CHAPTER I.

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BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCXXXIV AUGUST, 1843. VOL. LIV.

FORMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER. BY SIR EDWARD LYTTON BULWER.

PART THE LAST.

We here close our attempts to convey to the English reader some notion,

however inadequate, of the genius and mind of Schiller. It is in these

Poems, rather, perhaps, than in his Dramas and Prose works, that the

upright earnestness of the mind, and the rich variety of the genius, are

best displayed. Here, certainly, can best be seen that peculiar union of

intellect and imagination which Mr Carlyle has so well distinguished as

Schiller's characteristic attribute, and in which it would be difficult

to name the modern poet by whom he is surpassed; and here the variety of

the genius is least restrained and limited by the earnestness of the

mind. For Schiller's variety is not that of Shakspeare, a creative and

universal spirit, passing with the breath of life into characters the

most diverse, and unidentified with the creations its invisible agency

invokes. But it is the variety of one in whom the consciousness of his

own existence is never laid aside; shown not so much in baring the minds

and hearts of others, as in developing the progress and the struggles of

his own, in the infinite gradations of joy and of sorrow, of exquisite

feeling and solemn thought. Hence, in the drama, arise his faults and

deficiencies; in his characters, he himself speaks. They are gigantic

images of his own moods at different epochs of his life--impassioned

with Moor--philosophizing with Posa--stately, tranquil, and sad, with

Wallenstein. But as, in his dramas, this intense perception of

self--this earnest, haunting consciousness--this feeling of genius as a

burden, and of life as a religion--interferes with true dramatic

versatility; so, on the contrary, these qualities give variety in his

poems to the expositions of a mind always varying, always

growing--always eager to think, and sensitive to feel. And his art loved

to luxuriate in all that copious fertility of materials which the

industry of a scholar submitted to the mastery of a poet; to turn to

divine song whatever had charmed the study or aroused the thought:

philosophy, history, the dogma, or the legend, all repose in the memory

to bloom in the verse. The surface of knowledge apparent in his poems is

immense; and this alone suffices to secure variety in thought. But the

aspiring and ardent nature of his intellect made him love to attempt

also constant experiments in the theme and in the style. The romantic

ballad, the classical tale, the lyric, the didactic, the

epigrammatic--the wealth of his music comprehended every note, the

boldness of his temper adventured every hazard. Yet still, (as in our

Byron, in our Goldsmith, and as, perhaps, in every mind tenacious of its

impressions,) some favourite ideas take possession of him so forcibly,

as to be frequently repeated as important truths. The sacred and

majestic office of the poet--the beauty of ideal life, (in which the

author of the "_Robbers_" and "_William Tell_" deemed, at last, that the

only liberty was to be found)--the worship of Virtue and the Beautiful,

for their own sake, and without hope of reward;--these, and many ideas

minor to, and proceeding from them, revisit us in a thousand tones of

eloquent and haunting music.

Reluctantly we tear ourselves from a task which has indeed been a labour

of love. Many poets may inspire as high an admiration as Schiller; few

so tender a personal affection. Even in his doubts and his errors, we

have that interest in his struggles which arises from the conviction of

his sound heart and his manly nature. Wrestling at one time with bitter

poverty, at one with unhappy passion--lonely in his habits, prematurely

broken in his health, his later wisdom dispelling his early dreams of

Utopian liberty--still, throughout all, his bravery never fails him, his

gentleness is never soured; his philanthropy changes its form, but it is

never chilled. Even when he wanders into error, it is from his search

for truth. That _humanity_ which the French writers of the last century

sought to preach, Schiller took from the scoffing wit of Voltaire, and

the unhealthy enthusiasm of Rousseau, to invest it with the thoughtful

sweetness and the robust vigour of his own great soul. And we believe

that no one can depart from the attentive study of that divine bequest

he has left the world, without a more serious respect for virtue, and a

more genial affection for mankind.

E. LYTTON BULWER.

SECOND PERIOD.

The Poems included in the Second Period of Schiller's literary career

are few, but remarkable for their beauty, and deeply interesting from

the struggling and anxious state of mind which some of them depict. It

was, both to his taste and to his thought, a period of visible

transition. He had survived the wild and irregular power which stamps,

with fierce and somewhat sensual characters, the productions of his

youth; but he had not attained that serene repose of strength--that

calm, bespeaking depth and fulness, which is found in the best writings

of his maturer years. In point of style, the Poems in this division have

more facility and sweetness than those that precede them, and perhaps

more evident vigour, more popular _verve_ and _gusto_, than some that

follow: in point of thought, they mark that era through which few men of

inquisitive and adventurous genius--of sanguine and impassioned

temperament--and of education chiefly self-formed, undisciplined, and

imperfect, have failed to pass--the era of doubt and gloom, of

self-conflict, and of self-torture.--In the "_Robbers_," and much of the

poetry written in the same period of Schiller's life, there is a bold

and wild imagination, which attacks rather than questions--innovates

rather than examines--seizes upon subjects of vast social import, that

float on the surface of opinion, and assails them with a blind and

half-savage rudeness, according as they offend the enthusiasm of

unreasoning youth. But now this eager and ardent mind had paused to

contemplate; its studies were turned to philosophy and history--a more

practical knowledge of life (though in this last, Schiller, like most

German authors, was ever more or less deficient in variety and range)

had begun to soften the stern and fiery spirit which had hitherto

sported with the dangerous elements of social revolution. And while this

change was working, before its feverish agitation subsided into that

Kantism which is the antipodes of scepticism, it was natural that, to

the energy which had asserted, denounced, and dogmatized, should succeed

the reaction of despondency and distrust. Vehement indignation at "the

solemn plausibilities" of the world pervades the "_Robbers_." In "_Don

Carlos_," (commenced in this period, though published much later,) the

passion is no longer vehement indignation, but mournful sorrow--not

indignation that hypocrisy reigns, but sorrow that honesty cannot

triumph--not indignation that formal vice usurps the high places of the

world, but sorrow that, in the world, warm and generous virtue glows,

and feels, and suffers--without reward. So, in the poems of this period,

are two that made a considerable sensation at their first

appearance--"_The Conflict_," published originally under the title of

"_The Freethinking of Passion_," and "_Resignation_." They present a

melancholy view of the moral struggles in the heart of a noble and

virtuous man. From the first of these poems, Schiller, happily and

wisely, at a later period of his life, struck the passages most

calculated to offend. What hand would dare restore them? The few stanzas

that remain still suggest the outline of dark and painful thoughts,

which is filled up in the more elaborate, and, in many respects, most

exquisite, poem of "_Resignation_." Virtue exacting all sacrifices, and

giving no reward--Belief which denies enjoyment, and has no bliss save

its own illusions; such is the sombre lesson of the melancholy poet--the

more impressive because _so far_ it is truth--deep and everlasting

truth--but only, to a Christian, a part of truth. Resignation, so sad if

not looking beyond the earth, becomes joy, when assured and confident of

heaven. Another poem in this intermediate collection was no less

subjected to severe animadversion, but with infinitely less justice. We

mean "_The Gods of Greece_." This lament for the beautiful old

mythology, is but the lament of a poet for the ancient founts of poetry;

and few, now-a-days, can be literal enough to suppose it seriously

intended to set up Paganism, to the disparagement of Christianity. But

the fact is, that Schiller's mind was so essentially religious, that we

feel more angry, when he whom we would gladly hail as our light and

guide, only darkens us or misleads, than we should, with a less grave

and reverent genius. Yet a period--a transition state--of doubt and

despondency is perhaps common to men in proportion to their natural

dispositions to faith and veneration. With them, it comes from keen

sympathy with undeserved sufferings--from wrath at wickedness

triumphant--from too intense a brooding over the great mysteries

involved in the government of the world. Scepticism of this nature can

but little injure the frivolous, and will be charitably regarded by the

wise. Schiller's mind soon outgrew the state which, to the mind of a

poet, above all men, is most ungenial, but the sadness which the

struggle bequeathed, seems to have wrought a complete revolution in all

his preconceived opinions. The wild creator of the "_Robbers_," drunk

with liberty, and audacious against all restraint, becomes the champion

of "Holy Order,"--the denouncer of the French republic--the extoller of

an Ideal Life, which should entirely separate Genius the Restless from

Society the Settled. And as his impetuous and stormy vigour matured into

the lucent and tranquil art of "_Der Spaziergang_," "_Wallenstein_," and

"_Die Braut von Messina_," so his philosophy threw itself into calm

respect for all that custom sanctioned, and convention hallowed.

But even during the painful transition, of which, in his minor poems,

glimpses alone are visible, Scepticism, with Schiller, never insults the

devoted, or mocks the earnest mind. It may have sadness--but never

scorn. It is the question of a traveller who has lost his way in the

great wilderness, but who mourns with his fellow-seekers, and has no

bitter laughter for their wanderings from the goal. This division

begins, indeed, with a Hymn which atones for whatever pains us in the

two whose strain and spirit so gloomily contrast it, viz. the matchless

and immortal "_Hymn to Joy_"--a poem steeped in the very essence of

all-loving and all-aiding, Christianity--breathing the enthusiasm of

devout yet gladsome adoration, and ranking amongst the most glorious

bursts of worship which grateful Genius ever rendered to the benign

Creator.

And it is peculiarly noticeable, that, whatever Schiller's state of mind

upon theological subjects at the time that this hymn was composed, and

though all doctrinal stamp and mark be carefully absent from it, it is

yet a poem that never could have been written but in a Christian age, in

a Christian land--but by a man whose whole soul and heart had been at

one time (nay, _was_ at the very moment of composition) inspired and

suffused with that firm belief in God's goodness and His justice--that

full assurance of rewards beyond the grave--that exulting and seraphic

cheerfulness which associates joy with the Creator--and that animated

affection for the Brotherhood of Mankind, which Christianity--and

Christianity alone, in its pure, orthodox, gospel form, needing no aid

from schoolman or philosopher--taught and teaches. Would, for objects

higher than the praise which the ingenuity of labour desires and strives

for--would that some faint traces of the splendour which invests the

original, could attend the passage of thoughts so noble and so tender,

from the verse of a poet to the rhyme of a translator!

HYMN TO JOY.

Spark from the fire that Gods have fed--

JOY--thou Elysian Child divine,

Fire-drunk, our airy footsteps tread,

O Holy One! thy holy shrine.

The heart that Custom from the other

Divides, thy charms again unite,

And man in man but hails a brother,

Wherever rest thy wings of light.

_Chorus_--Embrace ye millions--let this kiss,

Brothers, embrace the earth below!

You starry worlds that shine on this,

One common Father know!

He who this lot from fate can grasp--

Of one true friend the friend to be,--

He who one faithful maid can clasp,

Shall hold with us his jubilee;

Yes, each who but one single heart

In all the earth can claim his own!--

Let him who cannot, stand apart,

And weep beyond the pale, alone!

_Chorus_--Homage to holy Sympathy,

Ye dwellers in our mighty ring;

Up to yon Star-pavilions--she

Leads to the Unknown King!

All being drinks the mother-dew

Of joy from Nature's holy bosom;

And Vice and Worth her steps pursue--

We trace them by the blossom.

Hers Love's sweet kiss--the grape's rich treasure,

That cheers Life on to Death's abode;

Joy in each link--the worm has pleasure,

The Cherub has the smile of God!

_Chorus_--Why bow ye down--why down--ye millions?

O World, thy Maker's throne to see,

Look upward-search the Star-pavilions:

_There_ must His mansion be!

Joy is the mainspring in the whole

Of endless Nature's calm rotation;

Joy moves the dazzling wheels that roll

In the great Timepiece of Creation;

Joy breathes on buds, and flowers they are;

Joy beckons--suns come forth from heaven;

Joy rolls the spheres in realms afar,

Ne'er to thy glass, dim Wisdom, given!

_Chorus_--Joyous as Suns careering gay

Along their royal paths on high,

March, Brothers, march our dauntless way,

As Chiefs to Victory!

Joy, from Truth's pure and lambent fires,

Smiles out upon the ardent seeker;

Joy leads to Virtue Man's desires,

And cheers as Suffering's step grows weaker.

High from the sunny slopes of Faith,

The gales her waving banners buoy;

And through the shattered vaults of Death,

Springs to the choral Angels-Joy!

_Chorus_--Bear this life, millions, bravely bear--

Bear this life for the Better One!

See ye the Stars?--a life is there,

Where the reward is won.

Man never can the gods requite;

How fair alike to gods to be!

Where want and woe shall melt in light

That plays round Bliss eternally!

Revenge and Hatred both forgot;

No foe, the deadliest, unforgiven;

With smiles that tears can neighbour not;

No path can lead Regret to Heaven!

_Chorus_--Let all the world be peace and love--

Cancel thy debt-book with thy brother;

For God shall judge of _us_ above,

As we shall judge each other!

Joy sparkles to us from the bowl--

Behold the juice whose golden colour

To meekness melts the savage soul,

And gives Despair a Hero's valour.

Up, brothers!--Lo, we crown the cup!

Lo, the wine flashes to the brim!

Let the bright Fount spring heavenward!--Up!

To THE GOOD SPIRIT this glass!--To HIM!

_Chorus_--Praised by the ever-whirling ring

Of Stars, and tuneful Seraphim--

To THE GOOD SPIRIT--the Father-King

In Heaven!--This glass to Him!

Strong-hearted Hope to Sorrow's sloth;

Swift aid to guiltless Woe;

Eternity to plighted Troth;

Truth just to Friend and Foe;

Proud men before the throne to stand;

(These things are worth the dying!)

Good fortune to the Honest, and

Confusion to the Lying!

_Chorus_--Draw closer in the holy ring,

Sworn by the wine-cup's golden river--

Sworn by the Stars, and by their King,

To keep our vow for ever!

THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA.

She comes, she comes--the Burthen of the Deeps!

Beneath her wails the Universal Sea!

With clanking chains and a new God, she sweeps,

And with a thousand thunders, unto thee!

The ocean-castles and the floating hosts--

Ne'er on their like, look'd the wild waters!--Well

May man the monster name "Invincible."

O'er shudd'ring waves she gathers to thy coasts!

The horror that she spreads can claim

Just title to her haughty name.

The trembling Neptune quails

Under the silent and majestic forms;

The Doom of Worlds in those dark sails;--

Near and more near they sweep! and slumber all the Storms

Before thee the array,

Blest island, Empress of the Sea!

The sea-born squadrons threaten thee,

And thy great heart, BRITANNIA!

Woe to thy people, of their freedom proud--

She rests, a thunder heavy in its cloud!

Who, to thy hand the orb and sceptre gave,

That thou should'st be the sovereign of the nations?

To tyrant kings thou wert thyself the slave,

Till Freedom dug from Law its deep foundations;

The mighty CHART thy citizens made kings,

And kings to citizens sublimely bow'd!

And thou thyself, upon thy realm of water,

Hast thou not render'd millions up to slaughter,

When thy ships brought upon their sailing wings

The sceptre--and the shroud?

What should'st thou thank?--Blush, Earth, to hear and feel:

What should'st thou thank?--Thy genius and thy steel.

Behold the hidden and the giant fires!

Behold thy glory trembling to its fall!

Thy coming doom the round earth shall appall,

And all the hearts of freemen beat for thee,

And all free souls their fate in shine foresee--

_Theirs_ is _thy_ glory's fall!

One look below the Almighty gave,

Where stream'd the lion-flags of thy proud foe;

And near and wider yawn'd the horrent grave.

"And who," saith HE, "shall lay mine England low--

The stem that blooms with hero-deeds--

The rock when man from wrong a refuge needs--

The stronghold where the tyrant comes in vain?

Who shall bid England vanish from the main?

Ne'er be this only Eden freedom knew,

Man's stout defence from Power, to Fate consign'd."

God the Almighty blew,

And the Armada went to every wind!

THE CONFLICT.

No! I this conflict longer will not wage,

The conflict Duty claims--the giant task;--

Thy spells, O Virtue, never can assuage

The heart's wild fire--this offering do not ask!

True, I have sworn--a solemn vow have sworn,

That I myself will curb the self within;

Yet take thy wreath, no more it shall be worn--

Take back thy wreath, and leave me free to sin.

Rent be the contract I with thee once made;--

She loves me, loves me--forfeit be thy crown!

Blest he who, lull'd in rapture's dreamy shade,

Glides, as I glide, the deep fall gladly down.

She sees the worm that my youth's bloom decays,

She sees my springtime wasted as it flees;

And, marv'ling at the rigour that gainsays

The heart's sweet impulse, my reward decrees.

Distrust this angel purity, fair soul!

It is to guilt thy pity armeth me;

Could Being lavish its unmeasured whole,

It ne'er could give a gift to rival _Thee!_

Thee--the dear guilt I ever seek to shun,

O tyranny of fate, O wild desires!

My virtue's only crown can but be won

In that last breath--when virtue's self expires!

RESIGNATION.

And I, too, was amidst Arcadia born,

And Nature seem'd to woo me;

And to my cradle such sweet joys were sworn:

And I, too, was amidst Arcadia born,

Yet the short spring gave only tears unto me!

Life but one blooming holiday can keep--

For me the bloom is fled;

The silent Genius of the Darker Sleep

Turns down my torch--and weep, my brethren, weep--

Weep, for the light is dead!

Upon thy bridge the shadows round me press,

O dread Eternity!

And I have known no moment that can bless;--

Take back this letter meant for Happiness--

The seal's unbrokenen--see!

Before thee, Judge, whose eyes the dark-spun veil

Conceals, my murmur came;

On this our orb a glad belief prevails,

That, thine the earthly sceptre and the scales,

REQUITER is thy name.

Terrors, they say, thou cost for Vice prepare,

And joys the good shall know;

Thou canst the crooked heart unmask and bare;

Thou canst the riddle of our fate declare,

And keep account with Woe.

With thee a home smiles for the exiled one--

There ends the thorny strife.

Unto my side a godlike vision won,

Called TRUTH, (few know her, and the many shun,)

And check'd the reins of life.

"I will repay thee in a holier land--

Give thou to me thy youth;

All I can grant thee lies in this command."

I heard, and, trusting in a holier land,

Gave my young joys to Truth.

"Give me thy Laura--give me her whom Love

To thy heart's core endears;

The usurer, Bliss, pays every grief--_above_!"

I tore the fond shape from the bleeding love,

And gave--albeit with tears!

"What bond can bind the Dead to life once more?

Poor fool," (the scoffer cries;)

"Gull'd by the despot's hireling lie, with lore

That gives for Truth a shadow;--life is o'er

When the delusion dies!"

"Tremblest thou," hiss'd the serpent-herd in scorn,

"Before the vain deceit?

Made holy but by custom, stale and worn,

The phantom Gods, of craft and folly born--

The sick world's solemn cheat?

What is this Future underneath the stone?

But for the veil that hides, revered alone;

The giant shadow of our Terror, thrown

On Conscience' troubled glass--

Life's lying likeness--in the dreary shroud

Of the cold sepulchre--

Embalm'd by Hope--Time's mummy--which the proud

Delirium, driv'ling through thy reason's cloud,

Calls '_Immortality!_'

Giv'st thou for hope (corruption proves its lie)

Sure joy that most delights us?

Six thousand years has Death reign'd tranquilly!--

Nor one corpse come to whisper those who die,

What _after_ death requites us!"

Along Time's shores I saw the Seasons fly;

Nature herself, interr'd

Among her blooms, lay dead; to those who die

There came no corpse to whisper Hope! Still I

Clung to the Godlike Word.

Judge!--All my joys to thee did I resign,

All that did most delight ne;

And now I kneel--man's scorn I scorn'd--thy shrine

Have I adored--Thee only held divine--

Requiter, now requite me!

"For all my sons an equal love I know,

And equal each condition,"

Answer'd an unseen Genius--"See below,

Two flowers, for all who rightly seek them, blow--

The HOPE and the FRUITION.

He who has pluck'd the one, resign'd must see

The sister's forfeit bloom:

Let Unbelief enjoy--Belief must be

All to the chooser;--the world's history

Is the world's judgment doom.

Thou hast had HOPE--in thy belief thy prize--

Thy bliss was centred in it:

Eternity itself--(Go ask the Wise!)

Never to him who forfeits, resupplies

The sum struck from the Minute!"

THE GODS OF GREECE.

1.

Ye in the age gone by,

Who ruled the world--a world how lovely then!--

And guided still the steps of happy men

In the light leading strings of careless joy!

Ah, flourish'd them your service of delight!

How different, oh, how different, in the day

When thy sweet fanes with many a wreath were bright,

O Venus Amathusia!

2.

Then, through a veil of dreams

Woven by Song, Truth's youthful beauty glow'd,

And life's redundant and rejoicing streams

Gave to the soulless, soul--where'er they flow'd.

Man gifted Nature with divinity

To lift and link her to the breast of Love;

All things betray'd to the initiate eye

The track of gods above!

3.

Where lifeless--fix'd afar,

A flaming ball to our dull sense is given,

Phoebus Apollo, in his golden car,

In silent glory swept the fields of heaven!

On yonder hill the Oread was adored,

In yonder tree the Dryad held her home;

And from her Urn the gentle Naiad pour'd

The wavelet's silver foam.

4.

Yon bay, chaste Daphne wreathed,

Yon stone was mournful Niobe's mute cell,

Low through yon sedges pastoral Syrinx breathed,

And through those groves wail'd the sweet Philomel;

The tears of Ceres swell'd in yonder rill--

Tears shed for Proserpine to Hades borne;

And, for her lost Adonis, yonder hill

Heard Cytherea mourn!--

5.

Heaven's shapes were charm'd unto

The mortal race of old Deucalion;

Pyrrha's fair daughter, humanly to woo,

Came down, in shepherd-guise, Latona's son.

Between men, heroes, Gods, harmonious then

Love wove sweet links and sympathies divine;

Blest Amathusia, heroes, Gods, and men,

Equals before thy shrine!

6.

Not to that culture gay,

Stern self-denial, or sharp penance wan!

Well might each heart be happy in that day--

For Gods, the Happy Ones, were kin to Man!

The Beautiful alone, the Holy there!

No pleasure shamed the Gods of that young race;

So that the chaste Camoenae favouring were,

And the subduing Grace!

7.

A palace every shrine;

Your very sports heroic;--Yours the crown

Of contests hallow'd to a power divine,

As rush'd the chariots thund'ring to renown.

Fair round the altar where the incense breathed,

Moved your melodious dance inspired; and fair

Above victorious brows, the garland wreathed

Sweet leaves round odorous hair!

8.

The lively Thyrsus-swinger,

And the wild car the exulting Panthers bore,

Announced the Presence of the Rapture-Bringer--

Bounded the Satyr and blithe Fawn before;

And Maenads, as the frenzy stung the soul,

Hymn'd, in their madding dance, the glorious wine--

As ever beckon'd to the lusty bowl

The ruddy Host divine!

9.

Before the bed of death

No ghastly spectre stood--but from the porch

Of life, the lip--one kiss inhaled the breath,

And the mute graceful Genius lower'd a torch.

The judgment-balance of the Realms below,

A judge, himself of mortal lineage, held;

The very Furies at the Thracian's woe,

Were moved and music-spell'd.

10.

In the Elysian grove

The shades renew'd the pleasures life held dear:

The faithful spouse rejoin'd remember'd love,

And rush'd along the meads the charioteer;

There Linus pour'd the old accustom'd strain;

Admetus there Alcestes still could greet; his

Friend there once more Orestes could regain,

His arrows--Philoctetes!

11.

More glorious then the meeds

That in their strife with labour nerved the brave,

To the great doer of renowned deeds,

The Hebe and the Heaven the Thunderer gave.

To him the rescued Rescuer of the dead,

Bow'd down the silent and Immortal Host;

And the Twin Stars their guiding lustre shed,

On the bark tempest-tost!

12.

Art thou, fair world, no more?

Return, thou virgin-bloom on Nature's face;

Ah, only on the Minstrel's magic shore,

Can we the footstep of sweet Fable trace!

The meadows mourn for the old hallowing life;

Vainly we search the earth of gods bereft;

Where once the warm and living shapes were rife,

Shadows alone are left!

13.

Cold, from the North, has gone

Over the Flowers the Blast that kill'd their May;

And, to enrich the worship of the ONE,

A Universe of Gods must pass away!

Mourning, I search on yonder starry steeps,

But thee no more, Selene, there I see!

And through the woods I call, and o'er the deeps,

And--Echo answers me!

14.

Deaf to the joys she gives--

Blind to the pomp of which she is possest--

Unconscious of the spiritual Power that lives

Around, and rules her--by our bliss unblest--

Dull to the Art that colours or creates,

Like the dead timepiece, Godless NATURE creeps

Her plodding round, and, by the leaden weights,

The slavish motion keeps.

15.

To-morrow to receive

New life, she digs her proper grave to-day;

And icy moons, with weary sameness, weave

From their own light their fullness and decay:

Home to the Poet's land the Gods are flown;

Light use in _them_ that later world discerns,

Which, the diviner leading-strings outgrown,

On its own axle turns.

16.

Home!--and with them are gone

The hues they gazed on, and the tones they heard,

Life's beauty and life's melodies--alone

Broods o'er the desolate void the lifeless Word!

Yet rescued from Time's deluge, still they throng,

Unseen, the Pindus they were wont to cherish,

Ah--that which gains immortal life in song

To mortal life must perish!

We subjoin a few poems, belonging to the third period, which were

omitted in our former selections from that division.

THE MEETING.

1.

I see her still, with many a fair one nigh,

Of every fair the stateliest shape appear:

Like a lone son she shone upon my eye--

I stood afar, and durst not venture near.

Seized, as her presence brighten'd round me, by

The trembling passion of voluptuous fear,

Yet, swift, as borne upon some hurrying wing,

The impulse snatch'd me, and I struck the string!

2.

What then I felt--what sung--my memory hence

From that wild moment would in vain invoke--

It was the life of some discover'd sense

That in the heart's divine emotion spoke;

Long years imprison'd, and escaping thence

From every chain, the SOUL enchanted broke,

And found a music in its own deep core,

Its holiest, deepest deep, unguess'd before.

3.

Like melody long hush'd, and lost in space,

Back to its home the breathing spirit came:

I look'd, and saw upon that angel face

The fair love circled with the modest shame;

I heard (and heaven descended on the place)

Low-whisper'd words a charmed truth proclaim--

Save in thy choral hymns, O spirit-shore,

Ne'er may I hear such thrilling sweetness more!

4.

"I know the worth within the heart which sighs,

Yet shuns, the modest sorrow to declare;

And what rude Fortune niggardly denies,

Love to the noble can with love repair.

The lowly have the loftiest destinies;

Love only culls the flower that love should wear;

And ne'er in vain for love's rich gifts, shill yearn

The heart that feels their wealth--and can return!"

TO EMMA.

1.

Amidst the cloud-grey deeps afar

The Bliss departed lies;

How linger on one lonely star

The loving wistful eyes!

Alas--a star in truth--the light

Shines but a signal of the night!

2.

If lock'd within the icy chill

Of the long sleep, thou wert--

My faithful grief could find thee still

A life within my heart;--

But, oh, the worse despair to see

Thee live to earth, and die to me!

3.

Can those sweet longing hopes, which make

Love's essence, thus decay?

Can that be love which doth forsake?--

_That_ love--which fades away?

That earthly gifts are brief, I knew--

Is that all heaven-born mortal too?

TO A YOUNG FRIEND DEVOTING HIMSELF TO PHILOSOPHY.

Severe the proof the Grecian youth was doom'd to undergo,

Before he might what lurks beneath the Eleusinia know--

Art _thou_ prepared and ripe, the shrine--that inner shrine--to win,

Where Pallas guards from vulgar eyes the mystic prize within?

Know'st thou what bars thy way? how dear the bargain thou dost make,

When but to buy uncertain good, sure good thou dost forsake?

Feel'st thou sufficient strength to brave the deadliest human fray--

When Heart from Reason--Sense from Thought, shall rend themselves away?

Sufficient valour, war with Doubt, the Hydra-shape, to wage;

And that worst Foe within thyself with manly soul engage?

With eyes that keep their heavenly health--the innocence of youth

To guard from every falsehood, fair beneath the mask of Truth?

Fly, if thou can'st not trust thy heart to guide thee on the way--

Oh, fly the charmed margin ere th' abyss engulf its prey.

Round many a step that seeks the light, the shades of midnight close;

But in the glimmering twilight, see--how safely Childhood goes!

THE PUPPET-SHOW OF LIFE.

(_Das Spiel des Lebens._)

A PARAPHRASE.

A _literal_ version of this pretty little poem, which possibly may have

been suggested by some charming passages in Wilhelm Meister, would,

perhaps, be incompatible with the spirit which constitutes its chief

merit. And perhaps, therefore, the original may be more faithfully

rendered (like many of the Odes of Horace) by paraphrase than

translation.

Ho--ho--my puppet-show!

Ladies and gentlemen, see my show!

Life and the world--look here, in troth,

Though but _in parvo_, I promise ye both!

The world and life--in my box are they;

But keep at a distance, good folks, I pray!

Lit is each lamp, from the stage to the porch,

With Venus's naphtha, from Cupid's torch;

Never a moment, if rules can tempt ye,

Never a moment my scene is empty!

Here is the babe in his loading-strings--

Here is the boy at play;

Here is the passionate youth with wings,

Like a bird's on a stormy day,

To and fro, waving here and there,

Down to the earth and aloft through the air!

Now see the man, as for combat, enter--

Where is the peril he fears to adventure?

See how the puppets speed on to the race,}

Each his own fortune pursues in the chase; }

How many the rivals, how narrow the space! }

But, hurry and scurry, O mettlesome game!

The cars roll in thunder, the wheels rush in flame.

How the brave dart onward, and pant and glow!

How the craven behind them come creeping slow--

Ha! ha! see how Pride gets a terrible fall!

See how Prudence, or Cunning, out-races them all!

See how at the goal, with her smiling eyes,

Ever waits Woman to give the prize!

THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE NEW CENTURY.

Where can Peace find a refuge?--whither, say,

Can Freedom turn?--lo, friend, before our view

The CENTURY rends itself in storm away,

And, red with slaughter, dawns on earth the New.

The girdle of the lands is loosen'd;--hurl'd

To dust the forms old Custom deem'd divine,--

Safe from War's fury not the watery world;--

Safe not the Nile-God nor the antique Rhine.

Two mighty nations make the world their field,

Deaming the world is for their heirloom given--

Against the freedom of all lands they wield

This--Neptune's trident; that--the Thund'rer's levin.

Gold to their scales each region must afford;

And, as fierce Brennus in Gaul's early tale,

The Frank casts in the iron of his sword,

To poise the balance, where the right may fail--

Like some huge Polypus, with arms that roam

Outstretch'd for prey--the Briton spreads his reign;

And, as the Ocean were his household home,

Locks up the chambers of the liberal main.

Where on the Pole scarce gleams the faintest star,

Onward his restless course unbounded flies;

Tracks every isle and every coast afar,

And undiscover'd leaves but--Paradise!

Alas, in vain on earth's wide chart, I ween,

Thou seek'st that holy realm beneath the sky--

Where Freedom dwells in gardens ever green--

And blooms the Youth of fair Humanity!

O'er shores where sail ne'er rustled to the wind,

O'er the vast universe, may rove thy ken;

But in the universe thou canst not find

A space sufficing for ten happy men!

In the heart's holy stillness only beams

The shrine of refuge from life's stormy throng;

Freedom is only in the land of Dreams;

And only blooms the Beautiful in Song!

THE MINSTRELS OF OLD.

Where now the minstrel of the large renown,

Rapturing with living words the heark'ning throng?

Charming the Man to heaven, and earthward down

Charming the God?--who wing'd the soul with song?

Yet lives the minstrel, not the deeds--the lyre

Of old demands ears that of old believed it--

Bards of bless'd time--how flew your living fire

From lip to lip! how race from race received it!

As if a God, men hallow'd with devotion--

What Genius, speaking, shaping, wrought below,

The glow of song inflamed the ear's emotion,

The ear's emotion gave the song the glow;

Each nurturing each--back on his soul--its tone

Whole nations echoed with a rapture-peal;

Then all around the heavenly splendour shone

Which now the heart, and scarce the heart can feel.

FAREWELL TO THE READER.

The Muse is silent; with a virgin cheek,

Bow'd with the blush of shame, she ventures near--

She waits the judgment that thy lips may speak,

And feels the def'rence, but disowns the fear.

Such praise as Virtue gives, 'tis hers to seek--

Bright Truth, not tinsel Folly to revere;

He only for her wreath the flowers should cull

Whose heart, with hers, beats for the Beautiful.

Nor longer yet these days of mine would live,

Than to one genial heart, not idly stealing,

There some sweet dreams and fancies fair to give,

Some hallowing whispers of a loftier feeling.

Not for the far posterity they strive,

Doom'd with the time, its impulse but revealing,

Born to record the Moment's smile or sigh,

And with the light dance of the Hours to fly.

Spring wakes--and life, in all its youngest hues,

Shoots through the mellowing meads delightedly;

Air the fresh herbage scents with nectar-dews;

Livelier the choral music fills the sky;

Youth grows more young, and Age its youth renews,

In that field-banquet of the ear and eye;

Spring flies--lo, seeds where once the flowers have blush'd

And the last bloom's gone, and the last muse hush'd.

A READING PARTY IN THE LONG VACATION.

Every one who knows Oxford, and a good many besides, must have heard of

certain periodical migrations of the younger members of that learned

university into distant and retired parts of her Majesty's dominions,

which (on the _"lucus a non lucendo"_ principle) are called and known by

the name of Reading Parties. Some half dozen under-graduates, in peril

of the coming examination, form themselves into a joint-stock cramming

company; take L.30 or L.40 shares in a private tutor; pitch their camp

in some Dan or Beersheba which has a reputation for dulness; and, like

other joint-stock companies, humbug the public, and sometimes

themselves, into the belief that they are "doing business." For these

classical bubbles, the long vacation is the usual season, and Wales one

of the favourite localities; and certainly, putting "Reading" out of the

question, three fine summer months might be worse spent, than in

climbing the mountains, and whipping the trout-streams, of that romantic

land. Many a quiet sea-side town, or picturesque fishing-village, might

be mentioned, which owes no little of its summer gayety, and perhaps

something of its prosperity, to the annual visit of "the Oxonians:" many

a fair girl has been indebted for the most piquant flirtation of the

season to the "gens togata," who were reading at the little

watering-place to which fate and papa had carried her for the race-week,

or the hunt ball: and whatever the effect of these voluntary

rustications upon the class lists in Oxford, they certainly have

procured for the parties occasionally a very high "provincial

celebrity." I know that when we beat our retreat from summer quarters at

Glyndewi in 18--, the sighs of our late partners were positively

heart-rending, and the blank faces of the deserted billiard-marker and

solitary livery-stable 'groom' haunt me to this day.

I had been endeavouring by hard reading, for the last three months, to

work up the arrears of three years of college idleness, when my evil

genius himself, in the likeness of George Gordon of Trinity, persuaded

me to put the finishing touch to my education, by joining a party who

were going down to Glyndewi in ----shire, "really to read." In an

unguarded moment, I consented; packed up books enough to last me for

five years, reading at the rate of twenty-four hours per day, wrote to

the governor announcing my virtuous intention, and was formally

introduced to the Rev. Mr Hanmer, Gordon's tutor, as one of his "cubs"

for the long vacation.

Six of us there were to be; a very mixed party, and not well mixed--a

social chaos. We had an exquisite from St Mary Hall, a pea-coated

Brazenose boatman, a philosophical water-drinker and union-debater from

Balliol, and a two bottle man from Christ Church. When we first met, it

was like oil and water; it seemed as if we might be churned together for

a century, and never coalesce: but in time, like punch-making, it turned

out that the very heterogeneousness of the ingredients was the zest of

the compound.

I had never heard of such a place as Glyndewi, nor had I an idea how to

get there. Gordon and Hanmer were gone already; so I packed myself on

the top of the Shrewsbury mail, as the direct communication between

Oxford and North Wales, and there became acquainted with No. 2 of my

fellows in transportation; (for, except Gordon and myself, we were all

utter strangers to each other.) "I say, Hawkins; let's feel those

ribbons a bit, will you?" quoth the occupant of the box-seat to our

respectable Jehu. "Can't indeed, sir, with these hosses; it's as much as

ever I can do to hold this here near leader." This was satisfactory;

risking one's neck in a tandem was all very well--a part of the regular

course of an Oxford education; but amateur drivers of stage coaches I

had always a prejudice against: let gentlemen keep their own

four-in-hands, and upset themselves and families, as they have an

undeniable right to do--but not the public. I looked at the first

speaker: at his pea-jacket, that is, which was all I could see of him:

Oxford decidedly. His cigar was Oxford too, by the villanous smell of

it. He took the coachman's implied distrust of his professional

experience good-humouredly enough, proffered him his cigar-case, and

entered into a discussion on the near-leader's moral and physical

qualities. "I'll trouble you for a light, if you please," said I; he

turned round, we stuck the ends of our cigars together, and puffed into

each other's faces for about a minute, (my cigars were damp-ish,) as

grave as North American Indians. "Thank you," said I, as the interesting

ceremony was concluded, and our acquaintance begun. We got into

conversation, when it appeared that he, too, was bound for the

undiscovered shores of Glyndewi, and that we were therefore likely to be

companions for the next three months. He was an off-hand, good-humoured

fellow; drank brandy and water, treated the coachman, and professed an

acquaintance with bar-maids in general, and pretty ones in particular,

on our line of road. He was going up for a class, he supposed, he said;

the governor had taken a "second below the line" himself, and insisted

upon his emulating the paternal distinction; d----d nonsense, he said,

in his opinion; except that the governor had a couple of harriers with

Greek names, he did not see that his classics were of any use to him:

and no doubt but that Hylax and Phryne would run just as well if they

had been called Stormer and Merry Lass. However, he must rub up all his

old Eton books this 'long,' and get old Hanmer to lay it on thick. Such

was Mr Branling of Brazenose.

At Shrewsbury, we were saluted with the intelligence, "Coach dines here,

gentlemen." We found a couple of fowls that the coach might probably

have dined upon, and digested with other articles--in the hind boot; to

human stomachs they seemed impracticable. We employed the allotted ten

minutes upon a leg of mutton, and ascended again to our stations on the

roof: and here was an addition to our party. Externally, it consisted of

a mackintosh and a fur cap: in the very short interval between the

turned-down flap of the one and the turned-up collar of the other, were

a pair of grey-glass spectacles, and part of a nose. So far we had no

very sufficient premises from which to draw conclusions, whether or not

he were "one of us." But there were internal evidences; an odour of

Bouquet de Roi or some such villanous compound nearly overpowering the

fragrance of some genuine weed which I had supplied my pea-coated friend

with in the place of his Oxford "Havannahs"--a short cough occasionally,

as though the smoke of the said weed were not altogether "the perfume of

the lip he loved;"--and a resolute taciturnity. What was he? It is a

lamentable fact that an Oxford under-graduate does not invariably look

the gentleman. He vibrates between the fashionable assurance of a London

swindler, and the modest diffidence of an overgrown schoolboy. There is

usually a degree of unfinishedness about him. He seems to be assuming a

character unlike the glorious Burschenschaf of Germany, he has no

character of his own. However, for want of more profitable occupation,

we set to work in earnest to discover who our fellow traveller really

was: and by a series of somewhat American conversational enquiries, we

at last fished out that he was going into ----shire like ourselves--nay,

in answer to a direct question on the subject, that he hopes to meet

Hanmer of Trinity at Glyndewi. But no further information could we get:

our new friend was reserved. Mr Branling and I had commenced intimacy

already. "My name is Branling of Brazenose;" "and mine Hawthorne of

----;" was our concise introduction. But our companion was the pink of

Oxford correctness on this point. He thanked the porter for putting his

luggage up called me "Sir" till he found I was an Oxford man; and had we

travelled for a month together, would rather have requested the coachman

to introduce us, than be guilty of any such barbarism as to introduce

himself. So by degrees our intimacy, instead of warming, waxed cold. As

night drew on, and the fire of cigars from Branling, self, and coachman,

became more deadly, the fur cap was drawn still closer over the ears,

the mackintosh crept up higher, and we lost sight of all but the outline

of the spectacles.

The abominable twitter of the sparrows in the hedgerows gave notice of

the break of day--to travellers the most dismal of all hours, in my

opinion--when I awoke from the comfortable nap into which I had fallen

since the last change of horses. For some time we alternately dozed,

tumbled against each other, begged pardon, and awoke; till at last the

sun broke out gloriously as we drove into the cheerful little town of

B----.

A good breakfast set us all to rights, and made even our friend in the

mackintosh talkative. He came out most in the character of tea-maker:

(an office, by the way, which he filled to the general satisfaction of

his constituents during our stay in North Wales.) We found out that he

was a St Mary Hall man, with a duplicate name: Mr Sydney Dawson, as the

cards on his multifarious luggage set forth: that he was an aspirant for

"any thing he could get" in the way of honours: (humble aspiration as it

seemed, it was not destined to be gratified, for he got nothing.) He

thought he might find some shooting and fishing in Wales, so had brought

with him a gun-case and a setter; though his pretensions to

sportsmanship proved to be rather of the cockney order. For three months

he was the happily unconscious butt of our party, and yet never but once

was our good-humour seriously interrupted.

From B---- to Glyndewi we had been told we must make our way as we

could: and a council of war, which included boots and the waiter, ended

in the arrival of the owner of one of the herring-boats, of which there

were several under "the terrace." "Was you wish to go to Glyndewi,

gentlemen? I shall take you so quick as any way; she is capital wind,

and you shall have fine sail." A man who could speak such undeniable

English was in himself a treasure; for an ineffectual attempt at a

bargain for some lobsters (even with a "Welsh interpreter" in our hands)

had warned us that there were in this Christian country unknown tongues

which would have puzzled even the Rev. Edward Irving. So the bargain was

struck: in half-an-hour ourselves and traps were alongside the boat: and

after waiting ten minutes for the embarkation of Mr Sydney Dawson and

his dog Sholto, who seemed to have an abhorrence of sea-voyages,

Branling at last hauled in the latter in the last agonies of

strangulation, and his master having tumbled in over him, to the

detriment of a pair of clean whites and a cerulean waistcoat, we--_i.e._

the rest of us--set sail for Glyndewi in high spirits.

Our boatmen were intelligent fellows, and very anxious to display their

little stock of English. They knew Mr Hanmer well, they said--he had

been at Glyndewi the summer before; he was "nice free gentleman;" and

they guessed immediately the object of our pilgrimage: Glyndewi was

"very much for learning;" did not gentlemen from Oxford College, and

gentlemen from Cambridge College, all come there? We warned him not on

any account to couple us in his mind with "Cambridge gentlemen:" we were

quite a distinct species, we assured him. (They had beaten us that year

in the eight-oar match on the Thames.) But there seemed no sufficient

reason for disabusing their minds of the notion, that this influx of

students was owing to something classical in the air of Glyndewi:

indeed, supposing this theory to be wrong, it was no easy matter to

substitute a sounder one. In what did the superiority of Mrs Jenkins's

smoky parlour at Glyndewi consist, for the purposes of reading for a

degree, compared with my pleasant rooms looking into ---- Gardens at

Oxford, or the governor's snug library at home? It is an abstruse

question. Parents and guardians, indeed, whose part upon the stage of

life, as upon the theatrical stage, consists principally in submitting

to be more or less humbugged, attribute surprising effects to a fancied

absence of all amusements, with a mill-horse round of Greek, Latin, and

logic, early rising, and walks in the country with a pocket Horace. From

my own experience of reading parties, I should select as their peculiar

characteristics, a tendency to hats and caps of such remarkable shapes,

as, if once sported in the college quadrangle, would be the subject of a

common-room _instanter_; and, among some individuals (whom we may call

the peripatetic philosophers of the party) a predilection for seedy

shooting-coats and short pipes, with which they perambulate the

neighbourhood to the marvel of the aboriginal inhabitants; while those

whom we may class with the stoics, display a preference for

dressing-gowns and meerschaums, and confine themselves principally to

the doorways and open windows of their respective lodgings. How far

these "helps to knowledge"--for which Oxford certainly does not afford

equal facilities--conduce to the required first or second class, is a

question I do not feel competent to decide; but _if_ reading-parties

_do_ succeed, the secret of their success may at least as probably lie

in these hitherto unregarded phenomena.

Five hours of a fair wind brought us to Glyndewi. Here we found Hanmer

and Gordon, who had taken a house for the party, and seemed already

domesticated. I cannot say that we were royally lodged; the rooms were

low, and the terms high; but as no one thought of taking lodgings at

Glyndewi in the winter, and the rats consequently lived in them

rent-free for six months, it was but fair somebody should pay: and we

did. "Attendance" we had into the bargain. Now, attendance at a

lodging-house has been defined to be, the privilege of ringing your bell

as often as you please, provided you do not expect any one to answer it.

But the bell-ropes in Mrs. Jenkins's parlours being only ornamental

appendages, our privilege was confined to calling upon the landing-place

for a red-headed female, who, when she did come, which was seldom, was

terrible to look upon, and could only be conversed with by pantomime.

To do Mrs. Jenkins and "Gwenny" justice, they were scrupulously clean in

every thing but their own persons, which, the latter's especially,

seemed to have monopolised the dirt of the whole establishment. College

bedrooms are not luxurious affairs, so we were not inclined to be

captious on that head; and we slept soundly, and awoke with a

determination to make out first voyage of discovery in a charitable

spirit.

The result of our morning's stroll was the unanimous conclusion, that

Glyndewi was a rising place. It did not seem inclined to rise at all at

once though; but in patches here and there, with a quarter of a mile or

so between, like what we read of the great sea-serpent. (I fear this

individual is no more; this matter-of-fact age has been the death of

him.) There were two long streets--one parallel to the quay, (or, as the

more refined called it, "the terrace,") and the other at right angles to

it. The first was Herring Street--the second Goose Street. At least such

were the ancient names, which I give for the benefit of antiquarian

readers. Since the then Princess Victoria visited B----, the loyalty of

the Glyndewi people had changed "Herring" into "Victoria;" and her royal

consort has since had the equivocal compliment paid him of transmuting

"Goose Street" into "Albert Buildings." I trust it will not be

considered disloyal to say, that the original sponsors--the geese and

the herrings--seen to me to have been somewhat hardly used; having done

more for their namesakes, than, as far as I can learn, their royal

successors even promised.

Glyndewi was rising, however, in more respects than in the matter of

taste in nomenclature. Tall houses, all front and windows, were stuck up

here and there; sometimes with a low fisherman's cottage between then,

whose sinking roof and bulging walls looked as if, like the frog in the

fable, it had burst in the vain attempt to rival its majestic neighbour.

At one end stood a large hotel with a small business, and an empty

billiard-room: at the other, a wall some six inches high marked the spot

where subscription-rooms were to be built for the accommodation of

visitors and the public generally, as set forth in the prospectus, as

soon as the visitors and the public chose to find the money. Nearly the

whole of the village was the property of a gentleman who had built the

hotel and billiard-room, and run up a few lodging-houses on a

speculation, which seemed at best a doubtful one, of making it in time a

fashionable watering-place.

Glyndewi had been recommended to us as a quiet place. It was

quiet--horribly quiet. Not the quiet of green fields and deep woods, the

charm of country life; but the quiet of a teetotal supper-party, or a

college in vacation. "Just the place for reading: no gayety--no

temptations." So I had written to tell the governor, in the ardour of my

setting forth as one of a "reading-party:" alas! it was a fatal mistake.

Had it been an ordinarily cheerful place, I think one or two of us could

and should have read there; as it was, our whole wits were set to work

to enliven its dulness. It took us as long to invent an amusement, as

would have sufficed elsewhere for getting tired of half a dozen

different dissipations. The very reason which made us fix upon it as a

place to read in, proved in our case the source of unmitigated idleness.

"No temptations" indeed! there were no temptations--the only temptation

I felt there was to hang or drown myself, and there was not a tree six

feet high within as many miles, and the Dewi was a river "darkly,

deeply, beautifully"--muddy; it would have been smothering rather. We

should not have staid to the end of the first month, had it not been for

very shame; but to run away from a reading-party would have been a joke

against us for ever. So from the time we got up in the morning, until we

climbed Mrs Jenkins's domestic treadmill again at night, the one

question was, what should we do with ourselves? Walk? there were the

A---- and B---- roads--three miles of sand and dust either way. Before

us was the bay--behind the ----shire mountains, up which one might walk

some sixteen miles, (in the month of July,) and yet the same view from

each successive point you reached: viz., a hill before you, which you

thought must be the top at last, and Glyndewi--of which we knew the

number of houses, and the number of windows in each--behind. Ride then?

the two hacks kept by mine host of the Mynysnewydd Arms, deserve a

history to themselves. Rossinante would have been ashamed to be seen

grazing in the same field with such caricatures of his race. There was a

board upon a house a few doors off, announcing that "pleasure and other

boats" were to be let on hire. All the boats that we were acquainted

with must have been the "other" ones--for they smelled of herrings,

sailed at about the pace of a couple of freshmen in a "two--oar," and

gave very pretty exercise--to those who were fond of it--in baling. As

for reading, we were like the performers at a travelling theatre--always

"going to begin."

Branling, indeed, did once shut himself up in his bedroom, as we

afterwards ascertained, with a box of cigars and a black and tan

terrier, and read for three weeks on end in the peculiar atmosphere thus

created. Willingham of Christ Church, and myself, had what was called

the dining-room in common, and proceeded so far on the third day after

our arrival, as to lay out a very imposing spread of books upon all the

tables; and there it remained in evidence of our good intentions, until

the first time we were called upon to do the honours of an extempore

luncheon. Unfortunately, from the very first, Willingham and myself were

set down by Hanmer as the idle men of the party; the sort of prophetical

discrimination, which tutors at Oxford are very much in the habit of

priding themselves upon, tends, like other prophecies, to work its own

fulfilment. Did a civil Welshman favour us with a call? "Show him in to

Mr Hawthorne and Mr Willingham; I dare say they are not very

busy"--quoth our _Jupiter tonans_ from on high in the dining-room, where

he held his court; and accordingly in he came. We had Stilton and

bottled porter in charge for these occasions from the common stock; but

the honours of all these visits were exclusively our own, as far as

houseroom went. In dropped the rest of the party, one by one. Hanmer

himself pitched the Ethics into a corner to make room, as he said, for

substantials, the froth of bottled Guiness damped the eloquence of

Cicero, and Branling having twisted up my analysis of the last-read

chapter into a light for his cigar, there was an end of our morning's

work. How could we read? That was what we always said, and there was

some truth in it.

Mr Branling's reading fit was soon over too; and having cursed the

natives for barbarians, because there was not a pack of harriers within

ten miles, which confirmed him in the opinion he had always expressed of

their utter want of civilization, (for, as he justly remarked, not one

in a dozen could even speak decent English,) he waited impatiently for

September, when he had got leave from some Mr Williams or Jones, I never

remembered which, to shoot over a considerable range about Glyndewi.

But with the 20th of August, a change came over the spirit of our dream.

Hitherto we had seen little of any of the neighbouring families,

excepting that of a Captain George Phillips, who, living only three

miles off, on the bank of the river, and having three sons and two

daughters, and keeping a pretty yacht, had given us a dinner party or

two, and a pleasant day's sail. Capital fellows were the young

Phillipses: Nature's gentlemen; unsophisticated, hearty Welshmen; lads

from sixteen to twenty. Down they used to come, in a most dangerous

little craft of their own, which went by the name of the "Coroner's

Inquest," to smoke cigars, (against which the Captain had published an

interdict at home,) and question us about Oxford larks, and tell us in

return stories of wild-fowl shooting, otter hunting, and salmon fishing,

in all which they were proficient.

Our establishment was not an imposing one, but of them we made no

strangers. Once they came, I remember, self-invited to dinner, in a most

unfortunate state of our larder. The weekly half sheep had not arrived

from B----; to get any thing in Glyndewi, beyond the native luxuries of

bacon and herrings, was hopeless; and our dinner happened to be a leash

of fowls, of which we had just purchased a live supply. Mrs Glasse would

have been in despair; we took it coolly; to the three boiled fowls at

top, we added three roast ditto at bottom, and by unanimous consent of

both guests and entertainers, a more excellent dinner was never put on

table.

But the 20th of August! the day of the Glyndewi regatta! _that_ must

have a chapter to itself.

CHAPTER II.

When a dull place like Glyndewi does undertake to be gay, it seldom does

things by halves. Ordinary doses of excitement fail to meet the urgency

of the case. It was the fashion, it appeared, for all the country

families of any pretensions to _ton_, and not a few of the idlers from

the neighbouring watering-places, to be at Glyndewi for the race-week.

And as far as the programme of amusements went, certainly the committee

(consisting of the resident surgeon, the non-resident proprietor of the

"hotel," &c., and a retired major in the H.E.I.C.'s service, called by

his familiars by the endearing name of "Tiger Jones") had made a

spirited attempt to meet the demand. A public breakfast, and a regatta,

and a ball--a "Full Dress and Fancy Ball," the advertisement said, on

the 20th a Horse-Race; and an Ordinary on the 21st; a Cricket Match, if

possible, and any extra fun which the Visitors' own genius might strike

out on the following days.

The little bay of Glyndewi was not a bad place for a boat-race on a

small scale. The "terrace" commanded the whole of it; there were plenty

of herring-boats, about equally matched in sailing deficiencies, ready

and willing to "run"--_i.e._ creep--for the prizes; and an honourable

member of the Yacht Club, who for some years past, for reasons which it

was said his creditors could explain, had found it more convenient to

keep his season at B---- than at Cowes, always paid the stewards the

compliment of carrying off the "Ladies' Challenge Cup."

The two or three years' experience which the Glyndewi people had lately

gained of the nature and habits of "the Oxonians," made them an article

in great demand on these occasions. Mammas and daughters agreed in

looking upon us as undeniable partners in the ballroom, while the

sporting men booked us as safe for getting up a creditable four-oar,

with a strong probability of finding a light weight willing to risk his

neck and reputation at a hurdle-race. Certain it is, that from the time

the races began to be seriously talked about, we began to feel ourselves

invested with additional importance. "Tiger Jones" (who occupied a snug

little box about a mile out of Glyndewi, where he lived upon cheroots

and brandy and water) called, was exceedingly polite, apologized for not

inviting us to dinner--a thing he declared impossible in his

quarters--hoped we would call some day and take a lunch with him, spoke

with rapture of the capital crew which "the gentlemen who were studying

here last summer" had made up, and which ran away from all competitors,

and expressed a fervent hope that we should do likewise.

The sporting surgeon (of course he had called upon us long ago)

redoubled his attentions, begged that if any of us were cricketers we

would endeavour to aid him in getting up a "Glyndewi eleven" against the

"Strangers," and fixed himself upon me as an invaluable acquisition,

when he found I had actually once played in a match against Marylebone.

(I did not tell him that the total score of my innings was "_one_.")

Would I, then, at once take the drilling of as many recruits as he could

get together? And would Mr Willingham and Mr Gordon, who "used to play

at school," get up their practice again? (It wanted about a fortnight to

the races.) The result of this, and sundry other interviews, was, that

Branling at length found a vent for the _vis inertiae_ in putting us all,

with the exception of Mr Sydney Dawson, whom he declared to be so stiff

in the back that he had no hope of him, into training for a four-oar;

and the surgeon and myself set off in his gig for B----, to purchase

materials for cricket.

It is true, that our respected tutor did look more than usually grave,

and shook his head with a meaning almost as voluminous as Lord

Burleigh's, when informed of our new line of study. Rowing he declared

to be a most absurd expenditure of time and strength; he never could see

the fun of men breaking bloodvessels, and getting plucked for their

degree, for the honour of "the Trinity Boat." But the cricket touched

him on the raw. He was an old Etonian, and had in his time been a good

player; and was now as active as any stout gentleman of

seven-and-thirty, who had been twelve years a steady admirer of bursary

dinners and common-room port. So, after some decent scruples on his

part, and some well-timed compliments touching his physical abilities on

ours, (he was much vainer of the muscle of his arm than of his high

reputation as a scholar,) we succeeded in drawing from him a sort of

promise, that if we were so foolish as to get up a match, he would try

whether he had forgot all about bowling.

For the next fortnight, therefore, we had occupation enough cut out for

us. Branling was unmerciful in his practice on the river; and

considering that two of us had never pulled an oar but in the slowest of

"Torpids," we improved surprisingly under his tuition. The cricket, too,

was quite a new era in our existence. Davson (we told him that the

"Sydney" must be kept for Sundays) was a perfect fund of amusement in

his zealous practice. He knew as much about the matter as a cow might,

and was rather less active. But if perseverance could have made a

cricketer, he would have turned out a first-rate one. Not content with

two or three hours of it every fine evening, when we all sallied down to

the marsh, followed by every idler in Glyndewi, he used to disappear

occasionally in the mornings, and for some days puzzled us as to where

and how he disposed of himself. We had engaged, in our corporate

capacity, the services of a most original retainer, who cleaned boots,

fetched the beer, eat the cold mutton, and made himself otherwise useful

when required. He was amphibious in his habits, having been a

herring-fisher the best part of his life; but being a martyr to the

rheumatism, which occasionally screwed him up into indescribable forms,

had betaken himself to earning a precarious subsistence as he could on

shore. It was not often that we required his services between breakfast

and luncheon, but one morning, after having dispatched Gwenny in all

directions to hunt for Bill Thomas in vain, we at last elicited from her

that "may-be she was gone with Mr Dawson." Then it came out, to our

infinite amusement, that Dawson was in the habit, occasionally, of

impressing our factotum Bill to carry bat, stumps, and ball down to the

marsh, and there commencing private practice on his own account.

Mr Sydney Dawson and Bill Thomas--the sublime and the

ridiculous--amalgamating at cricket, was far too good a joke to lose; so

we got Hanmer to cut his lecture short, and come down with us to the

scene of action. From the cover of a sandbank, we had a view of all that

was going on in the plain below. There was our friend at the wicket,

with his coat off, and the grey spectacles on, in an attitude which it

must have taken him some study to accomplish, and Bill, with the ball in

his hand, vociferating "Plaiy." A ragged urchin behind the wicket,

attempting to bag the balls as Dawson missed them in what had once been

a hat, and Sholto looking on with an air of mystification, completed the

picture.

"That's too slow," said Sydney, as Bill, after some awful contortions,

at length delivered himself of what he called "a cast." "_Diawl!_" said

Bill, _sotto voce_, as he again got possession of the ball. "That's too

high," was the complaint, as with an extraordinary kind of jerk, it

flew some yards over the batsman's head, and took what remained of the

crown out of the little lazzaroni's hat behind. "_Diawl!_" quoth Bill

again, apologetically, "She got too much way on her that time." Bill was

generally pretty wide of his mark, and great appeared to be the

satisfaction of all parties when Dawson contrived to make a hit, and

Sholto and the boy set off after the ball, while the striker leaned with

elegant _nonchalance_ upon his bat, and Bill mopped his face, and gave

vent to a complimentary varety of "Diawl." It was really a pity to

interrupt the performance; but we did at last. Bill looked rather

ashamed of his share in the business when he saw "Mishtar," as he called

Hanmer; but Dawson's self-complacency and good-humour carried him

through every thing. "By Jove," said Willingham to him, "no wonder you

improve in your style of play; Bill has no bad notion of bowling, has

he?" "Why, no; he does very well for practice; and he is to have

half-a-crown if he gets me out." "Bowl at his legs, Bill," said

Willingham aside, "he's out, you know, if you hit them." "Nay," said

Bill, with a desponding shake of the head, "She squat'n hard on the knee

now just, and made'n proper savage, but I wasn't get nothing for that."

Positively we did more in the way of reading after the boating and the

cricket began, than while we continued in a state of vagrant idleness,

without a fixed amusement of any kind. In the first place, it was

necessary to conciliate Hanmer by some show of industry in the morning,

in order to keep him in good humour for the cricket in the evening; for

he was decidedly the main hope of our having any thing like a decent

eleven. Secondly, the Phillipses took to dining early at home, and

coming to practice with us in the evening, instead of dropping down the

river every breezy morning, and either idling in our rooms, or beguiling

us out mackerel-fishing or flapper-shooting in their boat. And thirdly,

it became absolutely necessary that we should do something, if class

lists and examiners had any real existence, and were not mere bugbears

invented by "alma mater" to instil a wholesome terror into her unruly

progeny. Really, when one compared our actual progress with the Augean

labour which was to be gone through, it required a large amount of faith

to believe that we were all "going up for honours in October."

We spent a very pleasant morning at Llyn-eiros, the den of "Tiger

Jones." He obtained this somewhat appalling soubriquet from a habit of

spinning yarns, more marvellous than his unwarlike neighbours were

accustomed to, of the dangers encountered in his Indian sports; and one

in particular, of an extraordinary combat between his "chokedar" and a

tiger--whether the gist of the story lay in the tiger's eating the

chokedar, or the chokedar eating the tiger, I am not sure--I rather

think the latter. However, in Wales one is always glad to have some

distinguishing appellation to prefix to the name of Jones. If a man's

godfathers and godmothers have the forethought to christen him

"Mountstewart Jones," or "Fitzhardinge Jones," (I knew such instances of

cognominal anticlimax,) then it was all very well--no mistake about the

individuality of such fortunate people. But "Tom Joneses" and "Bob

Joneses" were no individuals at all. They were classes, and large

classes; and had to be again distinguished into "Little Bob Joneses" and

"Long Bob Joneses." Or if there happened to be nothing sufficiently

characteristic in the personal appearance of the rival Joneses, then was

he fortunate who had no less complimentary additions to his style and

title than what might be derived from the name of his location, or the

nature of his engagements. These honours were often hereditary--nay,

sometimes descended in the female line. We hear occasionally, in

England, of "Mrs Doctor Smith," and "Mrs Major Brown;" and absurd as it

is, one does comprehend by intuition that it was the gentleman and not

the lady who was the ten-year man at Cambridge, or the commandant of the

Boggleton yeomanry; but few besides a Welshman would have learned,

without a smile, that "Mrs Jones the officer" was the relict of the late

tide-waiter at Glyndewi, or that the quiet, modest little daughter of

the town-clerk of B---- was known to her intimates as "Miss Jones the

lawyer." Luckily our friend the Tiger was a bachelor; it would have

been alarming to a nervous stranger at the Glyndewi ball, upon enquiring

the name of the young lady with red hair and cat's eyes, to have been

introduced incontinently to "Miss Jones the tiger."

The Tiger himself was a well-disposed animal; somewhat given to solitary

prowling, like his namesakes in a state of nature, but of most

untiger-like and facetious humour. He generally marched into Glyndewi

after an early breakfast, and from that time until he returned to his

"mutton" at five, might be seen majestically stalking up and down the

extreme edge of the terrace, looking at the fishing-boats, and

shaking--_not_ his tail, for, as all stout gentlemen seem to think it

their duty to do by the sea-side, he wore a round jacket. From the time

that we began our new pursuits, he took to us amazingly--called us his

"dear lads"--offered bets to any amount that we should beat the

B----Cutter Club, and protested that he never saw finer bowling at

Lord's than Hanmer's.

Branling was in delight. He had found a man who would smoke with him all

day, (report said, indeed, that the Tiger regularly went to sleep with a

cheroot in his mouth,) and he had the superintending of "the boat,"

which was his thought from morning to night. A light gig, that had once

belonged to the custom-house, was polished and painted under his special

directions, (often did we sigh for one of King's worst "fours!") and the

fishermen marvelled at such precocious nautical talent.

None of these, however--great events as they were in our hitherto

monotonous sojourn--were the "crowning mercy" of the Glyndewi regatta.

Hitherto the sunshine of bright eyes, and the breath of balmy lips, had

been almost as much unknown to us as if we had been still within the

monastic walls of Oxford. We had dined in a body at our friend the

surgeon's: he was a bachelor. We had been invited by two's and three's

at a time to a Welsh squire's in the neighbourhood, who had two maiden

sisters, and a fat, good-humoured wife. Captain Phillips had given us a

spread more than once at Craig-y-gerron, and, of course, some of us (I

was not so fortunate) had handed in the Misses Phillips to dinner; but

the greater part of the time from six till eleven (at which hour Hanmer

always ordered out our "_trap_") was too pleasantly occupied in

discussing the captain's port and claret, and laughing at his jokes, to

induce us to give much time or attention to the ladies in the

drawing-room. If some of my fair readers exclaim against this stoic (or

rather epicurean) indifference, it may gratify their injured vanity to

know, that in the sequel some of us paid for it.

The Phillipses came down in full force, the day before the regatta; they

were engaged to lunch with us, and, as it was the first time that the

ladies of the party had honoured us with a visit, we spared no pains to

make our entertainment somewhat more _recherche_ than was our wont. It

was then that I first discovered that Clara Phillips was beautiful. I am

not going to describe her now; I never could have described her. All I

knew, and all I remember, was, that for a long time afterwards I formed

my standard of what a woman ought to be, by unconscious comparison with

what she was. What colour her eyes were, was a question among us at the

time. Willingham swore they were grey; Dawson insisted that they were

hazel; Branling, to whom they referred the point, was inclined to think

there was, "something green" in them. But that they were eyes of no

common expression, all of us were agreed. I think at least half the

party were more than half in love with her when that race-week was over.

In one sense it was not her fault if we were; for a girl more thoroughly

free from every species of coquetry, and with less of that pitiful

ambition of making conquests, which is the curse of half the sex, it was

impossible to meet with. But she was to blame for it too, in another

way; for to know her, and not love her, would have been a reproach to

any man. Lively and good-humoured, with an unaffected buoyancy of

spirits, interesting herself in all that passed around her, and

unconscious of the interest she herself excited, no wonder that she

seemed to us like an angel sent to cheer us in our house of bondage. Of

her own family she was deservedly the darling; even Dick Phillips, whom

three successive tutors had given up in despair, became the most docile

of pupils under his sister Clara; accustomed early to join her brothers

in all out-door sports, she was an excellent horsewoman, a fearless

sailor, and an untiring explorer of mountains and waterfalls, without

losing her naturally feminine character, or becoming in any degree a

hoyden or a romp. She sang the sweet national airs of Wales with a voice

whose richness of tone was only second to its power of expression. She

did every thing with the air of one who, while delighting others, is

conscious only of delighting herself; and never seeking admiration,

received it as gracefully as it was ungrudgingly bestowed.

If there is one form of taking exercise which I really hate, it is what

people call dancing. I am passionately fond of music; but why people

should conceive it necessary to shuffle about in all varieties of

awkwardness, in order to enjoy it to their satisfaction, has been, is,

and probably will ever be, beyond my comprehension. It is all very well

for young ladies on the look-out for husbands to affect a fondness for

dancing: in the first place, some women dance gracefully, and even

elegantly, and show themselves off undoubtedly to advantage; (if any

exhibition on a woman's part be an advantage;) then it gives an excuse

for whispering, and squeezing of hands, and stealing flowers, and a

thousand nameless skirmishings preparatory to what they are endeavouring

to bring about--an engagement; but for a man to be fond of shuffling and

twirling himself out of the dignity of step which nature gave

him--picking his way through a quadrille, like a goose upon hot bricks,

or gyrating like a bad tee-totum in what English fashionables are

pleased to term a "valse," I never see a man thus occupied, without a

fervent desire to kick him. "What a Goth!" I hear a fair reader of

eighteen, prettily ejaculate--"thank Heaven, that all men have not such

barbarous ideas! Why, I would go fifty miles to a good ball!" Be not

alarmed, my dear young lady; give me but a moment to thank Providence,

in my turn, that you are neither my sister nor my daughter, and will

promise you, that you shall never be my wife.

On the Saturday night then, I made Gordon and Willingham both very

cross, and caught Sydney Dawson's eye looking over his spectacles with

supreme contempt, when I declared my decided intention of staying at

home the night of the ball. Even the Reverend Robert Hanmer, who was

going himself, was annoyed when Gordon told him of what he called my

wilfulness, having a notion that it was decidedly disrespectful in any

of us, either to go when he did _not_, or to decline going, when he

_did_.

On the Tuesday morning, I sent to B---- for white kids. Gordon looked

astonished, Hanmer was glad that I had "taken his advice," and

Willingham laughed outright; he had overheard Clara Phillips ask me to

dance with her. Men _are_ like green gooseberries--very green ones;

women _do_ make fools of them, and a comparatively small proportion of

sugar, in the shape of flattery, is sufficient.

Two days before the regatta, there marched into Mrs Jenkins's open

doorway, a bewildered looking gentleman, shaking off the dust from his

feet in testimony of having had a long walk, and enquiring for Hanmer.

Gwenny, with her natural grace, trotted up stairs before him, put her

head in at the "drawing-room" door, (she seemed always conscious that

the less one saw of her person the better,) and having announced

briefly, but emphatically, "a gentlemans," retreated. Hanmer had puzzled

himself and me, by an attempt to explain a passage which Aristotle, of

course, would have put in plainer language, if he had known what he

meant himself--but modern philosophers are kind enough to help him out

occasionally--when the entrance of the gentleman in dust cut the Gordian

knot, and saved the Stagyrite from the disgrace of having a pretty bit

of esoteric abstruseness translated into common sense.

(What a blessing would it be for Dr ----, and Professor ----, if they

might be allowed to mystify their readers in Greek! though, to do them

justice, they have turned the Queen's English to good account for that

purpose, and have produced passages which first-class men, at an

Athenian University, might possibly construe, but which the whole board

of sophists might be defied to explain.)

The _deus ex machina_--the gentleman on, or rather off the tramp--who

arrived thus opportunely, was no less a person than the Reverend George

Plympton, Fellow of Oriel, &c. &c. &c. He was an intimate friend of our

worthy tutor's; if the friendship between Oxford dons can be called

intimacy. They compared the merits of their respective college cooks

three or four times a term, and contended for the superior vintage of

the common-room port. They played whist together; walked arm-in-arm

round Christchurch meadow; and knew the names of all the old incumbents

in each other's college-list, and the value of the respective livings.

Mr Plympton and a friend had been making a walking tour of North Wales;

that is, they walked about five miles, stared at a mountain, or a fall,

or an old castle, as per guide-book, and then coached it to the next

point, when the said book set down that "the Black Dog was an excellent

inn," or that "travellers would find every accommodation at Mrs Price's

of the Wynnstay Arms." Knowing that Hanmer was to be found at Glyndewi,

Mr Plympton left his friend at B----, where the salmon was

unexceptionable, and had completed the most arduous day's walk in his

journal, nearly thirteen miles, in a state of dust and heat far from

agreeable to a stoutish gentleman of forty, who usually looked as spruce

as if he came out of a band-box. Hanmer and he seemed really glad to see

each other. On those "oxless" shores, where, as Byron says, "beef was

rare," though

"Goat's flesh there was, no doubt, and kid, and mutton,"

the tender reminiscences of far-off Gaude days and Bursary dinners, that

must have arisen in the hearts of each, were enough to make their

meeting almost an affecting one. Hanmer must have blushed, I think,

though far from his wont, when he asked Mr Plympton if he could feed

with us at four upon--hashed mutton! (We consumed nearly a sheep per

week, and exhausted our stock of culinary ideas, as well as our

landlady's patience, in trying to vary the forms in which it was to

appear; not having taken the precaution, as some Cambridge men did at

B----s one vacation, to bespeak a French cook at a rather higher salary

than the mathematical tutor's.[A]) Probably, however, Mr Plympton's

unusual walk made him more anxious about the quantity than the quality

of his diet, for he not only attacked the mutton like an Etonian, but

announced his intention of staying with us over the ball, if a bed was

to be had, and sending to B---- for his decorations. He was introduced

in due form to the Phillipses the next day, and in the number and

elegance of his bows, almost eclipsed Mr Sydney Dawson, whom Clara never

ceased to recommend to her brothers as an example of politeness.

Bright dawned the morning of the 20th of August, the first of the "three

glorious days" of Glyndewi. As people came to these races really for

amusement, the breakfast was fixed for the very unfashionable hour of

ten, in order not to interfere with the main business of the day--the

regatta. Before half-past, the tables at the Mynysnewydd Arms were

filled with what the _----shire Herald_ termed "a galaxy of beauty and

fashion." But every one seemed well aware, that there were far more

substantial attractions present, meant to fill not the tables only, but

the guests. The breakfast was by no means a matter of form. People had

evidently come with more serious intentions, than merely to display new

bonnets, and trifle with grapes and peaches. Sea-air gives a whet to

even a lady's appetite, and if the performances that morning were any

criterion of the effects of that of Glyndewi, the new Poor Law

Commissioners, in forming their scale of allowances, must really have

reported it a "special case." The fair Cambrians, in short, played very

respectable knives and forks--made no bones--or rather nothing but

bones--of the chickens, and ate kippered salmon like Catholics. You

caught a bright eye gazing in your direction with evident

interest--"Would you have the kindness to cut that pasty before you for

a lady?" You almost overheard a tender whisper from the gentleman

opposite to the pretty girl beside him. She blushes and gently

remonstrates. Again his lip almost touches her cheek in earnest

persuasion--yes! she is consenting--to another _little_ slice of ham! As

for the jolly Welsh squires themselves, and their strapping

heirs-apparent, (you remember that six-foot-four man surely, number six

of the Jesus boat)--now that the ladies have really done, and the

waiters have brought in the relays of brandered chickens and

fresh-caught salmon, which mine host, who has had some experience of his

customers, has most liberally provided--they set to work in earnest.

They have been only politely trifling hitherto with the wing of a fowl

or so, to keep the ladies' company. But now, as old Captain Phillips, at

the head of the table, cuts a slice and a joke alternately, and the

Tiger at the bottom begins to let out his carnivorous propensities, one

gets to have an idea what breakfast means. "Let me advise you, my dear

Mr Dawson--as a friend--you'll excuse an old stager--if you have no

particular wish to starve yourself--you've had nothing yet but two cups

of tea--to help yourself, and let your neighbours do the same. You may

keep on cutting Vauxhall shavings for those three young Lloyds till

Michaelmas; pass the ham down to them, and hand me those devilled

kidneys."

"Tea? no; thank you; I took a cup yesterday, and haven't been myself

since. Waiter! don't you see this tankard's empty?"

"Consume you, Dick Phillips! I left two birds in that pie five minutes

back, and you've cleared it out!"

"Diawl, John Jones, I was a fool to look into a tankard after you!"

Every thing has an end, and so the breakfast had at last; and we

followed the ladies to the terrace to watch the sailing for the ladies'

challenge cup. By the help of a glass we could see three yachts, with

about half-a-mile between each, endeavouring to get round a small boat

with a man and a flag in it, which, as the wind was about the worst they

could have had for the purpose, seemed no easy matter. There was no

great interest in straining one's eyes after them, so I found out the

Phillipses, and having told Dawson, who was escorting Clara, that Hanmer

was looking for him to make out the list of "the eleven," I was very

sorry indeed when the sound of a gun announced that the Hon. H.

Chouser's Firefly had won the cup, and that the other two yachts might

be expected in the course of half-an-hour. Nobody waited for them, of

course. The herring boats, after a considerable deal of what I concluded

from the emphasis to be swearing in Welch, in which, however, Captain

Phillips, who was umpire, seemed to have decidedly the advantage in

variety of terms and power of voice, were pronounced "ready," and

started by gunfire accordingly. A rare start they made of it. The great

ambition of every man among them seemed to be to prevent the boats next

in the line from starting at all. It was a general fouling match, and

the jabbering was terrific. At last, the two outside boats, having the

advantage of a clear berth on one side, got away, and made a pretty race

of it, followed by such of the rest as could by degrees extricate

themselves from the melee.

But now was to come our turn. Laden with all manner of good wishes, we

hoisted a bit of dark-blue silk for the honour of Oxford, and spurted

under the terrace to our starting-place. The only boat entered against

us was the Dolphin, containing three stout gentlemen and a thin one,

members of the B---- Cutter Club, who evidently looked upon pulling as

no joke. Branling gave us a steady stroke, and Cotton of Balliol steered

us admirably; the rest did as well as they could. The old boys had a

very pretty boat--ours was a tub--but we beat them. They gave us a

stern-chase for the first hundred yards, for I cut a crab at starting;

but we had plenty of pluck, and came in winners by a length. Of course

we were the favourites--the "Dolphins" were all but one married--and

hearty were the congratulations with which we were greeted on landing.

Clara Phillips' eyes had a most dangerous light in them, as she shook

hands with our noble captain, who was in a terrible hurry, however, to

get away, and hunting every where for "that d----d Dawson," who had

promised to have Bill Thomas in readiness with "the lush." So I was

compelled to stay with her and give an account of the race, which she

perfectly understood, and be soundly scolded by the prettiest lips in

the world for my awkwardness, which she declared she never could have

forgiven if it had lost the race.

"You will come to the ball, then, Mr Hawthorne?"

"Am I not to dance with you?"

"Yes, if you behave well, and don't tease Mr Sydney Dawson: he is a

great favourite of mine, and took great care of me this morning at

breakfast."

"Well, then, for your sake, Miss Phillips, I will be particularly civil

to him; but I assure you, Dawson is like the fox that took a pride in

being hunted; he considers our persecution of him as the strongest

evidence of his own superiority; and if you seriously undertake to

patronize him he will become positively unbearable."

The regatta over, we retired to make a hurried dinner, and to dress for

the ball. This, with some of our party, was a serious business.

Willingham and Dawson were going in fancy dresses. The former was an

admirable personification of Dick Turpin, standing upwards of six feet,

and broadly built, and becoming his picturesque costume as if it were

his everyday suit, he strutted before Mrs Jenkins's best glass, which

Hanmer charitably gave up for his accommodation, with a pardonable

vanity. Dawson had got a lancer's uniform from his London tailor; but

how to get into it was a puzzle; it was delightful to see his attempts

to unravel the gorgeous mysteries which were occupying every available

spot in his dingy bedroom. The shako was the main stumbling-block. Being

unfortunately rather small, it was no easy matter to keep it on his head

at all; and how to dispose of the cap-lines was beyond our united

wisdom. "Go without it, man," said Branling: "people don't want hats in

a ballroom. You can never dance with that thing on your head."

"Oh, but the head-dress is always worn at a fancy-ball, you know, and I

can take it off if I like to dance."

At last, the idea struck us of employing the five or six yards of gold

cord that had so puzzled us, in securing shako and plume in a

perpendicular position. This at length accomplished, by dint of keeping

himself scrupulously upright, Mr Sydney Dawson majestically walked down

stairs.

CHAPTER III.

Now, there happened to be at that time residing in Glyndewi an old lady,

"of the name and cousinage" of Phillips, who, though an old maid, was

one of those unhappily rare individuals who do not think it necessary to

rail against those amusements which they are no longer in a situation to

enjoy. She was neither as young, nor as rich, nor as light-hearted, as

she had been; but it was difficult to imagine that she could ever have

been more truly cheerful and happy than she seemed now. So, instead of

cutting short every sally of youthful spirits, and every dream of

youthful happiness, by sagacious hints of cares and troubles to come,

she rather lent her aid to further every innocent enjoyment among her

younger friends; feeling, as she said, that the only pity was, that

young hearts grew old so soon. The consequence was, that instead of

exacting a forced deference from her many nephews and nieces, (so are

first cousins' children called in Wales,) she was really loved and

esteemed by them all, and while she never wished to deprive them of an

hour's enjoyment, they would willingly give up a pleasant party at any

time to spend an evening with the old lady, and enliven her solitude

with the sounds she best loved--the music of youthful voices.

All among her acquaintance, therefore, who were going to the ball in

fancy costume, had promised to call upon her, whether in or out of their

way, to "show themselves," willing to make her a partaker, as far as

they could, of the amusement of the evening. Captain Phillips had asked

us if we would oblige him, and gratify a kind old woman, by allowing him

to introduce us in our fancy dresses. I had none, and therefore did not

form part of the exhibition; but Dick Turpin and the cornet of lancers,

with Branling in a full hunting costume, (which always formed part of

his travelling baggage,) walked some fifty yards to the old lady's

lodgings. Mr Plympton, always polite, accepted Captain Phillips's

invitation to be introduced at the same time. Now Mr Plympton, as was

before recorded, was a remarkably dapper personage; wore hair powder, a

formidably tall and stiff white "choker," and upon all occasions of

ceremony, black shorts and silks, with gold buckles. Remarkably upright

and somewhat pompous in his gait, and abominating the free-and-easy

manners of the modern school, his bow would have graced the court of

Versailles, and his step was a subdued minuet. Equipped with somewhat

more than his wonted care, the rev. junior bursar of Oriel was

introduced into Mrs Phillips's little drawing-room, accompanying, and

strongly contrasting with, three gentlemen in scarlet and gold.

Hurriedly did the good old lady seize her spectacles, and rising to

receive her guests with a delighted curtsy, scan curiously for a few

moments Turpin's athletic proportions, and the fox-hunter's

close-fitting leathers and tops. As for Dawson, he stood like the

clear-complexioned and magnificently-whiskered officer, who silently

invites the stranger to enter the doors of Madame Tussaud's wax

exhibition; not daring to bow for fear of losing his beloved shako, but

turning his head from side to side as slowly, and far less naturally,

than the waxen gentleman aforementioned. All, in their several ways,

were worthy of admiration, and all did she seem to admire; but it was

when her eye rested at last on the less showy, but equally

characteristic figure in black, who stood bowing his acknowledgments of

the honour of the interview, with an _empressement_ which fully made up

for Dawson's forced _hauteur_--that her whole countenance glistened with

intense appreciation of the joke, and the very spectacles danced with

glee. Again did she make the stranger her most gracious curtsy; again

did Mr Plympton, as strongly as a bow could do it, declare how entirely

he was at her service: he essayed to speak, but before a word escaped

his lips, the old lady fairly burst out into a hearty laugh, clapped her

hands, and shouted to his astonished ears, "Capital, capital! do it

again! oh, do it again!" For a moment the consternation depicted upon Mr

Plympton's countenance at this remarkable reception, extended to the

whole of his companions; but the extraordinary sounds which proceeded

from Captain Phillips, in the vain attempt to stifle the laugh that was

nearly choking him, were too much for the gravity of even the

polite Mr Dawson; and it was amidst the violent application of

pocket-handkerchiefs in all possible ways, that the captain stepped

forward with the somewhat tardy announcement, "My dear aunt, allow me to

present the Rev. Mr Plympton, Fellow and Tutor of Oriel College." This

was accompanied by a wink and an attempt at a frown, intended to convey

the strongest reprobation of the old lady's proceedings; but which, upon

the features of the good captain, whose risible muscles were still

rebellious, had any thing but a serious effect. "Indeed!" said she,

curtsying yet more profoundly in return for another bow. "How do you do,

sir? Oh, he is beautiful, isn't he?" half-aside to Willingham, who was

swallowing as much as he could of the butt of his whip. Poor Mr Plympton

looked aghast at the compliment. Branling fairly turned his back, and

burst from the room, nearly upsetting Hanmer and myself; who, having

waited below some time for our party to join us, had made our way

upstairs to ascertain the cause of the unusual noises which reached us

from the open door of the drawing-room. Dawson was shaking with reckless

disregard of the safety of his head-dress, and the captain in an agony

between his natural relish for a joke and his real good breeding. "Aunt

Martha, this is a clergyman, a friend of Mr Hanmer's, who is on a visit

here, and whom I introduce to you, because I know you will like him." Mr

Plympton commenced a fresh series of bows, in which there was, perhaps,

less gallantry and more dignity than usual, looking all the time as

comfortable as a gentleman might do who was debating with himself

whether the probabilities, as regarded the old lady's next movements,

lay on the side of kissing or scratching. Mrs Martha Phillips herself

commenced an incoherent apology about "expecting to see four young

gentlemen in fancy dresses;" and Hanmer and the captain tried all they

could to laugh off a _contretemps_, which to explain was impossible.

What the old lady took Mr Plympton for, and what Mr Plympton thought of

her, were questions which, so far as I know, no one ventured to ask. He

left Glyndewi the next morning, but the joke, after furnishing us with a

never-failing fund of ludicrous reminiscence for the rest of our stay,

followed him to the Oriel common-room, and was an era in the dulness of

that respectable symposium.

Dancing had begun in good earnest when we arrived at the ballroom. There

was the usual motley assemblage of costumes of all nations under the

sun, and some which the sun, when he put down the impudence of the

wax-lights upon his return the next morning, must have marvelled to

behold. Childish as it may be called, a fancy ball is certainly, for the

first half-hour at all events, an amusing scene. Willingham and myself

stood a little inside the doorway for some moments, he enjoying the

admiring glances which his tine figure and picturesque costume were well

calculated to call forth, and I vainly endeavouring to make out Clara's

figure amidst the gay dresses, and well-grown proportions, of the pretty

Cambrians who flitted past. Sounds of expostulation and entreaty,

mingled with a laugh which we knew to be Branling's, in the passage

outside, disturbed both our meditations, and at last induced me to turn

my eyes unwillingly to the open door. Branling was leaning against it in

a fit of uncontrollable mirth, and beckoned us earnestly to join him.

Outside stood Dawson, stamping with vexation, and endeavouring to undo

the complex machinery which had hitherto secured his shako in an erect

position. He was in the unfortunate predicament of Dr S----'s

candelabrum, which, presented to him as a testimony of respect from his

grateful pupils, was found by many feet too large to be introduced into

any room in the Dr's comparatively humble habitation, and stood for some

time in the manufacturer's show-room in testimony of the fact, that

public acknowledgments of merit are _sometimes_ made on too large a

scale. Architects who give measurements for ordinary doorways, do not

contemplate such emergencies as testimonial candelabrums or irremoveable

caps and plumes: and the door of the Glyndewi ballroom had no notion of

accommodating a lancer in full dress who could not even be civil enough

to take off his hat. So there stood our friend, impatient to display his

uniform, and unwilling to lessen the effect of his first appearance by

doffing so important a part of his costume: to get through the door, in

the rigid inflexibility of head and neck which he had hitherto

maintained, was a manifest impossibility: Branling had suggested his

staying outside, and he would undertake to bring people to look at him:

but Dawson, for some unaccountable reason, was usually suspicious of

advice from that quarter; so he "stooped to conquer" and lost all. The

shako tumbled from its precarious perch, and hung ignobly suspended by

the cap-lines. A lancer with a pair of grey spectacles, and a shako

hanging round his neck, would have been a very fancy dress indeed: so he

was endeavouring, at the risk of choking himself, to disentangle, by

main force, the complication of knots which we had woven with some dim

hope of the result. In vain did we exhort him to take it patiently, and

remind him how preposterous it was to expect, that what had taken our

united ingenuity half an hour to arrange "to please him," could be

undone in a minute. "Cut the cursed things, can't you?" implored he. No

one had a knife. "I do believe Branling, you are tying that knot

tighter: I had much rather not have your assistance." Branling protested

his innocence. At last we did release him, and he entered the room with

a look most appropriately crest-fallen, shako in hard, solacing himself

by displaying its glories as well as could be effected by judicious

changes of its position.

I soon found Clara, looking more radiantly beautiful than ever I had

seen her, in a sweet dress of Stuart tartan. I had to make my apologies,

which were most sincerely penitent ones, for not being in time to claim

my privilege of dancing the first quadrille with her. She smiled at my

evident earnestness, and good-humouredly added, that the next would be a

much more pleasant dance, as the room was now beginning to fill. It was

a pleasant dance as she said: and the waltz that followed still more

delightful: and then Clara, with a blush and a laugh, declined my

pressing entreaties until after supper at all events. I refused her

good-natured offer of an introduction to "that pretty girl in blue" or

any other among the stars of the night: and sat down, or leant against

the wall, almost unconsciously watching her light step, and sternly

resisting all attempts on the part of my acquaintances to persuade me

to dance again. Of course all the dancing characters among our party

were Clara's partners in succession; and both Gordon and Dawson, who

came to ask what had put me into the sulks, were loud in their encomiums

on her beauty and fascination; even Branling, no very devoted admirer of

the sex, (he saw too much of them, he said, having four presentable

sisters,) allowed that she was "the right sort of girl;" but it was not

until I saw her stand up with Willingham, and marked his evident

admiration of her, and heard the remarks freely made around me, that

they were the handsomest couple in the room, that I felt a twinge of

what I would hardly allow to myself was jealousy: when, however, after

the dance, they passed me in laughing conversation, evidently in high

good humour with each other, and too much occupied to notice any one

else, I began to wonder I had never before found out what a conceited

puppy Willingham was, and set down poor Clara as an arrant flirt. But I

was in a variable mood, it seemed, and a feather--or, what some may say

is even lighter, a woman's word--was enough to turn me. So when I found

myself, by some irresistible attraction, drawn next to her again at

supper, and heard her sweet voice, and saw what I interpreted into a

smile of welcome, as she made room for me beside her, I forgave her all

past offences, and was perfectly happy for the next hour: nay, even

condescended to challenge Willingham to a glass of _soi-disant_

champagne. The Tiger, who was, according to annual custom, displaying

the tarnished uniform of the 3d Madras N. I., and illustrating his

tremendous stories of the siege of Overabad, or some such place, by

attacks on all the edibles in his neighbourhood, gave me a look of

intelligence as he requested I would "do him the honour," and shook his

whiskers with some meaning which I did not think it necessary to enquire

into. What was it to him if I chose to confine my attentions to my

undoubtedly pretty neighbour? No one could dispute my taste, at all

events; for Clara Phillips was a universal favourite, though I had

remarked that none of the numerous "eligible young men" in the room

appeared about her in the character of a dangler. She was engaged to

Willingham for the waltz next after supper, and I felt queerish again,

till she willingly agreed to dance the next set with me, on condition

that I would oblige her so far as to ask a friend of hers to be my

partner in the mean time. "She is a very nice girl, Mr. Hawthorne,

though, perhaps, not one of the _belles_ of the room, and has danced but

twice this evening, and it will be so kind in you to ask her--only don't

do it upon my introduction, but let Major Jones introduce you as if at

your own request." Let no one say that vanity, jealousy, and all those

pretty arts by which woman wrongs her better nature, are the rank growth

necessarily engendered by the vitiated air of a ballroom; rooted on the

same soil, warmed by the same sunshine, fed by the same shower, one

plant shall bear the antidote and one the poison: one kind and gentle

nature shall find exercise for all its sweetest qualities in those very

scenes which, in another, shall foster nothing but heartless coquetry or

unfeminine display. Never did Clara seem so lovely in mind and person as

when she drew upon her own attractions to give pleasure to her less

gifted friend; and I suppose, I must have thrown into the tone of my

reply something of what I felt; for she blushed, uttered a hasty "I

thank you," and told Willingham it was time to take their places. I

sought and obtained the introduction, and endeavoured, for Clara's sake,

to be an agreeable partner to the quiet little girl beside me. One

subject of conversation, at all events, we hit upon, where we seemed

both at home; and if I felt some hesitation in saying all I thought of

Clara, my companion had none, but told me how much every body loved her,

and how much she deserved to be loved. It was really so much easier to

draw my fair partner out on this point than any other that I excused

myself for being so eager a listener; and, when we parted, to show my

gratitude in what I conceived the most agreeable way, I begged

permission to introduce Mr. Sydney Dawson, and thus provided her with

what, I dare say, she considered a most enviable partner. I had told

Dawson she was a very clever girl; (he was fond of what he called

"talented women," and had a delusive notion that he was himself a

genius:) he had the impertinence to tell me afterwards he found her

rather stupid; I ought, perhaps, to have given him the key-note. During

the dance which followed, I remember I was silent and _distrait_; and

when it was over, and Clara told me she was positively engaged for more

sets than she should dance again, I left the ballroom, and wandered

feverishly along the quay to our lodgings. I remember persuading myself,

by a syllogistic process, that I was not in love, and dreaming that I

was anxiously reading the class-list, in which it seemed unaccountable

that my name should be omitted, till I discovered, on a second perusal,

that just about the centre of the first class, where "Hawthorne,

Franciscus, e. Coll--" ought to have come in, stood in large type the

name of "CLARA PHILLIPS."

The races, which occupied the morning of the next day, were as stupid as

country races usually are, except that the Welshmen had rather more

noise about it. The guttural shouts and yells from the throats of

tenants and other dependents, as the "mishtur's" horse won or lost, and

the extraordinary terms in which they endeavoured to encourage the

riders, were amusing even to a stranger, though one lost the point of

the various sallies which kept the course in one continued roar. As to

the running, every body--that is, all the sporting world--knew perfectly

well, long before the horses started, which was to win; that appearing

to be the result of some private arrangement between the parties

interested, while the "racing" was for the benefit of the strangers and

the ladies. Those of the latter who had fathers, or brothers, or, above

all, lovers, among the knowing ones, won divers pairs of gloves on the

occasion, while those who were not so fortunate, lost them.

I fancied that Clara was not in her usual spirits on the race-course,

and she pleaded a headach as an excuse to her sister for ordering the

carriage to drive home long before the "sport" was over. If I had

thought the said sport stupid before, it did not improve in attraction

after her departure; and, when the jumping in sacks, and climbing up

poles, and other callisthenic exercises began, feeling a growing disgust

for "things in general," I resisted the invitation of a mamma and three

daughters, to join themselves and Mr Dawson in masticating some

sandwiches which looked very much like "relics of joy" from last night's

supper, and sauntered home, and sat an hour over a cigar and a chapter

of ethics. As the clock struck five, remembering that the Ordinary hour

was six, I called at the Phillips' lodgings to enquire for Clara. She

was out walking with her sister; so I returned to dress in a placid

frame of mind, confident that I should meet her at dinner.

For it was an Ordinary for ladies as well as gentlemen. A jovial Welsh

baronet sat at the head of the table, with the two ladies of highest

"consideration"--the county member's wife and the would-have-been

member's daughter--on his right and left; nobody thought of politics at

the Glyndewi regatta. Clara was there; but she was escorted into the

room by some odious man, who, in virtue of having been made high-sheriff

by mistake, sat next Miss Anti-reform on the chairman's left. The

natives were civil enough to marshal us pretty high up by right of

strangership, but still I was barely near enough to drink wine with her.

If a man wants a good dinner, a hearty laugh, an opportunity of singing

songs and speech-making, and can put up with indifferent wine, let him

go to the race Ordinary at Glyndewi next year, if it still be among the

things which time has spared. There was nothing like stiffness or

formality: people came there for amusement, and they knew that the only

way to get it was to make it for themselves. There seemed to be fun

enough for half-a-dozen of the common run of such dinners, even while

the ladies remained. It was, as Hanmer called it, an _extra_-ordinary.

But it was when the ladies had retired, and Hanmer and a few of the

"steady ones" had followed them, and those who remained closed up around

the chairman, and cigars and genuine whisky began to supersede the

questionable port and sherry, and the "Vice" requested permission to

call on a gentleman for a song, that we began to fancy ourselves within

the walls of some hitherto unknown college, where the "levelling system"

had mixed up fellows and under-graduates in one common supper-party, and

the portly principal himself rejoiced in the office of "arbiter

bibendi." Shall I confess it? I forgot even Clara in the uproarious

mirth that followed. Two of the young Phillipses were admirable singers,

and drew forth the hearty applause of the whole company. We got Dawson

to make a speech, in which he waxed poetical touching the "flowers of

Cambria," and drew down thunders of applause by a Latin quotation, which

every one took that means of showing that they understood. I obtained

almost unconsciously an immortal reputation by a species of flattery to

which the Welsh are most open. I had learnt, after no little

application, a Welsh toast--a happy specimen of the language; it was but

three words, but they were truly cabalistic. No sooner had I, after a

"neat and appropriate" preface, uttered my triple Shibboleth, (it ended

in _rag_, and signified "Wales, Welshmen, and Welshwomen,") than the

whole party rose, and cheered at me till I felt positively modest. My

pronunciation, I believe, was perfect, (a woman's lips and an angel's

voice had taught it to me:) and it was indeed the Open Sesame to their

hearts and feelings. I became at once the intimate friend of all who

could get near enough to offer me their houses, their horses, their

dogs--I have no doubt, had I given a hint at the moment, I might have

had any one of their daughters. "Would I come and pay a visit at

Abergwrnant before I left the neighbourhood? Only twenty-five miles, and

a coach from B----!" "Would I, before the shooting began, come to

Craig-y-bwldrwn, and stay over the first fortnight in September?" I

could have quartered myself, and two or three friends, in a dozen places

for a month at a time. And, let me do justice to the warm hospitality of

North Wales--these invitations were renewed in the morning: and were I

ever to visit those shores again, I should have no fear of their having

been yet forgotten.

Captain Phillips had told us, that when we left the table, "the girls"

would have some coffee for us, if not too late; and Willingham and

myself, having taken a turn or two in the moonlight to get rid of the

excitement of the evening, bent our steps in that direction. There were

about as many persons assembled as the little drawing-room would hold,

and Clara, having forgotten her headach, and looking as lovely as ever,

was seated at a wretched piano, endeavouring to accompany herself in her

favourite songs. Willingham and myself stood by, and our repeated

requests for some of those melodies which, unknown to us before, we had

learnt from her singing to admire beyond all the fashionable trash of

the day, were gratified with untiring good-nature. Somehow I thought

that she avoided my eye, and answered my remarks with less than her

usual archness and vivacity. I could bear it on this evening less than

ever; a hair will turn the scale, and I had just been, half ludicrously,

half seriously, affected by Welsh nationality. One cannot help warming

towards a community which are so warm-hearted among themselves. Visions

of I know not what--love and a living, Clara and a cottage--were

floating dreamlike before my eyes, and I felt as if borne along by a

current whose direction might be dangerous, but which it was misery to

resist. Willingham had turned away a minute to hunt for some missing

book, which contained one of his favourites; and, leaning over her with

my finger pointing to the words which she had just been singing, I said

something about there being always a fear in happiness such as I had

lately been enjoying, lest it might not last. For a moment she met my

earnest look, and coloured violently; and then fixing her eyes on the

music before her, she said quickly, "Mr Hawthorne, I thought you had a

higher opinion of me than to make me pretty speeches; I have a great

dislike to them." I began to protest warmly against any intention of

mere compliment, when the return of Willingham with his song prevented

any renewal of the subject. I was annoyed and silent, and detected a

tremor in her voice while she sang the words, and saw her cheek paler

than usual. The instant the song was over, she complained with a smile

of being tired, and without a look at either of us, joined a party who

were noisily recounting the events of the race-course. Nor could I again

that evening obtain a moment's conversation with her. She spoke to me,

indeed, and very kindly; but once only did I catch her eye, when I was

speaking to some one else--the glance was rapidly withdrawn, but it

seemed rather sorrowful than cold.

I was busy with Hanmer the next morning before breakfast, when Dick

Phillips made his appearance, and informed us that the "strangers" had

made up an eleven for the cricket match, and that we were to play at

ten. He was a sort of live circular, dispatched to get all parties in

readiness.

"Oh! I have something for you from Clara," said he to me, as he was

leaving; "the words of a song she promised you, I believe."

I opened the sealed envelope, saw that it was not a song, and left

Hanmer somewhat abruptly. When I was alone, I read the following:--

"DEAR MR HAWTHORNE,--Possibly you may have been told that I have, before

now, done things which people call strange--that is, contrary to some

arbitrary notions which are to supersede our natural sense of right and

wrong. But never, until now, did I follow the dictates of my own

feelings in opposition to conventional rules, with the painful

uncertainty as to the propriety of such a course, which I now feel. And

if I had less confidence than I have in your honour and your kindness,

or less esteem for your character, or less anxiety for your happiness, I

would not write to you now. But I feel, that if you are what I wish to

believe you, it is right that you should be at once undeceived as to my

position. Others should have done it, perhaps--it would have spared me

much. Whether your attentions to me are in sport or earnest, they must

cease. I have no right to listen to such words as yours last night--my

heart and hand are engaged to one, who deserves better from me than the

levity which alone could have placed me in the position from which I

thus painfully extricate myself. For any fault on my part, I thus make

bitter atonement. I wish you health and happiness, and now let this save

us both from further misunderstanding.

"C."

Again and again did I read these words. Not one woman in a hundred would

have ventured on such a step. And for what? to save me from the

mortification of a rejection? It could be nothing else. How easy for a

man of heartless gallantry to have written a cool note in reply,

disclaiming "any aspiration after the honour implied," and placing the

warm-hearted writer in the predicament of having declined attentions

never meant to be serious! But I felt how kindly, how gently, I had been

treated--the worst of it was, I loved her better than ever. I wrote some

incoherent words in reply, sufficiently expressive of my bitter

disappointment, and my admiration of her conduct; and then I felt "that

my occupation was gone." She whom I had so loved to look upon, I

trembled now to see. I had no mind to break my heart; but I felt that

time and change were necessary to prevent it. Above all, Glyndewi was no

place for me to forget _her_ in.

In the midst of my painful reflections on all the happy hours of the

past week, Gordon and Willingham broke in upon me with high matter for

consultation relative to the match, In vain did I plead sudden illness,

and inability to play: they declared it would knock the whole thing on

the head, for Hanmer would be sure to turn sulky, and there was an end

of the eleven; and they looked so really chagrined at my continued

refusals, that at length I conquered my selfishness, (I had had a lesson

in that,) and, though really feeling indisposed for any exertion, went

down with them to the ground. I was in momentary dread of seeing Clara

arrive, (for all the world was to be there,) and felt nervous and

low-spirited. The strangers' eleven was a better one than we expected,

and they put our men out pretty fast. Hanmer got most unfortunately run

out after a splendid hit, and begged me to go in and "do something." I

took my place mechanically, and lost my wicket to the first ball. We

made a wretched score, and the strangers went in exultingly. In spite of

Hanmer's steady bowling, they got runs pretty fast; and an easy catch

came into my hands just as Clara appeared on the ground, and I lost all

consciousness of what I was about. Again the same opportunity offered,

and again my eyes were wandering among the tents. Hanmer got annoyed,

and said something not over civil: I vas vexed myself that my

carelessness should be the cause of disappointment twice, and yet more

than half-inclined to quarrel with Branling, whom I overheard muttering

about my "cursed awkwardness." We were left in a fearful minority at the

close of the first innings, when we retired to dinner. The Glyndewi

party and their friends were evidently disappointed. I tried to avoid

Clara; but could not keep far from her. At last she came up with one of

her brothers, spoke and shook hands with me, said that her brother had

told her I was not well, and that she feared I ought not to have played

at all. "I wish you could have beat them, Mr Hawthorne--I had bet that

you would; perhaps you will feel better after dinner, those kind of

headachs soon wear off," she added with a smile and a kind look, which I

understood as she meant it. I walked into the tent where we were to

dine: I sat next a little man on the opposite side, an Englishman, one

of their best players, as active as a monkey, who had caught out three

of our men in succession. He talked big about his play, criticised

Willingham's batting, which was really pretty, and ended by discussing

Clara Phillips, who was, he said, "a demned fine girl, but too much of

her." I disliked his flippancy before, but now my disgust to him was

insuperable. I asked the odds against us, and took them freely. There

was champagne before me, and I drank it in tumblers. I did what even in

my under-graduate days was rarely my habit--I drank till I was

considerably excited. Hanmer saw it, and got the match resumed at once

to save me, as he afterwards said, "from making a fool of myself." I

insisted, in spite of his advice "to cool myself," upon going in first.

My flippant acquaintance of the dinner-table stood _point_, and I knew,

if I could but see the ball, and not see more than one, that I could

occasionally "hit square" to some purpose. I had the luck to catch the

first ball just on the rise, and it caught my friend _point_ off his

legs as if he had been shot. He limped off the ground, and we were

troubled with him no more. I hit as I never did before, or shall again.

At first I played wild; but as I got cool, and my sight became steady, I

felt quite at home. The bowlers got tired, and Dick Phillips, who had no

science, but the strength of a unicorn, was in with me half-an-hour,

slashing in all directions. It short, the tide turned, and the match

ended in our favour.

I was quite sober, and free from all excitement, when I joined Clara,

for the last time after the game was over. "I am so glad you played so

well," said she, "if you are but as successful at Oxford as you have

been at the boat-race and the cricket, you will have no reason to be

disappointed. Your career here has been one course of victory." "Not

altogether, Miss Phillips: the prize I shall leave behind me when I quit

Glyndewi to-morrow, is worth more than all that I can gain." "Mr

Hawthorne," said she kindly, "one victory is in your own power, and you

will soon gain it, and be happy--the victory over yourself."

I made some excuse to Hanmer about letters from home, to account for my

sudden departure. How the party got on after I left them, and what was

the final result of our "reading," is no part of my tale; but I fear the

reader will search the class-lists of 18-- in vain for the names of Mr

Hanmer's pupils.

HAWTHORNE.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: Fact.]

CHAPTERS OF TURKISH HISTORY.

No. X.

THE SECOND SIEGE OF VIENNA.

The Ottoman empire, exhausted by its strenuous and long-continued

efforts in the death-struggle of Candia, had need of peace and repose to

recruit its resources; but the calm was not of long duration. A fresh

complication of interests was now arising in the north, which, by

involving the Porte in the stormy politics of Poland and Russia, led to

consequences little foreseen at the time, and which, even at the present

day are far from having reached their final accomplishment. Since the

ill-judged and unfortunate invasion by Sultan Osman II., in 1620 the

good understanding between Poland and the Porte had continued

undisturbed, save by the occasional inroads of the Crim Tartars on the

one side, and the Cossacks of the Dniepr on the other, which neither

government was able entirely to restrain. But the oppression to which

the Polish nobles attempted to subject their Cossack _allies_, whom they

pretended to regard as serfs and vassals, was intolerable to these

freeborn sons of the steppe; and an universal revolt at length broke

out, which was the beginning of the evil days of Poland. For nearly

twenty years, under the feeble rule of John Casimer, the country was

desolated with sanguinary civil wars; the Czar Alexis Mikhailowitz,

eager to regain the rich provinces lost by Russia during the reign of

his father, at length appeared in the field as the protector of the

Cossacks; and, in 1656, the greater part of their body, with the Ataman

Bogdan Khmielnicki at their head, formally transferred their allegiance

to the Russian sceptre. This fatal blow, which in effect turned the

balance of power, so long fluctuating between Poland and Russia, in

favour of the latter, failed, however, to teach moderation to the Polish

aristocracy; and the remainder of the Cossacks, who still continued in

their ancient seats under the Ataman Doroszenko, finding themselves

menaced by a fresh attack, embraced the resolution of "placing

themselves under the shadow of the horsetails," by becoming the

voluntary vassals of the Porte, of which they had so long been the

inveterate enemies. In spite of the violent reclamations of the Polish

envoy Wizocki, the offer was at once accepted, and a mace and kaftan of

honour sent to the ataman as ensigns of investiture, while the Poles

were warned to desist from hostilities against the subjects of the

sultan. The refusal to accede to this requisition produced an instant

declaration of war, addressed in an autograph letter from Kiuprili to

the grand chancellor of Poland, and followed up, in the spring of 1672,

by the march of an army of 100,000 men for Podolia. The sultan himself

took the field for the first time, attended by Kiuprili and the other

vizirs of the divan, and carrying with him his court and harem, and the

whole host, after a march of four months from Adrianople, crossed the

Dniester in the first days of August.

The distracted state of Poland, where the helpless Michael Coribut

Wiecnowicki bore but the empty title of king, precluded the possibility

of even an attempt at resistance, and the grand marshal of the kingdom,

the heroic John Sobieski, who, with only 6000 men, had held his ground

against the Cossacks, Turks, and Tartars, through the preceding winter,

was compelled to withdraw from Podolia. The whole province was speedily

overrun; the fortresses of Kaminiec and Leopol were yielded almost

without defence; and the king, terrified at the progress of the

invaders, sued for peace, which was signed September 18, 1672, in the

Turkish camp at Buczacz. Kaminiec, Podolia, and the Cossack territory,

were by this act ceded to the Porte, besides an annual tribute from

Poland of 220,000 ducats; and Mohammed, having caused proclamation to be

made by the criers that "pardon for his offences had been granted to

the rebel _kral_ of the _Leh_,"[B] (Poles,) returned in triumph to

Adrianople, leaving his army in winter quarters on the Danube.

The Diet, however, indignantly refused either to ratify the treaty or

pay the tribute; and hostilities were resumed the next year with

increased inveteracy on both sides. The sultan accompanied his army only

to the Danube, where he remained engrossed with the pleasures of the

chase at Babataghi; while Sobieski, who had accommodated for the time

his differences with his colleague and rival Pac, hetman of Lithuania,

and was at the head of 50,000 men, boldly anticipated the tardy

movements of the Turks, who were advancing in several separate _corps

d'armee_, by crossing the Dniester early in October. He was forthwith

joined by Stephen, waiwode of Moldavia, with great part of the Moldavian

and Wallachian troops, who unexpectedly deserted the standards of the

crescent; and, after several partial encounters, a general engagement

took place, November 11, 1673, between the Polish army and the advanced

divisions of the Ottomans under the serasker Hussein, pasha of

Silistria, who lay in an intrenched camp on the heights near Choczim. A

heavy fall of snow during the night, combined with a piercing north wind

had benumbed the frames of the Janissaries, accustomed to the genial

warmth of a southern climate; and the enthusiastic valour of the Poles,

stimulated by the exhortations and example of their chief, made their

onset irresistible. The Turkish army was almost annihilated: 25,000 men,

with numerous begs and pashas, remained on the field of battle, or

perished in the Dniester from the breaking of the bridge: all their

cannon and standards became trophies to the victors: and the green

banner of the serasker was sent to Rome by Sobieski, in the belief that

it was the _Sandjak-shereef_, or sacred standard of the Prophet--the

oriflamme of the Ottoman empire. Never had a defeat nearly so

disastrous, with the single exception of that of St. Gotthard, ten years

before, befallen the Turkish arms in Europe; and the other corps, under

the command of the grand-vizir and of his brother-in-law, Kaplan-pasha

of Aleppo, which were marching to the support of Hussein, fell back in

dismay to their former, ground on the right bank of the Danube. The

Poles, however, made no further use of their triumph than to ravage

Moldavia, and the death of the king, on the same day with the victory at

Choczim, recalled Sobieski to Warsaw, in order to become a candidate for

the vacant crown. On his election by the Diet, in May 1674, he made

overtures for peace to the Porte, but they were rejected, and the

contest continued during several years, without any notable achievement

on either side, the war being unpopular with the Turkish soldiery; while

the civil dissensions of his kingdom, with his consequent inferiority of

numbers, kept Sobieski generally on the defensive. In his intrenched

camp at Zurawno, with only 15,000 men, he had for twenty days kept at

bay 100,000 Turks under the serasker Ibrahim, surnamed Shaitan or _the

devil_, when both sides, weary of the fruitless struggle, agreed upon a

conference, and peace was signed October 27, 1676. The humiliating

demand of tribute was no longer insisted upon; but Kaminiec, Podolia,

and great part of the Ukraine, were left in possession of the Turks,

whose stubborn perseverance thus succeeded, as on many occasions, in

gaining nearly every object for which the war had been undertaken.

Before the news, however, of the pacification with Poland had reached

Constantinople, Ahmed-Kiuprili had closed his glorious career. He had

long suffered from dropsy, the same disease which had proved fatal to

his father, and the effects of which were in his case, aggravated by too

free an indulgence in wine, to which, after his return from Candia, he

is said to have become greatly addicted. He had accompanied the sultan,

who had for many years remained absent from his capital, on a visit,

during the summer months, to Constantinople, but, on the return to

Adrianople, he was compelled, by increasing sickness, to halt on the

banks of the Erkench, between Chorlu and Demotika, where he breathed

his last in a _chitlik_, or farm-house, called Kara-Bovir, October 30,

at the age of forty-seven, after having administered the affairs of the

empire for a few days more than fifteen years. His corpse was carried

back to Constantinople, and laid without pomp in the mausoleum erected

by his father, amid the lamentations of the people, rarely poured forth

over the tomb of a deceased grand vizir. The character of this great

minister has been made the theme of unmeasured panegyrics by the Turkish

historians; and Von Hammer-Purgstall (in his _History of the Ottoman

Empire_) has given us a long and elaborate parallel between the life and

deeds of Ahmed Kiuprili and of the celebrated vizir of Soliman the

Magnificent and his two successors, Mohammed-Pasha Sokolli; but we

prefer to quote the impartial and unadorned portrait drawn by his

contemporary Rycaut:--"He was, in person, (for I have seen him often,

and knew him well,) of a middle stature, of a black beard, and brown

complexion;[C] something short-sighted, which caused him to knit his

brows, and pore very intently when any strange person entered the

presence; he was inclining to be fat, and grew corpulent towards his

latter days. If we consider his age when he first took upon him this

important charge, the enemies his father had created him, the

contentions he had with the Valideh-sultana or queen-mother, and the

arts he had used to reconcile the affections of these great personages,

and conserve himself in the unalterable esteem of his sovereign to the

last hour of his death, there is none but must judge him to have

deserved the character of a most prudent and politic person. If we

consider how few were put to death, and what inconsiderable mutinies or

rebellions happened in any part of the empire during his government, it

will afford us a clear evidence and proof of his greatness and

moderation beyond the example of former times: for certainly he was not

a person who delighted in blood, and in that respect far different from

the temper of his father; he was generous, and free from avarice--a rare

virtue in a Turk! He was educated in the law, and therefore greatly

addicted to all the formalities of it, and in the administration of

justice very punctual and severe: and as to his behaviour towards the

neighbouring princes, there may, I believe, be fewer examples of his

breach of faith, than what his predecessors have given in a shorter time

of rule. In his wars abroad he was successful, having upon every

expedition enlarged the bounds of the empire: he overcame Neuhausel,

with a considerable part of Hungary, he concluded the long war with

Venice by an entire and total subjugation of the Island of Candia,

having subdued that impregnable fortress, which by the rest of the world

was considered invincible; and he won Kemenitz (Kaminiec,) the key of

Poland, where the Turks had been frequently baffled, and laid Ukraine to

the empire. If we measure his triumphs, rather than count his years,

though he might seem to have lived but little to his prince and people,

yet certainly to himself he could not die more seasonably, nor in a

greater height and eminency of glory."

The deceased vizir left no children: and the sultan is said to have

offered the seals, in the first instance, as if the office had become in

fact hereditary in the family, to Mustapha, another son of

Mohammed-Kiuprili, a man of retired and studious habits, who had the

philosophy to decline the onerous dignity.[D] However this may have

been, (for the story appears to rest on somewhat doubtful authority,)

within seven days of the death of Ahmed, the vizirat had been conferred

on Kara-Mustapha Pasha, who then held the office of kaimakam, and had

for several years been distinguished by the special favour and

confidence of the sultan. The new minister was connected by the ties

both of marriage and adoption with the house of Kiuprili. His father

Oroudj, a spahi, holding land at Merzifoun, (a town and district in

Anatolia contiguous to Kiupri,) had fallen at the siege of Bagdad, under

Sultan Mourad-Ghazi in 1638: and the orphan had been educated in the

household of Mohammed-Kiuprili as the companion and adopted brother of

his son Ahmed, one of whose sisters he in due time received in marriage.

The elevation of his patron to the highest dignity of the empire, of

course opened to Kara-Mustapha the road to fortune and preferment--from

his first post of deputy to the _meer-akhor_, or master of the horse, he

was promoted to the rank of pasha of two tails--and after holding the

governments successively of Silistria and Diarbekr was nominated

capitan-pasha in 1662 by his brother-in-law Ahmed; but exchanged that

appointment in the following year for the office of kaimakam, in which

capacity he was left in charge of the capital on the departure of the

vizir to the army in Hungary. His duties in this situation, as

lieutenant of the grand-vizir during his absence, gave him constant

access to the presence of the sultan: and being (as he is described by

the contemporary writer above quoted) "a wise and experienced person, of

a smooth behaviour, and a great courtier," he so well improved the

opportunities thus afforded him, as to obtain a place in the monarch's

favour second only to that of Kiuprili himself. This excessive

partiality was, however, scarcely justified by the good qualities of the

favourite; for though the abilities of Kara-Mustapha were above

mediocrity, his avarice was so extreme as to lay him open to the

suspicion of corruption: and his sanguinary cruelty, when holding a

command in Poland in the campaign of 1674, drew down on him the severe

reprobation of his illustrious brother in-law. The predilection of the

sultan for his society continued, however, unabated:--and during the

visit of the court to Constantinople in 1675, he was still further

exalted by becoming, at least in name, son-in-law to his sovereign,

being affianced to the Sultana Khadidjeh, then only three years old. The

fetes of the betrothal, which were celebrated at the same time as those

for the circumcision of the heir-apparent, (afterwards Mustapha II.,)

were unrivalled for splendour in a reign distinguished for

magnificence:--and on the death of Ahmed-Kiuprili in the following year,

this fortunate adventurer found little difficulty in stepping, as we

have seen, into the vacated place.

The first cares of the new vizir were on the side of the newly acquired

frontier in the Ukraine; for, though all claim to that part of the

Cossack territory had been expressly resigned by Poland at the treaty of

Durawno, the Czar of Muscovy had never ceased to assert his pretensions

to the whole Ukraine, in virtue of the convention of 1656 with

Khmielnicki; and during the Polish campaign of 1674, his troops on the

border, under a general named Romanodoffski, had several times come into

collision with the Turks--an era deserving notice as the first hostile

encounter between these two great antagonist powers. The defection of

Doroszenko, who had gone over to the Russians at the end of 1676, and

surrendered to them the important fortress of Czehryn, the capital and

key of the Ukraine, and the repulse of the serasker Ibrahim before its

walls in the following year, showed the necessity of vigorous measures:

and, in 1678, the grand vizir in person appeared at the head of a

formidable force in the Ukraine, bringing with him George Khmielnicki,

son of the former ataman, who had long been confined as a state prisoner

in the Seven Towers, but was now released to counteract, by his

hereditary influence with the Cossacks, the adverse agency of

Doroszenko. Czehryn, after a close investment of a month, was carried by

storm, the garrison put to the sword, and the fortifications razed. But

though the war was continued through another campaign, it was obviously

not the interest of the Divan to prolong this remote and unprofitable

contest at a juncture when the state of parties in Hungary bid fair to

present such an opportunity as had never before occurred, for

definitively establishing the supremacy of the Porte over the whole of

that kingdom. Negotiations were accordingly opened on the Dniepr between

the Muscovite leaders and the Khan Mourad-Gherni; and a peace was signed

at Radzin, Feb. 12, 1681, by which the frontiers on both sides were left

unaltered, while the Porte expressly renounced all claim to Kiow and

the Russian Ukraine, which had been in the possession of the Czar since

1656. The ratification of the treaty was brought to Constantinople in

the following September by an envoy, whose gifts of costly arctic furs,

and ivory from the tusks of the walrus, might have unfolded to the Turks

the wide extent of the northern realms ruled by the monarch whom they

even yet regarded only as a tributary of their own vassal the Khan of

the Tartars, and scarcely deigned to admit on equal terms to diplomatic

intercourse.

Though the truce for twenty years, concluded between the Porte and the

Empire after the defeat of Ahmed-Kiuprili at St Gotthard in 1564, had

not yet expired by nearly three years, the political aspect of Hungary

left little doubt that the resumption of hostilities would not be so

long delayed. To understand more clearly the extraordinary complication

of interests of which this country was now the scene, it will, however,

be necessary to take a retrospective glance at its history during the

seventeenth century, after the treaty of Komorn with the Porte, in 1606,

had terminated for the time the warfare of which it had almost

constantly been the theatre since the occupation of Buda by Soliman the

Magnificent in 1541, ad had, in some measure, defined the boundaries of

the two great powers between which it was divided. The Emperors of the

House of Hapsburg, indeed, styled themselves Kings of Hungary, and Diets

were held in their name at Presburg; but the territory actually under

their sway amounted to less than a third of the ancient kingdom,

comprehending only the northern and western districts; while all the

central portion of Hungary Proper, as far as Agria on the north, and the

Raab and the Balaton Lake on the west, was united to the Ottoman Empire,

and formed the pashaliks of Buda and Temeswar, which were regularly

divided into sandjaks and districts, with their due quota of spahis and

timariots, who had been drawn from the Moslem provinces of Turkey, and

held grants of land by tenure of military service. The principality of

Transylvania, (called _Erdel_ by the Turks,) which had been erected by

Soliman in favour of the son of John Zapolya, comprehended nearly

one-fourth of Hungary, and (though its suzerainte was claimed by Austria

in virtue of a reversionary settlement executed by that prince shortly

before his death,) was generally, in effect, dependent on, and tributary

to the Porte, from which its princes, elected by the Diet at

Klaucenburg, received confirmation and investiture, like the waiwodes of

the neighbouring provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia. During the

interval between the death of John Sigismond Zapolya in 1571, and the

election of Michael Abaffi in 1661, not fewer than thirteen princes,

besides nearly as many ephemeral pretenders, had occupied the throne;

and, though at one time the family of Batthori, and, subsequently, that

of Racoczy, established a kind of hereditary claim to election, their

tenure was always precarious; and, on more than one occasion, the prince

was imposed on the states by the Turks or Austrians, without even the

shadow of constitutional forms.

This modified independence of Transylvania, however, often gave its

princes great political importance, during the endless troubles of

Hungary, as the assertors of civil and religions liberty against the

tyranny and bad faith of the Austrian cabinet; which, with unaccountable

infatuation, instead of striving to attach to its rule, by conciliation

and good government, the remnant of the kingdom still subject to its

sceptre, bent all its efforts to destroy the ancient privileges of the

Magyars, and to make the crown formally, as it already was in fact,

hereditary in the imperial family. The extirpation of Protestantism was

another favourite object of Austrian policy: and the cruelties

perpetrated with this view by George Basta and the other imperial

generals at the beginning of the century was such, that a general rising

took place under Stephen Boczkai, then waiwode of Transylvania,

Wallachia, and Moldavia, who extorted from the Emperor Rodolph, in 1607,

the famous _pacification of Vienna_, which was guaranteed by the Porte,

and which secured to the Hungarians full liberty of conscience, as well

as the enjoyment of all their ancient rights. This agreement was soon

violated; but the Protestants again found a protector in a Transylvanian

prince, the celebrated Bethlen-Gabor;[E] who, assuming the royal title,

occupied Presburg and Neuhausel in 1619, formed an alliance with the

Bohemian revolters under Count Thurn, and was narrowly prevented from

forming a junction with them under the walls of Vienna, which, if

effected, would probably have overthrown the dynasty of Hapsburg. He is

said to have entertained the design of uniting all Hungary east of the

Theiss, with Transylvania and Wallachia, into a modern _kingdom of

Dacia_, leaving the west to the Turks as a barrier against Austrian

aggression--but his want of children left his schemes of aggrandizement

without a motive, and at his death in 1630 they all fell to the ground.

The Thirty Years' War procured the Hungarian subjects of Austria a

temporary respite; but Leopold, who was elected king in 1655, and

succeeded his father Ferdinand in the empire three years later,

stimulated by the triumph of his predecessor over the liberties of

Bohemia, resumed with fresh zeal the crusade against the privileges of

the Magyars. Not only was the persecution of the Protestants

recommenced, but the excesses of the ill-paid and licentious German

mercenaries, who were quartered on the country in defiance of the

constitution after the twenty years' truce, under the pretence of

guarding against any fresh attack from the Turks, were carried to such a

height that disaffection became universal even among those who had

hitherto constantly adhered to the Austrian interest, so that (in the

words of a writer[F] of the time,) "they began to contrast their own

condition with that of the Transylvanians, who are not forced to take

the turban but live quietly under the protection of the Turk--while we

(as they say) are exposed to the caprices of a prince under the absolute

dominion of the Jesuits, a far worse sort of people than the Dervishes!"

As early as 1667, a secret communication had been made to the Porte

through the envoy of Abaffi; but Kiuprili, who was then on the point of

departure for Candia, and was unwilling to risk a fresh rupture with the

empire in his absence, gave little encouragement either to these

overtures, or to the more advantageous propositions received in 1670

from Peter Zriny, Ban of Croatia, and previously a famous

partisan-leader against the Moslems; in which the malecontents offered,

as the price of Ottoman aid and protection, to cede to the sultan all

the fortified towns which should be taken by his arms, and to pay an

annual tribute of 30,000 ducats. The conspiracy had, however, become

known at Vienna; and instant measures were taken for seizing Zriny and

his Croatian confederates, Nadasti, Tattenbach, and Christopher

Frangipani, who were all executed in the course of the following year.

The Emperor, now considering Hungary as a conquered country, formally

abolished the dignity of Palatine, and nominated Gaspar Von Ampringham,

grand master of the Teutonic knights, to be viceroy of the kingdom;

while the Protestants were persecuted with unheard-of rigour, and many

of their ministers imprisoned in the fortresses, or sent in chains to

the galleys at Naples.

The confederates of Upper Hungary had been better on their guard: and on

the news of the fate of Zriny and his associates, they forthwith

assembled in arms at Kaschau or Cassovia, and electing Francis Racoczy,

son of the late prince of Transylvania, and son-in-law of Zriny, as

their leader, bade defiance to the Emperor. The civil war continued

several years without decisive success on either side; till on the

death, in 1676, of Racoczy, (who had previously abandoned the popular

cause,) the famous Emeric Tekoeli, then only twenty years of age, was

chosen general. He was the hereditary enemy of the Austrians; his father

Stephen, Count of Kersmark, having been besieged in his castle by the

Imperialists at the time of his death; and while he pressed the Germans

in the field with such vigour as to deprive them of nearly all the

fortified places they still held in Upper Hungary, the negotiation with

the Porte for aid was renewed, and being backed by the diplomatic

influence of France, then at war with the empire, was more favourably

received by Kara-Mustapha than the former advances of the malcontents

had been by his predecessor. The war with Russia, however, prevented the

Turks for the present from interfering with effect, but Abaffi was

authorized to support the insurgents in the mean time, while Leopold,

fearing the total loss of Hungary, summoned a diet at Oedenburg (in

1681) for the redress of grievances, in which most of the ancient

privileges of the kingdom were restored, full liberty of conscience

promised to the Lutherans and Calvinists, and Paul Esterhazy named

Palatine. But these concessions, wrung only by hard necessity from the

Cabinet of Vienna, came now too late. Tekoeli replied to the amnesty

proclaimed by the Emperor, by the publication of a counter-manifesto, in

which were set forth a hundred grievances of the Hungarians; and, having

obtained a great accession of strength by his marriage (June 1682) to

Helen Zriny, the widow of Racoczy, whereby he gained all the adherents

of those two powerful houses, he summoned a rival diet at Cassovia,

where he openly assumed the title of sovereign prince of Upper Hungary,

exercising the prerogatives of royalty, and striking money in his own

name, which bore his effigy on the obverse, and on the reverse the motto

inscribed on his standards--"Pro Deo, Patria, et Libertate."

Though Tekoeli professed to act by the authority of the Porte, from

which he had received a firman of investiture with the usual ensigns of

sovereignty, no formal declaration of war had yet been issued from

Constantinople; and many of the Ulemah protested against such a measure,

at least till the twenty years' truce, concluded in 1664, should have

expired. The aid openly afforded, however, to Tekoeli by Abaffi and the

pasha of Buda, as well as the constant march of large bodies of troops

to the Danube, afforded sufficient indication that an attack would not

be long delayed; and Leopold, disquieted at the prospect of having at

once to contend against his own revolted subjects, and the mighty force

of the Ottoman empire, sent Count Caprara on a mission to

Constantinople, in the hope of averting the storm; while, at the same

time, he made overtures for an alliance with Poland, still smarting

under her losses in the late Turkish war. The mission of Caprara led to

no result, from the exorbitant demands made by the Ottoman ministers on

behalf both of the Porte and its Hungarian allies, which amounted to

little less than a total cession of the country, and a few days after

the arrival of the ambassador, the despatch of the firman to Tekoeli,

and the display of the imperial horsetails in the plain of Daood-Pasha,

showed that the resolution of the Divan was fixed for war. The

negotiation with Poland presented almost equal difficulties, from the

rooted jealousy entertained by the Poles of the ambition of Austria, and

the opposition of the French envoy, De Vitry, who even carried his

intrigues so far as to embark in a plot for the death or dethronement of

the king, and the substitution of the grand marshal Iablonowski. The

firmness of Sobieski, however, whom no minor considerations could blind

to the importance of saving Austria and Hungary from the grasp of the

Osmanli, overcame all these machinations; and the ratification of the

diet was eventually given to a league, offensive and defensive, with

Austria, on March 31, 1683--the same day on which the vast host of the

Ottomans broke up from its cantonments about Adrianople, and directed

its march towards the Danube.

The sons of Naodasti and Zriny, who had been executed ten years before,

were retained as hostages, under the name of chamberlains, in the

imperial household; and it fell to the lot of the former to announce to

Leopold, that the legions of the crescent were pouring down on Hungary.

The cheek of the Emperor blanched at the tidings; for well did he know

that, till the arrival of the Poles, his disposable force amounted to

scarce 35,000 men, under Duke Charles of Lorraine, who could barely make

head against Abaffi and Tekoeli, while so high were the hopes of the

Magyars raised of a speedy and final deliverance from Austrian tyranny,

that a plot is even said to have been laid between Zriny and his sister,

now the wife of Tekoeli, for seizing the person of Leopold in the palace

of Vienna, and giving him up to the Tartars, who had already commenced

their ravages on the frontiers. The sultan meanwhile--the cumbrous

luxury of whose harem and equipages had retarded the march of the

army--had halted at Belgrade, after holding a grand review of his

forces, and placing the standard of the Prophet in the hands of the

vizier, in token of the full powers entrusted to him for the conduct of

the campaign. On the 10th of June, Tekoeli, who had crossed the Danube

to welcome his potent auxiliaries, was received at Essek with royal

magnificence by Kara-Mustapha, who imitated, in the ceremonial observed

on this occasion, the pomp of the reception of John Zapolya by Soliman,

on his march against Vienna in 1529; but after receiving personal

investiture of the royal dignity conferred on him by the sultan, he

returned rapidly to Cassovia, where he had fixed his headquarters. The

khan of the Tartars had already arrived at Stuhlweissenburg, and was

speedily joined by the vizir and the main Turkish army, which, passing

the Danube to the number of 140,000 men, swept like a torrent over the

rich plains of Lower Hungary: the towns, abandoned by the panic-stricken

German garrisons, every where opening their gates to the partisans of

Zriny and Tekoeli, in the hope of escaping the fate of Veszprim, which

had been sacked by the janissaries for attempting resistance. The march

was pressed with unexampled rapidity, till on the 28th the whole army

was mustered under the walls of Gran; and the vizir, summoning to his

tent the khan and the principal pashas, announced that his orders were

to make himself master of Vienna.

The veneration with which the Turks have always regarded the memory of

the greatest of their sultans, has led them not only to shrink with

superstitious awe from attempting any enterprise in which he failed, but

even to attach a prophetic importance to his recorded sayings. A promise

attributed to him, that "an Ottoman army should never pass the Raab,"

had been recalled at the time of the signal defeat experienced by

Ahmed-Kiuprili on that river, and his memorable repulse before Vienna

had been ever held as a warning, that the Ottoman arms were destined

never to prevail against the ramparts of the _Kizil-Alma_. These

considerations, however, had little weight with Kara-Mustapha; bridges,

hastily thrown over the ill-omened stream, afforded a passage to the

army, (July 8,) and the march was again directed without stop or stay on

Vienna. A body of Hungarians in the pay of the emperor, under Budiani,

passed over to the ranks of their insurgent countrymen on the first

appearance of the standards of Tekoeli; and the Duke of Lorraine, who

had withdrawn his infantry to the island of Schutt and the other bank of

the Danube, was worsted in a cavalry fight at Petronel by the Tartars,

whose flying squadrons were already seen from the walls of Vienna.

Proclamation had been made, forbidding the citizens to _speak of the

present state of affairs!_--but the emperor and court, who had

confidently reckoned on the invaders being delayed by the sieges of Raab

and Komorn, no sooner learned that they had passed those fortresses

unheeded, and were rapidly approaching the capital, than, seized with a

panic-terror, they fled from the devoted city, on the same day with the

combat at Petronel, (July 7,) in such dismayed haste, that the empress

was forced to lodge one night under a tree in the open air; nor did they

deem themselves in safety from the terrible pursuit of the Tartars, till

they reached Lintz, on the furthest western verge of the hereditary

states. The Austrian towns along the Danube were overwhelmed by the

advancing tide of Turks, or ravaged by the Hungarian followers of

Tekoeli, who vied with their Moslem allies in animosity against the

Germans; and the light troops and Tartars, overspreading the country,

pushed their predatory excursions so far up the river, as even to alarm

the imperial fugitives at Lintz, who consulted their safety by a second

flight to Passau. The three great abbeys of Lilienfeldt, Moelk, and

Klosterneuburg, were preserved from these desultory marauders by the

strength of their walls, and the valour of their monastic inmates, who

took arms in defence of their cloisters; but the open country was laid

waste with the same ferocity as in the invasion by Soliman, and many

thousands of the country people were dragged as slaves into the Turkish

camp. The regular columns of the janissaries and feudatory troops,

meanwhile, continuing their advance, appeared on the morning of the 14th

under the walls of Vienna; the posts of the different corps were

assigned on the same day, and in the course of the following night,

ground was broken for the trenches on three sides of the city.

The ancient ramparts of Vienna, which had withstood the assault of the

great Soliman, had been replaced, not long after the former siege, by

fortifications better adapted for modern warfare; but during the long

interval of security, the extensive suburbs, with the villas and gardens

of the nobles and opulent citizens, had been suffered to encroach on the

glacis and encumber the approaches; and the ruins of these luxurious

abodes, imperfectly destroyed in the panic arising from the unexpected

celerity of the enemy's movements, were calculated at once to impede the

fire from the walls, and to afford shelter and lodgement to the

besiegers. Such preparations for defence, however, as the time allowed

of, had been hastily made by the governor, Rudiger Count Stahrenberg, a

descendant of the stout baron who, in the former siege, had repulsed the

Tartars in the defiles near Enns, and an artillery officer of proved

skill and valour. Most of the gates had been walled up, platforms and

covered ways constructed, and the students of the university, with such

of the citizens as were able and willing to bear arms, were organized

into companies in aid of the regular troops, whose number did not exceed

14,000. But the flower of the Austrian nobility, with many gallant

volunteers, not only from Germany, but from other parts of Christendom,

were within the walls, and animated by their example the spirits of the

defenders, whose only hope of relief lay apparently in the distant and

uncertain succours of Poland. The Duke of Lorraine, with his cavalry,

had still hoped to maintain himself in the Prater and the Leopoldstadt,

(which were on an island separated from the city by a narrow arm of the

river,) and thus to keep up the communication with the north bank:--but

an overwhelming body of Turkish horse, (among whom were conspicuous the

Arab chargers and gorgeous equipments of a troop of Egyptian Mamlukes, a

force rarely seen in the Ottoman armies,) was directed against him on

the 17th, and after a desperate conflict, he was driven across the main

stream with the loss of 500 men, and with difficulty secured himself

from pursuit by breaking the bridge. The suburb of Leopold, in itself a

second city, was given up to the flames; and the Turks, erecting two

batteries on the bank opposite Vienna, completed the investment on the

only side which had hitherto remained open. Kara-Mustapha, in the

confidence of anticipated triumph, now summoned Stahrenberg to

surrender, by throwing a cartel into the city, wrapped up in linen and

fastened to an arrow: and no answer being returned, the fire of the

batteries on the Leopold island opened on the town; and in less than a

week ten others were completed and mounted with cannon on the landward

side.

The main point of attack, in the former siege under Soliman, had been

the gate of Carinthia, (Kaernther-Thor,) and the adjoining bastions; but

the weight of the Turkish fire on the land side was now directed

principally against the Castle-Gate, (Burg-Thor,) lying to the left of

the former, and against the curtain between the Castle bastion and that

of Loebel; and on the river side from the batteries of the Leopold island

against the Rothenthurm or Red Tower, at the point where the

fortifications abut on the stream of the Danube. The tent of the vizir

was pitched opposite the Burg-Thor, in the midst of the janissaries and

Roumeliote troops, while the feudatories of Anatolia and Syria, under

their pashas, were posted right and left of this central point, and the

encampments of the various divisions stretched far round the city in a

semi-circle many miles in extent, touching the Danube at its two extreme

points of Ebersdorff below Vienna, and Nussdorff in the higher part of

the stream, where a bridge thrown over the narrow channel formed a

communication between the outposts on the mainland, and those on the

Leopold island. The charge of this bridge was assigned to the Moldavian

and Wallachian contingents, under the command of Scherban, waiwode of

the latter province, and one of the most remarkable adventurers of the

age. Born of a noble Wallachian family, which claimed descent from the

ancient imperial house of Cantacuzene, he had earned from the Turks, not

less by the reckless bravery he had displayed under the standard of the

crescent in the wars of Poland, than by the consummate address with

which he had steered his way through the tortuous intrigues of the

Fanar, the sobriquet of Shaitan Ogblu, _son of Satan_--nor was he

unknown as a gay and gallant visitor to the more polished and voluptuous

courts of the west. In his elevation to the throne of his native

country, he was said to have been materially assisted by the criminal

favour of the consort of his predecessor, the Princess Ducas:--but in

the camp before Vienna he assumed the guise of extraordinary piety--a

lofty cross was erected before his tent, where the rights of the Greek

Church were daily celebrated with extraordinary pomp, and the priests of

that communion offered up prayers for the success of the Ottoman arms

against the schismatics of the Western Church![G]

On the 23d of July, two mines were fired under the counterscarp of the

Loebel bastion, and though from the want of skill in the Turkish

engineers, they did little damage, the alarm caused among the garrison,

who called to mind the formidable use made of this species of approach

in the siege of Candia, was such, that Stahrenberg issued orders that

one person should be constantly on the watch in each house, to prevent

the Turks from making their way into the city by these subterraneous

passages. No more than forty mines, however, were sprung during the

whole siege, and their effect, from the industry with which they were

countermined by the garrison, was far less destructive than at

Candia:--but the fire from the batteries continued without cessation,

till the counterscarp and ravelin between the two bastions were reduced

to a heap of ruins, and the covered approaches of the Turks, in spite of

the constant sorties of the besieged, were pushed so close to the outer

works that the defenders could reach the pioneers employed on the

galleries by thrusting at them through the palisades with the long

German pikes, the efficiency of which had been so severely experienced

in the former siege. The first assault on the ravelin was made July

25--but the explosion of a mine at the instant threw the attacking

column into disorder, and they were repulsed after a severe conflict, in

which Stahrenberg himself was wounded. The attack was not repeated in

force till the night of Aug. 3, when the troops of the pasha of

Temeswar, and a select body of janissaries under their _houlkiaya_ or

lieutenant-general, rushed with such fury upon the ruined rampart, that

though four times driven back, they at last succeeded in effecting a

lodgement in the ravelin, and threw up parapets to screen themselves

from the fire of the walls. The city, meanwhile, was repeatedly set on

fire by bombs thrown from the Turkish batteries; and during the

confusion arising from one of these partial conflagrations, a fresh mine

was run under the angle of the court bastion, and sprung with such

effect as to cause a practicable breach. The quantity of powder,

however, had been so greatly over calculated that great part recoiled

among the Turks and the garrison, by a well-timed sortie, did great

damage to the enemy's works. Before the breach, however, could be

repaired, the janissaries, recovering from their panic, again assailed

it, and, after a desperate struggle, established themselves in the ditch

and front of the bastion, while the defenders endeavoured, by changing

the direction of their guns, to enfilade the ground thus won by the

enemy, so as to prevent their penetrating into the interior, which now

lay open to them.

Great had been the panic throughout Europe at the advance of the Turks

into Austria, and their appearance before Vienna. The infidel host was

magnified, by the exaggerations of popular terror, to the number of

100,000 horse and 600,000 foot! And it was doubted whether, after

destroying the power of the House of Hapsburg, the vizir would march to

the Rhine, and annihilate the remaining strength of Christendom by the

overthrow of Louis XIV., or would cross the Alps to fulfil the famous

threat of Bayezid I., by stabbing his horse before the high altar of St

Peter's. Even among those better qualified to take a calm view of the

state of affairs, little hope was entertained that Vienna could hold out

till the armies of Poland and the empire could be collected in

sufficient force for its relief, if the Turks continued to press the

siege with that vigour and stubborn perseverance, the combination of

which in the attack of fortified places had hitherto been one of their

most remarkable military characteristics. But Kara-Mustapha, deficient

alike in martial experience and personal courage, was little qualified

either to stimulate the fanatic ardour of the Ottomans or to guide it to

victory. While within the wide enclosure of his own tents, carefully

pitched beyond the range of cannon-shot from the ramparts, he maintained

a household and harem of such luxurious magnificence as none of the

sultans had ever carried with them into the field, the rations of the

soldiers were reduced, on the pretext that the supplies expected from

Hungary had been intercepted by the garrisons of Raab and the other

towns on the Danube, which still held out for the emperor; and so little

did he care to disguise his apprehensions for his own safety, that he

visited the lines only in a litter rendered musket-proof by plates and

lattices of iron! Whether he entertained the wild design, as asserted by

Cantemir, (whose authority, as that of a contemporary, may in this case

perhaps deserve some credit,) of throwing off his allegiance to the

sultan, and erecting an independent _Western Empire_ of the Ottomans in

Austria and Hungary, or whether he was simply instigated by his avarice

to preserve the imagined treasures of the capital of the German Caesars

from the pillage which must follow from its being taken by storm--he no

sooner saw the imperial city apparently within his grasp, than he

restrained, instead of encouraging, the spirit of the troops,

endeavouring rather to wear out the garrison by an endless succession of

petty alarms, than to carry the place at once by assault. The murmurs of

the soldiers, who even refused to remain in the trenches, were with

difficulty quieted by the exhortations of Wani-Effendi, a celebrated

Moslem divine, who had accompanied the army in order to share in the

merit of the _holy war_--while the remonstrances of the pashas and

generals were silenced by the exhibition of the sultan's

_khatt-shereef_, which conferred on the vizir plenary powers for the

conduct of the war.

While Kara Mustapha thus lay inactive in his lines before Vienna,

Tekoeli, who had been detached with his Hungarian followers and an

auxiliary Turkish corps to reduce the castle of Presburg, which held out

after the surrender of the town, had been defeated by the Duke of

Lorraine, aided by a body of Polish cavalry under Lubomirski, the

forerunners of the army now assembling at Cracow. All the European

princes, meanwhile, with the exception of Louis XIV., who, even in the

danger of their common faith, forgot not his hostility to the house of

Hapsburg, vied with each other in forwarding the equipment of the host

which was to save the bulwark of Christendom. The cardinals at Rome sold

their plate to supply funds for the German levies; Cardinal Barberini

alone contributed 20,000 florins, and the Pope was profuse in his

indulgences to those who joined the new crusade. The emperor, meanwhile,

from his retreat at Passau, was abject in his entreaties to Sobieski for

speedy succour, offering to cede to him his rights upon Hungary if he

could preserve his Austrian capital; but the zeal of the Polish hero

needed no stimulus. Though so disabled by the gout as to be unable to

mount his horse without help, he was indefatigable in his exertions to

hasten the march of his troops, to whom he gave the rendezvous, "Under

the counterscarp at Vienna." On his march into Germany, he was every

where received as a deliverer; the Jesuits of Olmutz erected, at his

entrance into the town, a triumphal arch, with the inscription,

"Salvatorem expectamus;" and all hailed, as a sure omen of victory, the

presence of the champion whose very name had become a byword of terror

among the Turks. The beleaguered garrison was, meanwhile, cheered by

frequent messages promising speedy relief from the Duke of Lorraine,

whose emissaries, selected for their knowledge of the Turkish language,

contrived to pass and re-pass securely; but an epidemic disease, in

addition to the sword and the bombardment, was rapidly thinning their

numbers; and Callonitz, bishop of Neustadt, who, in his younger days,

had gained distinction against the Turks in Candia, now acquired a

holier fame by his pious care of the sick and wounded, who crowded the

hospitals and houses. The siege had been languidly carried on during the

greater part of August, but at the end of the month fresh symptoms of

activity were observed in the Ottoman lines; several mines were sprung

on the 27th and 28th, and the fire from the batteries was so warmly kept

up, that on the 29th the garrison, conjecturing that the anniversary of

the battle of Mohacz had been chosen for the general assault, stood to

their arms in anxious suspense. But the day passed over without any

alarm, and it was not till September 4, that, having blown up great part

of the right face of the court bastion by a powerful mine, 5000 of the

_elite_ of the janissaries sprang, sword in hand, with loud shouts and

the clangour of martial music, into the breach thus made, and forcing

their way, with the fanatic valour which had in their best days

characterized the sons of Hadji-Bektash, into the interior of the

bastion, planted their _bairahs_, or pennons, on the ruined ramparts.

Stahrenberg himself, with his officers and guards, was fortunately going

the rounds at the menaced point at the moment of the explosion and

assault, but the Osmanlis held firm the ground they had gained; and

Stahrenberg, seeing the enemy thus fairly established within the

defences, directed barriers to be constructed and trenches sunk at the

head of the streets nearest the breach, while thirty rockets, fired in

the night from the steeple of St Stephen's Domkirch, announced the

extremity of their distress to their approaching friends; and all eyes

were turned to the rocky heights of the Kahlenberg, which bounded the

prospect to the west, in hope of descrying the standards of the

Christian army.

It was at Tuln, six leagues above Vienna, that Sobieski received, the

day after this assault, a despatch from Stahrenberg, containing only the

words--"There is no time to be lost!" On the 6th the Poles passed the

river by the bridge of Tuln, and the king, amazed at the supineness of

the vizir in suffering this movement to be effected without molestation,

exclaimed, "Against such a general the victory is already gained!"--and

advanced as to an assured triumph. Though far inferior in numbers to the

Turks, who, after all their losses by the sword and desertion, still

mustered 120,000 effective men, when passed in review on the 8th by the

vizir, it was in truth a gallant army which Sobieski now saw united

under his command. The Imperialists, under the Duke of Lorraine, were

not more than 20,000; but the Saxons and Bavarians, led by their

respective electors, and the contingents of the lesser states of the

empire, with the fiery hussars and cuirassiers of Poland, formed an

aggregate of 65,000 men, more than half of whom were cavalry; while in

the ranks were found, besides the German chivalry who fought for their

fatherland, many noble volunteers, who had hastened from Spain and Italy

to share in the glories anticipated under the leadership of Sobieski.

Among these illustrious auxiliaries was a young hero, who had escaped

from France in defiance of the mandate of Louis XIV., to flesh his

maiden sword in view of the Polish king, and who at a later period,

under the well-known name of Prince Eugene, himself earned deathless

fame by his achievements against those redoubted enemies, whose first

great overthrow he was destined to witness.

On the evening of the 10th the two armies were separated only by the

ridge of the Kahlenberg, and the thick forests covering its sides; and a

still more urgent message arrived from the governor, who intimated that

he had little chance of repelling another assault. "On the same night,

however," (says the diary of a Dutch officer in the garrison,) "we saw

on the hills many fires, and rockets thrown up, as signals of our

approaching succours, which we joyfully answered in like manner ... and

next day the Turks were moving, and their cavalry riding about in

confusion, till about four P.M. we saw several of their regiments

drawing off towards the hills, and those in Leopoldstadt marching over

the bridge." The knowledge, indeed, that the terrible Sobieski was at

the head of the Christian army, had spread such a panic among the

Osmanli, that several thousands left the camp the same night; but

Kara-Mustapha, though urged by all his officers to march with his whole

force to meet the coming storm, contented himself with sending 10,000

men, under Kara-Ibrahim, pasha of Buda, to watch the Poles, while the

rest were kept in their lines before the city, which was cannonaded with

redoubled fury throughout the 11th and the night following. The summits

of the Kahlenberg glittered with the arms of the confederates, who

bivouacked there during the night, being unable to pitch their tents

from the violence of the wind, which Sobieski, in one of his letters to

his queen, (his "charmante et bien aimee Mariette,") says, was

attributed by the soldiers to the incantations of the vizir, "who is

known to be a great magician." From the top of the Leopoldsberg, the

king and the Duke of Lorraine reconnoitred the Turkish camp, which lay

in all its wide extent before them, from the opposite skirts of the

Wienerberg almost to the foot of the ridge on which they stood, with the

lofty pavilions and scarlet screens of the vizir's quarters conspicuous

in the midst, while the incessant roar of the artillery rose from the

midst of the smoke which enveloped the city.

At five in the morning of the 12th, the sound of musketry was heard from

the thickets and wooded ravines at the foot of the Kahlenberg, where the

Saxons were already engaged with the Turkish division under

Ibrahim-Pasha; and the king, having heard mass on the Leopoldsberg from

his chaplain Aviano, mounted his favourite sorrel charger, and, preceded

by his son James, whom he had just dubbed a knight in front of the army,

and by his esquire bearing his shield and banner, led the Poles, who

held the right of the allied line, down the slopes of the mountain. The

left wing, which lay nearest the river, was commanded by the Duke of

Lorraine, and the columns in the centre were under the orders of the two

electors, and the Dukes of Saxe-Lauenburg and Eisenach. By eight A.M.

the action had become warm along the skirts of the Kahlenberg--the

Turks, who were principally horse, dismounting to fight on foot behind

hastily-constructed abattis of trees and earth, as the nature of the

ground was unfavourable to cavalry, and keeping up a heavy fire on the

enemy while they were entangled in the ravines. The ardour of the

Christians, however, speedily overcame these obstacles; and by ten A.M.,

their van was debouching from the defiles into the plain with loud

shouts of battle; and the Turks, though from time to time receiving

reinforcements from the camp, were gradually obliged to give ground. The

vizir, meanwhile, remaining immovable in his tent, directed a fresh

cannonade to be directed against the city, under cover of which a

general assault was to be made; but the long files of camels laden with

the spoils of Austria, which were sent off in haste on the road to

Hungary, revealed his secret disquietude--and the troops in the

trenches, effectually disheartened by the delay and privations of the

siege, showed little inclination again to advance against the shattered

bastions. The towers and steeples of Vienna were thronged with anxious

spectators, who with throbbing hearts watched the advance of their

deliverers, who pressed on at all points, "making the Turks give way"

(says the diary above quoted) "whenever they came to a shock." The

villages of Nussdorff and Heiligenstadt on the Danube, where several

_odas_ of janissaries, with heavy cannon, were posted, checked for some

time the progress of the Austrians on the left; the Duc de Croye, a

gallant French volunteer, fell in leading the attack, but a body of

Polish cuirassiers were at last sent to their aid, who, levelling their

lances, and dashing with loud shouts against the flank of the Turkish

batteries, carried the position, and put the defenders to the sword. It

was not so much a battle, as a series of desperate but irregular

skirmishes scattered over wide extent of ground--the Turkish troops (who

were almost all cavalry, as most of the regulars and artillery were

still in the camp) gradually receding before the heavy advancing columns

of the Christians. By four P.M. they were driven so close to their

intrenchments, that Sobieski could descry the vizir, seated in a small

crimson tent, and tranquilly drinking coffee with his two sons. At this

moment, a torrent of the wild cavalry of the Tartars, headed by the khan

in person, poured forth from the Moslem lines, and thundered upon the

right of the Poles, only to recoil in disorder before the lances of

Iablonowski and the Lithuanians, who pushed in pursuit close to a deep

ravine, which covered the redoubts of the Turks. But the khan had

recognized in the melee the well-known figure of Sobieski, whose

personal presence had been as yet uncertain. "By Allah!" said he to the

vizir on his return from his unsuccessful charge, "the heavens have

fallen upon us; for the ill-omened _kral_ of the _Leh_ (Poles) of a

truth is with the infidels!"

The Turks were now every where driven within their lines, and the battle

appeared over for the day; but the Poles, with cries of triumph,

demanded to be led to the attack of the camp, and Sobieski exclaiming,

"Not unto us, O Lord, but to thy name be the praise!" directed the

assault. In a moment the Polish chivalry spurred up the steep side of

the ravine in the teeth of the Turkish artillery--a redoubt in the

centre of the lines was stormed through the gorge by Maligny,

brother-in-law of the king--the Pashas of Aleppo and Silistria, whose

prowess sustained the fainting courage of their troops, were slain in

the front of the battle--and, after a conflict of less than an hour, the

whole vast array of the Osmanlis, pierced through the centre by the

onset of the Polish lances, gave way in hopeless, irremediable

confusion, and, abandoning their camp, artillery, and baggage, fled in

wild confusion on the road to Hungary. By 6 P.M. the Polish King reached

the tent of the vizir; but Kara-Mustapha had not awaited the arrival of

the victor. In an agony of despair at the mighty ruin which he now saw

to be inevitable, he gave the barbarous order (which was but partially

executed) for the massacre of the women of his harem, to prevent

their falling into the hands of the enemy; and, seizing the

Sandjak-shereef,[H] mounted an Arabian camel of surpassing swiftness,

and accompanied, or perhaps preceded, the flight of his army. Such was

the panic haste of the rout, that, before sunset the next day, the whole

host swept past the walls of Raab, the garrison of which thus gained the

first tidings of the catastrophe--nor have the crimson banners of the

crescent been ever again seen on the soil of Germany.

From the desultory character of the action, in which little use was made

of artillery, and the headlong dismay in which the Turks at last took to

flight, not more than 10,000 of their number, according to the most

probable accounts, fell in the battle; of the allies, scarcely 3000 were

killed or wounded. Three hundred pieces of cannon of various calibres,

many of them taken in former wars by the Turks, and still bearing the

arms of Poland or the empire--a countless quantity of arms, ammunition,

and warlike implements of all kinds--were found in the abandoned

intrenchments; and the abundance of cattle, with the amply stored

magazines of provisions, afforded instant relief to the famine from

which the citizens had been for some time suffering.

Surrounded by a vast crowd, who hailed him with enthusiastic

acclamations as their deliverer, and thronged each other with a zeal

approaching adoration, to kiss his hand or his stirrup, Sobieski entered

Vienna through the breach on the morning of September 13, in company

with the Duke of Lorraine and the electoral Prince of Bavaria, and with

the horsetails found before the tent of the vizir borne in triumph

before him; and having met and saluted Stahrenberg, repaired with him to

a chapel in the church of the Augustin friars, to return thanks for the

victory. As he entered the church, a priest cried aloud in an ecstacy of

fervour--"There was a man sent from God whose name was John," and this

text, which in past ages had been applied to the Hungarian paladin, John

Hunyades, was again employed by the preachers throughout Europe, in

celebration of the new champion of Christendom, John Sobieski. Far

different to the entry of the Polish king was the return of the Emperor

Leopold to his rescued capital. He had quitted it as a fugitive, amid

the execrations of the people, who accused him of having drawn on them

the storm of invasion, without providing means to ward off the

destruction which threatened them; and having descended the Danube in a

boat, he re-entered the city on the 14th in the guise of a penitent,

proceeding on foot, with a taper in his hand, to the cathedral of St

Stephen, where he knelt before the high altar in acknowledgement of his

deliverance. But neither from his misfortunes, nor from his returning

prosperity, had Leopold learned the lesson of gratitude or humility. He

even attempted at first to evade an interview with Sobieski, on the

ground that an elective king had never been received on terms of

equality by an emperor of Germany: and, when this unworthy plea was

overruled by the honest indignation of the Duke of Lorraine, the meeting

of the two monarchs was formal and embarrassed: and Sobieski, disgusted

at the meanness and arrogance of the prince who owed to him the

preservation of his capital and throne, hastily cut short the

conference, by deputing to his chancellor Zaluski the task of showing to

Leopold the troops who had saved his empire; and departed on the 17th

with his noble colleague in arms, the Duke of Lorraine, to follow up

their triumphs by attacking the Turks in Hungary.

The battle of Vienna effectually broke the spell of the Ottoman military

ascendancy, which for near three centuries had held Europe in awe;--and

though the energies of the empire, and the efficacy of its institutions,

had long been gradually decaying, it was this great blow which first

revealed the secret of its impaired strength. The treaty of Zurawno with

Poland in 1676, had raised the Ottoman dominions to the highest point of

territorial extent which they ever attained. From the time of the

reunion of the empire, after the confusion following the defeat of

Bayezid I. by Timour, every reign had seen its boundaries enlarged by

successive acquisitions; and if we except the voluntary abandonment, in

1636, of the remote and unprofitable province of Yemen, the horsetails

had never receded from any territory on which they had been planted in

token of permanent occupation. Besides the vast territories which were

under the immediate rule of pashas sent from the Porte, and which the

land and capitation taxes (_ssalyaneh_ and _kharatch_,) the khan of the

Krim Tartars, the otaman of the Cossacks, the vassal princes of

Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia, the hereditary chiefs of the

Circassian and Koordish tribes, and the rulers of the Barbary regencies,

were all "under the shadow of the imperial horsetails," and paid tribute

and allegiance to the sultan, who might boast, with no less justice than

did the monarchs of the Seljookian Turks of old, that a crowd of princes

arose from the dust of his footsteps. During the reign of Mohammed IV.,

the last relics of Venetian rule in the Levant had been extirpated by

the conquest of Candia; the frontiers in Hungary and Transylvania had

been strengthened by the acquisition of the important fortresses of

Grosswardein and Neuhausel, with the territory attached to them; while

Poland had been deprived of the province through which she had access to

the undefended points of the Ottoman frontier, and the Cossacks, from

restless and intractable enemies, had been converted into friends and

auxiliaries. In the domestic administration, also, the wisdom and

clemency of Ahmed-Kiuprili, supported by a corresponding disposition on

the part of the sultan, who was naturally averse to measures of

severity, had introduced a spirit of moderation and equity unknown in

the Ottoman annals. Such was the condition of the foreign relations and

internal government of the Turkish empire at the juncture immediately

preceding the death of Ahmed-Kiuprili, whose life closed (as mentioned

above) within a few days of the conclusion of the peace of Zurawno:--and

the coincidence of this highest point of territorial aggrandizement and

domestic prosperity, with the last days of the great minister who had so

principal a share in producing them, would almost justify the

superstitious belief, that the star of the Kiuprilis was in sooth the

protecting talisman of the Ottoman state, and inseparably connected with

its welfare and splendour.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote B: The Poles were sometimes called _Lechi_, from Lech, the

name of one of their ancient kings.]

[Footnote C: Von Hammer describes him, without quoting his authority, as

of lofty stature, and extremely fair complexion; but Rycaut's personal

acquaintance insures his correctness.]

[Footnote D: He subsequently became grand-vizir, and was killed at the

battle of Salankaman in 1691.]

[Footnote E: This name in western parlance would be Gabriel de Bethlen;

in Hungary, the Christian _follows_ the surname.]

[Footnote F: The anonymous biographer of Tekoeli, believed to be M.

Leclerc.]

[Footnote G: After the defeat of the Turks, Scherban Cantacuzene opened

a correspondence with the Emperor and the King of Poland, setting forth

his hereditary claim to the imperial crown of Constantinople in the

event of their expulsion from Europe! but his intrigues became known to

the Ottoman ministry, and he is supposed to have been taken off by

poison.]

[Footnote H: A _crimson_ banner was again sent to Rome as the

Sandjak-shereef, as the green one of Hussein had been after the victory

of Choczim.]

EXHIBITIONS

British art is in a transition state. Remembering many a year past our

Academy Exhibitions, and the general, the family resemblance the works

bore to each other, the little variety either in style or execution; and

of later years noticing the gradual change, the adoption of a new class

of subjects, and more varied styles; we are yet struck with the manifest

difference between the present and any other we ever remember to have

seen. There is, in fact, more originality. There are, indeed, mannerists

enough; and we mean not here to use the word in its reprehensive sense

but they stand more alone. There are far fewer imitators--some, of

course, there must be, but they are chiefly in those classes where

imitation is less easily avoided. Common-place subjects will ever be

treated in a common-place manner, and resemble each other. Few venture

now to follow even erratic genius in its wild vagaries. Turner has no

rivals in the "dissolving view" style. By those who look to one or two

favourite masters, who have hitherto given the character to our

exhibitions, perhaps some disappointment may be felt. Edwin Landseer has

but two pictures--Sir Augustus Calleott not one; and herein is a great

loss, speaking not with reference to his very late pictures, his English

landscape, or even his Italian views, but in vivid recollection of his

fascinating river views, with their busy boats, under illuminating

skies, such as, alas! he has ceased to paint.

With regard to landscape, we progress slowly. Yet we fancy we can

perceive indications there, that are of a better promise; although of

the higher class of landscape there is not one this year. The promise is

in the pencil of Creswick. He labours to unite great finish, too minute

finish, with breadth and boldness of effect. His is unquestionably a new

style; his subjects are all pleasing, bordering on the poetical; we only

question if his aim at minute finishing does not challenge a scrutiny

into the accuracy and infinite variety of the detail of nature, that few

pictures ought to require, and his certainly do not satisfy the demand.

For, after all, there is a great sameness, where there ought to be

variety, particularly in his foliage: it is safer, by a greater

generality, to leave much to the imagination. We do not, however, mean

to quarrel with this his peculiar style, nor to limit its power. There

is something yet not achieved.

Mr Maclise has likewise originated a new style, and if not altogether a

new class of subjects, one so richly, so luxuriantly treated as to be

fairly considered new. He has given to humour a gentle satire, and more

especially to works of creative fancy an historical importance; for

herein he is essentially different from all other painters of this

class, that none of his pieces, we might almost say none of his figures,

are, or pretend to be, real life. If it be said that they are

theatrical, we know not but that the term expresses their merit; for as

Sir Joshua has well observed, there must be in the theatrical a certain

ideal--which is, nevertheless, the higher representative of nature. Mr

Maclise has adopted the elaborate finish and lavish ornament, but with

so much breadth, and powerful execution, that the display scarcely

offends--and he generally seeks subjects that will bear it. As a fault

it was conspicuous in his Lady Macbeth: the strong emotions of that

banquet-scene are of too hurrying, too absorbent a nature, to admit

either the conspicuous multiplicity of parts, or the excess of ornament

which that work exhibited. It was the very perfection of the "Sleeping

Beauty," and singularly enough, begat a repose; for the mind was

fascinated into the notion of the long sleep, by the very leisure

required and taken to examine the all-quiescent detail.

May we not call the style of Mr Redgrave original? perhaps more so in

his execution than his subject. He has appropriated the elegant

familiar. Many are the painters we might name under whose hands the arts

are advancing; those we have named, however, appear to us to be more or

less the chief originators of new styles. Nor does it follow from this

that their pictures are always the best in any exhibition, though they

may be generally found so to be. If we are to congratulate the world of

art on the particular advancement of this year, we shall certainly limit

our praise to one picture, because it is the picture of the year; and it

is a wondrous improvement upon all our former historical attempts.

Whoever has visited the Exhibition will at once know that we allude to

Mr Poole's "Plague of London." There has not been so powerful a picture

painted in this country since the best days of Sir Joshua Reynolds. For

its power we compare it with the "Ugolino" of the President, and we do

so the more readily as both pictures are now publicly exhibited. Unlike

as they are, unquestionably, in many respects, and painted indeed on

opposite principles, regarding the mechanical methods and colour; yet

for power, for pathos, they come into competition. The subject chosen by

Mr Poole was one of much more difficulty, more complication: he has had,

therefore, much more to do, much more to overcome; and he has succeeded.

Both, possibly, to a certain extent, were imitators, yet both possessing

a genius that made the works their own creations. Sir Joshua saw

Rembrandt in every motion of his hand; and Mr Poole was not unconscious

of Nicolo Poussin in the design and execution of his "Plague." This is

not said to the disparagement of either painter; on the contrary, we

should augur ill of that man's genius who would be more ambitious to be

thought original in all things than of painting a good picture. Great

minds will be above this little ambition. Raffaelle borrowed without

scruple from those things that were done well before him, a whole

figure, and even a group; yet the result was ever a work that none could

ever suspect to be by any hand but Raffaelle's. In saying that Mr Poole

has seen Nicolo Poussin, we do not mean to insinuate more than that

fact: others may say more; and, depreciating a work of surprising power,

and that, too, coming from an artist who has hitherto exhibited nothing

to be compared with it, will add that he has stolen it from Nicolo

Poussin. This we boldly deny. The works of Nicolo Poussin of similar

subjects are well known, and wonderful works they are; we need mention

but two--the one in the National Gallery, the "Plague of Ashdod," and

that in the collection of P.S. Miles, Esq., and exhibited last year at

the British Institution, and which is engraved in Forster's work. We do

not believe that one group or single figure in Mr Poole's picture can be

shown in these or any others of Poussin. And in the conception there is

a striking difference. Mr Poole's subject, though we have called it the

"Plague of London," is not, strictly speaking, the awfulness and the

disgust of that dire malady, but the insanity of the fanatic Solomon

Eagle, taking a divine, an almost Pythean impress from its connexion

with that woful and appalling mystery. This being his subject, he has

judiciously omitted much of that dreadfully disgusting detail, which

_his_ subject compelled Poussin to force upon the spectator. There is,

therefore, in Mr Poole's picture more to excite our wonder and pity than

disgust; nay, there is even room for the exhibition of tender,

sensitive, apprehensive, scarcely suffering beauty, and set off by

contrasts not too strong; so that nothing impedes the mind in, or draws

it off from, the contemplation of the madman--here more than madman, the

maniac made inspired by the belief of the spectator in denunciations

which appear verifying themselves visibly before him. It is this feeling

which makes the crazed one grand, heroic, and which constitutes this

picture an historical work of a high class. It is far more than a

collection of incidents in a plague; it is the making the plague itself

but an accessory. The theme is of the madness that spreads its

bewilderment on all around, as its own of right, as cause and effect--a

bewilderment that works beyond the frame, and will not let the beholder

question its fanatic power. We will endeavour to describe the picture,

but first, take the subject from the catalogue:--"Solomon Eagle

exhorting the People to Repentance, during the Plague of the Year 1665.

P. F. Poole.--'I suppose the world has heard of the famous Solomon

Eagle, an enthusiast; he, though not infected at all, but in his head,

went about denouncing of judgment upon the city in a frightful manner,

sometimes quite naked and with a pan of burning charcoal on his

head.'--See DE FOE'S _Narrative of the Plague in London_." The scene is

supposed to be in that part of London termed "Alsatia," so well

described by Sir Walter Scott--the refuge of the destitute and criminal.

Here are groups of the infected, the dying, the callous, the

despairing--a miserable languor pervades them all. The young--the

aged--the innocent--the profligate. One sedate and lovely female is

seeking consolation from the sacred book, beside whom sits her father--a

grand figure, in whose countenance is a fixed intensity of worldly care,

that alone seems to keep life within his listless body, next him is a

young mother, with her dying child, and close behind him a maiden,

hiding her face, whose eye alone is seen, distended and in vacant gaze.

We feel that this is a family group, perhaps the broken remnant of a

family, awaiting utter desolation. Behind the group are two very

striking figures--a man bewildered, and more than infected, escaping

from the house, within the doorway of which we see, written in red

characters, "Lord have mercy upon us," and the cross; the nurse is

endeavouring to detain him. Nothing can be finer than the action and

expression in both figures--the horror of the nurse, and fever energy of

the escaped, in whose countenance, never to be forgotten, is the

personification of plague-madness. It is recorded that such a one did so

escape, swam across the Thames, and recovered. Beyond these are

revellers, a dissolute band, card-playing. In the midst of the game one

is smitten with the plague, and is falling back--one starts with horror

at the sudden seizure--a stupid, drunken indifference marks the

others--they had been waiting for a feast, which one is bringing in, who

stands just above the falling figure, who will never partake of it.

Quite in the background, and behind a low wall, are conveyers of the

dead, carrying along a body. This describes the left of the picture. To

the right, and near the middle, is a dying boy, leaning upon a man, who

is suddenly roused, and rising to hear the denunciations of Solomon

Eagle. At his back are two lovely female figures, sisters we should

suppose, the younger one dying, supported by the sister's knee, who sits

with crossed hands, as if in almost hopeless prayer. Beyond is a

wretched man, with his head resting upon his hand, in a fixed state of

stupid indifference; above whom are several figures, mostly of the lower

grade, in the various stages of infection or recovery. They are sitting

before the window of a house, through the panes of which we see

indistinctly one raving, while from the same house a dead body is being

let down from above, and in the background are the dead-cart and the

carriers. At the feet of the figures by the house lie others, in all the

langour of disease and feverish watchfulness. Among these persons are

various shades of character, apparently all from nature, each one,

artistically speaking, representing a class, and yet with such a stamp

of individual nature, that we are satisfied they must have been taken

from life. In this respect they resemble Raffaelle's beggars at the

"Beautiful Gate," in their admirable generality an individuality. Two

are very striking--an odd, stiff-looking old man, with a beard, whose

marked profile is of the old cheat; he is observing the escape of the

man on the opposite side of the picture, and the woman at his side,

whose face is turned upwards, one-half an idiot, and all-wicked. We

cannot help thinking that we have seen these two characters. It is,

perhaps, the skill of the painter that has so represented the class that

we have the conviction of the individuals. So far the scene is prepared

for the principal _dramatis personae_; and so far we have only the

calamity of the Plague, not in its scenes of turbulence, but kept down

under an awful and quiet expectation of doom; so that, were the two

principal figures obliterated, we should say the scene is yet but a

preparation, awaiting the master figures to mark its true impression and

feeling, constituting the subject of the picture. These principal

figures are Solomon Eagle and his attendant; they are placed judiciously

in the centre of the picture, in no part intercepted. Solomon Eagle

hurries into the picture with a book in one hand, the other raised, as

pointing to the heavens, from whence come the denunciations he

pronounces: on his head is a pan of burning charcoal. He is naked,

excepting his waist. His very attitude is insane--we need not look at

his face to see that; the fore-finger, starting off from the others, is

of mad action, and similar is the energy of the projected foot. The

attitude is of one with a fixed purpose, one under an imaginary divine

commission; it is of entire faith and firmness; and never was such

insanity more finely conceived in a countenance. The man is all crazed,

and grand, awfully grand, in his craziness. He throws around him an

infection of craziness, as does the atmosphere of plague. There is a

peculiar look in the eye, which shows the most consummate skill of the

painter. The finger starts up as with an electric power, as if it could

draw down the vengeance which it communicates. We mentioned the

attendant figure--not that he is conscious of her presence. She is

mysterious, veiled, a masked mystery--a walking tale of plague, woe, and

desolation--a wandering, lonely, decayed gentlewoman: we read her

history in her look, and in her walk. Her relations have all been

smitten, swept away by the pestilence; her mind is made callous by utter

misery; she wanders about careless, without any motive; a childish

curiosity may be her pleasure, any incident to divert thoughts that make

her sensible of her own bereavement. She stops to listen to the

denunciations of the crazed prophet, and herself partakes, though

callously, of his insanity--half believes, but scarcely feels. The sky

is lurid, pestilential; it touches with plague what it illuminates. Such

is the picture in its design. The colouring is quite in accordance with

the purpose, and completes the sentiment; there is much of a green tone,

yet under great variety. There is very great knowledge shown in it of

artistical design, and the art of disposing lines; the groups, kept

sufficiently distinct, yet have connecting links with each other; and

there are general lines that bring all within the compass of one

subject. Now, what, after all, is the impression on the mind of the

spectator? for it is not enough to paint plague or madness: unless our

human sympathy be touched, we turn away in disgust. Yet upon this

picture we look with pleasure. Many whom we have heard say they could

not bear to look at it, we found again and again standing before it:

some we questioned; and at last they acknowledged pleasure. So are we

moved at tragedy: human sympathies are moved--the great natural source

of all our pleasures: pity and tenderness, and a sense of the awfulness

of a great mystery, are upon us; and though pleased be too light a word,

yet we are pleased; and where we are so pleased, we are made better. We

feel the good flowing in upon us; and were not the busy scene of the

multitudes in an exhibition, and the general glare, distracting, and

discordant to the feeling such a picture is calculated to convey, we

could enter calmly and deeply into its enjoyment. We have given, at much

length, a description of the picture, because we think it a work of more

importance than any that has, we would say ever, been exhibited upon the

Academy walls--one of more decided commanding genius. There are faults

in it doubtless, some of drawing, but not of much importance. We look to

the mind in it--to its real greatness of manner, and we believe it to be

a work of which the nation may be proud; and were we to look for a

parallel, we must go to some of the best works of the best painters of

the best ages. We were surprised to find that so small a sum as L 400

was set upon the picture--and more so that it was not sold. We regret

that there is no power in the directors of our National Gallery to buy

occasionally a modern production. Is there, in that gallery, one work of

a British painter in any way equal to it?

There are only two pictures by Mr Maclise--they sustain his reputation.

"The Actress's reception of the Author."--"He advanced into the room

trembling and confused, and let his gloves and cloak fall, which having

taken up, he approached my mistress, and presented to her a paper with

more respect than that of a counsellor when he delivers a petition to a

judge, saying, "Be so good, madam, as to accept of this part, which I

take the liberty to offer." She received it in a cold and disdainful

manner, with out even deigning to answer his compliments.'-_Gil Blas_,

c. xi."

The picture here is the luxuriantly beautiful and insolent prima-donna;

we could wish that much of the picture, many of the "figures to let,"

were away. There is a continuous flowing of graceful lines, in this one

figure, with much breadth, that give it a largeness of style, extremely

powerful. She luxuriates in pride, insolence, and beauty. The expression

is perfect; nor is it confined to her face--it is in every limb and

feature. The poor despised author bows low and submissive--and is even

looked at contemptuously by a pet dressed monkey, pampered, and eating

fruit: a good satire; the fruit to the unworthy--the brute before the

genius. There is the usual display, the usual elaborate finish; but it

is perhaps a little harder, with more sudden transitions from brown to

white than commonly to be found in Mr Maclise's works.

"Waterfall at St. Nighton's, Kieve, near Tintagel, Cornwall." A lovely

girl crossing the rocky bed of a stream--attended by a dog, who is

leaping from stone to stone. The action of the dog, his care in the act

of springing, is admirable, and shows that Mr Maclise can paint all

objects well. This is of the high pastoral: the lonely seclusion of the

passage between rocks, the scene of the "Waterfall," is a most judicious

background to the figure, which is large. It is most sweetly painted.

We are glad to see Mr Ward, R. A., again in the Exhibition. His

"Virgil's Bulls," is a subject poetically conceived. The whole landscape

is in sympathy, waking, watchful sympathy, with the bulls in their

conflict. Not a tree, nor a hill, nor a cloud in the sky but looks on as

a spectator. All is in keeping. There is no violence in the colour,

nothing to distract the attention from the noble animals--all is quiet,

passive and observant. A less poetical mind would have given a bright

blue, clear sky, and sparkling sunny grass; one more daring than

judicious, might have placed the creatures in a turbulent scene of storm

and uprooted ground; Mr Ward has given all the action to the

combatants--you shall see nothing but them, and all nature shall be

looking on as in a theatre of her own making. The subject is no less

grand on the canvas than in the lines of the poet.

We had fully intended to have omitted any mention of Mr Turner's strange

productions; but we hear that a work has appeared, exalting him above

all landscape painters that ever existed, by a graduate of the

University of Oxford. Believing, then, that his style is altogether

fallacious, and the extravagant praise mischievous, because none can

deny him some fascinations of genius, which mislead, we think it right

to comment upon his this year's works. Their subjects are taken from

abstracts from a MS. poem, of which Mr Turner is, we presume, himself

the author; for though somewhat more distinct and intelligible than his

paint, they are obscure enough, and by their feet are as much out of the

perspective of verse, as his objects are of that of lines. "The opening

of the Wallhalla," is by far the best, indeed it has its beauties;

distances are happily given: most absurd are the figures, and the

inconceivable foreground. The catalogue announcement of No. 129 startled

us. We expected to see "Bright Phoebus" himself poetically personating

a doge, or a midshipman; for it points to the "Sun of Venice going to

Sea." His "Shade and Darkness; or, the Evening of the Deluge," is the

strangest of things--the first question we ask is, which is the shade

and which the darkness? After the strictest scrutiny, we learn from this

bit of pictorial history, that on the eve of the mighty Deluge, a

Newfoundland dog was chained to a post, lest he should swim to the ark;

that a pig had been drinking a bottle of wine--an anachronism, for

certainly "as drunk as David's sow," was an after-invention: that men,

women, and children, (such we suppose they are meant to be) slept a

purple sleep, with most gigantic arms round little bodies; that there

was fire that did not burn, and water that would nearly obliterate, but

not drown. But more wonderful still is the information we pick up, or

pick out bit by bit, as strange things glimmer into shape. "Light and

Colour, (Goethe's Theory)--The Morning after the Deluge--Moses writing

the book of Genesis." Such is the unexpected announcement of the

catalogue. But further to account for so remarkable a jumble as we are

to behold, Mr Turner adds the following verses:--

"The ark stood firm on Ararat: th' returning sun

Exhaled earth's humid bubbles, and, emulous of light,

Reflected her lost forms, each in prismatic guise,

Hope's harbinger, ephemeral as the summer fly,

Which rises, flits, expands, and dies."

_Fallacies of Hope, MS._

This is unquestionably one of the "Fallacies of Hope"--for it is quite

hopeless to make out, the sun smoking his cigar of colour, and exhaling

earth's humid bubbles; yet we do see a great number of "bubble" heads,

scratchy things, in red wigs, rolling and floating out of nothing into

nothing. There must indeed have been very wondrous giants in those days;

for here is an enormous leg, far beyond the "ex pede Herculem," rising

up some leagues off far bigger than whole figures close at hand. But we

learn the wonderful fact, that the morning after the Deluge, Moses,

sitting upon nothing, possibly the sky, wrote the book of Genesis with a

Perryian pen, and on Bath-post, and that he was so seen by Mr Turner in

his own peculiar perspective-defying telescope--for so "_sedet,

eternumque sedebit_," in the year 1843. We know that in this account of

it we a little jumble past, present, and future; but so we the better

describe the picture; for when the Deluge went, Chaos came. That we may

the more easily recognize the historian, a serpent is dropping from him,

hieroglyphically. Can Mr Turner be serious? or is he trying how far he

may perpetrate absurdities, and get the world to believe them beauties,

or that his practice is according to any "theory of colour!" His

conceptions are such as would be dreams of gallipots of colours, were

they endued with life, and the power of dreaming prodigies.

There is unquestionably an impetus given to historical talent--and there

is good proof that such talent is not wanting in this year's Exhibition;

Mr Patten has chosen a very grand subject from the Inferno of Dante.

"Dante, accompanied by Virgil in his descent to the Inferno, recognizes

his three countrymen, Rusticucci, Aldobrandi, and Guidoguerra"--_Divina

Commedia, Inferno._ The subject is finely conceived by Mr Patten. Virgil

and Dante stand upon the edge of the fiery surge; they are noble and

solemn figures. There is an abyss of flames below, that sends upward its

whirling and tormenting storm, driven round and round, by which are seen

the three countrymen. They are well grouped, and show the whirling

motion of the fiery tempest; we should have preferred them more

foreshortened, and such we think was the vision in Dante's mind's

eye--for he says--

"Thus each one, as he wheel'd, his countenance

At me directed, _so that opposite

The neck moved ever to the twinkling feet_."

There is great art in placing the large limb of one of the figures

immediately over the fiercest centre of fire--it gives interminable

space to the fiery sea--an this part of the picture is very daringly and

awfully coloured. We rather object to the equal largeness and importance

of all the figures; and perhaps the bodies are too smooth, showing too

little of the punishment of flame--they are too quiescent. Dante says,

"Ah me, what wounds I marked upon their limbs!" And Rusticucci, who

addresses Dante, thus describes their bodies:

"'If woe of this unsound and dreary waste,'

Thus one began, 'added to our sad cheer

_Thus peel'd_ with flame.'"

The persons of such sufferers should be Michael Angelesque--punishment

and suffering should be equally _large_. We venture to suggest this

criticism to Mr Patten, because the subject is grand, and there is so

much good in his manner of treating it, that he will do well to paint

another picture of it.

Mr Etty has no less than seven pictures. His "In the Greenwood Shade" is

by far the best. Cupid and sleeping nymphs--the rich and lucid colours,

softly losing themselves in shade, and here and there playfully

recovered, very much remind us of Correggio. We should more applaud Mr

Etty for his general colouring, than for his flesh tints; nor have his

figures in general the soft and luxuriant roundness which grace and

beauty should have--the faces, too, have often too much purple shadow.

We have before remarked that, painting too closely from the model, he

exhibits Graces that have worn stays. And surely he often mistakenly

enlarges the loveliest portion of the female form--the bosom--whose

beauty is in its undefined commencement, its gentle and innocent and

modest growth. How happily is this hit off by Dryden in his description

of Iphigenia sleeping, to the gaze of the clown Cymon:--

"As yet their places were but signified." While so many pictures of

acknowledged merit are rejected for lack of room, it is scarcely fair,

perhaps, for one artist to exhibit so many. Mr. Eastlake has, however,

been too liberal to others in his forbearing modesty; we could wish he

had not confined himself to one. He might offer the lioness's answer,

were not his picture one most tenderly expressive of all gentleness. It

is an old subject, but treated in no respect after the old manner. The

boy is faint and weary, on the ground. Hagar, with a countenance of

sweet anxiety, is giving the water, with a care, and with a view to the

safety of the draught. There is a dead, dry, burnt palm-tree lying on

the ground, poetically descriptive. The expression of both figures is

perfect, and they are most sweetly, tenderly painted. If we might make

any objection, it would be that the subject is not quite poetically

treated as to colour. It may be, and we have no doubt it is, most true

to nature in one sense. We can believe that such a country would have

such a sky, and such appearance in foreground and distance; but that

very truth creates to our mind's eye an anachronism--it brings down the

tale of antiquity to very modernism--it robs it of its antique hue--it

shows it too commonly, too familiarly. As _we read it_, we do not so see

it; we are not so matter-of-fact. There is an ideal colouring that

belongs to sentiment--our minds always adopt it. We have not as yet

correctly worked out that theory, and therefore it is not enough in our

practice. More particularly in this subject do we require something

ideal in the manner, for few are equally true in the characters as in

the external scene. Here, certainly, neither Hagar nor Ishmael are of

their nation and country. It is too lovely a picture to wish touched.

The remarks we venture upon may be applied to most modern pictures of

ancient subjects, and may be worth consideration. There are two other

pictures, very beautiful pictures, too, in the Exhibition, which have,

we think, this defect--"Jephtha's Daughter, the last Day of Mourning. H.

O. Neil;" and "Naomi and her Daughter-in-law. E. N. Eddis." The first,

Jephtha's Daughter and her attendant maidens is a group of very lovely

figures, extremely graceful, all breathing an air of purity; it is

loveliness in many forms; for its conception as to chiaroscuro and

colour, is most skilfully managed; but it has this present day's

reality, and we only force ourselves to believe it Jephtha's Daughter.

Exquisitely beautiful, too, is the affectionate, the very loving, Ruth.

Orpah, too, is sweet, but the difference is well expressed--"Orpah

kissed her mother-in-law, _but_ Ruth clave unto her." There is an

unaffected simplicity about these figures that is quite charming, a

simplicity of _manner_ well according with the simplicity of character;

but has not the picture in colouring too much of this day's familiar

air? In historical design both these pictures are a decided advance in

art. We are giving promise.

We could wish that Mr. Martin would not ruin his greatness by his

littlenesses. There is often a large conception, that we overlook to

examine interminable minutiae of parts, and mostly parts repeated; his

figures are always injurious. His "Canute the Great rebuking his

Courtiers" would have been a fine picture had he contented himself with

the real subject--the sea. It is, indeed, crude in colour, and the

coldness to the right ill agrees with the red heat on the left; but

still, in chiaroscuro, it would have been a fine picture, if completed

according to his first intention, but Canute and his courtiers spoil it.

In the first place, they make, by their position and ease, the awful

overwhelming sea safe. It is, as Longinus remarks, the plank that takes

away the danger and the poetry; and such an assemblage of courtiers put

the times of Canute quite out of our heads--a collection from a book of

fashions--Ladies' Magazines--in their velvet gauze and tiffany, in

colours that put the sun to shame, and make him blush less red; and the

little, minute work about the pebbly shore creates a weariness, for they

tempt us to count the sands. All this arises from a mistaken view of the

sublime, that we have before noticed in Mr. Martin. It is very strange

that an artist of his undoubted genius should err in a matter so

essential to the greatness at which he aims.

Would that we could say a word in of Mr Haydon's one historical

picture, "The Heroine of Saragossa." She is most unheroic certainly,

stretching across the centre of the picture with a most uncomfortable

stride, with what a foot! and a toe that looks for amputation--a torch

suspended out of her hand, held by nothing--not like "another Helen," to

"fire another Troy," but purposing to fire off a huge cannon, without a

chance of success; for not only do not her fingers hold the torch, but

her face is averted from the piece of ordnance, and her feet are taking

her away from it. She is splendidly dressed in red, and without shoes or

stockings--a great mistake, for such a foot might have been well hid.

She is the very worst historical figure we have ever seen in a picture

of any pretensions; there is another figure that only attempts to hold a

pistol. The whole is a most unfortunate display of the vulgar

historical. The unfortunate woman has two heads of hair, and both look

borrowed for the occasion. How very strange it is that an artist who

could paint the very respectable picture of the "Raising of Lazarus,"

now at the Pantheon, should not himself be sensible of the glaring

faults of such a picture as this; and we may add, the large one

exhibited last year. Mr Haydon understands art, lectures upon it, and

is, we believe, enthusiastic in his profession. Does he bring his own

works to the test of the principles he lays down? The misconception of

men of talent with regard to their own works is an unexplained

phenomenon.

Edwin Landseer, R. A., exhibits but two pictures, both excellent. Of the

two, we prefer the smaller, "Two horses drinking"--nature itself. Lord

Kames, in his Elements of Criticism, remarks, that the fore-horse of a

team always has his ears forward, on the alert, while the rest mostly,

throw theirs back. This watchfulness Landseer has observed in the eye of

the animal; the eye of the one, protected by the horse nearest to the

spectator, has a quiet, unobserving look; the eye of the other is

evidently on the watch. A cunning magpie is looking into a bone. The

picture is beautifully coloured.

Mr Redgrave's three pictures are exquisitely beautiful, and in his own

truly English style. "The Fortune Hunter,"

"Neglects a love on pure affection built,

For vain indifference if but double-gilt."

A screen separates the deserted one from the courting pair. The contrast

in expression of the two fair ones is as good as can be. The "vain

indifference" is not as many, treating this subject, have made her,

deformed, old, and ugly, for that would have removed our pity from the

suffering one, showing the man to be altogether worthless, and the loss

an escape; on the contrary she is of a face and person to be admired;

but she looks vain and void of affection. We like not so well his "Going

to Service;" but his "Poor Teacher," is most charming; it is a most

pathetic tale, though it be one figure only, but that how sweet! A

lovely girl in mourning is sitting in deep thought waiting for her

scholars; on the table is her humble fare, and of that she takes little

heed. She is thinking of her bereavement, perhaps a father, a mother, a

sister--perhaps she is altogether a bereaved one--a tear is on her

cheek. These are the subjects, when so well painted; that make us love

innocence and tenderness, the loveliness of duty, and, therefore, they

make us better. The habitual sight might rob a villain of his evil

thoughts--such human loveliness is the nearest to angelic--indeed it is

more, for we must not forget the exceeding greatness, loveliness, of

which human nature is capable. Divine love has given it a power to be

far above every other nature, and that divine love has touched the

heart, and speaks in the countenance of the "Poor Teacher."

Mr Creswick has this year rectified the fault of the last. His greens

were thought somewhat too crude and too monotonous. "In culpam ducet

culpae fuga"--the old foot-road is scarcely green enough. All Mr

Creswick's pictures have in them a sentiment--nature with him is

sentient and suggestive. The very stillness--the silence, the quiet of

the old foot-road is the contemplative of many a little history of them

whose feet have trod it: such is the character of "The Terrace." But the

most strikingly beautiful is "Welsh Glen"--

"The meeting cliffs each deep-sunk glen divides,

The woods wild scatter'd clothe their ample sides."

What sketcher has not frequently come upon a scene like this, and, with

a delight not unmixed with awe, hoped to realize it--and how many have

failed! How often have we looked down upon the quiet and not shapeless

rocky ledges just rising above and out of the dark still water; while

beyond them, and low in the transparent pool, are stones rich of hue,

and dimly seen, and beyond them the dark deep water spreads, reflecting

partially the hues of the cliffs above--and watched the slender boughs,

how they shoot out from rocky crevices, and above them branches from

many a tree-top high up, hanging over; while we look up under the green

arched boughs, and their fan-spreading leafage--every tree, every leaf

communing, and all bending down to one object, worshipping as it were

the deep pool's mystery! Here is the natural Gothic of Pan's temple--and

out from the deep pass, golden and like a painted window of the sylvan

aisle, glows the sun-touched wood, illuminated in all its wondrous

tracery. In such a scene--where "Contemplation has her fill"--the

perfect truth of this highly finished picture is sure to renew the

feeling first enjoyed--enjoyed in solitude: it should have no figure but

ourselves, for we are in it--and it has none. The colouring and

execution are most true to nature; if we would wish any thing altered,

it would be the sky, which is a little too light for the deep solemnity

of all below it. Exquisitely beautiful as are these scenes from Mr

Creswick's pencil, we doubt if he has reached or knows his own power. He

has yet to add to this style the largeness of nature. We should venture

to recommend to his reading, again and again, those parts of Sir

Joshua's Discourses which treat of the large generality of nature.

Stanfield is, as usual, remarkably clear, more characteristic of

himself, his manner, than of the places of his subjects--ever the same

coloured lights and shadows. His compositions are well made up, there is

seldom a line to offend. In "Mazorbo and Torcello, Gulf of Venice,"

however, the right-hand corner is extra-parochial to the scene--is

unbalanced, and injures the composition. The scenes, as views, are very

sweet, and have more repose than he usually throws into his pieces. This

sameness of colouring, and scenical arrangement and effect, are no less

conspicuous in the works of Mr Roberts, most of which are, however, very

beautiful. Very striking is the view of "Ruins on the Island of Philoe,

Nubia." It is not the worse for the absence of the general polish. We

seem to be on the spot--the effect is so simple, the art is unobserved.

We have to wonder at departed glory, at hidden history, and we do

wonder. Why is it that Mr Danby, whose pictures of the "Sixth Seal," and

the "Deluge," none that have seen them can forget, exhibits but one

piece, and that, though very beautiful, not from the boldness of his

genius? It is a quiet evening scene--the sun setting red towards the

horizon, the sky having much of nature's green tints, her most peaceful

hues, some cattle are standing in the river--the left is filled up with

trees, which, beautiful in form, want transparency. There is a heaviness

in that part too powerful; it attracts, and therefore disturbs the

repose. Mr Lee has not very much varied his subjects or manner this

year. His scenes are evidently from nature--great parts appear to have

been painted out of doors, being fresh and true. Not altogether liking

some of his subjects, we cannot but admire the skill in their treatment,

the warm glow in the colouring, and true character of some of his woods

running off in perspective are most pleasing. He does not aim at

sentiment. He often reminds us of Gainsborough's best manner; but he is

superior to him always, in subject, in composition, and in variety. He

has great skill in the transparency and clearness of his tones. We think

his pictures would be vastly improved if painted in a lower key. His

"Scenery near Crediton, Devonshire," is remarkably good; perhaps the sky

and distance is a little out of harmony with the rest. There are three

pictures by Mr Mueller, two very effective--"Prayers in the Desert"--but

we are more struck with his "Arabs seeking a Treasure." The sepulchral

interior is solemnly deep; the dim obscure, through which are yet seen

the gigantic sculptured heads that seem the presiding guardians; the

light and shade is very fine, as is the colour; the blue sky, seen from

within, wonderfully assists the colour of the interior. There is great

grandeur in the scene, and it is finely treated. His other picture, No.

1 in the Exhibition, is so very badly placed over the door, that we do

not pretend to judge of it, because, Mr Mueller being a good colourist,

we do not recognise him in what we can see of this "Mill Scene on the

Dolgarley."

Mr Collins has improved greatly upon his last year's exhibition. "A

Sultry Day," though at Naples, and a "Windy Day," in Sussex are not the

most pleasant things to feel or to think of. Mr Collins has succeeded in

conveying the disagreeableness of the "windy day," and it is the more

disagreeable for reminding us of Morland: luckily he has not succeeded

in conveying the sultriness. On the contrary, to us, No. 217 breathes of

freshness and coolness. It is a very sweet picture; water, boats, and

shore, beautifully painted. It is well that Mr Kennedy has but one

picture--"Italy"--for he paints by the acre. It is a great mistake--and,

while so many pictures of merit are rejected for want of room, some

injustice in his doing so. Nor does his subject, which is meagre enough,

gain any thing by its size. There is merit in the grouping--not a little

affectation in the poor colouring and general effect. Surely he might

have made a much prettier small picture of a subject that has no

pretensions to be large. Were "Italy" like that, we should totally

differ with him, and not subscribe to his quotation--

"I must say

That Italy's a pleasant place to me."

There is a very good picture by J. R. Herbert, A., if it were not for

its too great or too common naturalness. The subject is the interview

with the woman of Samaria. There is good expression, simplicity of

design, but violence of colour. The subject demands a simplicity of

colouring. Surely in such a scriptural subject, the annunciation, "I

that speak unto thee am He," should alone be in the mind; but here the

accessories are as conspicuous as the figures. Yet it is a picture of

great merit.

There are two pictures of historical subjects, (not in the artistical

sense so treated,) which attract great attention. "The Queen receiving

the Sacrament," by Leslie; and "Waterloo," by Sir W. Allan, R.A. We are

aware of the great value of this manner of pageant painting; it is

perhaps worth while to sacrifice much of art to portraiture in this

case. Viewing the necessity and the difficulty, we cannot but

congratulate Mr Leslie--notwithstanding the peculiarity of the dresses,

and the quantity of white to be introduced, this is by no means an

unpleasantly coloured picture. There is much richness, in fact; and the

artist has, with very great skill, avoided a gaudy effect. So the Battle

of Waterloo must derive its great value from the truth of the portraits.

It is any thing, however, but an heroic representation of a battle.

Perhaps the object of the painter was confined to the facts of a

military description, of positions of brigades and battalions--to our

unmilitary eyes, there is wanting the vivid action, the energy, the

mighty conflict--possibly only the ideal of a battle---which may, after

all, be in appearance a much more tame sort of thing than we imagine.

There is a necessity, for historical value, to see too much. There is Mr

Ward's "Fight of the Bulls:" the whole earth echoes the boundary and the

conflict; it is one great scene of energy. But the great fight of men

conveys none of this feeling. It is not imposing in effect--it looks

indeed rather dingy, the sky and distance cold, and not remarkably well

painted--a battle should have more vigorous handling, something of the

fury of the fight. If, however, it be matter-of-fact truth; that in such

a subject is all important, and should be painted. A battle, any battle,

may be another thing.--"Sir Joshua Reynolds and his Friends" is an

excellent subject, if all the portraits are from authentic pictures; at

a future day it will be of great value, although it is not very

agreeable as a picture.

Either the portraits have less effect than they usually have, or there

are fewer of them this year. We must give the palm to Mr Grant. He

combines many excellences--perfect truth, unaffected simplicity, and

most judicious and ever-harmonious colouring. It may not perhaps be far

wrong to say, that he is the very best portrait-painter this country has

known since Vandyck; certainly he appreciates, and has often deeply

studied, that great painter. We have long considered Mr Grant's female

portraits by far the best--the present exhibition raises him as a

general portrait-painter. The perfect unaffected ease of his attitudes

is a very great thing. Here are three pictures in a line, portraits, the

_sitters_ all _seated_--and yet how striking it is, that there is only

one that sits--Mr Grant's "Lord Wharncliffe." How sweet and natural, how

beautiful as a picture, are "The Sisters!" The conventional style of

portrait is undoubtedly good, and founded on good sense--but genius will

seize an opportunity, and be original--such is the character of Mr

Grant's portrait of "Lord Charles Scott, youngest son of the Duke and

Duchess of Buccleuch." The boy stands like a boy, every limb belongs to

him; he is all life--the flesh tints in the face are as perfect as can

be. The attitude, the dress, so admirably managed. It has all the

breadth, and power, too, of Velasquez, with all modern clearness. And

what a charmingly coloured picture is the portrait of "Lady Margaret

Littleton!" And close at hand, right glad were we to see the noble

portrait of the "Professor of Moral Philosophy, Edinburgh," the [Greek:

autos echeinos], by R. S. Lauder, an artist whose works we think have

not always been done justice to in the Academy--yet how seldom do we see

pictures of such power as his "Trial," from the "Heart of Mid-Lothian,"

and his "Ravensworth!" There is another portrait painter that is very

original--Linnell; and such is he, in the "Portraits of the Three eldest

Children of Robert Clutterbuck, Esq." There are so many smooth and soft

pictures at the exhibitions which we must look at very near, that the

habit is acquired of seeing all in that manner. To those who should so

see this of Mr Linnell, it will appear odd, sketchy, unfinished--recede,

and it is of very great power, and comes out wonderfully with all the

truth of nature. It is an out-of-door scene. The children in most

natural positions, and separate from the background, which is quite true

in effect, with surprising force. It is very well coloured, and the

manner, though not so at first, at length pleases. We like to see much

done with little effort, as soon as the eye has recovered from the

examination of laboured work.--How many works of great merit that we

should wish to mention! and perhaps we ought to notice some of demerit;

but we must forbear; the bad and the good must repose together--if there

_can_ be repose in an exhibition room. Why has not Mr Uwins painted

another "Fioretta," worth all the crude, blue, red and yellow

processions he ever painted? And why--but we will ask no questions but

of the "Hanging Committee:" why do they offend the eyes of spectators,

and vex the hearts of exhibitors, by hanging little pictures out of

sight? It is insulting to the public and the artists. Surely, if the

works be not fit to be seen, boldly and honestly reject them. It is an

injury to misplace them. Many of the pictures so placed, are evidently

intended to be seen near the eye. You do not want to _furnish_ the walls

with pictures. If so, do advertise that you will sacrifice some of your

own to that purpose. You may find a sufficient number of "Amateurs"

ready to immolate their reputation for art, of little value; but you

should consider with what an aching heart the poor painter sees the

labour of many a day, and many a cherished hope, as soon as the Academy

opens, raised to its position of noted contempt. Nor should you have a

"Condemned Cell"--such is the octagon-room termed. You render men

unhappy--and superciliously seem to think, you pay them by a privilege

of admission. Admission to what?--to see your well-placed merits, and

their own disgraced position. We are happy to see an appeal to you on

this subject in the _Artist's Magazine_, and eloquently written--and

with good sense, as are all the notices in that work. That or some other

should be enlarged to meet the requirements of art. Now we are indeed

making hotbeds for the growth of artists. They will be thick as peas,

and not so palatable--youths of large hope and little promise--some

aiming beyond their reach, others striving and straining at a low

Art-Union prize. Patronage can never keep pace with this "painting for

the million system." The world will be inundated with mediocrity. This

fever of art will terminate in a painting-plague. What is to become of

the artists? Where will you colonize?

Now let us purpose a plan. Let the members of the Academy come to this

resolution that instead of exhibiting some 1300 pictures annually, they

will not admit into their rooms more than the 300--and so cut off the

1000--that the said 300 shall all have good places, and shall be the

choicest works of British talent. Let them signify to the public that

they will show no favour, and that they will be responsible for the

merit of the works they mean to invite the public to see. They need not

doubt the effect. Great will be the benefit to art, artists, and to

patrons of art.

SUFFOLK STREET GALLERY--SOCIETY OF BRITISH ARTISTS.

This twentieth exhibition opens, according to the catalogue, under the

auspices of Marcus Tullius Cicero; but why or wherefore the world who

read the quotation mottoes of catalogues, must ever be at a loss to

discover. "I think," said the wordy Roman, "that no one will ever become

a highly distinguished orator, unless he shall have obtained a knowledge

of all great things and arts." Therefore, you, the British public, are

requested to walk in and see the show. We wish this motto affectation

were put an end to--the Royal Academy are sadly puzzled year after year

to hit upon a piece of Latin that will do, and their labour in that line

is often in vain. And certainly this intimation from Suffolk Street,

which might be very useful to a young barrister preparing for the

circuit, is now to the "matter in hand" _nihil ad rem_. But have not we

heard that motto before? We believe it was the last year's, and is we

suppose to become an annual repetition _in secula seculorum_. The

exhibition is, however, very respectable; we fear it is not so well

attended as it deserves to be. The fact is, that the Academy, with its

innumerable works, becomes, before it is half gone through, a very

tiresome affair. What with straining at raw crude colours, and pictures

out of sight, the public, who feel they must go there, have had enough

of work for weary eyes; and imagining the other gallery to be inferior,

go not to it. Yet, after a little rest, they would, we are sure, feel

gratified in Suffolk Street. If there are but half-a-dozen good

pictures, they are worth going to see, and certainly this exhibition has

its very fair proportion of works of merit, and interest. Nor is there

any lack of variety. We have only to make remarks upon a very few, not

at all wishing to have it believed that we have selected either the best

or the worst. There is novelty in some of Mr Woolmer's pictures. He

seems, however, undetermined as to style; for his pictures are here very

unequal. In one or two he is imitating Turner, but it is to have

"confusion worse confounded." And singularly enough, in such imitations,

his subjects are of repose. "A Scene in the Middle Ages, suggested by a

visit to Haddon Hall," is very pleasing. The style here is suggestive,

and judiciously so; he generalizes, and we are pleased to imagine. We

see elegant figures walking under shade of trees, clear refreshing green

shade; the composition is graceful, and fit for the speculative or

enamoured loiterers. Perhaps the foreground is too ambitious--too much

worked to effect. If this be done for the sake of contrast, it is a

mistake of the proper effect of, and proper place for, contrast. In such

a scene of ease and gentleness, all contrast is far better avoided; it

always has a tendency to make active; and is to be applied in proportion

to the degree of life and activity that may be desirable. His "Castle of

Indolence" is much in imitation of Turner. The poet uses a singular

expression,

"O'er which were _shadowy_ cast _Elysian gleams_."

What meaneth Thomson? He further calls the hue, "a roseate smile," and

is reminded of Titian's pencil. By all which hints and expressions we

conclude that the poet saw this "pleasing land of Drowsyhead" as

through a coloured glass, subduing all the exciting colours of nature to

a mellow dreaminess. No strong, no vivid colours are here--all is the

quiescent modesty, the unobtruding magic of half-tones. What shall we

say of such a Domain of Indolence being painted without shade or

shelter; with violent contrasts of dark and light, and of positive

forcing colouring? All repose is destroyed. Then again we see too much;

there are too many parts, too many figures, too many occupations:

indication that the territory was peopled would have been enough; this

is more like a _fete champetre_. Besides, the scene itself is not one to

give delight to contemplate; it is not suggestive of pleasant dream, but

looks out on an ugly, swampy, fog-infected country. The only "Indolence"

we see has been devoted to the execution, for it is slovenly to a

degree. We find the same fault, though not to the same extent, with his

"Scene from Boccaccio." It sadly wants repose, and affects colouring

which is neither good for itself, nor suitable to the subject. His

"Subject from Chaucer" has the same defects. Mr Woolmer is decidedly a

man of ability; but we think he has strange misconceptions with respect

to colours, their sentimental effect and power.

There is a "Scene from the Arabian Nights," by Mr Jacobi, which, though

it is an attempt, and by no means an unsuccessful one, at an accidental

effect of nature, which is generally to be avoided, is extremely

pleasing. It is a portrait of great loveliness, grace, and beauty--we

look till we are in the illusion of the Arabian tale--the foot of the

Beauty is not good in colour or form; and the distance is a little out

of harmony. There is considerable power; such peculiar light and shade,

and colouring, offered great difficulty to keep, up the effect

evenly--and the difficulty has been overcome. Mr Herring greatly keeps

up the character of this exhibition in his peculiar line. His "Interior

of a Country Stable" is capitally painted, even to the ducks. The old

horse has been evidently "a good 'un;" goats, ducks, and white horse

behind, all good, and should complete the scene--we may have "too much

for our money." The cows and occupation going on within, in an inner

stall, are too conspicuous and a picture within a picture, and therefore

would be better out. His black and roan, in the "Country Bait Stable,"

are perfect nature. A picture by Mr H. Johnston, "The Empress Theophane,

begging her husband Leo V. to delay the execution of Michael the

Physician," is well designed; has a great deal of beauty of design, of

expression, and of general colour, but not colour of flesh--nor is the

purple blue of the background good.

We take it for granted that artists are often at a loss for a subject,

and that they often choose badly we all know; but a worse than that

chosen by Mr G. Scott, we do not remember ever to have met with. It is

entitled "Morbid Sympathy," forming two pictures. In the one the

murderer is coming from the house where he has just committed the

diabolical act; in the other he is visited. The man is an uninteresting

villain and his visitors are fools. The object of the painter is

doubtless a good one; it is to avert that morbid sympathy which has been

so conspicuously and mischievously felt and affected for the worst, the

most wicked of mankind. But to do this is the province of the press, not

the pencil. It is a mistake of the whole purpose of art. It will not

deter murderers, who look not at pictures; and if they were to look at

these, would not be converted by any thing the pictures have to

show--nor will it keep back one fool, madman, or sentimental hypocrite

from making a disgraceful exhibition. We are not sorry to notice this

failure of Mr Scott's, because we would call the attention of artists in

general to "subject." Let a painter ask himself before he takes his

brush in hand, why--for what purpose, with what object do I choose this

scene or this incident? Can the moral or the sentiment it conveys be

told by design and colour?--and if so, are such moral and such sentiment

worth the "doing." Will it please, or will it disgust? We mean not to

use the word "please" in its lowest common sense, but in that which

expresses the gratification we are known to feel even when our quiescent

happiness is disturbed. In that sense we know even tragedies are

pleasing. We may, however, paint a martyr on his gridiron, and paint

that which is only disgusting; the firmness, the devotion through faith

of the martyr, are of the noblest heroism. If to represent that be the

sole object, and it succeeds, such a work would rank with tragedy, and

please.

PAINTING IN WATER COLOURS.

We have visited the two societies of painters in water colours. In these

there are two antagonist principles in full practice--while some are

endeavoring to imitate, and indeed to go beyond the power of oil

colours, others are going back as much as may be to the white paper

system; imitating in fact the imitation which painters in oil have taken

up from the painters in water colour. We must, of course, expect from

this no little extravagance both ways--and we are not disappointed in

the expectation. We will first notice the elder institution. In this,

certainly, there are fewer examples of the power of colour system--but

not a few in the weaker system. We noticed last year that Mr Copley

Fielding was making great advances in it. His practised and skilful hand

causes that style to have many admirers. Poor John Varley--we look with

interest at his last work. His early ones were full of genius. He was an

enthusiast in art. There is very great beauty in his "View on the

Croydon Canal previous to the making the rail-road." An admirable

composition--the woods and water are very fine. There are some very good

drawings by D. Cox, which will greatly please all who like to see much

told with little labour. Prout fully sustains his reputation. Amidst

much detail he is always broad and large. There is a most true effect of

haze in Copley Fielding's fine drawing of "Folkstone Cliff." There is an

affected absence of effect in his "Arundel Castle"--the blues and

yellows are not in harmony--and all has an uncomfortable, unsubstantial

look. Eliza Sharpe's "Little Dunce" is a delightful drawing. It is only

the old dame that can ever be angry with a little dunce--and she puts on

more than half her anger; and this is a glorious little dunce, that we

would not see good for the world--the triumph of nature over tuition.

This charming little creature has been happy her own way, has been

wandering in her own "castle of indolence," and perhaps, too,

philosophizing thus--Well, I have been naughty, but happier still than

if I had been good. So is the goodness we force upon children often

against nature--we love to see nature superior. Eliza Sharpe must have

been of the same way of thinking, and it is archly expressed. Her Una

and the lion is large and free--the face of Una nor quite the thing. We

have a "Castle of Indolence" by Mr Finch, gay with "all the finches of

the grove," but the country does not look indolent, nor the country for

indolence. Hunt's boys, clever as ever. The sleeping boy, with his large

shadow on the wall, is most successful. The companion, the boy awake, is

a little of the caricature. His "Pet," a boy holding up a pig, natural

as it is, is nevertheless disgusting; for such a toy will ever be the

biggest beast of the two. Mr Hills has several excellent drawings of

deer; but there is one, so perfect that it is quite poetical--a few

deer, in their own wild haunt, heathery brown, and almost treeless, the

few spots of stunted trees serving to mark the spot, separating it from

similar, and making it the home. It is furthest from the haunts of man.

It looks silence. The animals are quite nature, exquisitely grouped. The

quiet colouring, unobtrusive, could not be more nicely conceived--it is

the long Sabbath quiet of an unworking world. The picture is well

executed. It is one that makes a lasting impression.

Mr Oakley's "Shrimper," a boy sitting on a rock, reminds us of some of

Murillo's boys; it is as good in effect, and better in expression, than

most of the Spaniard's. "After the second Battle of Newbury," by

Cattermole, is a well-imagined scene, but is defective in that in which

we should have supposed the artist would not have failed. It is not

moonlight. "Tuning," by J. W. Wright, is a good proof that blue, as

Gainsborough likewise proved, is not necessarily cold. His "Confession,"

with the two graceful figures, is very sweet. "The Gap of Dunloe," W.

A. Nesfield--has fine folding forms--the distance and rainbow

beautiful--it is, however, somewhat hurt by crude colour, and too much

cut up foreground. The Vicar and his family supply work to many an

artist of our day. Mr Taylor's is very good--Moses pulling the reluctant

horse, is a good incident. We do not quite recognize Mrs Primrose, and

could wish the daughter had more beauty. We never could very much admire

Mr Richter's coarse vulgarities--and they are of gross feeling, and we

think, caricatures without much humour; but his sentimentalities are

worse. His "Sisters," a scene from the novel of "The Trustee," is but a

miserable attempt at the pathetic. Mr Gastineau's "Bellagio" is a

beautiful drawing, has great breadth and truth; but the water is

certainly too blue.

EXHIBITION OF NEW SOCIETY IN WATER COLOURS.

Generally speaking, this Society is mostly ambitious of carrying water

colour to its greatest possible depth and power, and certainly, in this

respect, the attainment is wondrous. In design, and other character,

this society more than keeps its ground. We remember last year noticing

Miss Setchell's little picture, as one of the best of the year; we have

still a perfect recollection of the most lovely pathetic expression of

the poor girl. We were greatly disappointed that no work of Miss

Setchell adorns the walls. There is a picture, however, which, if it did

not move us equally, at once arrested our attention, and again and again

did we return to it. The character of it is not certainly moving, as

Miss Setchell's, it is altogether of a different cast--it is one for

thought and manly contemplation. The subject is "Cromwell and Ireton

intercepting a letter of Charles the First," by L. Haghe. Cromwell is

standing reading a letter--Ireton adjusting the saddle in the recess of

a window, near which Cromwell stands, is a table with a flagon, the

scene is an inn in Holborn. The attitude of Cromwell is dignified ease

and resolution. In his fine countenance we read the full history of the

"coming events"--we see all there, that we have learned from history.

The very curtains and stick seem to the imagination's eye convertible

into canopy and sceptre. There is great forbearance in the painting--we

mean that there is just enough, and no more, of water-colours' ambition.

More depth would have injured the effect. It is a very striking picture;

well finished, and with a breadth suited to the historical importance of

the history. Mr Warren's "Christ's Sermon" is of the ambitious school.

If we contrast the quiet, solemnly quiet, tone of that sermon of

beatitudes, with the coloured character of the picture, we must condemn

the inappropriate style. We should say it is immodestly painted; the

picture and not the subject, obtrudes. The head of Christ is weak. It is

a picture nevertheless of great ability, but with a gorgeous colouring

ill suited to the subject. But we must speak with unqualified admiration

of a little picture by Mr Warren--the "Ave Maria." It is a lady kneeling

before a picture of a saint in a chapel. The depth and power is very

surprising, and much reminds of Rembrandt, with the exception of the

picture of the saint, which struck us at first as too light by a great

deal, so much so that we noted it down as a glaring defect, but

returning to the picture, we looked, not only till we were reconciled,

but to an admiration of what we had considered a fault. It is the poetry

of the subject. We see not the face of the petitioning figure, we only

feel that she is there, and devoutly petitioning, and the brightness of

the patron saint, with its simple open character of face and figure,

comes out as a miraculous manifestation. We must not mistake--the "Ave

Maria" does not mean that it is to the Virgin the petitioner prays; it

is to a male saint.

Mr E. Corbould still is in the full ambition of water colour power.

"Jesus at the House of Simon the Pharisee," is an example of the

inappropriateness of this manner to solemn sacred subjects. The Mary is

very good--not so the principal figure, it has a weak expression: some

parts of this picture are too sketchy for others. His "Woman of Samaria"

is a much better picture, has great breadth and grace. It is rather

slight. His "Flower of the Fisher's Hut" is very pretty--a lady in

masquerade. Absolon's "Uncle Toby" is well told, and with the author's

naivete. Mr Topham's farewell scene from the "Deserted Village," is, we

think, too strong of the mock-pathetic--a scene of praying and babying.

There are many pictures we would wish to notice, but we must forbear: we

cannot, however, omit the mention of a sea-piece, which we thought very

fine, with a watery sky; a good design,--"North Sunderland Fishermen

rendering assistance after a Squall."

THE BRITISH INSTITUTION.

Having recently given some account of Sir Joshua, his Discourses, his

genius, and his influence upon the arts in this country, we visited this

gallery, where as many as sixty of his works are exhibited, with no

little interest. The North Room is occupied by them alone. Have we

reason to think our estimate of Sir Joshua Reynolds, as a painter, not

borne out by this exhibition? By no means. Our first impression from the

whole collection, not seeing any particular picture, is of colour. And

here Sir Joshua appears _inventive_; for though he not unfrequently

imitated Rembrandt, there is, on the whole, a style that is far from

Rembrandt, and is not like any other old master; yet we believe, for it

was the character of his mind so to do, that he always had some great

master in view in all he did. But he combined. Hence there is no little

novelty in his style, and not seldom some inconsistencies--a mixture of

care and delicacy, with great apparent slovenliness. We say apparent,

for we are persuaded Sir Joshua never worked without real care and

forethought; and that his apparent slovenliness was a purpose, and a

long studied acquirement. He ever had in view the maxim--_Ars est celare

artem_; but he did not always succeed, for he shows too evidently the

art with which he concealed what first his art had effected. Looking

carefully at these pictures, we see intention every where: there is no

actual random work. We believe him to have finished much more than has

been supposed; that there is, in reality, careful drawing and colouring,

at least in many of his pictures, _under_ that large and general

scumbling and glazing, to which, for the sake of making a whole, he

sacrificed the minor beauties. And we believe that many of those

beauties were not lost when the works were fresh from his easel, but

that they lave been obscured since by the nature of the medium and the

materials he used. That these were bad we cannot doubt, for we plainly

see that some of these pictures, his most laboured for effect, are not

only most wofully cracked, (yet that is not the word, for it expresses

not the gummy separation of part from part,) but that transparency has

been lost, and the once-brilliant pigments become a _caput mortuum_.

Hence there is very great _heaviness_ pervading his pictures; so that

even in colouring there is a want of freshness. A deep asphaltum has

overpowered lightness and delicacy, and has itself become obscure. Sir

Joshua did not leave his pictures in this state. It is as if one should

admire, in the clear brown bed of a mountain river, luminous objects,

stone or leaf, pebble or weed, most delicately uncertain in the magic of

the waving glaze; and suddenly there should come over the fascination an

earthy muddying inundation. In estimating Sir Joshua's mind, we must, in

imagination, remove much that his hand has done. Nor was Sir Joshua,

perhaps, always true to his subject in his intention of general

colouring. His "Robinettas," and portraits, or ideals of children, are

not improved by that deep asphaltum colouring, so unsuitable to the

freshness, and may we not add, purity of childhood. And there appears,

at least now in their present state, that there is too universal a use

of the brown and other warm colours; Rembrandt invariably inserted among

them cool and deep grays, very seldom blue, which, as too active a

colour, is apt to destroy repose, the intended effect of deep colouring.

Titian uses it for the sake of its activity, as in the Bacchus and

Ariadne and how subdued is that blue! but even in such pictures there

are the intermediate grays, both warm and cold, that the transition from

warm to cold be not too sudden. We cannot say that Sir Joshua Reynolds

did not introduce these qualifying grays, because the browns have so

evidently become more intense, that they may have changed them to their

own hue.

There are some pictures here which have either lost their glaze by

cleaning, or never had it, and these have a freshness, and touch too,

which others want; such is the case with "Lady Cockburn and her Three

Sons"--a very fine picture, beautifully coloured, and well grouped, very

like nature, and certainly in a manner of Vandyck. We remember, too, his

"Kitty Fisher," and regret the practice which, with the view of giving

tone, often took away real colour, and a great deal of the delicacy of

nature. The very natural portrait of "Madame Schindelin," quite in

another manner from any usual with Sir Joshua, shows that he was less

indebted to his after theory of colouring than people in general have

imagined. The most forcible picture among them is the "Ugolino." It is

well known that the head of Ugolino was a study, and not designed for

Ugolino, but that the story was adopted to suit it; yet it has been

thought to want the dignity of that character. Ugolino had been a man in

power; there is not much mark in the picture of his nobility. It has

been said, too, that the addition of his sons is no improvement in the

picture. We think otherwise: they are well grouped; by their various

attitudes they give the greater desperate fixedness to Ugolino, and they

do tell the story well, and are good in themselves. The power of the

picture is very great, and it is not overpowered by glazing. On the

whole, we think it his most vigorous work, and one upon which his fame

as a painter may fairly rest. We have a word to say with respect to Sir

Joshua's pictures of children. That he fully admired Correggio, we

cannot doubt--his children have all human sweetness, tenderness, and

affection; but it was the archness of children that mostly delighted our

painter--their play, their frolic, their fun. In this, though in the

main successful, he was apt to border upon the caricature; we often

observe a cat-like expression. "The Strawberry Girl" has perhaps the

most intense, and at the same time human look. It is deeply sentient or

deeply feeling. The "Cardinal Beaufort" disappoints; so large a space of

canvass uncouthly filled up, rather injures the intended expression in

the cardinal. Has the demon been painted out, or has that part of the

picture changed, and become obscure? But we will not notice particular

pictures; having thus spoken so much of the general effect, we should

only have to repeat what we have already said.

The Middle Room is a collection of old masters of many schools, and

valuable indeed are most of these works of art. There is a small

landscape by Rembrandt, "A Road leading to a Village with a Mill,"

wonderfully fine. It is the perfect poetry of colour. The manner and

colouring give a sentiment to this most simple subject. It is a village

church, with trees around it. This is the subject--the church and

trees--all else belongs to that--we see dimly through the leafage--we

read, through the gloom and the glimmer, the village histories. The

repose of the dead--the piety of the living--all that is necessary for

the village home, is introduced--but not conspicuously--and nothing

more; here is a house, a farm-house, and a mill--a village stream, over

which, but barely seen, is a wooden bridge--the clouds are closing

round, and such clouds as "drop fatness," making the shelter the

greater--a figure or two in the road. There is great simplicity in the

chiaroscuros, and the paint is of the most brilliant gem-like richness,

into which you look, for it is not flimsy and thin, but substance

transparent--so that it lets in your imagination into the very depth of

its mystery. No painter ever understood the poetry of colour as did

Rembrandt. He made that his subject, whatever were the forms and

figures. We have made notes of every picture, but have no room, and must

be content with selecting a very few. Here are two fine sea-pieces by

Vandervelde and Backhuysen. We notice them together for their unlikeness

to each other. In the latter, "A Breeze, with the Prince of Orange's

Yacht," there is a fine free fling of the waves, but lacking the

precision of Vandervelde. There are two vessels, of nearly equal

magnitude, and not together so as to make one. We are at a loss,

therefore, which to look at. It is an offence in composition, and one

which is never made by Vandervelde--often by Backhuysen; and not

unfrequently are his vessels too large or too small for the skies and

water. "The Breeze, with Man-of-War," by Vandervelde, is, in its

composition, perfect. It is the Man-of-War; there is nothing to compete

with it--the gallant vessel cares not for the winds or waves--she

commands them. It is wondrously painted, and as fresh as from the easel.

Here are three pictures by Paul Potter--the larger one, "Landscape, with

Cattle and Figures," how unlike the others! "Cattle in a Storm," is a

large picture in little. The wind blows, and the bull roars. It is very

fine, and quite luminous. The other, "Landscape, with Horses and

Figures," looks, at first view, not quite as it should; but, on

examining it, there are parts most exquisitely beautiful--the white

horse coming out of the stable is perfect, and, like the Daguerreotype

portraits, the more you look with a good magnifying-glass, the more

truth you see. There is no picture in this room that excites so much

attention as the "View of Dort from the River."--Cuyp. It is certainly

very splendid. It is a sunny effect; the town is low--some warm trees

just across the river, near which, half-way in the stream, is a barge,

the edges gilded by the sun--further off is a large vessel, whose sides

are illuminated--above all is a thunder-cloud, very effectively painted.

The picture has been divided, and rejoined, and is very well done. It

would perhaps be better if it were cut off a little beyond the large

vessel, as the opposite sides are not quite in harmony, one part being

cold, the other extremely warm. There is a companion by Cuyp, which has

been engraved for Forster's work, "A River Scene--Fishing under the

Ice." It is very fine: if not quite so luminous as the former, it is in

better tone altogether. We must move on to--

THE SOUTH ROOM

With the exception of two pictures of the modern German school, this

room contains the works of English artists not living. Only one of the

German school is a picture of any pretension, "Christ blessing the

Little Children"--Professor Hesse. The reputation of this painter led us

to expect something better. We must consider it apart from its German

peculiarities, and with respect to what it gains or loses by them. As a

design, the story is well and simply told. As a composition, it is a

little too formal, lacking that easy flowing of lines into each other,

which, though eschewed by the new school, is nevertheless a beauty. The

expression in the heads is good generally, not so in the principal

figure. There is throughout a character of purity and tenderness--it is

a great point to attain this. But none of this character is assisted by

the colouring, or the chiaroscuro. The colouring, though it has a gold

background, is not rich, for the gold is pale, even to a straw colour,

and the pattern on it rather gives it a straw texture. We presume it is

meant to represent the dry Byzantine style of colouring, purposely

avoiding the richer colours; as power is lost, by this adoption, it is

impossible to give either the tones or colours of nature--there is no

transparency. To preserve this old simplicity, softening and blending

shadows are avoided, by which a positive unnaturalness offends the eye;

hence the hands and feet not only look hard, but clumsy--they may not

be, but they look, ill drawn. The figures, indeed, look like pasteboard

figures stuck on; there is a leaden hue pervading all the flesh tints.

It fails, too, in simplicity and antique air, which we suppose to be the

objects of the school. For there is too much of art in the composition

for the former, too little quaintness for the latter; and indeed its

perfect newness of somewhat raw paint prevents the mind from going back

to ancient time; and that failure makes the picture as a whole, a

pretension. It does not, then, appear to gain what that old style is

intended to bestow--and it loses nearly all the advantages of the

after-improvements of art--of its extended means. It rejects the power

of giving more intensity to feeling, of adding the grace of nature, the

truth and variety of more perfect colouring, by the opaque and the

transparent, and does not in any other way attain any thing which could

not have been more perfectly attained without the sacrifice. The

collection of the British school contains good and bad--few of the best

of each master. West's best picture is among them, his "Death Of

Wolfe"--everyone knows the print; the picture is good in colour and

firmly painted, and contrasts with some others where we see the

miserable effect of the megillups and varnishes which our painters were

wont to mix with their colours. We should have been glad to have seen

better specimens of Fuseli's genius--we suppose we must say that he had

genius. The best piece of painting of his hand in the room is the boy in

Harlowe's picture of the "Kemble Family;" a picture of considerable

artistic merit, but ruined by the coarse vulgarity of a caricature of

Mrs Siddons. How unlike the Lady Macbeth! The corpulent velvet dark mass

and obtruding figure is most unpleasant. It is much to be regretted Mr.

Harlowe did not redesign that principal figure. There are several

landscapes of Gainsborough's, and one portrait--the latter excellent,

the former poor. There is much vigour of colouring and handling in the

"Horses at a Fountain;" but as usual, it is a poor composition, and of

parts that ill agree. The mass of rock and foliage are quite out of

character with the bit of tame village scene, and the hideous figures.

Here, too, his "Girl and Pigs," for which he asked sixty guineas, and

Sir Joshua gave him a hundred. We do not think the President had a

bargain. There is not one of Wilson's best in this collection. The

"Celadon and Amelia" is dingy, and poor in all respects. It verifies as

it illustrates; for Thomson says,

"But who _can paint_ the lover as he stood?"

Very coarse is Opie's "Venus and Adonis." He had not grace for such a

subject--nor for "Lavinia." We should have been glad to have seen some

of his works where the subjects and handling agree. We are sorry to see

Hogarth's "March to Finchley" so injured by some ignorant cleaner. His

"Taste in High Life" is the perfection of caricature. We have not the

slightest idea what Constable meant when he painted the "Opening of

Waterloo Bridge." The poor "_Silver_ Thames" is converted into a smear

of white lead and black. "Charles the First demanding the Five Members,"

surprised us by its power--its effect is good. Here is no slovenly

painting, so common in Mr. Copley's day--the general colour too is good;

and the painting of individual heads is much after the manner of

Vandyck. There are some pictures on the walls which might have been

judiciously omitted in an exhibition which must be considered as

characteristic of English talent.

As the British Gallery is for a considerable period devoted to works of

English art, and as so many other exhibitions offer them in such

profusion, we would suggest that it would be more beneficial to art, and

to the success and improvement of British painters, if the original

intention of the governors of the institution were adhered to, of

exhibiting annually the choicest works of the old schools.

MARSTON, OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN.

PART III.

"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.

The meeting was a singular and a melancholy one. The news from France

had become hourly more fearful. Every packet brought accounts of new

outrages. Paris was already in the power of the populace. The struggle

continued, however hopelessly, in the provinces, just enough to swell

the losses of noble life, and the conflagrations of noble property. To

these wounds of feeling had now to be added sufferings of a still more

pressing nature; their remittances had begun to fail. The property which

they had left in the hands of their Parisian bankers had either become

valueless by the issue of assignats, which no one would take, or

confiscated in the general plunder of the banks, whose principals had

been thrown into prison, on _suspicion_ of being worth robbing. All was

bankruptcy.

The duchess made a slight attempt, evidently a painful one, to explain

to us, as strangers, the purpose of their unusual meeting. It was

simply, that "the emigrant noblesse, who had already experienced so much

heroic hospitality from their English friends, thought that the time was

come when they ought to be burdens on them no longer. The letters from

France are dreadful," said she, "and it will be our duty to show, that

as we have enjoyed prosperity, we can submit to suffering. We must

prepare to earn our bread by those accomplishments which we acquired in

happier times, and, as we once supposed, for happier times."

A general sigh seemed to break from every heart, and Mariamne hung on

the hand of the duchess, and grew pale. There was a silence for a while;

at length she resumed--"We must not return to our own country, at least

until this horrid struggle is at an end; for we should only embarrass

those who have sent us to the protection of this generous land, and for

whose sake we live. Yet, we only do honour to them by avoiding to eat

the bread of dependence, while we can labour for ourselves." Those

words, few as they were, were uttered with many a pause, and in the low

tone of a true mourner. She then called a beautiful girl towards her.

The girl rose, hesitated, and sank again. "Clotilde, my love, here are

none but friends; we must forget every thing but patience and our

country." As she spoke, the duchess took her contribution from her hand;

it was a drawing of some size, and of singular elegance--an Arcadian

festival. It was sent round the room with universal admiration; and the

ice thus once broken, a succession of proficients followed, bringing the

produce of their talents; some, miniatures--some, sketches of French and

Swiss scenery--some, illustrations of Racine and the French theatre;

and, of course, many with embroidery, and the graceful works of the

needle. Strangers are too apt to conceive that Paris is France and that

the frivolity of life in the capital was always its model in the

provinces. I here saw evidence to the contrary, and was not a little

surprised to see performances so seldom to be found among the French

arts, as admirable oil-paintings, carvings in ivory, marble busts, and

bas-reliefs, casts of antique vases and groups, and even models of the

chief temples and palaces of antiquity. The leisure of the chateau was

often vividly, and even vigorously employed; and while the youths of the

great families were solely directed to military prospects, the females

often acquired solid and grave accomplishments. In short, we had among

us as many artificers, not a few of them delicate and lovely, as could

have furnished a Tower of Babel, if not built it; but _our_ fabric

would have had one exception, it would have had no "confusion of

tongues;" for tongues there were none to be heard among us--all was

silence, but when some work of striking beauty, and this was not

unfrequently the case, was handed round with a murmur of applause.

The harp and piano were then brought forward and this was the most

trying part of all--not from any want of skill in the performers, for

the majority were perfect on both instruments, but from the nature of

the performances themselves. France is not renowned for native music,

but neither Italian genius, nor German science, has produced more

exquisite little snatches of melody than are to be found in some of the

nooks and corners of the provinces. Paris is, like other capitals, an

epitome of the world; but Languedoc, the wild country of Auvergne, the

Vosges mountains, the hidden and quiet vales of Normandy, and even the

melancholy sands of the Breton, have airs of singular and characteristic

sweetness. Gretry and Rousseau were but their copyists. Sorrow,

solitude, and love, are every where, and their inspiration is worth all

the orchestras in the globe.

Those simple airs were more congenial to the depressed spirits of the

whole assemblage than the most showy bravuras; and, sung by those

handsome creatures--for beauty adds a charm to everything--retained me

spell-bound. But, on the performers, and their circle of hearers, the

effect was indescribable. All the world knows, that there is nothing

which revives memories like music. Those were the airs which they had

heard and sung from their infancy; the airs of their early

companionships, hopes, and perhaps loves; sung in their gardens, their

palaces, at their parents' knees, by the cradles of their children, at

their firesides, every where combining with the heart. Sung now in their

exile, they brought back to each heart some recollection of the happiest

scenes and fondest ties of its existence. No power of poetry, nor even

of the pencil, could have brought the past so deeply, so touchingly,

with such living sensibility, before them. _There_ at least, was no

acting, no display, no feigned feeling--their country, their friends,

the perils of husband and brother in the field, the anguish, almost the

agony, of woman's affection--and what can equal that affection?--was in

the gestures and countenances of all before me. Some wept silently and

abundantly; some buried their faces on their knees, and by the heaving

of their bosoms alone, showed how they felt; some sat with their large

eyes fixed on heaven, and their lips moving as in silent prayer; some

almost knelt, with hands clasped and eyes bent down, in palpable

supplication. Stranger as I was to them and theirs, it was painful even

to me. I felt myself doubly an intruder, and was thinking how I might

best glide away, when I saw Mariamne, in an attempt like my own, to

move, suddenly fall at the feet of the duchess. She had fainted. I

carried her into the open air, where she soon recovered. "Do you wish to

return, Mariamne?" said I. She looked at me with amazement. "Return! It

would kill me. Let us go home." I placed her on her horse, and we moved

quietly and sadly away.

"That was a strange scene," said I, after a long interval of silence.

"Very," was the laconic reply.

"I am afraid it distressed you," I observed.

"I would not have seen it for any consideration, if I could have known

what it was;" she answered with a new gush of tears. "Yet what must my

feelings be to theirs? They lose every thing."

"But they bear the loss nobly. Still they have not lost all, when they

can excite such sympathy in the mind of England. They have found at

least an asylum; but what was the object of this singular meeting?"

"Oh, who can tell what they are dreaming of in their distraction?" she

said with a deep sigh. "It was probably to turn their talents to some

account; to send their works to London, and live by them--poor things,

how little they know of London!--or, perhaps, to try their chance as

teachers, and break their hearts in the trial. Revolutions are terrible

things!" We lapsed into silence again.

"I pity most the more advanced in life," I resumed. "They have been so

long accustomed to all the splendours of Paris, that living here must be

felt with incurable humiliation. The young are more elastic, and bear

misfortune by the mere spirit of youth; and the lovely find friends

every where. Did you observe the noble air, the almost heroine look, of

that incomparable girl who first showed her drawing?" Mariamne shot a

quick glance at me.

"You have quite forgotten her name, I suppose?" said she, with a

scrutinizing look.

"Not wholly. I think the duchess called her Clotilde."

"I shall set you at ease, sir, upon that point," said she smartly. "But

of one thing I can assure you, and it is, that she is engaged to be

married to her second cousin, the Marquis de Montrecour. So, you see, it

is scarcely worth your while to enquire any thing more of her name, as

she is about to change it so soon--but it is De Tourville, a descendant

of the renowned admiral, who lost a renowned French fleet a hundred

years ago, an event not unusual in French history. You observe, Mr

Marston, I give you most willingly all the information in my power."

I have never presumed to have a master key to female hearts; but there

was something half contemptuous, half piqued, in my fair companion's

tone, and a rapid interchange of red and pale in her cheeks, which set

me musing. She touched her horse with her fairy whip, and cantered a few

paces before me. I followed, as became a faithful squire. She suddenly

reined up, and said, in the voice of one determined that I should feel

the full point of the sting--"Oh, I had forgot. I beg a thousand

pardons. Yesterday the Marquis arrived in London. His proposal reached

Madame la Comtesse this morning, the young lady's mother--your

_heroine_, I think you called her. The _trousseau_ will probably be sent

down from London in a week, unless she shall go to town to choose it,

which is the more likely event, as among French ladies the trousseau is

generally a more important matter than the gentleman; and then, I

presume, you will be relieved from all _anxiety_ upon the subject."

I was all astonishment. The language would have been an impertinence in

any one else; yet, in the pretty and piquant Mariamne, it was simply

coquettish. At any other time or place I might have felt offended; but I

was now embarrassed, wordless, and plunged in problems. Why should I be

concerned in this news? What was the opinion of this butterfly to me?

yet its sarcasm stung me: what was Clotilde to me? yet I involuntary

wished the Marquis de Montrecour at the bottom of the Channel; or what

knew I of French tastes, or cared about trousseaux? yet, at that moment,

I peevishly determined to take no more rambles in the direction of the

Emigrant cottages, and to return to town at once, and see what sort of

absurdity a French marriage present looked at my first step in Bond

Street.

But this was destined to be a day of adventures. I had led her a circuit

through the Downs, in the hope of reviving her by the fresh air before

we reached the villa; and we were moving slowly along over the velvet

turf, and enjoying that most animating of all the breaths of sky or

earth--the sea-breeze; when Mariamne's steed--one of the most highly

_maneged_, and most beautiful of animals, began to show signs of

restlessness, pricked up his ears, stopped suddenly, and began to snuff

the gale with an inflated nostril. As if the animal had communicated its

opinions to its fellow, both our horses set off at a smart trot, the

trot became a canter, the canter a gallop. Mariamne was a capital

horsewoman and the exercise put her in spirits again. After a quarter of

an hour of this volunteer gallop, from the top of one of the Downs we

saw the cause--the Sussex hunt, ranging the valley at our feet. Our

horses were now irrestrainable, and both rushed down the hill together.

The peril of such a descent instantly caught all eyes. A broad and high

fence surrounded the foot of the hill, and, wildly as we flew down, saw

that the whole hunt had stopped in evident alarm. In another moment we

had reached the fence. Mariamne's horse, making a desperate spring, flew

over it. Mine failed, and threw me into the middle of the hedge. I was

stunned, the sight left my eyes; and, when I opened them again, a man of

peculiarly striking countenance, and stately figure, was raising me from

the ground, while an attendant was pouring brandy down my throat. My

first thought was of my unfortunate companion. "Where is the lady? Is

she safe? What has become of her?" were my first exclamations. "Are you

much hurt," enquired the stranger. "No, no," I cried; "where is the

lady?" "I hope by this time safe," said he; "some gentlemen of the party

have followed her: her horse has run away with her; but they will

doubtless overtake her in a few minutes." He ascended a small rising

ground close to us, and stood gazing in the distance. "No, they are

following her still. She keeps her seat. They are now taking a short cut

to intercept her. They are close up.--No, that mad animal of a horse has

thrown them all out again, he springs over every thing; yet she still

holds on. What a capital horsewoman!" While he uttered those broken

exclamations I rolled on the ground in torture. At length, after a

pause, I heard him say, in a shuddering voice, "All's over! that way

leads direct to the cliff."

At the words, though dizzy with pain, and scarcely able to see, I seized

the bridle of the groom's horse, who had alighted to assist me; without

a word sprang on his back, and dashing in the spur was gone like an

arrow. The whole group soon followed.

From the first rising ground, I saw the frightful chase continued.

Mariamne's hat had fallen off, and her hair and habit were flying in the

wind. She was bending to the neck of her steed, whom the pursuit of the

hunt, and the sight of their red coats, had evidently frightened. He was

darting, rather than galloping along, by wild bounds, evidently growing

feeble, but still distancing his pursuers. Half dead with pain and

terror, I could scarcely hold the bridle, and was soon overtaken by the

stranger. "Sir," said he, "you are exhausted, and will never be able to

overtake the unfortunate lady in that direction. I know the

country--follow me." Unable to answer, I followed; with my ears ringing

with a thousand sounds, and my thoughts all confusion--I was awoke from

this half stupor by a tremendous outcry.

On the brow of the hill before me, were the dozen jaded riders, forced

to draw rein by the steepness of the declivity, and all pointing with

vehement gestures below. In the next instant, through the ravine at its

foot, and within a hundred yards of the cliff, came Marianne, still

clinging to the horse, and flying like the wind. The look which she cast

upon me, as she shot by, haunted me for years after, whenever an image

of terror rose in my dreams. Her eyes were starting from their sockets,

her lips gasping wide, her visage ghastliness itself. Another moment,

and all must be over; for at the end of the valley was the cliff, a

hundred and fifty feet high. I rushed after her. The sight of the sea

had struck her at once. She uttered a scream, and fell with her forehead

on the horse's neck. Even that movement probably checked him, for he

reared, and before his feet touched the ground again I was close to him;

with a frantic effort I caught his bridle, and swept his head round.

Mariamne fell, voiceless, sightless, and breathless, into my arms. The

spot where she was saved was within a single bound of the precipice.

The hunters now came round us, and all was congratulation. Our escape

was pronounced to be "miraculous;" I was complimented on all kinds of

heroism; and the stranger, evidently the chief personage of the circle,

after giving the glance of a connoisseur at poor Mariamne's still

pallid, yet expressive, countenance, thanked me, "for having allowed him

to breathe at last, which he had not done, he believed, for some

minutes, through terror." Nothing could exceed the graceful interest

which he expressed in my companion's safety. His grooms were sent to

look for assistance in all quarters, and it was not until a carriage had

arrived from the next village, and he had seen Mariamne placed in it,

that he could be persuaded to take his leave. Even in after life, when I

saw him in the midst of the splendour of the world, himself its ruling

star, and heard him so often quoted as

"The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,"

I thought that he never deserved the title more than when I saw him

perform the duties of simple good-nature to two unknown individuals on a

wild heath on the Sussex shore That stranger was the Prince of Wales!

This adventure, by all the laws of romance, should have made me fall in

love with Mariamne, or Mariamne fall in love with me. But reality has

laws of a different kind, and the good fortune of being just in time to

save a lady's life, whether on horseback or on foot, whether in lake or

river, whatever it might be in any other ages, is not necessarily a

pledge of eternal constancy in our times. That she was grateful, I fully

believe, for her nature was innocent and kind; but confession was out of

the question, for neither during our rapid drive home, nor for some days

after, was she capable of uttering one word. Alarm had reduced her to a

state of exhaustion next to death. Her slight frame had been so shaken

that she was as helpless as a child; and almost the only sin of

consciousness which she gave, was her shrinking from the sight of the

sea whenever she was led towards the window, and her hiding her head in

her shawl at every sound of the surge.

It may be true, that if the choice depended on her father I should have

been the possessor of her fair hand, and the heir to his half million,

and equally true, that the event might have saved me a million of

troubles. Even at this hour, I sometimes cannot help thinking how total

a change must have been given to my anxious career--how many desperate

struggles I should have escaped, if I had thus found my path covered,

like an eastern potentate's, with cloth of gold! From my first step, how

many privations, nay pangs, would have been utterly unknown to me in

climbing up the steeps of life, if I had been lifted on the broad and

easy pinions of opulence; how little I should have suffered from that

reptilism which lurks in every thicket of public life, and every where

with a sting; if I had gone through existence, like another Rasselas in

his valley of imperishable summer, guarded from all the inclemencies of

fortune, and surrounded with all the enjoyments of man!

And yet, who can tell that the very ease of such a destiny might not

have wearied my heart, enervated my mind, and rendered me at once

burdensome to myself and useless to the world? Is it not hunger that

gives the true zest to the banquet, however exquisite, and labour that

gives the true charm to the couch, however embroidered? Is not the

noblest enjoyment of the noblest mind to be found it the consciousness

that we have done something in our generation; that we have contributed

a stone to the pyramid of the national renown, that our lips have

swelled the echoes of imperial glory? What can reconcile the man of

powerful intellect to the consciousness that he has passed through life

a cipher, and left nothing behind him but a tomb?

I had now to undergo the temper of Mordecai. The sight of a post-chaise

flying along the shore, with one of the royal grooms as outrider, had

brought him and all the inmates of the villa to the door. From our

furious haste it was evident to them all that some extraordinary

circumstance had caused the long delay of their young mistress. From the

entrance of the avenue I saw Mordecai standing, straight and silent as

one of the pillars of his gate, with his arms folded, and his eye

lowering under his huge brow, like one prepared for calamity. But when

the carriage drove up to the door, and I raised his helpless and

ashy-coloured daughter in my arms, he gazed for an instant on her, and

with a howl like that of a wild animal pierced by bullet or steel, fell

on his face on the ground. He evidently thought that she was dead.

Even when she opened her feeble eyelids, smiled, and took his hand, he

could scarcely be persuaded that she was still alive. He raved, he tore

his hair, he vowed deathless vengeance, and the vengeance of all his

race, against the murderer of his child, "his beloved, the child of his

soul, the last scion of his name, his angel Mariamne." Rage and tears

followed each other in all the tempest of oriental fury. No explanation

of mine would be listened to for a moment, and I at length gave up the

attempt. The grooms had given the outline of the story; and Mordecai

charged me with all kinds of rashness and folly. At one time rushing

forward to the couch where she lay, faintly attempting to soothe him, he

would fling himself on his knees beside her, kiss her forehead, and

upbraid himself for all his fancied harshness to her in the course of

his life. Then suddenly starting on his feet, with the spring of a

tiger, he would bound towards me, his powerful features distended with

rage, his deep eye flashing, and his bony hand clenched as if it grasped

a dagger, cursing the hour "when I had first set my foot under his

unhappy roof," or cast my "evil eye upon the only child of the undone

Mordecai." Ever in all the scene, the thought struck me, of what would

be the effect of a hundred thousand such men, sweeping with scymetar and

lance over the fields of Palestine? The servants fled in terror, or

lurked in different directions until the storm should be gone down. At

length Mariamne, dreading an actual collision between us, rose with an

effort, tottered across the room, and threw her arms around her father's

neck. The old man was conquered at once; his countenance grew calm; he

sat down upon the floor, and with his daughter hiding her face in his

bosom, wept silently and long. When I saw him thus quieted, I left them

together, and retired to my chamber, determined to leave the discovery

of his error to his returning judgment; and reinforced in my intention

to depart for London even at the earliest dawn.

I employed myself for a while in packing up my few equipments for the

journey, but this was soon done, and the question was, how to get rid of

the remainder of the evening. I was resolved to meet Mordecai no more;

and the servant who announced that dinner was ready, was sent back with

an answer, that a violent headach prevented my leaving my room. The

headach was true; and I had a reluctance equally true to see the "human

face divine" for that evening at least. There was one exception to that

reluctance, for thoughts had begun to awake in me, from which I shrank

with something little short of terror. There was one "human face divine"

which I would have made a pilgrimage round the world to see--but it was

not under the roof of Mordecai. It was in one of the little cottages on

which I was then looking from my window, and yet which seemed placed by

circumstances at an immeasurable distance from me. It was the

countenance of a stranger--one with whom I had never exchanged a word,

who was probably ignorant of my existence, whom I might never see again,

and yet whom I had felt to be my fate. Such are the fantasies, the

caprices of that most fantastic of things--the the unfledged mind. But I

have not taken up my pen to write either the triflings or the

tendernesses of the heart. I leave to others the _beau ideal_ of life.

Mine has been the practical, and it has been stern and struggling. I

have often been astonished at the softness in which other minds seem to

have passed their day; the ripened pasture and clustering vineyards--the

mental Arcadia--in which they describe themselves as having loitered

from year to year. Can I have faith in this perpetual Claude Lorraine

pencil--this undying verdure of the soil--this gold and purple suffusion

of the sky--those pomps of the palace and the temple, with their

pageants and nymphs, giving life to the landscape, while mine was a

continual encounter with difficulty--a continual summons to

self-control? My march was like that of the climber up the side of AEtna,

every step through ruins, the vestiges of former conflagration--the

ground I trode, rocks that had once been flame--every advance a new

trial of my feelings or my fortitude--every stage of the ascent leading

me, like the traveller, into a higher region of sand or ashes, until, at

the highest, I stood in a circle of eternal frost, and with all the rich

and human landscape below fading away in distance, or covered with

clouds, looked down only on a gulf of fire.

* * * * *

As I sat at my window, gazing vaguely on the sea, then unruffled by a

breath, and realizing all the images of evening serenity, a flight of

curlews shot screaming by, and awoke me from my reverie. I took my gun,

and followed them along the shore. My sportsmanship was never of the

most zealous order, and my success on this occasion did not add much to

the mortality of the curlews. But the fresh air revived me, I felt my

elasticity of foot and frame return, and I followed for some miles along

the windings of the shore. At last I had reached the pool where they,

probably more aware of the weather than I was, seemed intending to take

up their quarters for the night. I took my ground, and was preparing to

attack them with both barrels; when a gust that swept with sudden

violence between the hills nearly blew me down, and scattered all my

prey, screaming and startled, on the wing far into the interior. I had

now leisure to look to myself. The sea was rolling in huge billows to

the shore. The sun had sunk as suddenly as if it had been drowned. The

hills were visible but for a moment, gleamed ghastly in the last light,

and were then covered with mist. One of those storms common in Autumn,

and which brings all the violence of winter into the midst of the

loveliest season of the year, had come on, and I was now to find shelter

where I could in the wilderness.

I was vigorous and hardy, but my situation began to be sufficiently

embarrassing; for I was at least half-a-dozen miles from home; and the

fog, which wrapped every thing, soon rendered the whole face of the

country one cloud. To move a single step now was hazardous. I could

judge even of my nearness to the ocean only by its roar. The rain soon

added to my perplexities, for it began to descend less in showers than

in sheets. I tried the shelter of the solitary thicket in these wilds,

but was quickly driven from my position. I next tried the hollow of a

sand-hill, but there again I was beaten by the enemy; and before I had

screened myself from the gust a quarter of an hour, a low rumbling

sound, and the fall of pieces of the hill above, awoke me to the chance

of being buried alive. I now disclaimed all shelter, and painfully

gained the open country, with no other guide than my ear, which told me

that I was leaving the sea further and further behind, but hearing the

rush of many a rivulet turned into a river before me, and in no slight

peril of finishing my history in the bed of some pool, or being swept on

the surface of some overcharged ditch, to find my bed in the sea after

all.

All vexations seem trifling when they are once over; but, for full two

hours of this pelted pilgrimage, I felt sensations which might have

cured me of solitary sporting for the rest of my existence.

At the end of those hours, which appeared to me ten times the length, I

heard the barking of a dog, the usual announcement of peasant life; and

rejoicing in it, as one of the most welcome of all possible sounds, I

worked, felt, and waded, my way to the door of a building, at which,

without ceremony, I asked for entrance. My application was for some time

unanswered but I heard a rustling within which made me repeat my request

in various ways. After trying my eloquence in vain, I offered a guinea

for a bed. A window was now opened above, and showed a pair of heads,

which in their night-gear strongly reminded me of the grandmother wolf

in Little Red Riding hood--myself, of course, being the innocent victim.

I now doubled my offer, my whole purse amounting to no more; and was let

in.

My hosts were two, an old woman hideous with age and ferocity of

feature, but the other a young one, with a handsome but bold countenance

whose bronze had been borrowed as much from free living as from the sea

breeze. The house was furnished in the parti-coloured style, which,

showed me at once that it belonged to something above the peasant. The

women at first were rather reluctant to enter into any conversation; but

when, to make my reception welcome, I paid the two guineas down on the

table, their hearts became thawed at once, and their tongues flowed. My

wet clothes were exchanged for the fisherman's wardrobe, and a tolerable

supper was put on the table. Some luxuries which I might not have found

under roofs of more pretension, were produced one after the other; and I

thus had Hamburg hung beef, Westphalia ham, and even St Petersburg

caviare; preserved pine apple formed my desert, and a capital glass of

claret "for the gentleman," of which the ladies, however, professed

themselves incapable of discovering the merit, was followed by an

equally capital bottle of brandy, which they evidently understood much

better.

In the midst of our festivity, the dog sprang to the door, and a sound

like that of a horn or conch shell, was heard through the roar of the

gale. The women started from their seats in evident consternation, swept

away the remnants of the supper, and conveyed me into an adjoining

closet; where they begged of me to keep close, not to speak a syllable,

let what would happen, and, as I valued my life and theirs, not to

mention thereafter whatever I might see or hear. It was now plain that I

was in the house of smugglers; and as those were notoriously people not

to be trifled with, I made my promises of non-intervention with perfect

sincerity.

I was scarcely in my nook when the party arrived. They were evidently

six or seven--their conversation was the common bluster and

boisterousness of their trade--and between their demands for supper,

their coarse jokes, and their curses at the lubberliness or loitering of

their associates from the other side of the Channel, (for, with all

their accompliceship, they had the true John Bull contempt for the

seamanship of Monsieur,) they kept the house in an uproar. They expected

a cargo from Calais that right, and the idea of losing so favourable an

opportunity as the tempest offered, rendered them especially indignant.

Scouts were sent out from tine to time to look for signals, but nothing

appeared. At length the brandy was beginning to take effect on their

brains, and their rough jokes arose into quarrel. A charge of treachery

produced the drawing of cutlasses, and I heard them slashing at each

other; but the right Nantz which had inflamed the quarrel rendered it

harmless, until one lost his balance, rolled headlong against my door,

and burst it in. There stood I, visible to all, and the sight produced a

yell, in which the epithets of "spy, exciseman, custom-house shark," and

a whole vocabulary of others, all equally remote from panegyric, were

showered upon me. I should have been cut down by some of the blades

which flashed before me, but that I had taken the precaution of carrying

my gun to my closet, and was evidently determined to fight it out. This

produced a parley; when I told my tale, and as it was corroborated by

the women, who came forward trembling at the sight of their savage

masters, and who spoke with the sincerity of fear; it saved me further

encounter, and I was merely enjoined to pledge myself, that I should not

betray them.

The compromise was scarcely brought to a conclusion when the discharge

of a pistol was heard outside; and as this was the signal, the whole

party-prepared to leave the house. I now expected to be left to such

slumbers as I could find in the midst of rocking roofs, and rattling

doors and windows. But this was not to be. After a short consultation at

the door, one of them returned, and desired me to throw on a fisherman's

dreadnought which was smoking beside the fire; and follow him. Against

this, however, I vehemently protested.

"Why, lookye, sir," said the fellow, smoothing his tone into something

like civility, "there is no use in that thing there against about fifty

of us; but you must come along."

I asked him, could he suppose, that I was any thing like a spy, or that,

if I gave my word, I should not keep it?

"No," said the fellow. "I believe you to be a gentleman; but what a

story shall we have for the captain if we tell him that we left a

stranger behind us--and, begging your pardon, sir, we know more about

you than what the women here told us--and that after he heard all our

plans for the night's work, we left him to go off to the custom-house,

with his story for the surveyor."

This seemed rational enough, but I still held my garrison. The fellow's

face flushed, and, with something of an oath, he went to the door, gave

a whistle, and returned next minute with a dozen powerful fellows, all

armed. Contest was now useless, and I agreed to go with them until they

met the "captain," who was then to settle the question of my liberty,

The women curtseyed me to the door, as if they rather regretted the loss

of their companion, and were at least not much pleased by being cut off

from further inroads on a purse which had begun by paying so handsomely,

not knowing, that it was utterly stript; and we marched to the point of

waiting for the bark from Calais.

The storm had actually increased in violence, and the howling of the

wind, and thunder of the billows on the shore, were tremendous. Not a

word was spoken, and if it had been, the roar would have prevented it

from being heard, the night was pitch dark, and the winding paths along

which we rather slid than walked, would not have been easy to find

during the day. But custom is every thing: my party strode along with

the security of perfect knowledge. The country, too, seemed alive round

us. The cottages, it is true, were all silent and shut up, as we hurried

through; but many a light we saw from the lowly cottage, and many a

whistle we heard over the wild heath. Cows' horns were also in evident

requisition for trumpets, and in the intervals of the gusts I could

often hear the creaking of cart-wheels in the distance. It is to be

remembered that this was notoriously _the_ smuggling country of England,

that those were the famous times of smuggling, and that the money made

by evading the king's customs often amounted to a moderate fortune in

the course of a simple speculation.

The whole country apparently had two existences, a day and a night

one--a day and a night population--the clown and his tillage in the

light, the smuggler and his trade in the dark; yet the same peasant

frequently exhibiting a versatility for which John Bull seldom gets

credit.--The man of the plough-tail and the spade, drudging and dull

through one half of his being; the same man, after an hour or two of

sleep, springing from his bed at midnight, handling the sail and helm,

baffling his Majesty's cruisers at sea, and making a _melee_ with the

officers of the customs on shore--active, quick, and bold, a first-rate

seaman, brave as a lion, fleet as a hare, and generally having the best

of it in the exercise of both qualities.

Our numbers had evidently grown as we advanced, and at length a whistle

brought us to a dead stand. One of the party now touched my sleeve, and

said,--"Sir, you must follow me." The cliff was so near, that thoughts

not much to the credit of my companions came into my head. I drew back.

The man observed it, and said, "The captain must see you, sir. If we

wanted to do you any mischief, an ounce of lead might have settled the

business an hour ago. But if we are free-traders, we are not

bloodhounds. You may trust _me_; I served on board Rodney's ship."

Of course this was an appeal to my new friend's honour, which could not

be refused without hurting his etiquette most grievously, and I

followed. After two or three windings through an excavation in the

cliff, we came in front of a blazing fire, screened from external eyes

by a pile of ship timbers. Before the fire was a table with bottles, and

at it a man busily writing. On raising his eyes the recognition was

instant and mutual. I saw at once, in his strong features, my companion

on the roof of the Royal Sussex stage, whose disappearance had been the

subject of so much enquiry. He palpably knew a good deal more of me than

I did of him, and, after a moment's embarrassment, and the thrusting of

papers and pistols into the drawer of a table, he asked me to sit down;

hurried to the mouth of the cavern, heard the story of my capture from

the sailor, and returned, with his forehead rather smoothed.

"I am sorry, sir," said he, "that the absurdity of my people has given

you a walk at this time of night; but they are rough fellows, and their

orders are to be on the _qui vive_."

My answer was, "That I had been treated civilly; and, as circumstances

had brought it about, I did not so much dislike the adventure after

all."

"Well spoken, young gentleman," was his reply. "Circumstances rule every

thing in this world, and one thing I shall tell you; you might be in

worse hands, even in this country, than in ours. Pray," added he, with a

peculiar look, "how did you leave my friend Mordecai?"

I laughed, and he followed my example. Tossing off a glass of wine and

filling out a bumper for me--

"Well, then," said he, "suppose we drink the Jew's health. I gave you a

rather strange character of him, I think. I called him the perfection of

a rogue; true enough; but still I make a difference between a man who

volunteers roguery; and a man on whom it is thrust by the world.

Circumstances, you see, are my reason for every thing. Make a hard

bargain with Mordecai, and ten to one but you are caught in his trap.

Throw yourself on his mercy; and if the whim takes him, I have known him

as generous as any other."

I replied, that his generosity or craft were now matters of very little

importance to me, for I had determined to return to London by day-break.

He expressed surprise, asked whether I was insensible to the charms of

the fair Mariamne, and recommend my trying to make an impression there,

if desired to have as much stock as would purchase the next loan. Our

further conversation was interrupted by the sound of a gun from seaward,

and we went out together.

The sight was now awful; the tide had risen, and the storm was at its

height. We could scarcely keep our feet, except by clinging to the

rocks. The bursts of wind came almost with the force of cannon shot, and

the men, who now seemed to amount to several hundreds, were seen by the

glare of the lightnings grasping each other in groups along the shore

and the hills, the only mode in which they could save themselves from

being swept away like chaff. The rain had now ceased its continual pour,

but it burst in sharp, short showers, that smote us with the keenness of

hail. The sea, to the horizon, was white with its own dashings, and

every mountain surge that swept to the shore was edged with light--the

whole, one magnificent sheet of phosphor and foam. Yet, awful as all

was, all was so exciting that I actually enjoyed the scene. But the

excitement grew stronger still, when the sudden report of two guns from

seaward, the signal for the approach of the lugger, followed almost

immediately by a broadside, told us that we were likely to see an action

before her arrival. As she rose rapidly upon the horizon, her signals

showed that she was chased by a Government cruiser, and one of double

her size. Of the superior weight of metal in the pursuer we saw

sufficient proofs in the unremitting fire. Except by superior

manoeuvering there was clearly no chance for the lugger. But in the

mean time all that could be done on shore was done. A huge fire sprang

up instantly on the cliff, muskets were discharged, and shouts were

given, to show that her friends were on the alert. The captain's

countenance fell, and as he strode backwards and forwards along the

shore, I could hear his wrath in continued grumblings.

"Fool and brute!" he cried, "this all comes of his being unable to hold

his tongue. He has clearly blabbed, otherwise we should not have had any

thing better than a row-boat in our wake. He will be captured to a

certainty. Well, he will find the comfort of being a cabin-boy or a

foremast-man on board the fleet for the rest of his days. I would not

trust him with a Thames lighter, if ever he gets on shore again."

The cannonade began now to be returned by the lugger, and the captain's

spirits revived. Coming up to me, he said, wiping the thick perspiration

from his brow, "This, sir, is a bad night's job, I am afraid; but if the

fellow in command of that lugger had only sea room, I doubt whether he

would not give the revenue craft enough to do yet. If he would but stand

off and try a fair run for it, but in this bay, in this beggarly nook,

where a man cannot steer without rubbing his elbows upon either shore,

he gives his seamanship no chance."

He now stood with his teeth firm set, and his night-glass to his eye,

bluff against the storm. A broadside came rolling along.

"By Jove! one would think that he had heard me," he exclaimed. "Well

done, Dick Longyarn! The Shark has got that in his teeth. He is leading

the cruiser a dance. What sort of report will the revenue gentleman have

to make to my Lords Commissioners to-morrow or the next day, I should

wish to know?"

The crowd on shore followed the Manoeuvres with not less interest.

Every glass was at the eye; and I constantly heard their grumblings and

disapprovals, as some luckless turn of the helm exposed the lugger to

the cruiser's fire. "She will be raked; she will lose her masts," was

the general groan. As they neared the shore, the effect of every shot

was visible. "There goes the mainsail all to ribands; the yards are shot

in the slings." Then public opinion would change. "Fine fellow that! The

Shark's main-top shakes like a whip." In this way all went on for nearly

an hour, which, however, I scarcely felt to be more than a few minutes.

"The skipper in command of that boat," said the captain at my side, "is

one of the best seamen on the coast, as bold as a bull, and will fight

any thing; but he is as leaky as a sieve; and when the wine gets into

him, in a tavern at Calais or Dunkirk, if he had the secrets of the

Privy Council, they would all be at the mercy of the first scoundrel who

takes a bottle with him."

"But he fights his vessel well," I observed.

"So he does," was the reply; "but if he should have that lugger captured

before a keg touches the sand, and if the whole goes into the

custom-house before it reaches the cellars of the owners, it will be all

his fault."

They were at length so near us that we could easily see the splinters

flying from the sides of both, and the havoc made among the rigging was

fearful; yet, except for the anxiety, nothing could be more beautiful

than the manoeuvres of both. The doublings of the hare before the

greyhound, the flight of the pigeon before the hawk, all the common

images of pursuit and evasion were trifling to the doublings and

turnings, the attempts to make fight, and the escape at the moment when

capture seemed inevitable. The cruiser was gallantly commanded, and her

masterly management upon a lee shore, often forced involuntary

admiration even from the captain.

"A clever lad that revenue man, I must own," said he, "it is well worth

his while, for if he catch that lugger he will have laid hold of twenty

thousand pounds' worth of as hard-earned money as ever crossed the

Channel. I myself have a thousand in silk on board."

"Then all is not brandy that she brings over?"

"Brandy!" said the captain, with a bitter smile. "They would be welcome

to all the brandy she carries to-night, or to double the freight, if

that were all. She has a cargo of French silks, French claret, ay, and

French gold, that she must fight for while she has a stick standing."

At this moment, the sky, dark as it was before, grew tenfold darker, and

a cloud, that gave me the exact image of a huge black velvet pall,

suddenly dropped down and completely covered both vessels; no firing was

heard for a time, even the yell of the gust had sunk; nothing was heard

but the billow, as it groaned along the hollow shore. The same thought

occurred to us both at once. "Those brave boys are all in their coffin

together," slowly murmured my companion. There was neither shout nor

even word among the crowd; while every eye and ear was strained, and the

men began to run along the water's edge to find a fragment of the

wrecks, or assist some struggler for life in the surge. But the cloud,

which absolutely lay upon the water, suddenly burst open, with a roar of

thunder, as if split from top to bottom by the bolt, and both were seen.

A sheet of lightning, which, instead of the momentary flash, hung

quivering from the zenith, showed both vessels with a lurid distinctness

infinitely clearer than day. Every remaining shroud and rope, every

wound of mast or yard, every shot-hole, nay, every rib and streak of the

hulls, was as distinctly visible as if they had been illuminated from

within. But their decks, as the heave of the surge threw them towards

us, showed a fearful spectacle. The dying and the dead, flung along the

gangways, the wounded clinging to the gun carriages or masts, a few

still loading the guns, which neither had now hands enough to

manoeuvre; yet both ships still flying on, shattered and torn, and

looking, in the wild light, like two gigantic skeletons.

The lugger now fired a rocket, and sent up a striped flag, the signal of

distress. A cry for "The boats!" was echoed along the shore, and eight

or ten were speedily started from their hiding places and dragged down

the shingle. Stout hearts and strong hands were in them without loss of

time, and they dashed into the storm. But their efforts were wholly

useless. No strength of oars could stand against such a gale. Some were

swamped at once, the men hardly escaping with their lives. The rest were

tossed like dust upon the wind, and dashed high on shore. All was

hopeless. Another rocket went up, and by its ghastly blaze I caught a

glimpse of the captain. He had been either forced from his hold on the

rocks by the wind, or fallen through exhaustion. His bronzed face was

was now as pale as the sand on which he lay; he was the very image of

despair. Thinking that he had fainted, and fearing that, in this

helpless state, he might be swept away by the next surge--for the spray

was now bursting over us at every swell--I laid hold of his hand to drag

him higher up the cliff after me. As if the grasp had given him a

renewed life, he sprang on his feet, and saying, in a distracted tone,

which I alone could hear, "Better be drowned than ruined!" he cried out

with the voice of a maniac, "Boys, sink or swim, here I go! Five guineas

for every man who gets on board." Tearing off his heavy coat, he rushed

forward at the words, and plunged headlong into the billow. There was a

general rush after him; some were thrown back on the sand, but about

half the number were enabled to reach the lugger. We quickly saw the

effect of even this reinforcement. At the very point of time when the

cruiser was about to lay her on board, she came sharply round by the

head, and discharged her broadside within pistol-shot. I could see the

remaining mast of the cruiser stagger; it made two or three heaves, like

a drunkard trying to recover his steps, then came a crash, and it went

over the side. The vessel recoiled, and being now evidently unable to

steer, the storm had her at its mercy; and the last we saw of her was a

hull, rolling and staggering away down the Channel, firing guns of

distress, and going headforemost toward the Bay of Biscay.

Need I say in what triumph the lugger was hauled up the sand, or how

her bold commander and hardy crew were received? But while a carouse was

preparing for them--and, it must be owned that if sailing and fighting

were claims, they had earned their suppers--the business portion of the

firm was in full activity. From the waggon down to the wheelbarrow,

every country means of carriage was in motion without delay. I had been

hitherto by no means aware of what Johnson would probably have called

"the vehicular opulence" of the Sussex shore. Nor had I ever a more

striking illustration of the proverbial lightness of the work of many

hands; a process, which in his solemn lips would probably have been,

"Sir, congregated thousands laugh at individual difficulty; delay

vanishes before united labour; and time is an element of toil no more."

The clearance of the cargo would have put all the machinery of a royal

dockyard to shame. As for the activity of the custom-house, it would

have been the movement of a tortoise, to the rapidity of whatever is

most rapid in unpacking or pilfering. But pilfering here we had none; we

were all "men of honour;" and, undoubtedly, if any propensity to mistake

the _tuum_ for the _meum_ had been exhibited, there were among us

sufficient of the stamp of my old friend "who had served with Rodney,"

to have flung the culprit where men pilfer no more; whatever may be done

by porpoises.

But as I had no wish to be a party to what, with all its gaiety and

gallantry, I felt to be a rough infraction of the law; I now begged

permission to make my way homewards. It was given at once, with even

some expressions of gratitude for my having, as it was termed, stood by

them to the last; and a guide was ordered for me as an additional

civility. "You will have five miles to walk," said the captain, as he

shook hands with me; "but Grapnel here will take you the shortest way

and it will be light in an hour. You need say nothing of this business

to Mordecai, who makes a point of being deaf and dumb when ever it suits

him; though, between ourselves."--The captain's prudence here checked

his overflow of confidence. "I merely mean to say, that if you drink any

particularly fine claret, in a day or two, at his table, you will have

to thank the lugger, La Belle Jeannette, for it. _Au revoir_."

My guide and I pushed on into the darkness. He was a bluff, open-hearted

fellow, with all the smuggler's hatred of the magistracy, and taking

great delight in telling how often they failed in their attempts to stop

the "free trade," which he clearly regarded as the only trade worthy of

a man. His account of the feats of his comrades; their escapes from the

claws of the customs; their facetious tricks on the too vigilant among

the magistrates; and the real luxury in which, with all their life of

hardship, they found opportunities of indulging, would have edified a

modern tour writer, and possibly relieved even the dreariness of a

county historian. Among other matters too, he let out, that he paid me a

prodigious compliment in accompanying me, as this night's smuggling was

one of the grand exploits of the year; and casting a "longing, lingering

look, behind," where a distant glimmer marked the scene of operations,

he evidently halted between the two opinions, whether to go on, or

return. "What a glorious night!" he exclaimed, as he turned his bald

forehead to a sky black as Erebus, and roaring with whirlwind. "Talk of

sunshine, or moonshine, compared with that!" Another burst of rain, or

flash of lightning, would evidently have rendered the scene too

captivating. Both came, and I must have lost my guide, when he stopped

short, and in a half whisper, asked me, "whether I heard anything?"

Before I could return a word, he had flung himself on the ground, with

his ear to the sward, and after a moment's listening, said, "here they

come!"

"Who come? There is neither sight nor sound between us and Brighton. Are

you thinking of the custom-house officers?"

The look which I had the benefit of seeing by a blue blaze from the

zenith, and the tone of infinite scorn, in which he slowly repeated the

words, "custom-house officers," were incomparable. "Afraid of _them_!"

said he, as he rose from the wet heather, "as much afraid as the cat is

of the mice. No, those are the dragoons from Lewes."

"Well, what have we to care about them?"

"Care?" said he, with a mixture of frown and grin. "Only that you are

the captain's friend, and I daresay, are going at this time of night to

do a job for him in Brighton yourself--I should think, young gentleman,

you were only laughing at Sam Grapnel. Better not! Why, you see, though

the fellows with their pens behind their ears are no more than

six-watered gin to us, the dragoons are another sort of thing. I must go

back. So, young gentleman, I wish you a very good night."

The oddity of the wish in the midst of this elemental uproar, made me

laugh, shivering as I was. Yet, to be left to find my own way at such a

time, was startling. I offered him money.

"At another opportunity, sir," said he, rather pacified by the offer.

"But, if they come upon the captain unawares, they will find every thing

ready to their hands; all at sixes and sevens just now. It will take an

hour or two before he can clear the cargo off the ground; and there goes

the whole speculation. Don't you hear them? You have only to drop your

ear to the ground, to know the whole affair. A lubber deserted from us a

week ago, and no doubt he has laid the information."

I lay down, and clearly enough heard the trampling of horses, and in

considerable numbers. My own situation was now somewhat embarrassing.

They were evidently coming up in our direction; and, to be found past

midnight, armed, (for my gun had been restored to me,) in company with

an unquestionable smuggler, must have made appearances tell strongly

against me. But my companion's mind was made up with the promptitude of

a life which has no time to waste on thinking.

"I must go back this moment, or all our comrades will be taken in the

fact. And, take my advice, you had better do the same; for go I will.

The captain shan't have it to say that I let him be caught without

warning."

I still hesitated, and he still urged.

"You can do no better, sir; for if you stand here five minutes longer,

you will either be taken, or you will lose the number of your mess, by a

carbine slug, or the slash of a sabre; while, if you turn back, you will

have ten times the chance of escape along the shore."

I could now distinctly hear the clatter of hoofs, and the jingling of

bridles. There was no time to deliberate; I certainly felt no

inclination to be the means of the captain's ruin or death, and I

followed my guide, who set off with the swiftness of a deer.

We soon reached the shore, where our intelligence struck considerable

alarm. "I thought that it would be so," said the captain; "I had notice

from a friend in the customs itself, that a spy was at work, and it was

to this that we owed the chase of the lugger. For the revenue officers I

care not a straw, but the dragoons are to be avoided when we can. We may

fight upon occasion, it is true, but we choose our time for it. We have

now only to get out of the way; and clever as they are, they may find us

not so easily laid hold of."

Turning to me, he said, "I am sorry, Mr Marston, that you have been

brought into all this bustle; but time and chance happen to us all. At

all events, it will show you something of life, which you would scarcely

have seen in the Jew's villa, though he, too, could show you a good

deal. We shall see each other again, but let this night be forgotten,

and now, good by once more." Then turning to my guide, he said, "This

young gentleman must be seen safe along the cliff; stay with him until

he sends you back again.

"Come, lads, all hands to work!" he now shouted to a group who stood at

a little distance; "are the tar-barrels ready?" "Ay, ay," was the

answer. They trundled three or four barrels along the shore, dragged

them up the face of the cliff, and I had scarcely left them a hundred

yards behind, when they were in a blaze. The trampling of the dragoons

was now heard coming on at full speed.

"There," said Grapnel, "I'll engage that he tricks them at last; while

they are moving up to the fire, the cargo is moving up to the store. He

will leave half a dozen kegs for them to make prize of, while he is

carrying away clear and clean as much silk as would make gowns for all

the corporation of London, and as much claret as would give the gout

to"----the gust choked the remainder of the comparison.

He had probably been accustomed to performances of this order, for his

conjecture was exactly verified. From the spot where we stood, to get,

as he called it, a last peep at "the free-traders bamboozling the

dragoons," we could see cavalry rushing up to the blaze, evidently sure

of having made a capture. A few carts in the ravine below next caught

their eye. Another beacon on another hill soon threw up its flame, and a

party galloped off to examine the new phenomenon. Two or thee more

blazed in succession, and increased their perplexity.

"I must have one shot at them before I go," said Grapnel, "if I die for

it;" and, before I could utter a word to prevent him, he discharged his

pistol. This was an unlucky shot, as it drew the attention of a party of

dragoons, whom we had not before seen, in the hollow beneath. After

returning a shot or two, they darted down upon the rear of the last

convoy, which was silently moving under the shadow of the cliffs, with

the captain and some of its stoutest followers at its head. The business

now began to be serious. The captain and his men, determined not to lose

their venture, made a bold resistance. The dragoons came riding in from

all quarters, but the ground was unfavourable for them, hemmed in as it

was on all sides by the sea, and on the other by the cliff, besides the

encumbrance of the carts and waggons, behind which the cutlasses of the

smugglers were fully a match for the sabre.

If I could have thought of any thing but the hazard of those unfortunate

fellows, the scene from the spot where I stood was sufficiently

striking. The blaze from the tar-barrels showed a long extent of the

Downs, with the troops scattered and galloping among them on all sides.

Long ridges of light were thrown over the waters, while, immediately

below me, the flashes of the smugglers' muskets and the soldiers'

pistols were incessant. It was a battle on a minor scale.

But it is dangerous to be in the way of bullets even as an amateur; for,

as I stood gazing down, I felt a sudden stroke like a shock of

electricity. I staggered, and was on the point of rolling over the

cliff, when Grapnel darted towards me. I just felt myself grasped by

him, and lost all recollection.

On recovering my senses again, I was in Mordecai's villa, where I had

been brought by some fishermen on the morning of the skirmish; and who,

asking no questions, and being asked none, had deposited me, bandaged

and bruised as I was, at the door of the villa. If I was not sensible of

this service, it was, at least, a vast relief to the Jew, who had begun

to think that his violence had urged me on some desperate course. As

hasty in his repentance as in his wrath, he had no sooner become

rational enough to hear his daughter's story, than he was eager to make

me the _amende_ by all the means in his power. Perhaps he would have

even lent me money, if I had met him in the penitential mood; but I was

not to be found. The sight of my corded trunk convinced him that I had

taken mortal offence, and he grew more uneasy still. As the night fell,

a general enquiry was made amongst the fisherman's cabins; and as, on

those occasions, no one ever desires to send away the enquirer without

giving himself, at least, credit for an answer, every one gave an answer

according to his fashion. Some thought that they had seen me in a skiff

on the shore; where I was, of course, blown out to sea, and, by that

time, probably carried to the chops of the Channel. Others were sure,

that they had seen me on the outside of the London mail--an equally

embarrassing conjecture; for it happened that the horses, startled by

the lightening, had dashed the carriage to pieces a few miles off.

Mordecai's own conception was, that the extravagance of his rage had

driven me to the extravagance of despair; and that I was by this time

making my bed below the surges which roared and thundered through the

dusk; and some scraps of verse which had been found in my

apartment--"Sonnets to an eyebrow," and reveries on subjects of which my

host had as much knowledge as his own ledger, were set down by him for

palpable proofs of that frenzy to which he assigned my demise. Thus, his

night was a disturbed one, passed alternately in watching over his

daughter's feeble signs of recovery, and hurrying to the window at every

sound of every footstep which seemed to give a hope of my return. The

sight of me in the morning, laid at his hall door, relieved his heart of

a burden; and, though the silence and rapid retreat of my bearers gave

him but too much the suspicion that I had somehow or other been

involved in the desperate business of the last twelve hours; of whose

particulars he had, by some means or other, become already acquainted;

he determined to watch over, and, if need be, protect me, until I could

leave his house in safety.

My recovery was slow. A ball had struck me on the forehead; and, though

it had luckily glanced off, it had produced a contusion which long

threatened dangerous consequences. For a month, I remained nearly

insensible. At length I began to move, health returned, the sea-breeze

gave me new sensations of life; and, but for one circumstance, I should

have felt all the enjoyment of that most delightful of all

contrasts--between the languor of a sick bed, and the renewed pouring of

vitality through the frame.

On my first awaking, I found an accumulation of letters on my table.

Some were the mere common-places of correspondence; some were from

sporting friends in the neighbourhood of the castle, detailing with due

exactness the achievements of their dogs and horses; three were from the

Horse Guards at successive intervals of a week--the first announcing

that my commission in the Guards had received the signatures of the

proper authorities; the second, giving me a peremptory order to join

immediately; and the third, formally announcing, that, as I had neither

joined, nor assigned any reason for my absence, my commission had been

cancelled!

This was an unexpected blow, and, in my state of weakness might have

been a fatal one, but for my having found, at the bottom of the heap, a

letter in the handwriting of Vincent. This excellent man, as if he had

anticipated my vexations, wrote in a style singularly adapted to meet

them at the moment. After slight and almost gay remarks on country

occurrences, and some queries relative to my ideas of London; he touched

on the difficulties which beset the commencement of every career, and

the supreme necessity of patience, and a determination to be cheerful

under all.

"One rule is absolutely essential," wrote he, "never to mourn over the

past, or mope over the future. 'Sufficient unto the day is the evil

thereof,' is a maxim of incomparable wisdom. Never think of the failures

of yesterday, but to avoid them to-morrow, and never speculate on the

failures of to-morrow, but to remember that you have outlived the

failures of to-day. The French philosophers are now preaching around the

world, that knowledge is power, and so it is, but only as gunpowder is

power; a dangerous invention which blew up the inventor. It requires to

be wisely managed. English experience will tell you, more to the

purpose, that 'perseverance is power;' for with it, all things can be

done, without it nothing. I remember, in the history of Tamerlane, an

incident which, to me, has always had the force of an apothegm.

"In early life, and when reduced to the utmost distress, defeated in

battle, and without a follower, he one day threw himself into the ruins

of a Tartar caravansera, where he resolved to give up all further

effort, and die. As he lay on the ground, sunk in despair, his eye was

caught by the attempts of an ant to drag a grain of corn up to its nest

in the wall. The load was too great for it, and the ant and the grain

fell to the ground together. The trial was renewed, and both fell again.

It was renewed ninety and nine times, and on the hundredth it succeeded,

and the grain was carried into the nest. The thought instantly struck

the prostrate chieftain, 'Shall an insect struggle ninety and nine times

until it succeeds, while I, a man, and the descendant of heroes, give up

all hope after a single battle?' He sprang from the ground, and found a

troop of his followers outside, who had been looking for him through the

wilderness. Scimitar in hand, he threw himself on his pursuers, swelled

his troop into an army, his army into myriads, and finished by being the

terror of Europe, the conqueror of Asia, and the wonder of the world."

The letter finished with general enquiries into the things of the day,

and all good wishes for my career.

It is astonishing what an effect is sometimes produced by advice, given

at the exact moment when we want it. This letter was the "word in

season" of which the "wisest of men" speaks; and I felt all its

influence in my rescue from despondency. Its simplicity reached my heart

more than the most laboured language, and its manliness seemed a direct

summons to whatever was manly in my nature. I determined thenceforth, to

try fortune to the utmost, to task my powers to the last, to regard

difficulties as only the exercise that was intended to give me strength,

and to render every success only a step to success higher still. That

letter had pushed me another stage towards manhood.

With the Horse Guards' papers in my hand, and the letter of my old

friend placed in a kind of boyish romance, in my bosom, I went to meet

Mordecai and his daughter. The Jew shook his bushy brows over the

rescript which seemed to put a perpetual extinguisher on my military

hopes. But Mariamne was the gayest of the gay, on what she termed my

"fortunate ill-fortune." She had now completely recovered; said she

remembered nothing of her accident but "the heroism," as she expressed

it, "on my part which had saved her to thank me;" and between her

gratitude and her vivacity, might have given a spectator the idea that

M. Lafontaine was rapidly losing ground with that creature of open lips

and incessant smiles. Her harp was brought, she was an accomplished

performer, and she surprised me by the taste and tenderness with which

she sung a succession of native melodies, collected in her rambles from

Hungary to the Hartz; and from the Mediterranean to the Alps and

Pyrenees. One air struck me as so beautiful that I still remember the

words. They were Garcilasso's:--

"De las casualidades

Y las quimeras,

Nacen felicidades

Que no se esperano.

Siempre se adviente

Que donde esta la vida,

Se halla la muerte."

Then with that quick turn of thought which forms so touching a feature

of the love-poetry of Spain--

"Tus ojos a mis ojos,

Miran atentos,

Y callando se dicen

Sus sentimientos.

Cosa es bien rara,

Que sin hablar se entienden

Nuestras dos almas."

The Spaniard, in his own language, is inimitable. I cannot come nearer

the soft Southern than these ballad lines--

"Alas,--how sweet, yet strange!

Joy in the lap of woe!

Love, all a change!

Like roses laid on snow,

Nipt by the cruel wind;

Love, all unkind!

"Yet, close those eyes of thine,

Else, though no accents fall,

These stealing tears from mine

Will tell thee all!

Strange, that what lips deny,

Is spoken by the telltale eye."

Whether the little seguidilla meant any thing in the lips of the

songstress, I do not presume to say. But the hearts of women, perhaps I

should say of all pretty women, expect admiration as naturally as an

idol receives incense; and as a part of the incense now and then

descends upon the worshippers themselves, the sentiment becomes in some

degree mutual. However, with all my perceptions alive to her merits, and

she had many; the cause of my gallant French friend was perfectly safe

in my hands. I never had much vanity in these matters, and even if I

had, the impression already made by another had made me impregnable, for

the time, to the whole artillery of eyes.

Yet the evening which I thus spent, gave me the first genuine idea of

domestic happiness which I had ever received. I had certainly seen but

little of it at home. There all was either crowds, or solitude; the

effort to seem delighted, or palpable discontent; extravagant festivity,

or bitterness and frowns. My haughty father was scarcely approachable,

unless when some lucky job shed a few drops of honey into his natural

gall; and my gentle mother habitually took refuge in her chamber, with a

feebleness of mind which only embittered her vexations. In short, the

"family fireside" had become with me a name for every thing dull and

discomforting; and a _tete-a-tete_ little less than an absolute terror.

But in this apartment I saw how perfectly possible it might be to make

one's way through life, even with so small a share of that world as the

woman before me. I had now spent some hours without a care, without a

wish, or even a thought beyond the room in which we sat. My imagination

had not flagged, no sense of weariness had touched me, our conversation

had never wanted a topic; yet the Jew was one certainly of no peculiar

charm of manner, though a man of an originally vigorous mind, and well

acquainted with general life; and even his daughter was too foreign and

fantastic to realize my _beau ideal_. Still with the one being of my

choice, I felt that it would be possible to be happy on a desert island.

Our supper was as animated as our evening. My remarks on the passing

world--a world of which I then knew not much more than the astronomer

does of the inhabitants of the moon, by inspecting it

"With his glazed optic tube,

At midnight from the top of Fesole,

Or in Val d'Arno, to descry new seas,

Rivers, and mountains on her spotty globe"--

were received with an acquiescence, which showed that I had already

gained some ground, even in the rough, though undoubtedly subtle and

powerful mind of the Jew: as for Mariamne, she was all delight, and

until she took her leave of us for the night, all smiles.

As she closed the door Mordecai laid his muscular hand on my shoulder.

"A word with you, Mr Marston; you have rendered me the highest of

services in saving that girl from a dreadful death. You have been of use

to me in other matters also, unconsciously I aver--but we shall talk of

that another time. To come to the point at once. If you can make

yourself my daughter's choice, for I shall never control her, I shall

not throw any obstacles in the way. What say you?"

I never felt more difficulty in an answer. My voice actually died within

my lips. I experienced a feverish sensation which must have mounted to

my face, and given me the look of a clown or a criminal, if the Jew had

but looked at me: but he was waiting my reply with his eyes fixed on the

ground. But the hesitation was soon over; I was almost pledged to

Lafontaine, as a man of honour; I knew that Mariamne, however she might

play the coquette for the day, was already bound in heart to the gallant

Frenchman; and if neither impediment had existed, there was a chain,

cold as ice, but strong as adamant--a chain of which she who had bound

it was altogether ignorant, but which I had neither the power nor the

will to sever. Still it was not for me to divulge Mariamne's secret, and

I could not even touch upon my own. I escaped from the dilemma under

cover of another reason, and also a true one.

Thanking him for his kindness and candour, I observed, "that I was

nothing and had nothing, that to offer myself to the acceptance of one

entitled to wed so opulently as his daughter, would be to pain my

feelings, and place me in a humiliating point of view, in the presence

of one whose respect I ought to deserve." Our conversation extended far

into the night; and I freely entered into the disappointment which I had

sustained in the unfortunate loss of my commission. I added, that I was

determined not to lead a life of idleness, even if I had possessed the

means; and that as the army was the profession which gave the fairest

prospect of being known to the world, I must pursue it if possible.

The idea was fully approved of by my energetic hearer. "Right!" said he.

"It is exactly the thing which I should have expected from you. You have

been ill-treated, I own, but there is no use in kicking at power, unless

you can kick it before you. The machinery of government is too huge for

any one of us to resist, and unless we run along with it, our only

wisdom is, to get out of its way. But you shall have a commission, ay,

even if it cost a thousand guineas. Never refuse; I am not in the habit

of throwing away my money; but you saved Mariamne's life, and I would

not have lost my child for all the bullion in the Bank of England, or on

the globe."

I was surprised by this burst of generosity, but it was real; and the

Jew, as if to put his sincerity beyond all doubt, had torn a leaf out of

his pocket-book, and was writing an order for the sum on his banker: he

laid it on the table. I returned it to him at once, perhaps not less to

his surprise than his offer had been to mine. But I reminded him, that I

had still a balance at my banker's; and I told him besides that I had

made up my mind to enter the regiment from which I had been so

unceremoniously dismissed, or none. He stared. "If," said I, "I shall

not be commissioned in the Coldstream, it will be utterly beyond my

power to persuade even my own relatives, much less the world, that I

have not been dismissed for some act of impropriety. Or, if men will not

hazard saying this to my face, they will only be more likely to say it

where I cannot defend myself."

"True!" said Mordecai, as if the opinion had cast a new light on him.

"Perfectly to the point. This is a world of scandal; and, like the

wolves, the whole pack fall on the wounded. You must recover your

commission in the Coldstream; or be ready to tell your story every day

of your life, and be only half believed after all. Yes, you must enter

that very corps, or be sneered at as long as you live; and if you have a

heart to be stung, it will be stung. Our people know that well."

"I should give my last shilling to be carrying its colours at this

moment," said I, "but unfortunately money is useless there. The Guards

are the favourite of royalty, and their commissions naturally go to men

of rank and fortune."

"We must go to town and see what is to be done. When will you be ready?"

asked my host.

"To-night--this moment--if possible, I should set out."

"No, no, Mr Marston, my movements cannot be quite so expeditious. I must

wait for my London letters in the morning. On their arrival we may

start, and, by taking four horses, reach town before the Horse Guards

closes for the day."

At breakfast next morning Mariamne was not to be seen: she excused

herself by a violent headach; and by the countenance of her Abigail,

generally a tolerable reflexion of the temper of the female authority of

a house, it was evident that I had fallen into disfavour. But how was

this to be accounted for? Mordecai, from the lateness of the hour at

which we parted, could not have seen her; even if she should condescend

to take my matrimonial chillness as an offence. But the mystery was

soon, cleared by her answer to the note which contained my farewell. It

was simply the enclosure of a few hapless lines of verse, in which the

name of Clotilde occurred, and which had been found in the clearance of

my chamber preparatory to my journey. This was decisive. Mariamne was a

sovereign, who, choose as she might her prime minister, would not suffer

her royal attendance to be diminished by the loss of a single slave. I

petitioned for a parting word, it was declined; and I had only to regret

my poetic error, or my still greater error in not keeping my raptures

under lock and key.

As the carriage drew up to the door, Mordecai casually asked me "have

you left your card at the Steyne?"

"No," was the reply. "Was it necessary?"

"Absolutely so; the prince has sent frequently to enquire for you during

your illness, and of course your leaving the neighbourhood without

acknowledging the honour would be impossible."

"Then let us drive there at once," said I.

On reaching the prince's cottage--for cottage it was, and nothing

more--the gentleman in waiting who received my card, told me that his

Royal highness had desired that whenever I called he should be apprized

of my coming, "as he wished to hear the history of the accident from

myself." The prince's fondness for hearing every thing out of the common

course, was well known; and I had only to obey. I had the honour of an

introduction accordingly; was received with all the customary graces of

his manner, and even with what attracts still more--with kindness. He

enquired into the circumstances, and was evidently taking an interest in

such parts of the narrative as I chose to give, when he was interrupted

by the arrival of a courier from London. The letters happened to be of

importance, and must be answered immediately. "But," said he, with his

irresistible smile, "I must not lose your story; we dine at seven. You

will probably meet some whom you would be gratified by seeing.

Adieu--remember, seven."

This was equivalent to a command, and there was no resource, but to

defer my journey for twelve hours more. Mordecai was not unwilling to

exchange a dreary drive in which he had no immediate concern, for the

comforts of his own home; or perhaps the honour among his neighbours of

having for an inmate a guest of the heir-apparent, qualified the delay.

Mariamne at our approach fled from the drawing-room like a frightened

doe. And at the appointed hour I was at the pretty trellised porch of

the prince's residence.

THE DEVIL'S FRILLS.

A DUTCH ILLUSTRATION OF THE WATER CURE.

CHAPTER I.

A stranger who visits Haarlem is not a little astonished to see, hung

out from various houses, little frames coquettishly ornamented with

squares of the finest lace. His curiosity will lead him to ask the

reason of so strange a proceeding. But, however he may push his

questions--however persevering he may be in getting at the bottom of the

mystery--if he examine and cross-examine fifty different persons, he

will get no other answer than--

"These are the devil's frills."

The frills of the devil! Horrible! What possible connexion can there be

between those beautiful Valenciennes, those splendid Mechlins, those

exquisite Brussels points, and his cloven-footed majesty? Is Haarlem a

city of idolaters? Are all these gossamer oblations an offering to

Beelzebub?

And are we to believe, in spite of well-authenticated tale and history,

that instead of horns and claws, the gentleman in black sports frills

and ruffles, as if he were a young dandy in Bond Street?

"These are the devil's frills."

It is my own private opinion that these mystic words contain some

prodigiously recondite meaning; or, perhaps, arise from one of those

awful incidents, of which Hoffman encountered so many among the

ghost-seeing, all-believing Germans. But don't take it on my simple

assertion, but judge for yourself. I shall tell you, word for word, the

story as it was told to me, and as it is believed by multitudes of

people, who believe nothing else, in the good town of Haarlem.