Mysensations were singular enough as I traced my way up the dark andlumbering staircase of the Foreign office; with the consciousnessthat, if I had chosen to turn my steps in another direction, I mightbefore night be master of thousands, or of hundreds of thousands. Butit is only due to the sense of honour which had been impressed on me, even in the riot and roughness of my Eton days, to say, that I didnot hesitate for a moment Sending one of the attendants to arouse thechief clerk, I stood waiting his arrival with the bulletin unopenedin my hands. The official had gone to his house in the country, andmight not return for some hours. My perplexity increased. Everymoment might supersede the value of my priority. At length atwinkling light through the chinks of one of the dilapidated doors, told me that there was some one within, from whom I might, at least, ask when and how ministers were to be approached. The door wasopened, and, to my surprise, I found that the occupant of the chamberwas one of the most influential members of administration. My nameand purpose were easily given; and I was received as I believe feware in the habit of being received by the disposers of high things inhigh places. The fire had sunk to embers, the lamp was dull, and thehearer was half frozen and half asleep. Yet no sooner had he cast hiseyes upon the mysterious paper which I gave into his grasp, than allhis faculties were in full activity. 

"This, " said he, "is the most important paper that has reached thiscountry since the taking of the Bastile. THE SCHELDT IS OPENED! Thisinvolves an attack on Holland; the defence of our ally is a matter oftreaty, and we must arm without delay. The war is begun, but where itshall end"--he paused, and fixing his eyes above, with a solemnity ofexpression which I had not expected in the stern and hard-linedcountenance, "or who shall live to see its close--who shall tell?"

"We have been waiting, " said he, "for this intelligence from week toweek, with the fullest expectation that it would come; and yet, whenit has come, it strikes like a thunderclap. This is the third nightthat I have sat in this hovel, at this table, unable to go to rest, and looking for the despatch from hour to hour. --You see, sir, thatour life is at least not the bed of roses for which the world is soapt to give us credit. It is like the life of my own hills--thehigher the sheiling stands, the more it gets of the blast. "

I do not give the name of this remarkable man. He was a Scot, andpossessed of all the best characteristics of his country. I had heardhim in Parliament, where he was the most powerful second of the mostpowerful first that England had seen. But if all men were inferior tothe prime minister in majesty and fulness of conception, the man towhom I now listened had no superior in readiness of retort, inaptness of illustration--that mixture of sport and satire, of easyjest and subtle sarcasm, which forms the happiest talent for themiscellaneous uses of debate. If Pitt moved forward like the armedman of chivalry, or rather like the main body of the battle--fornever man was more entitled to the appellation of a "host inhimself"--never were front, flanks, and rear of the host covered by amore rapid, quick-witted, and indefatigable auxiliary. He was a manof family, and brought with him into public life, not the manners ofa menial of office, but the bearing of a gentleman. Birth and bloodwere in his bold and manly countenance; and I could have felt nodifficulty in conceiving him, if his course had followed his nature, the chieftain on his hills, at the head of his gallant retainers, pursuing the wild sports of his romantic region; or in some foreignland, gathering the laurels which the Scotch soldier has so often andso proudly added to the honours of the empire. 

He was perfectly familiar with the great question of the time, andsaw the full bearings of my intelligence with admirable sagacity;pointed out the inevitable results of suffering France to take uponherself the arbitration of Europe, and gave new and powerful views ofthe higher relation in which England was to stand, as the generalprotectress of the Continent. "This bulletin, " said he, "announcesthe fact, that a French squadron has actually sailed up the Scheldtto attack Antwerp. Yet it was not ten years since France protestedagainst the same act by Austria, as a violation of the rights ofHolland. The new aggression is, therefore, not simply a solitaryviolence, but a vast fraud; not merely the breach of an individualtreaty, but a declaration that no treaty is henceforth to be held asbinding; it is more than an act of rapine; it is an universaldissolution of the principles by which society is held together. Inwhat times are we about to live?"

My reply was--"That it depended on the spirit of England herself, whether the conflict was to be followed by honour or by shame; thatshe had a glorious career before her, if she had magnanimitysufficient to take the part marked out for her by circumstances; andthat, with the championship of the world in her hands, even defeatwould be a triumph. "

He now turned the conversation to myself; spoke with more thanofficial civility of my services, and peculiarly of the immediateone; and asked in what branch of diplomacy I desired advancement?

My answer was prompt. "In none. I desired promotion but in oneway--the army. " I then briefly stated the accidental loss of myoriginal appointment, and received, before I left the chamber, a notefor the secretary at war, recommending me, in the strongest terms, for a commission in the Guards. --The world was now before me, and theworld in the most vivid, various, and dazzling shape; in the boldestdevelopment of grandeur, terror, and wild vicissitude, which itexhibited for a thousand years--ENGLAND WAS AT WAR!

There is no sight on earth more singular, or more awful, than a greatnation going to war. I saw the scene in its highest point of view, byseeing it in England. Its perfect freedom, its infinite, and oftenconflicting, variety of opinion--its passionate excitement, and itsstupendous power, gave the summons to hostilities a character ofinterest, of grandeur, and of indefinite but vast purposes, unexampled in any other time, or in any other country. When one ofthe old monarchies commenced war, the operation, however large andformidable, was simple. A monarch resolved, a council sat, less toguide than to echo his resolution; an army marched, invaded theenemy's territory, fought a battle--perhaps a dubious one--rested onits arms; and while _Te Deum_ was sung in both capitals alike for the"victory" of neither, the ministers of both were constructing anarmistice, a negotiation, and a peace--each and all to be null andvoid on the first opportunity. 

But the war of England was a war of the nation--a war of wrath andindignation--a war of the dangers of civilized society entrusted to asingle championship--a great effort of human nature to discharge, inthe shape of blood, a disease which was sapping the vitals of Europe;or in a still higher, and therefore a more faithful view, thegathering of a tempest, which, after sweeping France in its fury, wasto restore the exhausted soil and blasted vegetation of monarchythroughout the Continent; and in whose highest, England, serene andundismayed, was to

 "Ride in the whirlwind, and direct the storm. "

I must acknowledge, that I looked upon the coming conflict with astrange sense of mingled alarm and rejoicing. For the latter feeling, perhaps I ought to make some apology; but I was young, ardent, andambitious. My place in life was unfixed; standing in that unhappymiddle position, in which stands a man of birth too high to sufferhis adoption of the humbler means of existence, and yet of resourcestoo inadequate to sustain him without action--nay, bold andindefatigable exertion. I, at the moment, felt a very inferior degreeof compunction at the crisis which offered to give me at least achance of being seen, known, and understood among men. I felt like aman whose ship was stranded, and who saw the storm lifting the surgesthat were to lift him along with them; or like the traveller in anearthquake, who saw the cleft in the ground swallowing up the riverwhich had hitherto presented an impassable obstacle--cities andmountains might sink before the concussion had done its irresistiblewill, but, at all events, it had cleared his way. 

In thoughts like these, rash and unconnected as they were, I spentmany a restless day, and still more restless night. I often sprangfrom a pillow which, if I had lived in the days of witchcraft, Ishould have thought spelled to refuse me sleep; and walking forhours, endeavoured to reduce into shape the speculations which filledmy mind with splendours and catastrophes worthy of oriental dreams. Why did I not then pursue the career in which I had begun the world?Why not devote myself to diplomacy, in which I had hitherto receivedhonour? Why not enter into Parliament, which opened all the secretsof power? For this I had two reasons. The first--and, let me confess, the most imperious--was, that my pride had been deeply hurt by theloss of my commission. I felt that I had not only been deprived of anoble profession, accidental as was the loss; but that I hadsubjected myself to the trivial, but stinging remarks, which neverfail to find an obnoxious cause for every failure. While this cloudhung over me, I was determined never to return to my father's house. Good-natured as the friends of my family might be, I was fully awareof the style in which misfortune is treated in the idleness ofcountry life; and the Honourable Mr Marston's loss of his rank in hisMajesty's guards, or his preference of a more pacific promotion, wastoo tempting a topic to lose any of its stimulants by the popularignorance of the true transaction. My next reason was, that my mindwas harassed and wearied by disappointment, until I should not haveregreted to terminate the struggle in the first field of battle. Theonly woman whom I loved, and whom, in the strange frenzy of passion, I solemnly believed to be the only woman on earth deserving to be soloved, had wholly disappeared, and was, by this time, probablywedded. The only woman whom I regarded as a friend, was in anothercountry, probably dying. If I could have returned to MortimerCastle--which I had already determined to be impossible--I shouldhave found only a callous, perhaps a contemptuous, head of thefamily, angry at my return to burden him. Even Vincent--my old andkind-hearted friend Vincent--had been a soldier; and though I wassure of never receiving a reproach from his wise and gentle lips, wasI equally sure that I could escape the flash, or the sorrow, of hiseye?

In thoughts like these, and they were dangerous ones, I made many asolitary rush out into the wild winds and beating snows of thewinter, which had set in early and been remarkably severe; walkingbareheaded in the most lonely places of the suburbs, stripping mybosom to the blast, and longing for its tenfold chill to assuage thefever which burned within me. I had also found the old delay at theHorse-guards. The feelings of this period make me look with infinitecompassion on the unhappy beings who take their lives into their ownhands, and who extinguish all their earthly anxieties at a plunge. But I had imbibed principles of a firmer substance, and but upon oneoccasion, and one alone, felt tempted to an act of despair. 

Taking my lonely dinner in a tavern of the suburbs, the waiter handedme a newspaper, which he had rescued for my behoof from the hands ofa group, eager, as all the world then was, for French intelligence. My eye rambled into the fashionable column; and the first paragraph, headed "Marriage in high life, " announced that, on the morrow, wereto be solemnized the nuptials of Clotilde, Countess de Tourville, with the Marquis de Montrecour, colonel of the French Mousquetaires, &c. The paper dropped from my hands. I rushed out of the house; and, scarcely knowing where I went, I hurried on, until I found myself outof the sight or sound of mortal. The night was pitch-dark; there wasno lamp near; the wind roared; and it was only by the flash of thefoam that I discovered the broad sheet of water before me. I hadstrayed into Hyde Park, and was on the bank of the Serpentine. Withwhat ease might I not finish all! It was another step. Life was aburden--thought was a torment--the light of day a loathing. But theparoxysm soon gave way. Impressions of the duty and the trials ofhuman nature, made in earlier years, revived within me with asingular freshness and force. Tears gushed from my eyes, fast andflowing; and, with a long-forgotten prayer for patience and humility, I turned from the place of temptation. As I reached the streets oncemore, I heard the trumpets of the Life Guards, and the band of abattalion returning to their quarters. The infantry were theColdstream. They had been lining the streets for the king'sprocession to open the sitting of Parliament. This was the 13th ofDecember--the memorable day to which every heart in Europe was moreor less vibrating; yet which I had totally forgotten. What is man butan electrical machine after all? The sound and sight of soldiershiprestored me to the full vividness of my nature. The machine requiredonly to be touched, to shoot out its latent sparks; and with a newspirit and a new determination kindling through every fibre, Ihastened to be present at that debate which was to be the judgment ofnations. 

My official intercourse with ministers had given me some privileges, and I obtained a seat under the gallery--that part of the House ofCommons which is occasionally allotted to strangers of a certainrank. The House was crowded, and every countenance was pictured withinterest and solemn anxiety. Grey, Sheridan, and other distinguishednames of party, had already taken their seats; but the great heads ofGovernment and Opposition were still absent. At length a buzz amongthe crowd who filled the floor, --and the name of Fox repeated inevery tone of congratulation, announced the pre-eminent orator ofEngland. I now saw Fox for the first time; and I was instantly struckwith the incomparable similitude of all that I saw of him to all thatI had conceived from his character and his style. In the broad boldforehead, the strong sense--in the relaxed mouth, the self-indulgentand reckless enjoyment--in the quick, small eye under thosemagnificent black brows, the man of sagacity, of sarcasm, and ofhumour; and in the grand contour of a countenance and head, whichmight have been sculptured to take its place among the sages andsovereigns of antiquity, the living proof of those extraordinarypowers, which could have been checked in their ascent to the highestelevation of public life, only by prejudices and passions not lessextraordinary. As he advanced up the House, he recognized every oneon both sides, and spoke or smiled to nearly all. He stopped once ortwice in his way, and was surrounded by a circle with whom, as Icould judge from their laughter, he exchanged some pleasantry of thehour. When at length he arrived at the seat which had been reservedfor him, he threw himself upon it with the easy look of comfort of aman who had reached home--gave nod to Windham, held out a finger toGrey, warmly shook hands with Sheridan; and then, opening hiswell-known blue and buff costume, threw himself back into the bench, and laughingly gasped for air. 

But another movement of the crowd at the bar announced anotherarrival, and Pitt entered the House. His look and movement wereequally characteristic with those of his great rival. He looked toneither the right nor the left; replied to the salutations of hisfriends by the slightest possible bow; neither spoke nor smiled; but, slowly advancing, took his seat in total silence. The Speaker, hitherto occupied with some routine business, now read the King'sspeech, and, calling on "Mr Pitt, " the minister rose. I have for thatrising but one description--the one which filled my memory at themoment, from the noblest poet of the world. 

 "Deep on his front engraven, Deliberation sat, and public care. Sage he stood, With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies. His look Drew audience and attention, still as night, Or summer's noontide air. "

THE WEEK OF AN EMPEROR

The week ending the 8th of June, was the most brilliant that everoccupied and captivated the fashionable world of a metropolis of twomillions of souls, the head of an empire of two hundred millions. Therecollection runs us out of breath. Every hour was a new summons to anew _fête_, a new fantasy, or a new exhibition of the handsomest manof the forty-two millions of Russia proper. The toilettes of thewhole _beau monde_ were in activity from sunny morn to dewy eve; andfrom dewy eve to waxlighted midnight. A parade of the Guards, bywhich the world was tempted into rising at ten o'clock; a _dejeuner àla fourchette_, by which it was surprised into _dining_ at three, (_more majorum;_) an opera, by which those whose hour for going outis eleven, were forced into their carriages at nine; a concert atHanover Square, finished by a ball and supper at Buckinghampalace;--all were among those brilliant perversions of the habits ofhigh life which make the week one brilliant tumult; but which nevercould have been revolutionized but by an emperor in the flower of hisage. Wherever he moved, he was followed by a host of the fair andfashionable. The showy equipages of the nobility were in perpetualmotion. The parks were a whirlwind of horsemen and horsewomen. Thestreets were a levy _en masse_ of the peerage. The opera-house was agilded "black hole of Calcutta. " The front of Buckingham palace was ascene of loyalty, dangerous to life and limb; men, careful of either, gave their shillings for a glimpse through a telescope; andshortsighted ladies fainted, that they might be carried into houseswhich gave then a full view. Mivart's, the retreat of princes, hadthe bustle of a Bond Street hotel. Ashburnham House was in a state ofsiege. And Buckingham palace, with its guards, cavalcades, musteringsof the multitude, and thundering of brass bands, seemed to be thefocus of a national revolution. But it was within the palace that thegrand display existed. The gilt candelabra, the gold plate, the maidsof honour, all fresh as tares in June; and the ladies in waiting, allJunos and Minervas, all jewelled, and none under forty-five, enraptured the mortal eye, to a degree unrivalled in therecollections of the oldest courtier, and unrecorded in the annals ofqueenly hospitality. 

But we must descend to the world again; we must, as the poet said, "Bridle in our struggling muse with pain, That longs to launch into a nobler strain. "

We bid farewell to a description of the indescribable. 

During this week, but one question was asked by the universal worldof St James's--"What was the cause of the Czar's coming?"

Every one answered in his own style. The tourists--a race who cannotlive without rambling through the same continental roads, which theylibel for their roughness every year; the same hotels, which theylibel for their discomforts; and the same _table-d'hotes_, which theylibel as the perfection of bad cookery, and barefaced_chicane_--pronounced that the love of travel was the imperialimpulse. The politicians of the clubs--who, having nothing to do forthemselves, manage the affairs of all nations, and can discover hightreason in the manipulation of a toothpick, and symptoms of war in awaltz--were of opinion, that the Czar had come either to construct anEuropean league against the marriage of little Queen Isabella, or tobeat up for recruits for the "holy" hostilities of Morocco. With thefashionable world, the decision was, that he had come to see Ascotraces, and the Duke of Devonshire's gardens, before the sun withered, or St Swithin washed them away. The John Bull world--as wise at leastas any of their betters, who love a holiday, and think Whitsuntidethe happiest period of the year for that reason, and Greenwich hillthe finest spot in creation--were convinced that his Majesty's visitwas merely that of a good-humoured and active gentleman, glad toescape from the troubles of royalty and the heaviness of home, andtake a week's ramble among the oddities of England. "Who shalldecide, " says Pope, "when doctors disagree?" Perhaps the nearest wayof reaching the truth is, to take all the reasons together, and tryhow far they may be made to agree. What can be more probable thanthat the fineness of the finest season within memory, the occurrenceof a moment of leisure in the life of a monarch ruling a fifth of thehabitable globe, roused the curiosity of an intelligent mind, excited, like that of his great ancestor Peter, by a wish to see thenational improvements of the great country of engineering, shipbuilding, and tunnelling; perhaps with Ascot races--the mostshowy exhibition of the most beautiful horses in the world--to windup the display, might tempt a man of vigorous frame and activespirit, to gallop across Europe, and give seven brief days toEngland!

An additional conjecture has been proposed by the papers presumed tobe best informed in cabinet secrets; that this rapid journey has hadfor its distinct purpose the expression of the Imperial scorn for themiserable folly and malignant coxcombry of the pamphlet on the Frenchnavy; which has excited so much contempt in England, and so muchboasting in France, and so much surprise and ridicule every whereelse in Europe. Nothing could be more in consonance with a manlycharacter, than to show how little it shared the conceptions of acoxcomb; and no more direct mode could be adopted than the visit, toprove his willingness to be on the best terms with her government andher people. We readily receive this conjecture, because it impressesa higher character on the whole transaction; it belongs to anadvanced spirit of royal intercourse, and it constitutes an importantpledge for that European peace, which is the greatest benefactioncapable of being conferred by kings. 

The Emperor may be said to have come direct from St Petersburg, ashis stops on the road were only momentary. He reached Berlin from hiscapital with courier's speed, in four days and six hours, on Sundayfortnight last. His arrival was so unexpected, that the Russianambassador in Prussia was taken by surprise. He travelled throughGermany incognito, and on Thursday night, the 30th, arrived at theHague. Next day, at two o'clock, he embarked at Rotterdam forEngland. Here, two steamers had been prepared for his embarkation. The steamers anchored for the night at Helvoetsluys. At three in thefollowing morning, they continued the passage, arriving at Woolwichat ten. The Russian ambassador and officers of the garrison preparedto receive him; but on his intimating his particular wish to land inprivate, the customary honours were dispensed with. Shortly afterten, the Emperor landed. He was dressed in the Russian costume, covered with an ample and richly-furred cloak. After a stay of a fewminutes, he entered Baron Brunow's carriage with Count Orloff, anddrove to the Russian embassy. The remainder of the day was given torest after his fatigue. 

On the next morning, Sunday, Prince Albert paid a visit to theEmperor. They met on the grand staircase, and embraced each othercordially in the foreign style. The Prince proposed that the Emperorshould remove to the apartments which were provided for him in thepalace--an offer which was politely declined. At eleven, the Emperorattended divine service at the chapel of the Russian embassy inWelbeck Street. At half-past one, Prince Albert arrived to conducthim to the palace. He wore a scarlet uniform, with the riband andbadge of the Garter. The Queen received the Emperor in the grandhall. A _dejeuner_ was soon afterwards served. The remainder of theday was spent in visits to the Queen-Dowager and the Royal Family. One visit of peculiar interest was paid. The Emperor drove to ApsleyHouse, to visit the Duke of Wellington. The Duke received him in thehall, and conducted him to the grand saloon on the first floor. Themeeting on both sides was most cordial. The Emperor conversed muchand cheerfully with the illustrious Duke, and complimented him highlyon the beauty of his pictures, and the magnificence of his mansion. But even emperors are but men, and the Czar, fatigued with his roundof driving, on his return to the embassy fell asleep, and slumberedtill dinner-time, though his Royal Highness of Cambridge and theMonarch of Saxony called to visit him. At a quarter to eight o'clock, three of the royal carriages arrived, for the purpose of conveyingthe Emperor and his suite to Buckingham palace. 

On Monday, the Emperor rose at seven. After breakfast he drove toMortimer's, the celebrated jeweller's, where he remained for an hour, and is _said_ to have purchased L. 5000 worth of jewellery. He thendrove to the Zoological gardens and the Regent's park. In the courseof the drive, he visited Sir Robert Peel, and the families of some ofour ambassadors in Russia. At three o'clock, he gave a _dejeuner_ tothe Duke of Devonshire, who had also been an ambassador in Russia. Dover Street was crowded with the carriages of the nobility, who cameto put down their names in the visiting-book. 

At five, a guard of honour of the First Life-Guards came to escorthim to the railway, on his visit to Windsor; but on his observing itsarrival, he expressed a wish to decline the honour, for the purposeof avoiding all parade. The Queen's carriages had arrived, and theEmperor and his suite drove off through streets crowded withhorsemen. On arriving at the railway station, the Emperor examinedthe electrical telegraph, and, entering the saloon carriage, thetrain set off, and arrived at Slough, a distance of nearly twentymiles, in the astonishingly brief time of twenty-five minutes. 

At the station, the Emperor was met by Prince Albert, and conveyed tothe castle. 

The banquet took place in the Waterloo chamber, a vast hall hung withportraits of the principal sovereigns and statesmen of Europe, topaint which, the late Sir Thomas Laurence had been sent on a specialmission at the close of the war in 1815. Sir Thomas's conception ofform and likeness was admirable, but his colouring was cold and thin. His "Waterloo Gallery" forms a melancholy contrast with the depth andrichness of the adjoining "Vandyk Chamber;" but his likenesses arecomplete. The banquet was royally splendid. The table was coveredwith gold plate and chased ornaments of remarkable beauty--the wholelighted by rows of gold candelabra. The King of Saxony, the Duke ofWellington, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Aberdeen, and the chief noblemen ofthe household, were present at the entertainment. 

TUESDAY. 

This was the day of Ascot races. The road from Windsor to the coursepasses through a couple of miles of the rich quiet scenery whichpeculiarly belongs to England. The course itself is a file openplain, commanding an extensive view. Some rumours, doubting the visitof the royal party, excited a double interest in the first sight ofthe cavalcade, preceded by the royal yeomen, galloping up to thestand. They were received with shouts. The Emperor, the King ofSaxony, and Prince Albert, were in the leading carriage. They wereattired simply as private gentlemen, in blue frock-coats. The Duke ofWellington, Sir Robert Peel, and the household, followed in the royalcarriages. The view of the Stand at this period was striking, and theroyal and noble personages were repeatedly cheered. An announcementwas conveyed to the people, that the Emperor had determined to giveL. 500 a-year to the course. The Czarewitch had already given L. 200 atNewmarket. The announcement was received with renewed cheering. Allkings are fond of horses; and the monarch of the most numerous andactive cavalry in the world, may be allowed to be a connoisseur intheir strength, swiftness, and perseverance, by a superior right. TheEmperor can call out 80, 000 Cossacks at a sound of his trumpet. Heexhibited an evident interest in the races. The horses were saddledbefore the race in front of the grand stand, and brought up to itafter the race, for the purpose of weighing the jockeys. He had afull opportunity of inspection; but not content with this, when thewinner of the gold vase, the mare Alice Hawthorn, was brought up tothe stand, he descended, and examined this beautiful animal with thecloseness and critical eye of a judge. 

On Wednesday, the pageant in which emperors most delight wasexhibited--a review of the royal guards. There are so few troops inEngland, as the Prince de Joinville has "the happiness" to observe, that a review on the continental scale of tens of thousands, is outof the question. Yet, to the eye which can discern the excellence ofsoldiership, and the completeness of soldierly equipment, the few inline before the Emperor on this day, were enough to gratify theintelligent eye which this active monarch turns upon every thing. Theinfantry were--the second battalion of the grenadier guards, thesecond battalion of the Coldstream guards, the second battalion ofthe fusilier guards, and the forty-seventh regiment. The cavalrywere--two troops of the royal horse guards, (blue, ) the firstregiment of the life guards, and the seventeenth lancers. Theartillery were--detachments of the royal horse artillery, and thefield artillery. 

A vast multitude from London by the trains, and from the adjoiningcountry, formed a line parallel to the troops; and nothing couldexceed the universal animation and cheering when the Emperor, theKing of Saxony, and the numerous and glittering staff, entered thefield, and came down the line. 

After the usual salutes, and marching past the centre, where theroyal carriages had taken their stand, the evolutions began. Theywere few and simple, but of that order which is most effective in thefield. The formation of the line from the sections; the generaladvance of the line; the halt, and a running fire along the wholefront; the breaking up of the line into squares; the squares firing, then deploying into line, and marching to the rear. The Queen, withthe royal children, left the ground before the firing began, Thereview was over at half-past two. The appearance of the troops wasadmirable; the manoeuvres were completely successful; and thefineness of the day gave all the advantages of sun and landscape tothis most brilliant spectacle. 

But the most characteristic portion of the display consisted in thecommanding-officers who attended, to give this unusual mark ofrespect to the Emperor. 

Wellington, the "conqueror of a hundred fights, " rode at the head ofthe grenadier guards, as their colonel Lord Combermere, general ofthe cavalry in the Peninsula, rode at the head of his regiment, thefirst life guards. The Marquis of Anglesey, general of the cavalry atWaterloo, rode at the head of his regiment, the royal horse guards. Sir George Murray, quartermaster-general in the Peninsula, rode atthe head of the artillery, as master-general of the ordnance. Hisroyal highness the Duke of Cambridge rode at the head of hisregiment, the Coldstream. His royal highness Prince Albert rode atthe head of his regiment, the Scotch fusiliers. General Sir WilliamAnson rode at the head of his regiment, the forty-seventh. Lieutenant-Colonel Quentin rode at the head of the seventeenthlancers, the colonel of the regiment, Prince George of Cambridge, being in the Ionian Islands. Thus, three field-marshals, and fourgenerals, passed in review before the illustrious guests of herMajesty. The Emperor expressed himself highly gratified; as every eyeaccustomed to troops must have been, by the admirable precision ofthe movements, and the fine appearance of the men. A strikinginstance of the value of railways for military operations, wasconnected with this review. The forty-seventh regiment, quartered inGosport, was brought to Windsor in the morning, and sent back in theevening of the review day; the journey, altogether, was about 140miles! Such are the miracles of machinery in our days. This wascertainly an extraordinary performance, when we recollect that it wasthe conveyance of about 700 men; and shows what might be done in caseof any demand for the actual services of the troops. But even thisexploit will be eclipsed within a few days, by the opening of thedirect line from London to Newcastle, which will convey troops, orany thing, 300 miles in twelve hours. The next step will be to reachEdinburgh in a day!

The Emperor was observed to pay marked attention to the troops of theline, the forty-seventh and the lancers; observing, as it is said, "your household troops are noble fellows; but what I wishedparticularly to see, were the troops with which you gained yourvictories in India and China. " A speech of this kind was worthy ofthe sagacity of a man who knew where the true strength of a nationalarmy lies, and who probably, besides, has often had his glance turnedto the dashing services of our soldiery in Asia. The household troopsof every nation are select men, and the most showy which the countrycan supply. Thus they are nearly of equal excellence. The infantry ofours, it is true, have been always "fighting regiments"--the first inevery expedition, and distinguished for the gallantry of theirconduct in every field. The cavalry, though seldomer sent on foreignservice, exhibited pre-eminent bravery in the Peninsula, and theircharges at Waterloo were irresistible. But it is of the marchingregiments that the actual "army" consists, and their character formsthe character of the national arms. 

In the evening the Emperor and the King of Saxony dined with herMajesty at Windsor. 

THURSDAY. 

The royal party again drove to the Ascot course, and were receivedwith the usual acclamations. The Emperor and King were in plainclothes, without decorations of any kind; Prince Albert wore theWindsor uniform. The cheers were loud for Wellington. 

The gold cup, value three hundred guineas, was the principal prize. Eight horses ran, and the cup was won by a colt of Lord Albemarle's. His lordship is lucky, at least on the turf. He won the cup at Ascotlast year. 

FRIDAY. 

The royal party came to London by the railway. The Emperor spent thechief part of the day in paying visits, in the Russian ambassador'sprivate carriage, to his personal friends--chiefly the families ofthose noblemen who had been ambassadors to Russia. 

SATURDAY. 

The Emperor, the King, and Prince Albert, went to the Duke ofDevonshire's _dejeuner_ at Chiswick. The Duke's mansion and gardensare proverbial as evidences of his taste, magnificence, and princelyexpenditure. All the nobility in London at this period were present. The royal party were received with distinguished attention by thenoble host, and his hospitality was exhibited in a style worthy ofhis guests and himself. While the suite of _salons_ were thrown openfor the general company, the royal party were received in a _salon_which had been decorated as a Turkish tent. Bands of the guardsplayed in the gardens, a quadille band played in the ball-room, andthe fineness of the weather gave the last charm to a _fête_ preparedwith equal elegance and splendour. We doubt whether Europe canexhibit any open air festivity that can compete with a _dejeuner_ atChiswick. The gardens of some of the continental palaces are larger, but they want the finish of the English garden. Their statues anddecorations are sometimes fine; but they want the perfect andexquisite neatness which gives an especial charm to Englishhorticulture. The verdure of the lawns, the richness and variety ofthe flowers, and the general taste displayed, in even the most minuteand least ornamental features, render the English garden whollysuperior, in fitness and in beauty, to the gardens of the continentalsovereigns and nobility. 

In the evening, the Queen and her guests went to the Italian opera. The house was greatly, and even hazardously crowded. It is said that, in some instances, forty guineas was paid for a box. But whether thismay be an exaggeration or not, the sum would have been well worthpaying, to escape the tremendous pressure in the pit. After all, themajority of the spectators were disappointed in their principalobject, the view of the royal party. They all sat far back in thebox, and thus, to three-fourths of the house, were completelyinvisible. In this privacy, for which it is not easy to account, andwhich it would have been so much wiser to have avoided, the audiencewere long kept in doubt whether the national anthem was to be sung. At last, a stentorian voice from the gallery called for it. A generalresponse was made by the multitude; the curtain rose, and God savethe Queen was sung with acclamation. The ice thus broken, it wasfollowed by the Russian national anthem, a firm, rich, and boldcomposition. The Emperor was said to have shed tears at theunexpected sound of that noble chorus, which brought back therecollection of his country at so vast a distance from home. But ifthese anthems had not been thus accidentally performed, the royalparty would have lost a much finer display than any thing which theycould have seen on the stage--the rising of the whole audience in theboxes--all the fashionable world in _gala_, in its youth, beauty, andornament, seen at full sight, while the chorus was on the stage. 

SUNDAY. 

On this day at two o'clock, the Emperor, after taking leave of theQueen and the principal members of the Royal family, embarked atWoolwich in the government steamer, the Black Eagle, commanded forthe time by the Earl of Hardwicke. The vessel dropped down the riverunder the usual salutes from the batteries at Woolwich; the day wasserene, and the Black Eagle cut the water with a keel as smooth as itwas rapid. The Emperor entered into the habits of the sailor with asmuch ease as he had done into those of the soldier. He conversedgood-humouredly with the officers and men, admired the discipline andappearance of the marines, who had been sent as his escort, waspeculiarly obliging to Lord Hardwicke and Lieutenant Peel, (a son ofthe premier, ) and ordered his dinner on deck, that he might enjoy thescenery on the banks of the Thames. The medals of some of the marineswho had served in Syria, attracted his attention, and he enquiredinto the nature of their services. He next expressed a wish to seethe manual exercise performed, which of course was done; and hismajesty, taking a musket, went through the Russian manual exercise. On his arrival on the Dutch coast, the King of Holland came out tomeet him in a steamer; and on his landing, the British crew partedwith him with three cheers. The Imperial munificence was large to adegree which we regret; for it would be much more gratifying to thenational feelings to receive those distinguished strangers, withoutsuffering the cravers for subscriptions to intrude themselves intotheir presence. 

On the Emperor's landing in Holland, he reviewed a large body ofDutch troops, and had intended to proceed up the Rhine, and enjoy thelandscape of its lovely shores at his leisure. But for him there isno leisure; and his project was broken up by the anxious intelligenceof the illness of one of his daughters by a premature confinement. Heimmediately changed his route, and set off at full speed for St