PART XV.

"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.

Valenciennes was now captured. The sagacity of my friend, the French

engineer, had not been deceived. The explosion of the three great

mines, an operation from its magnitude almost new to war, and in its

effects irresistible, had thrown open the fortress. The garrison had

done their work gallantly, and the result was a capitulation, hastened

by the outcry of the famishing inhabitants. I hastened to the quarters

of my regiment, was received with all cordiality, had the honour of an

interview with the royal duke, who, at all times affable, was now in

peculiar good-humour, and who led me into a long detail of such public

opinions as might be gathered from my intercourse with the garrison.

At the close of our interview he gave me a note, which was to be

forwarded to the adjutant-general. I made my bow, and retired.

All in the camp was festivity. A great achievement had been

accomplished, and the barriers of France were broken down. But in the

midst of national triumph, I felt a depression which rendered me

wholly incapable of sharing it. The wounds of the spirit are not to be

healed like those of the frame; and with the recollection of the noble

creature whom I had lost, bitterness mingled in every sound, and

sight, and exultation. My first request would have been for leave of

absence, that I might follow her, if she were still in France, or in

the world. But the bustle at headquarters told me that some movement

was about to take place; and, under those circumstances, to ask for

leave was impossible. Still I continued making every imaginable

enquiry, dispatching letters, and seeing postmasters, to obtain

intelligence of the route which Clotilde had taken. After tracing her

for the first few leagues, all tidings were lost; and I had only to

trust to that hope which was a part of my sanguine nature, and which

was sustained by a kind of consciousness that a being so superior

could not be flung away in the chances which visit the multitude.

While I was thus pondering and perplexed, I was summoned to attend one

of the principal officers of his royal highness's staff. "We are

sending despatches of some importance to London," said he, "and it is

the wish of the commander-in-chief that you should take them. I have

the pleasure to tell you, that he feels an interest in you from the

opportunities which you have had of distinguishing yourself in the

campaign, and that he has appointed you an extra aide-de-camp. Your

service begins soon," added my informant with a smile, "for you must

set off to-night. The despatch mentioning the capitulation of the

fortress was, of course, sent off at once; but as the commission, in

those cases, is given by routine, it is desirable to have some one in

London capable of explaining the 'explanation,' or perhaps taking the

place of the 'honourable,' or 'right honourable' personage who has

been made the official bearer of the despatch. His royal highness is

satisfied, from his conversation with you, that you will be perfectly

fit for this purpose; and here is the despatch, with which you are to

make all expedition to the Horse-Guards."

After giving my orders for the journey, I hastened to take leave of

the man whom I most honoured and esteemed, my unfailing friend

Guiscard. To my surprise, he received the intelligence of my

appointment with scarcely a word of congratulation. Little as I myself

was now excitable by any thing in the shape of human fortune, I was

chagrined by his obstinate gravity. He observed it, and started from

his seat. "Come," said he, "let us take a walk, and get out of the

sight of mankind, if we can." He took my arm, and we strayed along the

banks of the Scheldt, where, however, his purpose was unobtainable,

for the whole breadth of the river was covered with the provision

barges of the troops. The bargemen were enjoying the fine July evening

in the national style--swilling the worst beer that ever punished the

taste for that barbarian beverage, and filling the fresh breeze with

the fumes of tobacco, worthy of the beer. Guiscard stopped to gaze at

them.

"I envy those fellows," said he. "Not merely for their escaping all

care, and being able to extract enjoyment out of their execrable drink

and pipes, but from their being exempt from all contact with

portfolios."

"But such enjoyment is only that of the swine."

"Well, and is not that of the swine perfect?--and what would you have

more than perfection?"

A huge herd of those creatures, basking along the miry edge of the

river, helped his illustration. "Mr Marston, you have not been for the

last month on the staff of the commander-in-chief of the allied

armies, or you would not look so incredulous. Sir, man's senses may be

as suitable for his purposes, as those of the animals which we see

wallowing there." I stared, waiting for the conclusion. He proceeded.

"But man has drawbacks on his natural faculties, which they have not.

Possibly nature intended that we should be as happy as they. But make

nine-tenths of them hewers of wood and drawers of water--send some of

them to dungeons--enforce a conscription among the rest, and send them

to use their tusks upon each other, and the most complacent of them

would rebel: or, as the last trial of temper, put the meekest of the

race into a cabinet of princes and general-officers, themselves

controlled by a cabinet five hundred miles off; and if they do not

growl as I do now, I shall give up all my knowledge of quadruped

nature."

"Why, Guiscard, what is the matter with you to-night? Have we not

gained our point? You are like the Thracians, who always mourned at

the birth of a child."

"And the Thracians were perfectly right, if the child were to be

reared a diplomatist. You talk of success!" Our path had led to where

a view of Valenciennes opened on us through the trees; and its

shattered ramparts and curtains, the trees felled along its glacis,

and its bastions stripped and broken by our cannon-balls, certainly

presented a rueful spectacle. The Austrian flag was flying on the

citadel.

"There," said he, "is our prize. It is not worth the loading of a

single gun; but it has cost us more millions to ruin than it took

francs to build it--it has cost us the conquest of France; and will

cost Europe the war, which we might have extinguished three months ago

if we had but left it behind. I acknowledge that I speak in the

bitterness of my heart; delay has ruined every thing. Our march to

Paris, and our march to Georgium Sidus, will now be finished on the

same day."

I attempted to laugh off his predictions, but he was intractable. "The

business," said he, "is all over. That flag is the signal of European

jealousy--the apple of discord. Yon are going to England; and, if you

have any regard for my opinion, tell your friends there to withdraw

their troops as soon as they can. That flag, which pretends to

partition France, will unite it as one man. Our sages here are

actually about to play its game. Orders have come to divide the army.

What folly! What inconceivable infatuation! In the very face of the

most fantastic and furious population of mankind, whom the most

trivial success inflames into enthusiasts; they are going to break up

their force, and seek adventures by brigades and battalions."

He stamped the ground with indignation; but, suddenly recovering his

calmness, he turned to me with his grave smile. "I am ashamed,

Marston, of thus betraying a temper which time ought to have cooled.

But, after all, what is public life but a burlesque; a thing of

ludicrous disappointment; a tragedy, with a farce always at hand to

relieve the tedium and the tinsel; the fall of kingdoms made laughable

by the copper lace of the stage wardrobe?"

"Do you object to our duke?"

"Not in the least. He is personally a gallant fellow; and if he wants

experience, so must every man at one time or other. His only error,

hitherto, has been his condescending to come at all with so small a

force under his command. No English army should ever plant its foot

upon the Continent with less than fifty thousand men on its

muster-roll. The duke's being put at the head of your troops--only a

division after all--seems to me the only wise thing that has been

done. It was a declaration of the heartiness of your alliance; and I

honour your country for the distinctness of the avowal. Your king

gives his son, as your country gives her soldiers, and your people

give their money. The whole was manly, magnanimous, or, as the highest

panegyric, it was English all over."

This language at once put an end to all my reserve. I shook his hand

in the spirit of old friendship; and, on our parting, extracted a

promise of keeping up our communication on all possible opportunities.

We had already separated, when I heard my name called again, and

Guiscard returned. "I had forgotten," said he, "to tell you what I was

most anxious to say. If I had seen no other prospect for you, I should

be the last man to make you discontented with your profession. My only

request is, that when you once more tread on English ground, you will

seriously consider whether you will continue in the army. If know you

at all, I think that you would not be altogether satisfied with

wearing your epaulettes at reviews and parades. And, if I am not

entirely mistaken, you will have nothing else for the next dozen

years. Your army are moving homewards already. You are now in the

secret."

"But is the campaign absolutely coming to an end? Are the hopes of

attacking the French so suddenly given up? Is France always to baffle

us?" was my vexed question.

"As to the fate of France, you should consult a prophet, not a

Prussian engineer--and one terribly tired of his trade besides," was

the reply. We parted; but the conversation was not lost upon me.

By midnight I was on my journey. My route lay through the Flemish

provinces, which had now recovered all their luxuriance, if not

derived additional animation from the activity which every where

follows the movements of a successful army. Troops marching to join

the general advance frequently and strikingly diversified the scene.

Huge trains of the commissariat were continually on the road. The

little civic authorities were doubly conscious of the dignity of

functions which brought them into contact with soldiership, from the

quartermaster up to the general. But the contrast of the tumult which

I left behind with the quietness of the scenes around me--the haste,

the anxiety, and the restlessness of a huge camp, with the calm of the

fields, with the regularity which seemed to govern all the operations

of farming life, and with the grave opulence of the old mansions,

which seemed to be formed for the natural receptacles of the wealth of

Flemish fields--at once refreshed me after the mental fever in which I

had tossed so long, and perhaps impressed on me more deeply the

parting advice of my friend the philosopher.

But, from the moment when I touched British ground, the whole sleepy

tranquillity which gathers over every man in the quietude of Flanders,

where man seems to have followed the same plough from the deluge, had

utterly vanished. I was in the midst of a nation in a ferment. The war

was the universal topic; party was in full life. From the inn at Dover

up to the waiting-room at the Horse-Guards, I heard nothing but

politics. The conduct of our army--the absurdity of every thing that

had been done, or left undone--the failures of the Allies--the

fanaticism of the French--the hopes of popular liberty on one side,

and the indignation of established power on the other--came rushing

round me in a chaos of discordant conceptions, that for the time

bewildered me. How simple was the gossip of the camp to this

heterogeneous mass of struggling topics! How straightforward was even

the wild haranguing of the Palais Royal to the thousand reports and

protests, remonstrances and replications, of the whole ringing and

raging, public mind of England! This was the age of pamphleteering.

Every sage who could, or could not, write, flung his pamphlet in the

teeth of the party whose existence he conceived to be ruinous to his

country, or perhaps prejudicial to his own prospect of a sinecure. The

journals printed their columns in gall; the satirists dipped their

pens in concentrated acid; the popular haranguers dashed the oil of

vitriol of contempt in each other's faces. The confusion, the

collision, the uproar, was indescribable.

But my whole experience of public life has told me, that however the

popular opinion may be wrong, the public opinion is right; and I felt

that the nation was already adverse to the conduct of the campaign.

The utmost skill of the cabinet was required to prevent a dangerous

reaction. The member of administration with whom my chief intercourse

officially existed, was the same manly and kind-natured individual to

whom I had formerly been indebted for so much civility; and, as if

proud of his own work, his civility now took the form of friendship.

Ill news came from abroad; and I expressed my impatience of remaining

with the pen in my hand, when I should have worn my sword. To all my

suggestions on the subject, the good-humoured answer was, that my

services were still necessary at home. At length, on my making a

decided request that I should be permitted to return to my regiment,

he told me in confidence that the campaign was probably at an end;

that the British commander-in-chief was about to return; and that, in

fact, the strength of England would be turned to the naval war. At the

close of one of those conversations, fixing his keen grey eye upon me,

he said, "Pray, what think you of Parliament?" My answer was, "That

mediocrity was more contemptible there than any where else; while

success was more difficult."

"You mean such success as Pitt's: you mean victory. But you must get

these Greek and Roman notions out of your head. An English House does

not want orators. One on a side is quite enough. They are like the

gold plate on a sideboard; it is well to show that we have such

things, for the honour of our establishment; but no one thinks of

making use of them at table. Pitt is an exception; he is equal to

every thing; an incomparable man of business. Burke, or some other man

of metaphor, compared him to the falcon; which, however high it may

soar, always follows the prey with its eye along the ground. But two

Pitts, if nature could be prolific of such magnificent monsters, would

absolutely perplex us. What could be more confusing than to have two

suns shining at the same time?"

"But is Fox nothing?" I asked.

"A great deal," was the answer. "He is the finest talker, I suppose,

in the world. The first of babblers."

"Of babblers!" I involuntarily repeated.

"Yes; for what is babbling but speaking in vain, pouring out endless

speculations without a purpose or the hope of a purpose, indulging a

remarkably powerful and productive mind with the waste of its own

conceptions, pouring out a whole coinage of splendid thoughts with no

more expectancy of practical result than if he poured the mint into

the Thames? You may rely upon it that such is the opinion of the

House, as it will be yours when you get there; and such will be that

of posterity, if they shall ever take the trouble to think about any

of us."

This conversation was evidently more than accidental; and I gave to it

some of my most perplexing hours. I had an original fondness for the

life of arms. I was of the age to feel its variety, animation, and

ardour. My experience had been fortunate; I had seen nothing but

victory, and had been flattered by personal distinction. But then came

the reverse of the medal. I remembered the opinion of the most

sagacious and penetrating spirit which it had been my lot ever to

know; and I felt that the Continent was to be our field of battle no

longer. The languor of home service, to one who had seen war in its

stateliest shape, and in its most powerful activity, rose before my

mind with an inexpressible sense of weariness. On the other hand,

supposing that I possessed the faculties for political life, was I

possessed of the temper, the endurance of toil, the measureless

patience, the inexhaustible equanimity, which every night of my public

existence would henceforth demand? Why was this heart-wearying

struggle to be preferred to the simple and straightforward pursuit of

an honourable profession, in which the only weight was the carrying of

my sword, and the only secret of distinction possessing an untarnished

name?

But I soon made up my mind. The question narrowed itself to this:

which was the more active life? The point of honour was no longer the

adherence to a profession whose purposes were necessarily changed.

Every hour gave additional evidence that the gates of the Continent

were closing upon the English soldier. Influence, impression,

publicity, were the prizes of a political career. I saw all other

names fade before the great senatorial names of England. I saw men of

humble extraction filling the world with their fame. I saw a

succession of individuals, who, if their profession had been arms, or

if their birth-place had been the Continent, would have lived and died

in the routine of obscure service, here rising to the height of

national homage, lustres of their generation, and guiding by their

opinions the courts of Europe. Whether I should ever take my place

among those illustrious names, scarcely entered into my thoughts. But

I was determined never to waste my life in conscious indolence.

Scarcely knowing what faculties I might possess, I had fully resolved

on trying their utmost strength; and grown almost indifferent to the

ordinary pursuits of human indulgence, I looked with something of a

melancholy yet proud hope, to the enjoyment which was to be found in

giving myself up to the solitary and stern toil of living for a great

cause, and leaving a name behind me that should not be forgotten.

On that very day the intelligence arrived that the British troops had

marched towards the north of Germany; that the royal duke had returned

to England; and that the Allies had, by common consent, abandoned the

invasion of France. My habits were always prompt. Before the hour was

over in which the gazette appeared, I waited on my ministerial friend,

and expressed my full acquiescence in his proposal.

I pass by the process of getting into Parliament. It was then a

simpler matter than it has since become. A treasury borough was then

the gate through which all the leading names of the country had

entered the legislature, and I merely followed the path of all but the

lords of acres.

Every man who will make himself master of an occupation must serve an

apprenticeship. Parliament, too, has its seven years' indentures, and

the few who have refused the training have seldom been the wiser for

their precipitancy. I "bided my time," taking a slight occasional

share in debates with whose topics I happened to be well acquainted;

and expecting the chances, which, to every one who employs himself

vigorously, are all but certainties. Still I felt that this mere

hovering on the outskirts of debate must not last too long, and that

nothing was more hazardous to final reputation than to be too slow in

attempting to lay its first stone. Yet I felt some difficulty in every

great question; and, after bracing my nerves for the onset, I always

found my courage fail at the sight of the actual encounter. I felt as

a young knight might have felt in some of the tilting-matches of

old--master of his charger in the open field, and delighting in the

pressure of his armour and the weight of his lance; but when he once

rode within the barrier, saw the galleries filled, and the heralds

lifting the trumpets to their lips, feeling his blood grow chill, and

the light depart from his eyes.

I mentioned my embarrassment to my Scottish friend, and almost

expected a remonstrance. To my great surprise and infinite pleasure,

he congratulated me. "You cannot give a better sign," said he. "My

only fear of you was, that you would dash into debate at once, like a

tumbler jumping from a precipice; and that, like him, all that you

would have gained by it would be broken limbs for life. If the fellow

had kept to his slack-rope and his stage, he would have been safe

enough, and gained some applause besides."

"But what is to be done in the House, without some hazard of the

kind?"

"Wrong--quite wrong. A great deal is to be done. Take myself for the

example. You see where I am, and yet I never made a _speech_ in my

life. From the beginning of my career, I never allowed any one to look

for any thing of the kind from me; and the consequence was, that by

some I was regarded as a much shrewder personage than I ever believed

myself to be; and by others was thought to know a great deal more than

I ever acquired."

"But will this account for the rapid distinctions of your public

life?"

"Perfectly, so far as they have gone. I obtained ministerial

confidence on the essential merits of being a safe man--one who made

no ambitious attempts to lower the crests of those above me. I escaped

the jealousy of those below me by adopting the style which mediocrity

assumes by nature. I was thus like the senior subaltern in a marching

regiment--I wore the same uniform with the colonel, and went through

the same exercise with the ensign. The field-officers knew that I

would not tread upon their heels, and every subaltern wished to see my

promotion, as a step to his own."

My official duties, the mere entrance into office, occupied me

laboriously for a while, and I felt all the habitual difficulties of

my noviciate. It had been fully my intention to follow the advice of

my experienced friend, and leave the hour which was to call for my

exertions in the House to the chances of the time. But that time came

more rapidly than I had expected. The public mind was fevered, hour by

hour; the news from the Continent was more and more startling; the

successes of the Republican armies had assumed a shape which our

desponding politicians regarded as invincibility, and which our

factious ones pronounced to be the ruin of Europe. The cabinet offered

only the prospect of a melancholy struggle. But six months before, it

had stood, strong as a citadel erected by the national hands, and

garrisoned by the spirit of the empire. It still stood, but it stood

dismantled; there were evident breaches in its walls, and the

fugitives of Opposition, rallying with the hope of success, advanced

again to the storm, headed by their great leader, and sustained by the

capricious and fluctuating multitude. The premier was harassed by the

incessant toil of defence--a toil in which he had scarcely a sharer,

and which exposed him to the most remorseless hostility. Yet, if the

historian were to choose the moment for his true fame, this was the

moment which ought to be chosen. He rose with the severity of the

struggle; assault seemed to give him new vigour; the attempt to tear

the robe of office from his shoulders only gave the nobler display of

his intellectual proportions. When I saw him, night after night,

standing almost alone, with nothing but disaster in front and timidity

in the rear, combating a force such as had never before been arrayed

under the banners of Opposition; the whole scene of magnificent

conflict and still grander fortitude, reminded me of the Homeric war

and its warriors.--The champion of the kingdom, standing forth in

despite of evil omens thickening round him, of the deepening cloud,

and the sinister thunders.

I speak of those times, and of the great men of those times, in no

invidious contrast with later days. I have so strong a faith in the

infinite ability which freedom gives to a great empire, that I am

convinced of our being able, in all its eras, to find the species of

public talent essential to its services. I regard the national mind,

as the philosopher does the natural soil, always capable of the

essential produce, where we give it the due tillage. The great men of

the past century have passed away along with it; they were summoned

for a day of conflict, and were formed for the conflict; their

muscular vigour, the power with which they wielded their weapons, the

giant step and the giant hand, were all necessary, and were all shaped

and sustained by that necessity. But this day had its close; the

leaders of man--like the "mighty hunters" of an Age, when the land was

still overshadowed with the forest, and the harvest was overrun with

the lion and the panther, would naturally give place to a less daring

and lofty generation, when the forest had given way to the field, and

the lair of the wild beast had become the highway and the bower. But

if the evil day should again return, the guardian power of intellect

and virtue will again come forth in the human shape, and vindicate the

providence that watches over the progress of mankind. I utterly deny

the exhaustion of national genius; I even deny its exhaustibility. If

the moral vegetation languishes, and the soil is parched for a while,

the great source of refreshing and fertility still lies before us--the

public mind, in its boundless expansion, and in its unfathomable

depth; the intellectual ocean which no plummet has ever sounded, and

which no shore has ever circumscribed, lies ready to restore the

balance of nature.

But the sense of power itself in the national mind forbids the

exhibition of its strength in tranquil times. It is lofty and

fastidious; it will not stoop to a contest in which nothing is to be

contended for. It is not an actor; and it cannot adopt the figured

passion of the actor, rend its robe, and flourish, and obtest heaven

against the traitor and the oppressor, to the sound of an orchestra,

or in the glitter of stage lamps. The true ability of the empire must

scorn all mimic encounter; and what else can be the little struggles

of party shut up in the legislature, whose sound scarcely transpires

through the walls, whose triumphs are a tax, and whose oracles are an

intrigue? But, when the true day of trial shall come--when an enemy

shall be seen hovering on the coasts of the Constitution--when trumpet

answers trumpet, and the "country is proclaimed in danger"--then, and

not till then, shall we know the superb resources of our intellectual

strength: whatever may have been the prowess of the past, we may see

it not merely rivaled but thrown into eclipse by the future; the

burnished armour, and massive swords and maces of our old intellectual

chivalry, superseded by more manageable and more destructive

implements of success; and the sterner conflict followed by the more

consummate triumph. Yet, when we undervalue the living ability of a

nation from its quietude at the moment, we but adopt the example of

every past age in succession. The last ten years of the last century

were preceded by a period of despair; Chatham's career was run, and

the national regrets over his tomb were mingled with sorrows for the

extinction of all parliamentary renown!--The day had gone down, and

darkness was to cover the sky for ever. But while the prediction was

scarcely uttered, the horizon as in a blaze, mighty meteors rushed

across it in a thousand courses of eccentric speed and splendour; and

a period of intellectual display began, which at once dazzled and

delighted mankind. Anne's Augustan age of war, negotiation, and

eloquence, was once pronounced to be, like the Augustan age of Rome,

incapable of rivalship by posterity; but our own times have seen a

bolder war, a broader peace, and a richer development of science,

invention, and eloquence. For fifty years, England was pronounced to

have worn herself out by the prolific brilliancy of the half century

before; like a precocious infant, to have anticipated her powers, and

ensured their premature decay; like the Boeotians, to have had her

Pindaric period, and thenceforward to have paid for its raptures and

renown by perpetual darkness; or like the Israelites in Egypt, to be

condemned to drudgery for life, sunk into an intellectual

slave-caste;--when in the midst of the scoffing, or the sorrow,

suddenly arrived a new epoch, a new summons to the national genius, a

time of lofty interpositions, "thunderings in the air, and lightning

running along the ground," an era of the marvellous things of mind;

the chains fell off the hands, and the generation went forth, with a

new sense of superiority, into new scenes of knowledge, discovery, and

empire.

Whether it was my good or ill fortune to make my first effort in the

midst of the men whose names have immortalized their day, I shall not

venture to decide. But my resolve had been firmly taken--not to remain

in Parliament unless I discovered in myself faculties fit for its

service. I was determined not to play the mute if I had the means of

uttering a voice. But now the whole force of administration was

demanded; and I made up my mind to ascertain by trial, what no man can

be sure of without that trial, whether I possessed any capacity for

public life.

The subject on which I first spoke was an address to the throne, in

answer to the King's message on the war. On this night Pitt, but

lately recovered from a fit of his hereditary gout, spoke briefly, and

with evident feebleness of frame. Fox, whose energy seemed always to

depend on his rival's power, and whose eloquence always rose or fell

with the vigour or languor of the minister--Fox, never so great as

when Pitt put forth all his strength, on this night idled away his

hour, through the mere want of an antagonist; but Sheridan made ample

compensation for his leader. The House had fallen into lassitude, and

the benches were already thin when he arose. I had heard him as the

humorist on some trivial occasions of debate. I had enjoyed the social

pleasantry which placed him at the head of the wits; but I was still

but imperfectly acquainted with the strong sarcasm, the deep disdain,

and the grave sophistry, which this extraordinary man could exhibit

with such redundant ease, and wield with such vigorous dexterity. I

must give but an outline:--

"You have made war," said he, "and you have made the arms of your

country contemptible by failures, which you rendered inevitable by

your rashness. You, sir," and he fixed his flashing eye on the

premier, "have commenced that war by a series of declarations,

which made our diplomacy as contemptible as our campaigns. The

national sword had been wrested from our hands. But you were not

content with that humiliation, and you added to it the disgrace of

the national understanding. You laid down a succession of

principles, and then trampled them in the dust on the first

opportunity. You encumbered yourself for action with pledges which

you could never have intended to sustain, or which in the first

collision your pusillanimity threw away. Yet I deprecate your

perfidy even more than I despise your weakness. I can comprehend

the effrontery of a fair aggression; but I scorn the meanness of

intrigue. I may face the man-at-arms, but I shudder at the

assassin. I may determine to hunt down and destroy the lion, but I

disdain the trap and the pitfall. And what has been the pretext of

his majesty's ministers? Moderation. In this spirit of moderation

they invaded France; in this spirit of moderation they captured

her fortresses, and then handed them over to the Emperor; in this

spirit of moderation they denounced the men who had given France a

constitution; and in this spirit of moderation you now prepare to

rebuild her Bastile, to restore her scaffolds, to reforge her

chains, and summon all the kings of Europe, instead of taking a

salutary lesson from the tomb of the monarchy, to see its skeleton

exhumed, and placed, robed and crowned, upon the throne, with the

nation forced to offer homage, at once in mockery and terror, to

the grinning emblem; in which, with all your philtres, you can

never put life again."

The orator then gave a general and singularly imposing view of the

state of our European connexions; which he described as utterly frail,

the result of interested motives, and sure to be broken up at the

first temptation. But the "first lord of the treasury and chancellor

of his majesty's exchequer," said he, "smiles at my alarm; he has his

security at his side--he has the purse, which commands all the baser

portion of our nature with such irresistible control! On one point I

fully agree with the right honourable gentleman--that nothing but the

purse could ever keep them faithful. Yet, is there nothing but gold

that can bribe? is there no bribe in territory? will he not find, when

he hurries to the purchase of allies with the millions of the treasury

in his hand, that more powerful purchasers have been there before him?

When he offers the loan, will he not find them offering the province?

when he bids with the subsidy, will he not be outbid with the kingdom?

Or, if the anticipated conquerors of Europe, raising their sense of

dignity to the level of their power, should disdain the traffic of

corruption; will not the roaring of the French cannon in the ears of

kings make them feel, that, to persist in your ill-omened alliance,

is to devote themselves to ruin? will they bargain, in sight of the

axe? will they dare to traffic in the blood of their people, with the

grave dug at their feet? will they be dazzled by your gold, while the

French bayonet is startling their eyes? Within ten years, if England

exists, she will be without an ally; or, if she continues to fight, it

will be in loneliness, in terror, and in despair."

In this strain he poured out his daring conceptions for more than two

hours, during which he kept the whole audience in the deepest

attention. He concluded in an uproar of plaudits from both sides of

the House.

My time now came. And the rising of a new member, always regarded with

a generous spirit of courtesy, produced some additional interest, from

the knowledge of my services on the Continent, and my immediate

connexion with the ministry. The House, which had filled to

overflowing in the course of Sheridan's incomparable speech, was now

hushed to the most total silence, and every eye was turned on me. I

shall say nothing of my perturbation, further than that I had stood

before an enemy's line of ten thousand men, with their muskets

levelled within half a hundred yards of me; and that I thought the

benches of the House of Commons on that night looked much the more

formidable of the two. My head swam, my throat burned, my eyes grew

dim. I thought that the ground was shaking under my feet, and I could

have almost rejoiced to have sunk into it, from the gaze and the

silence, which equally appalled me. While I attempted to mutter a few

sentences, of which I felt the sound die within my lips, my eye was

caught by the quick turn of Pitt's head, who fixed his impatient

glance upon me. Fox, with that kindliness of heart which always forgot

party when a good-natured act was to be done, gave his sonorous cheer.

From that instant I was another man; I breathed freely, and,

recovering my voice and mind together, I plunged boldly into the

boundless subject before me.

After scattering a few of the showy sophisms which the orator of the

opposition had constructed into his specious argument, I placed the

war on the ground of necessity. "Nations cannot act like

individuals--they cannot submit to self-sacrifice--they cannot give up

their rights--they cannot affect an indolent disdain or an idle

generosity. The reason of the distinction is, that in every instance

the nation is a trustee--It has the rights of posterity in its

keeping; it has nothing of its own to throw away; it is responsible to

every generation to come. If war be essential to the integrity of the

empire, war is as much a duty--a terrible duty, I allow--as the

protection of our children's property from the grasp of rapine, or the

defence of their lives against the midnight robber. But we are advised

to peace. No man on earth would do more willing homage than myself to

that beneficent genius of nations. But where am I to offer my homage?

Am I to kneel on the high-road where the enemy's armies, fierce with

the hope of plunder, are rushing along? Am I to build my altar in the

midst of contending thousands, or on the ground covered with

corpses--in the battle, or on the grave? Or am I to carry my offering

to the capital, and there talk the language of national cordiality in

the ear of the multitude dragging their king to the scaffold? Am I to

appeal to the feelings of human brotherhood in streets smoking with

civil massacre; to adjure the nation by the national honour, where

revolt is an avowed principle; to press upon them the opinion of

Europe, where they have proclaimed war with the world; to invoke them

by the faith which they have renounced, the allegiance which they have

disdained, the God whom they have blasphemed? Those things are

impossible. If we are to have a treaty with this new order of thinking

and action, it must be a compact of crime, a solemn agreement of

treachery, a formal bond of plunder; it must be a treaty fitter for

the cavern of conspiracy than for the chamber of council; its pledge

must be like that of Catiline, the cup of human blood! No; the most

powerful reprobation which ever shot from the indignant lip of the

moralist, would not be too strong for the baseness which stooped to

such a treaty, or the folly which entangled itself in its toils. No

burning language of prophecy would be too solemn and too stinging for

the premeditated wretchedness, and incurable calamity, of such a bond.

No; if we must violate the simplicity of our national interests by

such degrading, and such desperate involvements--if we should not

shrink from this conspiracy against mankind, let it, at least, not be

consummated in the face of day; let us at once abandon the hollow

pretences of human honesty; let us pledge ourselves to a perpetual

league of rapine and revolution; let it be transacted in some lower

region of existence, where it shall not disgrace the light of the sun;

and let its ceremonial be worthy of the spirit of evil which it

embodies, whose power it proclaims, and to whose supremacy it commands

all nations to bow down."

In alluding to the menace that our allies would soon desert us, I

asked, "Is this the magnanimity of party? Is England to be pronounced

so poor, or so pusillanimous, that she must give up all hope unless

she can be suffered to lurk in the rear of the battle? What says her

prince of poets?--

'England shall never rue,

If England to herself shall be but true.'

Is this 'little body with a mighty heart,' to depend for existence on

the decaying strength or the decrepit courage of the Continent? Is she

only to borrow the shattered armour which has hung up for ages in the

halls of continental royalty, and encumber herself with its broken and

rusty panoply for the ridicule of the world? The European governments

have undergone the vicissitudes of fortune. Instead of scoffing at the

facility of their overthrow, let us raise them on their feet again;

or, if that be beyond human means, I shall not join the party-cry

which insults their fall--I certainly shall not exult in that

melancholy pageant of mixed mirth and scorn, in which, like the old

Roman triumph, the soldier with his ruthless jest and song goes before

the chariot, and the captive monarch follows behind; wearing the royal

robe and the diadem only till he has gratified a barbarous curiosity

or a cruel pride, and then exchanging them for the manacle and the

dungeon. I deprecate the loss of these alliances; and yet I doubt

whether the country will ever be conscious of her true strength until

the war of the Continent is at an end. I more than doubt the wisdom of

suffering others to take the lead, which belongs to us by the right of

superior rank, superior prowess, and superior fame. I shall have but

slight regret for the fall of those outworks which--massive, nay,

majestic, as they are--waste the power of England by the division of

her force, and make us decline the gallant enterprize of the

field--ramparts and fosses which reduce us to defence, and which,

while they offer a thousand points of entrance to an active assault,

shut us in, and disqualify us from victory."

I now repeat this language of the moment, merely from later and long

experience of its truth. I fully believe, that if England had come

forward to the front of the battle in the early years of the war, she

would have crushed all resistance; or if she had found, by the chance

of things, the Continent impenetrable to her arms, she would have

surrounded it with a wall of fire, until its factions had left nothing

of themselves but their ashes.

I was now fully engaged in public life. The effort which I had made in

Parliament had received the approval of Pitt, who, without stooping to

notice things so trivial as style and manner on questions of national

life and death, highly applauded the courage which had dared to face

so distinguished a Parliamentary favourite as Sheridan, and had taken

a view of affairs so accordant with his own. From this period, I was

constantly occupied in debate; and, taking the premier for my model, I

made rapid proficiency in the difficult art of addressing a British

House of Commons. Of course, I have no idea of giving myself the

praise on this subject, which no man can give to himself on any,

without offence. But I felt that this was an _art_ which might escape,

and which had often escaped, men of distinguished ability, and which

might be possessed by men of powers altogether inferior. I must

acknowledge, that a portion of my success was owing to the advice of

that shrewdest, and at the same time most friendly, of human beings,

the secretary. "You must be a man of business," said he, "or you will

be nothing; for praise is nothing--popularity is nothing--even the

applause of the House is nothing. These matters pass away, and the

orators pass away with them. John Bull is a solid animal, and likes

reality. This is the true secret of the successes of hundreds of men

of mediocrity, and of the failures of almost every man of brilliant

faculties. The latter fly too high, and thus make no way along the

ground. They always alight on the same spot; while the weaker, but

wiser, have put one foot before another, and have pushed on. Sheridan,

at this moment, has no more weight in the House than he had within a

twelvemonth after taking his seat. Fox, with the most powerful

abilities, is looked on simply as a magnificent speechmaker. His only

weight is in his following. If his party fell from him to-morrow, all

his eloquence would find its only echo in bare walls, and its only

panegyric in street-placards. Pitt is a man of business, complete,

profound, indefatigable. If you have his talents, copy his prudence;

if you have not, still copy his prudence--make it the interest of men

to consult you, and you must be ultimately successful."

I laughingly observed, that the "Nullum numen abest" had been honoured

with an unexpected illustration.

"Sir," said the minister, fixing his keen grey eye upon me, "if Eton

had never taught any other maxim, it would have been well worth all

the tail of its longs and shorts. It is the concentration of wisdom,

personal, private, and public; the polar star of politics, as probably

you would say; or, as in my matter-of-fact style should express it,

the fingerpost of the road to fortune."

But there never was a time when all the maxims of political wisdom

were more required. A long succession of disasters had already broken

down the outworks of the continental thrones. The renown of the great

armies of Germany was lost; the discipline of the Prussian, and the

steady intrepidity of the Austrian, had been swept before the wild

disorder of the French. Men began to believe that the art of war had

been hitherto unknown, and that the enemy had at length mastered the

exclusive secret. Monarchy came to be regarded as only another name

for weakness; and civilized order for national decrepitude. A kind of

superstition stole over the minds of men; the signs of European

overthrow were discovered in every change; calculations were calmly

raised on the chances of existence to the most powerful dynasties; the

age of crowns was in the move, the age of republics was in the

ascendant; and while the feebler minds looked with quiescent awe on

what they regarded as the inevitable tide of events, the more daring

regarded the prospect as a summons to prepare for their part of the

spoil. The struggles of Opposition grew more resolute as the hope of

success came nearer, and the Government began to feel the effects of

this perpetual assault, in the sudden neutrality of some of its most

ostentatious champions, and in the general reserve of its supporters

in the House. Even the superb perseverance of Pitt was beginning to be

weary of a contest, in which victory lost its fruits on the one side,

while defeat seemed only to give fresh vigour on the other. But a new

triumph was to cheer the face of things.

I was returning one morning from the House after a night spent in a

fierce debate on the war, which Fox denounced with an asperity unusual

to his generous temperament. The premier had made a powerful speech,

vindicating the government from all share in the continental

misfortunes; pronouncing loftily, that, in a war not made for

conquest, it was sophistry to speak of our failure of possession as a

crime; and declaring in a tone of singular boldness and energy--that

if the Continent were untrod by a British soldier, there was a still

broader field for the arms and the triumphs of England. But his

eloquence had more effect in exposing the errors, than in reducing the

numbers of his opponents, and the smallness of his majority would have

made a feebler mind resign on the spot. The announcement of the

numbers was received with an insulting cheer by the minority, and the

cabinet was already by anticipation in their hands.

I left the House wearied and dejected, and was returning to Downing

Street, to throw myself on a couch, and get a few hours of rest before

my morning toil; when I found a messenger at the door of my office,

bearing a request from the secretary of state, that I should attend

him as soon as possible. I found my friend before a table covered with

despatches, his brow furrowed with weariness like my own.

"You see me here, Marston, more tired than any ploughman or watchman,

or any other son of labour from this to John O'Groat's House. I was

sent for, from the House, six hours ago, and every hour since have I

been poring over those puzzled papers. How long I can stand this wear

and tear the physicians must tell, but it would require the

constitution of Hercules or Samson, or both together, to go through

the work that is beginning to fall on the members of the cabinet."

I offered to give him such assistance as was in my power.

"No, no, Marston; I am chained to the oar for this night at least, and

must pull till I fall asleep. My purpose in keeping you from your

pillow at this time of night, is not to relieve myself from trouble;

but to ask whether you are disposed to relieve the government from

serious difficulty, and in a way which I hope will be not disagreeable

to yourself." I concluded that my mission was to be continental, and

my heart danced at the suggestion. In England it was impossible to

continue my search for the being in whom all my thoughts were fixed;

but once beyond the sea I should have the world before me. I asked

whether there was any intention of trying the chances of attack again

on the French frontier.

"None whatever. The greater probability is, that the French will make

some experiment on the strength of ours."

I looked all astonishment. He interpreted my look, and said--"To solve

the enigma at once, It is our wish to send you to Ireland."

I listened in silence while he went into a long detail of the hazard

of the island, arising from the interests of a powerful republican

party, who, inflamed by the successes of France, were preparing to

receive troops and arms from the republic. He finished by saying, in a

tone of compliment, which, from him, was as unusual as I believe it

was sincere, that my exertions in debate had attracted high

consideration in the highest quarter, and that I had been proposed by

the monarch himself for the chief-secretaryship of Ireland. The

premier had assented to the appointment at once; "and here," said he,

"is the warrant, which I have prepared in anticipation of its

acceptance. You are, from this moment, virtual viceroy of Ireland."

This was elevation indeed! I had at once surmounted all the slow

gradations of office. The broadest prospect of official ambition had

suddenly opened before me; popularity, founded on the most solid

grounds, was now waiting only my acceptance; the sense of power,

always dear to the heart of man, glowed in every vein; and it is only

justice to myself to say, that the strongest impulse of all was the

desire to leave my name as a benefactor to a people, who seemed to me

as much gifted by nature as they were unhappy by circumstances.

"How long will it take you to prepare for the journey?" asked the

minister.

"Half an hour," was my reply.

"Bravo! Marston. I see your campaigning has not been thrown away upon

you. You have the soldier's promptitude. We were prepared to allow you

a week. But the sooner you set off the better. The truth is," said he

rising, "we are in great difficulties in that quarter. The most

thoroughly English portion of the island is at this moment the most

disturbed. There are drillings, purchases of arms, midnight

musterings, and even something not far from prepared attacks upon the

king's troops. The papers among which you found me, contain a regular

and a very complete organization of an insurrectionary government. You

will require all the energy of the soldier and all the prudence of the

statesman."

"Let me add to them," said I, "what is essential to the success of

both in a country of generous hearts and quick conceptions, the

sincerity of a patriot."

"The experiment is worth trying," said he with a smile, "if it were

only for the sake of its novelty. But Ireland has qualities which,

like those of her soil, require only to be turned up to the light to

reward all the labours of wealth or wisdom." Before that evening

closed in, I was a hundred miles on my way to the Irish capital.

A rapid journey, and a tranquil passage over the sixty miles that lie

between Wales and Ireland, gave me what an old Roman would regard as

an omen of the peacefulness of my mission. On the dawn of one of the

finest mornings of the year, I came within sight of the Irish coast,

and was struck, as all travellers have been, by the beauty of the bold

and picturesque coast which rose from the waters before me. In front

was a province of mountains, touched by all the variety of colours,

which are painted in such richness by the summer sun, on groups of

pinnacles and cones, forest hills, and the fine diversities of

woodland and mountain scenery. On one side the eye glanced over a vast

sheet of water, shut in by headlands, and as blue and bright as a lake

under a serene sky. At the extremity of this noble estuary, a cloud,

unchanging and unmoving, showed where a city sent up the smoke of its

ten thousand fires; beyond this, all was purple confusion. My official

rank threw open all the _elite_ of Irish society to me at my first

step; and I found it, as it has been found by every one else,

animated, graceful, and hospitable. The nature of its government

tended to those qualifications. While the grave business of the state

was done in London, the lighter business of show was sedulously

sustained in the Irish capital. The lord-lieutenant was generally a

nobleman, selected more for his rank and his wealth than for his

statesmanship. A rich, showy, and good-humoured peer was the true man

for the head of affairs in Ireland. It was of more importance that he

should give balls and suppers, say lively things to the ladies, and be

jocular with the gentleman, than that he should have the brains of

Bolingbroke or the tongue of Chatham. But the position of the

secretary was the absolute antipode of this tranquil and festive

sinecure. He was in Ireland what the premier was in England, but with

ten times more of the difficulty, and ten times less of the power. The

whole conduct of public affairs lay on his shoulders; he was

responsible for every thing, while he was free in nothing; perpetually

assailed by opposition for measures which he was not at liberty to

explain, and standing between the English cabinet and the Irish party

as a scapegoat for the mistakes of the one, and a target for the shot

of the other. But the chief trial of temper was in the House of

Commons. Opposition in Ireland never had a list of more brilliant

names. Government had the majority behind its bench, and that majority

recruited from the ranks of Opposition; but the more distinguished

were fixed to party by their own celebrity; and the recruits, however

able, were so liable to be attacked for their change of side, that

they were paralyzed; in some instances, they were so much galled by

the merciless sharpshooting of their former associates, that they ran

back, and left the minister to fight the field alone.

I was fortunately free from the entanglements of that question, which

has since formed so large a portion of the political disquietudes of

Irish debate. The religion of the south was not yet among

parliamentary topics. The religion of the north, active ardent, and

indefatigable, was our most restless theme; and the political theories

which seemed to grow out of its bold abstractions, kept the government

in perpetual anxiety. The whole northern portion of the island was

ripe for revolt. America had blown the hot-blast of the revolutionary

furnace across the Atlantic, and a spark from France would have now

ignited the whole hot surface of the soil.

One of my first acts after arranging the preliminary business of

office, was to make a flying tour through Ulster. I was astonished at

its beauty. Even after being familiar with the loveliness of the

English landscape, I was in a state of continued surprise at the

variety, richness, and singularity of nature in the northern

counties. Mountain, lake, magnificent bay, and broad river, followed

each other in noble and unceasing succession. I was still more struck

with the skill and good fortune, by which the people had contrived to

combine the industry of manufactures with the life of the fields; a

problem which England herself had failed to solve. But, most of all, I

was attracted by the independent air, and handsome and vigorous

appearance of the people; almost every man was proprietor, and had the

look which proprietorship alone can give. I found books in almost

every cottage, decency of dress every where, and among the higher

orders frequent elegance and accomplishment. The women were cultivated

and intelligent; the men, spirited and enquiring. But the politics of

France had made their way through a large portion of the province, and

the glories of a republic "loomed large" before the popular eye. As it

was my purpose to see all that I could with my own eyes, I mingled

largely in society, made no distinction between honourable men of

different political creeds, enjoyed to-day the stag-hunt and claret of

the noble Whig, and to-morrow the stag-hunt and claret of the noble

Tory, listened to all, laughed with all, and learned something from

all. The English aristocrat, especially if he holds high official

place, once haunted the imaginations of the Irish of all conditions,

like an incarnation of an Indian deity--all fierceness and frigidity;

and it must be acknowledged that the general order of viceroys and

secretaries had not tended much to remove the conception. They were

chiefly men of advanced life, with their habits formed by intercourse

with the most exclusive class in existence, the English peerage, or

rendered rigid by the dry formalities of official life. But I was

young, had seen a good deal of that rough work of the world which

gives pliancy, if not polish, to all characters; and I was, besides,

really delighted with the animation, pleasantry, and winning kindness

which exhibited themselves every where round me. I was half a son of

Ireland already, and I regarded the recognition as the pledge of my

success.

"Do you know," said one of the most influential and accomplished

noblemen of the country to me, one day at his sumptuous table--"how

many of the lords-lieutenant do you think have left a popular

recollection behind them?"

I professed my ignorance, but enumerated some names remarkable for

intelligence and vigour of administration.

"Oh," said my entertainer, "that was not the question! Great statesmen

and showy governors, capital rulers of the country and bold managers

of our factions, we have had in sufficient succession, but I speak of

the faculty of being remembered; the talent of making a public

impression; the power of escaping that national oblivion into which

mere official services, let them be of what magnitude they may,

inevitably drop when their performer has disappeared. Well, then, I

shall tell you. _Two_, and no more."

I begged to know the names of those "discoverers of the grand secret,

the philosopher's stone of popularity," the alchemists who had power

to fix the floating essence of the Irish mind!

"Chesterfield and Townshend. Chesterfield, regarded as a fop in

England, was a daring, steady, and subtle governor of the unruly

spirits of Ireland, in one of the most hazardous periods. That the

throne of the Brunswicks did not see an Irish revolt at the moment

when it saw a Scottish invasion, was the service of Chesterfield. But

he ruled not by his wisdom, but by his wit. He broke down faction by

_bon-mots_; he extinguished conspiracy by passing compliments; he

administered the sternest law with the most polished smile; and cut

down rebellion by quotations from La Fontaine, and _calembourgs_ from

Scarron. But with these fortunate pleasantries he combined public and

solid services. He threw a large portion of the crown lands in the

neighbourhood of the capital into a park for the recreation of the

citizens, and thus gave one of the earliest and most munificent

examples of regard for the health and enjoyment of the people; a more

enduring monument of his statesmanship could not have been offered to

the gratitude of the country."

Of the Marquis Townshend I had heard as a gallant soldier, and a

stirring viceroy, but I still had to learn the source of his

popularity.

"Townshend was one of those singular men who possess faculties of

which they have no knowledge, until the moment when they become

necessary. He began life as a soldier, and finished his soldiership in

the most brilliant victory of his day--the battle of Quebec. On his

appointment to the viceroyalty, he found his government a nothing; a

government faction superseding the governor, and an opposition faction

engrossing the people. He now, for the first time, became a

politician. He resolved to crush both, and he succeeded. He treated

the government faction in Ireland with contumely, and he treated the

opposition with contempt. Both were indignant; he laughed at both, and

treated them with still more scorn. Both were astonished--the

government faction intrigued against him in England, the opposition

threatened impeachment. He defied them still more haughtily. They now

found that he was not to be shaken, and both submitted. The nation

joined him, was pacified, grew in vigour, as it required tranquillity;

and here you have the secret of all the privileges which Ireland has

obtained. Townshend performed, only on a smaller scale, the same

national service which Pitt performed on a larger one. He took the

people out of the hands of aristocracy, broke up the league of

opulence and power, and gave the island that popular freedom which the

great minister of England gave to the empire. For this the name of

Townshend lives among us still. His bold satires are recorded, his

gallant bearing is remembered, his passing pleasantries have become a

portion of the national wit, and his rough but effectual services are

among the memorials of our independence as a people."

The evening of this hospitable day concluded with a ball to the

neighbouring families, and all was graceful and animated enjoyment. My

host had travelled much in early life, and had brought home some fine

pictures and valuable sculptures. He was an accomplished classical

scholar--a quality which I found in some degree fashionable among the

leading personages of the time, and which unquestionably added much to

the high tone of conversation among the parliamentary circles. In his

magnificent mansion an artist might have found studies, a scholar

learning, a philosopher wisdom, and a man of the world all the charms

of polished life. How soon, and how fearfully, were they all to be

extinguished! How bitterly were all who honoured and esteemed that

generous and highly-gifted nobleman, to feel what shadows we are, and

what shadows we pursue!

Our mornings were chiefly spent in hunting over the fine landscape

which spread, in all the various beauty of vegetation, within view of

the mansion. On one of those days the attention of the field was

caught by the fierce riding of a singular-looking man, scarcely above

the peasant in his general appearance, and yet mounted on one of the

finest English horses that I had ever seen. He rode at every thing,

managed his horse with practised skill, and soon became an object of

general emulation. To "ride up" to the "wild horseman," was found to

be a task not easily accomplished, and at length all was a trial of

speed with this dashing exhibitor. A glance which, when on the point

of one of his most desperate leaps, he threw back at me, seemed to be

a kind of challenge, and I rushed on at speed. The Irish hunter

matchless at "topping" stone walls, but his practice has not lain much

among rivers; and the English horse is sometimes his master at the

deep and rapid streams which, running between crumbling banks, are

perhaps the severest trials to both horse and rider. The majority of

the hunt pulled up at the edge of one of those formidable chasms, and

I was by no means unwilling to follow their example; but the look of

the strange rider had a sneer along with it, which put me on my

mettle, and I dashed after him. The hounds had scrambled through, and

we rode nearly abreast through a broken country, that mixture of bog

and firm ground which occurs frequently in newly cleared land, and

over which nothing but the most powerful sinews can make way. We had

now left every one behind us, were struggling on through the dimness

of a hazy day, sinking into twilight. Suddenly my mysterious rival

turned his horse full upon me, and to my utter amazement discharged a

pistol at my head. The discharge was so close that I escaped only by

the swerving of my horse at the flash. I felt my face burn, and in the

impulse of the pain made a blind blow at him with my whip. He had

drawn out another pistol in an instant, which the blow luckily dashed

out of his hand. No words passed between us, but I bounded on him to

seize him. He slipped away from my grasp, and, striking in the spur,

galloped madly forward, I in pursuit. The twilight had now deepened,

and he plunged into a lane bounded on both sides by steep hedges, and

which, from some former hunting in this quarter, I knew to be a

_cul-de-sac_. This doubled my determination to make myself master of

the assassin; and even in the hurry of the moment I formed some

conception of my having seen his face before, and that the attempt to

put me out of the way was connected, in some way or other, with public

affairs. This question was soon decided. He reached the end of the

lane, which was shut in with a wall of about the height of a man. His

horse shied at the obstacle. The rider, with an oath and a desperate

exertion, pushed him to it again. I was now within a few yards of him,

and arrived just in time to see the animal make a convulsive spring,

touch with his hind feet on the top of the wall, and roll over. My

Irish horse cleared it in the native style, and I found my enemy

crushed under his hunter, and evidently in the pangs of death. He had

been flung on a heap of stones, and the weight of the falling horse

had broken his spine. I poured some brandy down his throat, relieved

him from the incumbrance of the hunter--attempted to give him

hope--but he told me that it was useless; that he felt death coming

on, and that I was the last man who should wish him to live, "as he

had pledged himself to my extinction." For a while, his recollections

were wild, and he talked of events in France and Spain, where he

seemed to have done some deeds which affected him with peculiar horror

in the prospect of dissolution. But, after a brief period of those

terrible disclosures, his pains totally ceased, his mind grew clear;

and he acknowledged that he was one of the leading agents of a

National Conspiracy to republicanize Ireland. "You are too kind," said

he to me, "to one who now sees the madness of the design, and is

sensible of the guilt of taking away the lives of honourable men." A

lapse of weakness here tied his tongue; and I brought him a draught of

water from a spring which gurgled beside the wall. He thanked me, and

proceeded to say, that my "character for vigilance and activity had

alarmed the principal conspirators, and that he, thinking all crimes

meritorious in a popular cause, had resolved to signalize the

commencement of his services, by putting the English secretary to

death on the first occasion." For this purpose, he had followed my

steps for some time in the metropolis, but without finding a fit

opportunity. The intelligence of my hunting days in the north gave him

renewed expectations, and he had followed me in various disguises; had

been present at dinners and balls, where I was the principal guest;

had even frequently conversed with me on public and foreign topics; in

fact, had haunted me with a case of pistols constantly in his bosom;

yet had never been able to find the true opportunity of despatching me

without _eclat_. He had, at last, determined to give up the object as

altogether hopeless; and had already prepared to act on a bolder scale

by heading open rebellion, when he heard of my intending to hunt on

this day. It was to be his last experiment; "and how rejoiced I am,"

said he, "that it has failed!" He now remained for a while in apparent

meditation, and then suddenly raising himself on his hand, said, in a

full and manly tone--"One thing I still can do in this world, if it

may not be too late. Leave me here; I must die; go back in all haste

to your friends, and tell them to prepare either to fly or defend

their lives. This is the night appointed for the breaking out of the

insurrection. Fifty thousand men are already armed in the mountains,

and ready for the signal to march on the principal towns. The few

troops in the country are to be made prisoners in their barracks. The

government stores are to be divided among the people. Before twelve

hours are over we shall have a force of a hundred thousand men on

foot; and a republic will be proclaimed."

The intelligence was startling, but not wholly unexpected. I demanded

the names of the leaders; but on this head he refused to make any

answer. I next enquired, whether the rebel directory had any hope of

assistance from the Continent. "That I can fully answer," said he, now

almost at his last gasp. "I myself was the negotiator. It is but a

month since I was in Paris. The government agreed to send seven sail

of the line, with ten thousand troops, and Hoche, the favourite

general of the republic, to the north; or, in case of unexpected

obstacles, to the south of Ireland. I have been looking out for their

flag from hour to hour." The man sank back on the ground. I prepared

to run for help, if there were any to be found in that desolate place.

He grasped my hand; his was icy. "No," said he, "I must now be left

alone; I am dying, and I am not sorry to die. I am free from your

blood, and I shall not share in the horrors which I see at hand. Men

in health, and men dying think differently of those things. Farewell!"

He gave my hand a convulsive clasp, and expired.

My situation was an anxious one. Night had fallen, and the hour was

full of peril to those whom I had left behind; it was even possible

that the insurrection might have already broken out. Sounds, which

seemed to me, in the stillness of the hour, to be the signals of the

peasantry--the echoes of horns, and trampling of bodies of

horse--began to rise upon the gust, and yet I was unwilling to leave

my unfortunate victim on the ground. A length a loud shout, and the

firing of musketry on the skirts of the wood, awoke me to a sense of

the real danger of my situation. I forced my way through the thickets,

and saw a skirmish between a large mass of armed men, and a picket of

troops in a village on the borders of the wood. There was now no time

to be lost. I returned to the spot where the body lay, placed my hand

on its forehead, to ascertain whether any remnant of life lingered

there; found all cold; and, remounting my horse, wound my dreary and

difficult way back to the mansion.

To my surprise, I found the windows blazing with lights, carriages

arriving, and all the signs of a night of gala. I had forgotten that

this was my noble entertainer's birthday, and that the whole circle of

the neighbouring nobles and gentlemen had been for the last month

invited. There were to be private theatricals, followed by a ball and

supper. The whole country continued to pour in. Full of my disastrous

intelligence, my first enquiry was for the noble host; he was not to

be seen. I was at length informed under the seal of secrecy by his

secretary, that some information of popular movements within a few

miles, having been conveyed to him late in the day, he had put himself

at the head of a squadron of his yeomanry to ascertain the nature of

the disturbance, and as it was then too late to countermand the

invitations to the ball, had given strict orders that the cause of his

absence should be concealed, and that the entertainments should go on

as if he were present.

Agreeing that this was the wisest thing which could be done, to avoid

unnecessary alarm, which paralyses action beforehand, and renders all

ridiculous after, I seldom felt it more difficult to play my part than

on this occasion. As a minister, any thing in the shape of solicitude

on my part, was sure to be magnified into actual disaster, and I was

forced to keep an unembarrassed countenance. I immediately sent out

servants in every direction to bring intelligence of the actual state

of affairs, and above all, to ascertain what had detained their

master. Though all this was done with the utmost secrecy, it was

impossible to suppress the growing impression that something

extraordinary must have occurred, to withdraw from his own hospitable

roof, and so long detain, the lord of the mansion, distinguished as he

was for the most polished courtesy. As the hour waned, the enquiries

became more urgent, the dance languished, and the showy crowd forming

into groups, and wandering through the saloons, or gathered to the

windows, had evidently lost all the spirit of festivity. To my

astonishment, strong opinions began to find utterance, and I

discovered that his lordship, in his general and lofty disregard of

the shades of popular sentiment, had among his guests some individuals

whose rank and wealth had not preserved them from the taint of

republicanism. As it was not my purpose to make a ball-room the scene

of a political squabble, and as I felt it due to my official position

to avoid any unnecessary entanglement in the obscure follies of

provincial partizanship, I first tried to laugh down the topic. But a

young orator, a handsome and fluent enthusiast, recently returned from

a continental excursion, gave so stirring a picture of the glories of

French independence, and the glittering advantages which must accrue

to all countries following the example, that I was forced to stand on

my defence. The gallant republican was not to be repelled; he poured

out upon me, as he warmed with the theme, so vast a catalogue of

public injuries, in language so menacing, yet so eloquent, that I was

forced to ask whether I was standing in the midst of a Jacobin

club--whether his object was actually to establish a democracy, to

govern by the guillotine, to close up the churches, and inscribe the

tombs with--death is an eternal sleep; to swear to the extinction of

monarchy, and proclaim universal war. Our dispute had now attracted

general notice. He answered with still more vehement and elaborate

detail. I had evidently the majority on my side, but some few adhered

to him, and those, too, men of consequence, and obvious determination.

The ladies shrank affrighted, as the contest grew more angry; and the

usual and unhappy result of political discussion in Ireland, an

exchange of cards, was about to take place, when one of the servants

brought me a small packet of papers which had been found on the body

of the assassin. Glancing over them, I saw a list of the leaders of

the insurrection, and the first name in the paper that of my

antagonist. I crushed the document in my hand, and beckoned him to a

window. There, alone, and out of hearing of the guests, who, however,

followed us anxiously with their eyes, I charged him with his guilt.

He denied it fiercely. I gave him five minutes to consider whether he

would confess or abide the consequences. His countenance visibly

exhibited the perturbations of his mind; he turned pale and red

alternately, shuddered, then braced himself up with desperate

resolution, and finally ended by denying and defying every thing. It

was not in my nature to press upon this moment of agony; but telling

him, that nothing but compassion prevented my ordering his arrest on

the spot, I again warned him to make his peace in time with the

government, by a solemn abjuration of his design.

I have the whole scene before me still. This man was destined to a

memorable and melancholy fate. I never remember a countenance more

expressive of intellectual refinement; but there was a look of strange

and feverish restlessness in his large grey eye, almost ominous of his

future career. He was still young, though he had already gone through

vicissitudes enough to darken the longest life. He had been, a few

years before, called to the bar, the favourite profession of the Irish

gentry, where he had exhibited talents of a remarkable order; but an

impatience of the slow success of this profession drove him to the

hazards of political change. He had married, and this increased his

difficulties, until party came athwart him with its promises of

boundless honour and rapid fortune. His sanguine nature embraced the

temptation at once; but the parliamentary opposition was too

deliberate and too frigid for his boiling blood; he plunged into the

deeper and wilder region of conspiracy, took the lead, which is so

soon assigned to the brilliant and the bold, and became the soul of

the tremendous faction which was ready to proclaim the separation of

the empire.

He had but now returned from France, with a commission in the army of

the Republic, and a plan agreed on with the Directory for the invasion

of Ireland; but these were discoveries to be made hereafter. On this

night I saw nothing but a gallant enthusiast, filled with classic

recollections, inflamed with the ardour of early life, and deluded by

the dreams of political perfection. My sense of the utter ruin which

he was preparing for himself was so strong, that I pressed him from

point to point, until he was forced to take refuge in flight, and,

rushing from me, burst open a door which led to the demesne. While I

paused, not unwilling to give him the opportunity to escape, I heard a

wild burst of wailing, and a confusion of voices outside. In the next

moment, I saw the fugitive return, with a tottering step, a bloodless

countenance, and a look of horror. Without a word, he pointed to the

door; I followed the direction, and saw what might well justify his

feelings. The troop of yeomanry had been attacked on their return from

patrolling the country; an ambuscade had been laid for them by a large

force of the insurgents, in one of the narrow roads which bordered the

demesne, and where, from its vicinity, they had imagined themselves

secure. As they moved down this defile with their noble commandant at

their head, a heavy fire of musketry assailed them from both sides;

and as the assailants were unapproachable, they had no resource but to

gallop on. But they had no sooner reached the wider part of the road,

than they found themselves fired on again from behind a barricade of

carts and waggons drawn across the road. The affair now seemed

desperate; the muzzles of the muskets almost touched their breasts,

and every shot told. Their pistols could only keep up a random fire,

and their sabres were wholly useless. They were now falling helplessly

and fast, when the earl ordered them to charge the insurgents in

front, and force their way over the barricade at all risks. He bravely

led the way, and they burst through under a volley from the rebels. A

ball fatally struck him as he was in the act of cheering on his men,

and he dropped dead from his horse without a groan. The troop, furious

at their loss, had taken a desperate revenge, cleared the road, and

had now brought the dead body of their lord to that mansion, where he

had so long presided as the example of every high-toned quality, and

which his fate was now to turn into a scene of terror and woe.

The melancholy tidings could not now be suppressed, and the ball-room

was filled with screams and faintings. The corpse was brought in,

borne on the arms of the yeomanry, most of them wounded, and looking

ghastly from loss of blood and the agitation of the encounter. The

guests crowded round the sofa on which the body was laid, with all the

varieties of sorrow and strong emotion conceivable, under the loss of

a common and honoured friend. Tears fell down many a manly cheek; sobs

were heard on every side, mingled with outcries of indignation against

the rebellious spirit by which so deep a calamity had been produced.

But all other considerations were quickly absorbed in the sense of

general danger. A tremendous shout was heard round the mansion,

followed by the discharge of musketry and the clashing of pikes. All

rushed to the windows, and we saw the hills in a blaze with fires, and

the demesne crowded with the armed thousands of the insurrection.

JANUS;

THE GOD OF NEW-YEAR'S DAY, FROM THE FASTI OF OVID.

Behold with omens blithe and bright, on festive New-Year's Day,

First in the year old Janus comes, and foremost in my lay!

Twin-headed god, source of the year that silent glides away,

Who only of the Olympian throng canst thine own back survey;

Bless thou our noble chiefs, whose arms have purchased gentle peace

To fruitful Earth, and lent the wave from pirate-chase release;

On senators and people smile, who call Quirinus god,

All temples bright, in shining white, fly open at thy nod!

A lucky sun doth shine; nor voice, nor thought of ill, be stirr'd

To tempt the time; the happy day demands the happy word.

No brawls assail the ear; cease now the harsh-vex'd forum's hum,

And calumny with eager tongue, for once thy spite be dumb!

Lo! where the pure and fragrant flame from every altar round

Upwreathes, while ears devout receive the saffron's crackling sound!

The wandering flame, far darting, strikes the golden-fretted roof,

And with the tremulous ray aloft, it weaves a shining woof.

In stately pomp, the people wend up the Tarpeian slope,

All brightly, on a bright day clad, the pure white robes of hope;

New axes shine, and in the sun new purple bravely sports,

And greeted-far the curule chair new weight of worth supports;[12]

New oxen come that lately cropp'd the sweet Faliscan grass,

And yield to Jove their willing necks on which no yoke did pass.

He, from his starry throne sublime, looks East and West; and lo!

He sees but Rome, and Rome's domain, in all he sways below.

Hail happy day, and still return to bless with happier face

The sons of Romulus, lords of Earth, not thankless for thy grace!

But who art thou, strange biform god, and what thy power? for Greece

With all her gods of thee and thine hath bade her Muses cease;

This say; and say why thou alone of all celestial kind,

Dost forwards still look steadfastly and also gaze behind?

Thus with myself I mused, and held my tablets to indite,

When sudden through the room there shone an unaccustom'd light,

And in the light the double shape of Janus hoar appear'd,

And 'fore my view with fix'd regard his double face he rear'd.

I stood aghast, each rigid hair erect rose on my head,

And through my frame with freezing touch the creeping terror sped.

He in his right hand held a staff, and in his left a key,

And with the mouth to-me-ward turn'd these words he spake to me--

"Fear not, pains-taking bard, whose pen doth chronicle the days,

Receive my word with faithful ear, and sound it in thy lays.

When earth was young, primeval speech first call'd me Chaos; I

Am no birth of to-day--a name of hoar antiquity.

This lucid air, and the other three, which elements ye class,

Fire, water, earth, were then one rude and undigested mass;

But soon within the mingled heap a secret strife did brew,

And to self-chosen homes anon the hostile atoms flew.

First rose the flame sublime, the air assumed the middle berth,

And to the central base were bound strong ocean, and firm earth.

Then I, till then a mass confused, a huge and shapeless round,

New features worthy of a god, and worthy members found;

Still of my primal shapeless bulk remain'd the little trace,

That I alone have no true back, but show both ways a face.

One cause thou hast; another hear, and with my figure know,

My virtue and my power above, my office here below.

Whate'er thou see'st, the earth, the sea, the air, the fiery cope,

At my command they shut their gates, at my command they ope.

I of the vasty universe do hold the secret key,

The hinge of every thing that turns is turn'd alone by me.

Peace, when I please to send her forth from her secure retreats,

Walks freely o'er the unfenced fields, and treads free-gated streets;

The mighty globe would quake convulsed by blood and murderous din,

Did not my brazen bolt confine the store of strife within.

The gates of Heaven are mine; I watch there with the gentle Hours,

That Jove supreme must wait my time in the Olympian bowers.

Thence my name Janus;[13] thence the priest who on my altar places

The salted cake, the sacred meal, with strange-mouth'd titles graces

My hoary deity; thence you hear Patulcius now, and now

Clusius, crown the votive gift, and seal the mystic vow.[14]

Thus rude antiquity at first its simple creed confess'd,

And with twin words the functions twain of one same god express'd.

My power you know--the god of gates--now for my figure, why?

The cause is plain, and may be read by half a poet's eye.

There is no door but looks two ways; into the busy street

This way, and that way back towards the quiet Lar's retreat;[15]

And as the porter whom you place to keep watch at your gate,

Sees who goes out and who comes in at early hour and late,

Thus I, the warden of the sky, from heaven's wide-tented blue,

Look forth, and scan both east and west with comprehensive view.

The triform image you have seen, and any where may see,

Of Hecate standing at the point where one road parts in three;

Thus I, lest turning of my neck my function might delay,

The motive world on either side without a move survey."

Thus spake the god with friendly mien and eye, that seem'd to say--

"If wish be yours to question more, command me; I obey."

Due thanks I gave; strong fear no more my eager tongue possess'd,

And with a look that sought the ground, the immortal I address'd.

"This would I know, why frosty days and storms begin the year,

Which flowery spring had usher'd in with more auspicious cheer;

Then all things flourish--all things then of youth and freshness tell,

The juicy vine begins to flow, the bud begins to swell;

With fresh green leaves the tree is clad, a virgin sheen appears,

The bursting seed above the ground the fresh green blade uprears.

With fresh full-throated warblings then the blithe birds stir the air,

And lamb and lambkin in the mead their frisking sports prepare.

Then suns are mild; its south retreat the stranger swallow leaves,

And skilful builds the well-known clay beneath the lofty eaves.

Then walks the ploughman forth; the clod yields to the sturdy steer;

Soothly the fittest time was this to omen in the year."

My words were many, but in words few and well-chosen, He,

Within the compass of two lines, thus made reply to me.

"What time the sun that sunk before mounts loftier to the view,

This fitliest closed the parting year, and usher'd in the new."

I ask'd again, "Why on this day the forum's strife should end

Only in part."--"The cause," said he, "I will explain; attend.

The young year's starting day I made but partial holiday,

Lest labourless begun, the year might run to the end in play;

Each cunning hand on Janus' feast makes prelude to his trade,

Of all the rest a timely test on New-Year's day is made."

Then I, this further--"Tell me why, when I bring frankincense

To Jove or any other god, with thee I still commence?"

"Because of things in heaven and earth I hold the sacred key,

The first approach to all the gods is made alone through me."

"But on thy kalends, why are men, so harsh on other days,

Keen to return the kindly look, and change the friendly phrase?"

To this the god, his strong right hand upon his good staff leaning,

"All ominous things when first observed speak out their fateful meaning.

To the first voice of things that cry, ye lend a trembling ear,

And the first flight of bodeful wings fills pious hearts with fear.

The ears are open of the gods, to catch on New-Year's day

What random words, or thoughtless prayer, a hasty fool may say."

Thus ceased the god; nor slow was I the broken thread to join,

But of the last words that he spake, thus trode the heels with mine.

"But what have dates to do with thee, and wrinkled figs, this tell,

And what the honey dew that drops pure from its snowy cell?"[16]

"Here, too, an omen lies," he said; "the cause is passing clear,

That from sweet things a savour sweet may relish the whole year."

Thus taught, the cause I understood of dates, and figs, and honey;

"But tell me now, wise god!" I said, "what means the piece of money?"

He smiled. "Alas! how much thy age deceives thy wit," he said;

"As if sweet honey by the touch of gold were sweeter made.

Even in good Saturn's day, 'twas hard to find a heart all pure,

From the infection of base gain, and gainful lust secure.

Small at the birth, it grew apace the thirst of yellow ore,

Till heap on heap ye pile so high, that ye can pile no more.

Not so the measure was of wealth in Rome's primeval time,

When all was poor that now is rich, and low that's now sublime;

When a small hut was all that held the son of Mars divine,

And gather'd reeds were all the couch on which he drain'd the wine;

When Jove within his narrow cell erect could scarcely stand,

An earthen Jove, and of base clay the bolt that arm'd his hand.

When with wild-flowers the fane was deck'd that now with jewels gleams,

And his own sheep the senator fed near the rural streams;

When gently woo'd by healthy sleep the rustic warrior lay

On straw, and praised above all down a truss of bristling hay;

When to give laws to Rome the peasant consul left the plough,

And gold was then as great a crime as 'tis a virtue now.

But when our fates were lifted high, and to the stars sublime,

Perch'd on her base of seven-hill'd state proud Rome had learn'd to

climb;

Wealth grew with power, and lust of wealth, a madness of the brain,

And still the more that they possess'd, the more they sought to gain.

Eager to make that they might spend, spending to make anew,

Change nursed by change of fell extremes to monstrous nature grew;

Thus he whose sickly body swells with water in the veins,

The more he drinks, the more within the thirsty fever reigns.

All things are prized by price; to wealth all honours now are sure;

Wealth buys the rich man friends; forlorn and friendless pines the poor.

If now you ask why copper coins are chiefly my delight,

The ancient brass of Rome should I, the ancient Janus, slight?

Brass was their wealth of old; though now the better omen's gold,

And the new metal from the field has fairly beat the old.

Myself, though simple and severe, approve a golden shrine--

This metal hath a majesty that suits a power divine.

We praise the ancients, and 'tis well; but use our modern ways--

All fashions in due time and place are worthy of our praise."

Thus ceased the god; but I, to set all rising doubts at rest,

The hoar key-bearer of the sky thus with meek words address'd:--

"Much I have learn'd; but tell me this--why of our copper coin

Does one side bear a ship, and one a double head like thine?"[17]

"That head is mine; you might have known the likeness of the face

But that hoar age and wear have dull'd the sharpness of the trace.

As for the ship, attend: the god that bears the scythe whilcome

Far-wandering in the Tuscan flood at length had ceased to roam.[18]

Well I remember when he came, and hold the memory dear--

Saturn, by Jove expell'd from heaven, and kindly welcom'd here.

Thence was the land Saturnia call'd; and Latium still we name

The part where ancient Saturn lurk'd in safety when he came.[19]

Our pious sires upon the brass the sacred ship impress'd,

Whose keel to blest Ausonian shores had borne the Olympian guest.

Then on that spot I made my home where Tiber's waters glide,

And eat the yielding banks away with sandy-rolling tide.

Here, where Rome stands, wild copse green grew; the busy forum now

Was then a peaceful glen, disturb'd by wandering oxen's low.

My fortress then was that same hill which pious Rome reveres

Even now, and thinks on Janus when Janiculum she hears.

Here I was king, when holy earth of heavenly guests could tell,

And in the haunts of men the gods were not ashamed to dwell;

Ere Justice, shrinking from the sight of human guilt and crime,

Last of immortals left the earth, and sought the starry clime;

When hearts were sway'd by love, and held by bonds of holy awe,

And light the labour was to shape for willing hearts the law.

Stern war I knew not, and the gates I held were gates of peace;

While in my hand the key declared--Let garner'd stores increase!"

Here closed the god his lips; but I, not bashful, open'd mine,

And with the mortal voice again unseal'd the voice divine.

"Since many gates are thine in Rome, say why dost thou appear

In perfect shape and size nowhere but at the forums here?"[20]

Whereto the god, with gentle hand stroking his long beard hoary,

Forthwith recounted in my ear OEbalian Tatius' story;

And how, by Sabine gauds ensnared, the fair and faithless maid

The path that to the Capitol leads to the Sabine lord betray'd.

"As there is now, so then there was, a slope by which you go

Steep from the citadel to the plain, and forum stretch'd below;

And now the twain had reach'd the gate where Juno's partial ward

The only bolts that closed their way propitiously unbarr'd,

When I, too wise with Saturn's seed in open fight to join,

Contrived a scheme that baffled hers, a plan entirely mine;

I oped (in opening lies my strength) a gate where waters slept,

And from the solid rock straightway a stream impetuous leapt;

To the hot spring such sulphurous steams my timely aid supplied

That eager Tatius quail'd and shrunk back from the rolling tide.

The Sabines fled; the gushing fount miraculous ceased to flow;

Nor pious Rome to own the power that sent such aid was slow;

A little altar on a shrine not large to Janus' name

Was raised; there sprinkled meal and cake smokes mingled with the flame."

"But this say further,--why thy gates in war are open, why

In peace are closed?" whereto the god thus gave the prompt reply;

"That till her sons fierce war have quench'd, and crush'd the crude

revolt,

Rome to receive the homeward host may keep unbarr'd the bolt;

In peace my locks are closed, that none may causeless leave his home,

Nor few the years I shall be closed while Caesar reigns in Rome."

Thus spake the god; and lifting high his head of diverse view,

Scann'd east and west, and all that's spread beneath the ethereal blue;

And peace rein'd o'er wide earth; ev'n where i' the north, with surly

wave,

The rebel Rhine to Caesar's arms their latest triumph gave;

Peace, hoary Janus, make thou sure for ever; and may they

Who purchased peace embrace the globe with everlasting sway.

TO A BLIND GIRL.

I do not sigh as some may sigh,

To see thee in thy darkness led

Along the path where sunbeams lie,

And bloom is shed.

I do not weep as some may weep,

Upon thy rayless brow to look;

A boon more rare 'twas thine to keep,

When light forsook.

A glorious boon! Thou shalt not view

One treasure from the earth depart--

Its starry buds, its pearls of dew,

Lie in thy heart.

No need to heed the frosty air,

No need to heed the blasts that chafe,

The scatter'd sheaf, the vintage spare--

_Thy hoard is safe_.

Thou shalt not mark the silent change

That falls upon the heart like blight,

The smile that grows all cold and strange.--

Bless'd is thy night!

Thou shalt not watch the slow decay,

Nor see the ivy clasp the fane,

Nor trace upon the column gray

The mildew stain.

_Ours_ is the darkness--thine the light.

Within thy brow a glory plays;

Shrine, blossom, dewdrop, all are bright

With quenchless rays.

J. D.

THE FORCED SALE.

A large red brick house, with a multitude of gable-ends, and rows of

small, dingy-looking windows, had hidden itself for many generations

in a clump of fine old trees in a large green field--almost qualified

to take rank as a park--at a distance of six or seven miles from St

Paul's. In the days of the good Queen Anne, the city lay comfortably

huddled up round the cathedral church, and looked upon her sister of

Westminster as too far removed, and of too lofty a rank, to be visited

except on rare occasions. London was then contained within reasonable

limits, and it was easy to walk round her boundaries; you could even

point out the precise spot at which the town ended and the country

began. The inhabitants of the large brick house, known by the name of

Surbridge Hall, at rare intervals, and then only to visit the shops,

undertook the journey into the city; and, unless in the stillest of

autumn evenings, when the enormous tongue of the metropolitan clock

made itself audible on the Surbridge lawn, they might have forgotten

that such a place as the capital was within fifty miles. That

generation died off; and London had begun to put out feelers in all

directions, and had outgrown the ancient limits. Streets began to move

out a little way into the country for change of air; and, in making

their usual shopping-visits to the great city, the inhabitants of

Surbridge Hall had now to drive through a short row of houses, where

the elders of the party remembered nothing but a hedge. That

generation also died out; and the city, like an old dowager who has

once been a beauty, and boasted of a waist, grew out of all shape.

There were squares and crescents rising in every quarter and the white

tops of chimneys, and the blue dinginess of roofs, became visible from

the upper windows of Surbridge Hall. The proprietor, terrified perhaps

by the approach of such neighbours, advertised the Hall for sale,

speedily found a purchaser, and, somewhere about the beginning of this

century, the old family name of the Walronds disappeared from the

country, and Surbridge Hall became the property of William Wilkins,

Esq. We may observe that, much about the same time, the name of the

senior partner disappeared from the door of a dingy-looking house in

Riches Court, and the firm of Wilkins & Roe was deprived of its larger

half. The old lion-rampant, that had stood on its hind-legs for so

many years on the top of one of the piers of the entrance gates, as if

in act to spring upon the deer that lay ruminating on the top of the

other, was now displaced; and, in a few days, his position was taken

by a plaster-of-Paris cast of Hebe, benevolently holding forth an

empty goblet towards the thirsty statue of Apollo which did duty on

the other side. The floors in the old hall were new laid, the windows

fitted with plate glass, the painting and decoration put into the

hands of a Bond-street finisher, who covered the walls with acres of

gilding, and hung chandeliers from the ceilings, and placed mirrors

upon the walls, till the rooms looked like the show galleries of an

upholsterer, and very different from the fine solid habitable

apartments they used to be in the time of the late proprietor. And a

change nearly as remarkable took place on Mr Wilkins himself as in his

house. He attended county meetings, and became learned in rents and

agriculture. He built new houses for his tenants, and only regretted

he had never learned to ride, or he would have followed the hounds.

But though he was no Nimrod, he dressed like one of his sons, and

encased his thick legs in top-boots, and generally carried a whip. At

last, by dint of good dinners, and voting on the right side at the

elections, he became a magistrate; and if Mrs Wilkins had had the

politeness to die, he would have married Lady Diana O'Huggomy, the

daughter of an Irish earl; but Mrs Wilkins did not die, and Lady Diana

ran away with a dancing-master. His son had been eighteen years at the

bar, and never had had a brief; his daughters had been twenty years on

the world, and never had had an offer; but he still expected to see

Richard lord chancellor, and his three girls peeresses. A country

gentleman, a county magistrate, perfectly healthy and tolerably rich,

was there any thing wanting to Mr Wilkins's felicity? Yes. Alexander

the Great was wretched when he had conquered the world, and was ten

times happier when he was breaking-in Bucephalus; and Mr Wilkins, if

the truth must be told, was very like Alexander the Great, at least in

his discontent, and was never so gay as he used to be in the dingy

mansion in Riches Court. The dinners he gave were formal, cold

affairs, where he never felt at his ease: he could not help thinking

that the neighbours quizzed and looked down on him; and, in short, he

felt out of his element, and longed sometimes for the free-and-easy

dinners he had relished so much in the city. His farm-houses were at

last all built, his improvements all completed, and there was no

further occupation for either himself or his money. He sometimes drove

into Harley Street to see his son, but he found that gentleman also on

the rack of idleness, and went home again, wondering how Roe was

getting on in the old premises, though never venturing to go near

him--for his family had insisted on a dead cut between the partners,

and could not endure the thoughts of Mr Roe coming between the wind

and their newly acquired nobility. Time wore on. Old Wilkins grew

older. He used to sit at the window of his drawing-room and look

towards London, fancying to himself the bustle and stir that were

going on, the crowding in Fleet Street, the crush at the Bank; and

occasionally imagination conjured up to him the image of an active

citizen bustling down towards the Exchange, radiant with success, and

filled with activity and hope; and he could scarcely recognise his own

identity with that joyous citizen, the William Wilkins of that happier

time. The flood of building, which had only reached to within three

miles of Surbridge when the Walronds retired to the ark of some estate

they retained in Yorkshire, had now increased to such a degree, as to

have submerged many of the fields and orchards that lay at very short

distance from the Hall. "Willars," with Italian fronts and little

greenhouses at the side, took post all along the road, and, from the

open windows, sounded in summer evenings the Battle of Prague, or God

save the King, so that you walked amidst perpetual music, for no house

was so ungenteel as to be without a piano. Surbridge Hall itself ran a

great risk of becoming a suburban villa at no distant time; and Mr

Wilkins was in some hopes that his family would allow him to consider

himself an inhabitant of London once more, and no longer doom him to

the cold nothingness of squireship and gentility. But whether they

might have relented in this respect can never be known; for while he

was meditating a renewal of his acquaintance with his late partner,

and an occasional dive into Riches Court, he changed his bed at the

Hall for the family vault (newly built) in Surbridge church, and his

great-coat and riding-whip for a Roman toga and a long gilt baton,

with which he pointed to heaven from the top of a splendid monument

near the south wall. Richard now succeeded to the family honours; and

as he had married a Miss Gillingham--a name which he preferred to his

ancestral appellation--he did her the honour to take it to himself,

and was duly enrolled in the list of justices as Wilkins Gillingham,

Esq. His son was sent to Christchurch, and his three daughters to a

fashionable boarding-school. His mother and sisters retired to

Tunbridge Wells, and they all began to persuade themselves that

Surbridge had been in the family from the time of the Conquest. By way

of strengthening their claims to county consideration, it was wisely

determined to oppose the building invasion as powerfully as they

could. Several farms and fields were bought, plantations were

skilfully placed, two or three feet were added to the height of the

walls all round the property; and it was hoped that some impression

was made on the advancing architectural enemy; for in the speculative

year of 1819, a dozen or two of builders were removed to the Queen's

Bench, and whole rows of houses were left looking up to heaven, in

vain expectation of a roof. Wilkins Gillingham served the office of

High Sheriff, caught a surfeit in entertaining the judges, and in a

few weeks gave place to his heir. Augustus had passed two years at

Oxford--had then married a beauty--the daughter of a country surgeon

of the name of Howard; and as he inherited his father's tastes, along

with his property, he changed his family name; and poor old Widow

Wilkins, who still survived, enlivened the tea-tables of the Wells

with anecdotes and descriptions of her grandson, Gillingham Howard.

Death seemed entirely to have forgotten the relict of the original

William. She stood like an ancient pillar, to point out where the

building it once belonged to was placed; and was looked upon by her

descendants pretty much as a native American looks upon a venerable

squaw of some Indian nation--the connecting link between New York and

the woods. The widow was the sole point of union left between

Surbridge Hall and Riches Court. Whether her grandson did not relish

the reminiscence, or from what cause no one can hazard more than a

guess, certain it is that on the death of his wife, who left him with

two daughters, four or five years old, he did not summon his venerable

ancestor from the Wells, but installed one of her daughters--Aunt

Susannah--in the temporary charge of his house. By some secret

arrangement, into the causes of which we have no time to enquire, such

a change took place in Aunt Susannah, that though she left Tunbridge,

having secured her place in the inside of the coach in the name of

Miss S. Wilkins, she was brought out from London in Mr Howard's

carriage in the name of Miss S. Gillingham; and there was no person of

the name of Wilkins in the whole of the establishment. Aunt Susannah

was not a person to hesitate long as to a change of name. It had been

the whole object of her life, till five-and-thirty years of

disappointment had almost made her despair of succeeding in her

object, by the help of special license or even vulgar banns; and she

accordingly made no scruple in adopting the more euphonious

Gillingham, and sinking all mention of the other. Mr Gillingham Howard

followed the example of his predecessors. He was a _bona fide_ country

gentleman, with the one drawback to his otherwise stupendous

respectability, of being the greatest drawer of the long-bow since the

days of Mendez Pinto. He added two feet more to the height of his

boundary walls, and bought all the disposable land round his estate;

but if he had transplanted a couple of miles of the Chinese wall to

Surbridge, he could no more have kept off the intrusion of the

barbarian villa-builders than the Celestials have been able to shut

out the same pushing, bustling, active, energetic, unabashable

individuals from the Flowery land. Architecture went on, and now the

gigantic city had stuck her arms so majestically on either hip, that

one of her elbows actually came into contact with the park of

Surbridge Hall. There was a gentle elevation--in those flat regions

honoured with the name of a hill--which lay at one side of the

Surbridge lands. It was a beautifully wooded little property of thirty

or forty acres, which it had always been the ambition of the Surbridge

owners to buy; but it was so involved with lawsuits or doubtful

titles, that it had hitherto been impossible to get possession of it

for love or money. The upper part of it rose high above the glades of

Surbridge park, and the clump of trees on the summit formed a very

fine object in the view from the drawing-room windows. It was all laid

down in the richest pasture, and would have formed the most valuable

addition to the property, both in making it compact and keeping it

secluded. The owner of it died at last in the Fleet, and it was

advertised for sale, with a perfect title and immediate possession.

The sale was by auction, and the day drew rapidly near. Mr Gillingham

Howard went carefully over the ground, examined the condition of his

credit--for his surplus cash was gone--had the property valued; and

determined to give a thousand more than its worth, to prevent it

falling into any one else's hands. When the day of sale arrived, he

placed himself in front of the auctioneer, and determined, by the

fierceness of his "bids," to frighten any competitor from the field.

The room was crowded, and the sale began. All the eloquence of the

celebrated Puff was displayed on this occasion; and when he paused

after his glowing description, and asked any gentleman to be kind

enough to name a sum to begin with--suggesting, at the same time, four

thousand pounds. "Gentlemen, shall we say four thousand guineas?" Mr

Gillingham Howard, in a voice that was calculated to show that he was

in earnest, and did not stand upon trifles, nodded his head, and said

"seven!" The auctioneer himself was overcome with the success of his

oratory, and there was a dead silence among the spectators. "Thank

you, sir--seven thousand guineas," he said, "Will any gentleman make

an advance?" looking round, at the same time, as if he considered it

useless to waste any breath in endeavouring to enhance the price. His

hammer mechanically went up, and was on the point of falling, when a

weak voice near the orator's pulpit whispered "eight."

The voice proceeded from an old man wrapped up in a thick great-coat,

though it was a warm day in June--a clear-eyed, small-featured,

diminutive old man, who had sat the whole time, taking no apparent

interest in the proceedings. All eyes were turned upon him in a

moment, and he quietly repeated the awful monosyllable--"eight!" Mr

Gillingham Howard looked at the old gentleman with detestation in

every feature, for he felt that the person, whoever he was, was

actually robbing him of a thousand pounds; and he would have had very

few scruples in sending the culprit to Botany Bay for so tremendous an

outrage. A sort of smile ran round the assemblage at seeing the sudden

alteration produced on his countenance; and though he had determined

not to give more than the original seven, he was ashamed to be cowed

by an unknown individual at once; and after a few minutes' pause, and

a glance of ineffable hatred at the little old man, who had relapsed

into his state of contented unconcern, he looked at the auctioneer,

and said, "Five hundred more!" Saying this, he put his hands into his

pockets, and kept his eye fixed on his competitor. Without a moment's

hesitation, the old gentleman nodded his head once more, and said, "Mr

Puff, I'm in a hurry. Will this gentleman give ten thousand guineas? I

will!"

The auctioneer gave one look to Mr Gillingham Howard, and saw, from

the blank expression of that gentleman's countenance, that competition

was at an end. The hammer fell, and seemed like a great rock on Mr

Gillingham Howard's heart.

"Your name, if you please, sir," said Mr Puff.

The little old gentleman rose up and said, "Give me a pen and ink.

I'll write an order for the money. My name is Thomas Roe, No. 20,

Riches Court."

CHAPTER II.

A week had passed, and Mr Gillingham Howard nursed his wrath, like Tam

O'Shanter's wife, to keep it warm. The name of the successful

purchaser had struck him with a feeling of horror; for as silence had

brooded for fifty years over the history of his grandfather--and as

the misty period preceding the purchase of Surbridge had given rise to

a whole mythology of ancestry like to the anti-historic periods of

Greece, and other imaginative nations--he looked upon the appearance

of the veritable contemporary of that fabulous age in the same way as

Romulus would have regarded any surviving friend and companion of the

real _bona fide_ robber or pig-driver to whom he probably owed his

birth. It is needless, therefore, to say, that over all other feelings

fear and disgust predominated. He determined to withdraw himself into

still more aristocratic seclusion than before, and on no account to

recognise the existence of his new neighbour. A month or two passed

on, and no steps seemed taken on the part of the purchaser to avail

himself of his new acquisition. Day after day Mr Gillingham Howard

looked up to the tuft of trees that crowned the beautiful field beyond

his park, and on seeing no symptoms of cutting down, nor other

preparations for house-building, began to indulge in the pleasing

anticipation that the old gentleman had no intention of the kind; and

by cherishing this idea for some time, he succeeded at last in

believing, that if he did in reality turn his ground to any such a

purpose, he would be guilty of a fresh injustice. Three months had

elapsed, and the beautiful colours of Autumn just unfurled themselves

in order to be struck at the first broadside of a November frost--the

sun was shining so warmly, that the leaves had every reason to be

ashamed of their yellow complexions; and a young lady--like a

butterfly awakened by the brightness of the day--fluttered forward

from the porch of Surbridge Hall, dressed in all the hues of the

rainbow. A green bonnet, a pink pelisse, a red shawl, and lilac

parasol, were scarcely in keeping with the sylvan scene on which she

hurriedly entered. She was very tall and very thin, and had been

taught to walk by a Parisian _promeneuse_ at a guinea a lesson; so

that the tail of her gown described a half circle every time she

stept, and her progress was apparently on the principle of the

propeller screw. A small sketch-book was under her arm, and across her

wrist she bore a supernumerary shawl. "If he should be there again,"

she thought, "he will surely speak. He looked as if he wished to do it

last time. But he's bashful, perhaps, to a person of my rank. Poor

fellow--how handsome he looked as he turned away!" The thought seemed

to be a pleasant one, for a sort of smile rose to her thin lips as she

dwelt on it, and she increased her pace. She opened a little gate, and

moved rapidly on towards an ornamental poultry-house near the boundary

of the estate. The extra shawl was soon spread upon the stump of a

tree, the sketch-book opened, and with her eye intently fixed on the

fantastic chimney of the hen-house, she listened for every sound. She

moved the pencil as if busily engaged in sketching; but, strange to

say, the figure produced by her touch, took (involuntarily as it were)

the appearance of a very handsome young man, for whose bright eyes and

smiling countenance there was no warrant in the twisted bricks and

oddly shaped cans of the original. As if her drawing had been the

mystic configurations of a conjurer, the spirit came when she did call

for it; and with a side glance of her eye, she perceived at no great

distance from her a young man, who seemed to be gazing at her with

great earnestness, and was only prevented from addressing her by the

awe, that formed of course the body-guard of a daughter of Mr

Gillingham Howard. There are many ways in which it is possible to show

that the said body-guard may be broken through, without subjecting the

culprit to the penalties of high-treason. A short cough, as if

preparatory to a conversation--a hurried look, and then a scarcely

perceptible smile--a sort of fidgety uneasiness, as if the stump of

the tree was something rather different from an air-cushion--such were

the methods pursued by Miss Arabel Howard on the present occasion with

complete success. The stranger combated with his respect, and going

near to where the sketcher--again utterly unconscious of his presence,

was putting in a tuft of ivy--he took off his hat and bowed--

"Ha!" exclaimed Miss Arabel, in a state of most becoming surprise.

"I hope I do not alarm you, madam," said the stranger; "though my

sudden presence here requires an apology."

"Oh!--I beg--I feel sure--any gentleman--my father will be most happy

to"----

"You are very kind. I perceive you appreciate the beauty of this

situation as much as I do. You are sketching the gable and

chimney"----

"Yes--but pray don't look."

But before she had time to close the page and clasp the book, he had

caught a view of a well drawn hat, and very tastefully touched

whiskers.

The stranger smiled.

"It is indeed a beautiful little work," he continued.

"And the building so very picturesque. Grandpapa pulled down a row of

cottages that the poor people lived in, and built this romantic little

hermitage."

"So I have heard."

"Oh, have you? Grandpapa improved this place very much. Think how the

view must have been spoilt by a row of nasty cottages, and a crowd of

horrid poor people."

"It was very near the church for the cottagers."

"Oh! but papa is going to get the horrid old church removed to the

other end of the parish, and have a beautiful building instead of the

present tumble-down old ruin."

"Taste seems hereditary in your family."

"It is indeed: ages ago great improvements were made by papa's

grandfather. He got quit of all the cottages except the row that stood

here--for what can be more horrid than the sight of a set of dirty

ignorant people in such beautiful scenery? They should all live in a

common, or hide themselves in some dark streets in London. Don't you

think so?"

"A great many of them do; but, if I were a sketcher, I think I could

make a very interesting subject out of a poor man's cottage, with his

little children playing about the garden."

"Not real poor children!" exclaimed Miss Arabel, "nor a real poor

man--no. I have made sketches myself of papa and the Misses

Warrible--Sir Stephen Warrible's daughters--dressing them in fancy

rags, and filling the garden they played in with flowers from our

conservatory, and giving the cottage French windows and a trellis-work

veranda. He stands leaning on a spade, with silver buckles in his

shoes, and the children are playing _La Grace_ with the hoops, covered

with pink ribands. I called it 'The Poor Man's Joy;' and Lord Moon has

begged me to give it to an engraver."

"I hope you will comply with his lordship's request."

"I would if I could escape the publicity of the thing. Papa would be

so angry if he thought I was so nearly professional as to be the

author of a published sketch."

"I am afraid your father is too particular. No scruple of the kind

fettered the genius of one of the princesses of France."

"Ah, but she was one of the new people! There was no artist in the

elder branch. Papa can't endure Louis Philippe, and says they are all

very low."

The gentleman was attacked with a slight cough, and after a pause

renewed the conversation.

"I think I have seen you engaged on this subject for some time."

"It takes a long time to get in all these twists and corners," replied

Miss Arabel with a smile of satisfaction, to find that the recontre

was not more one of chance on his side than her own.

"Do you devote yourself entirely to sketching?"

"Oh no! I paint as well. We have a large gallery at home, and it is an

excellent school. The family portraits are, many of them, very fine."

"Does it go far back in the English school?"

"Oh, you should see the great wigs of the Charleses and jack-boots of

the cavaliers! We were all cavaliers, I suppose, for I don't see a

single roundhead among them."

"And the ladies?"

"Oh, such hoops and farthingales! such pyramids of muslin on their

heads, and pillars of red leather upon their heels!"

"And is the painting good of that ancient date? How do you like it

compared to the modern?"

"We have very few modern portraits; and none of any ladies later than

George II."

"No?" enquired the young man anxiously. "No lady later than that? Ah,

then I have been misinformed!" he added in a disappointed tone.

"Had you heard of our collection, then?"

"Yes--no--that is--I believe, in most old family houses, there is a

regular series of portraits that may enable the student to trace the

alterations of the English school from its very commencement."

"Oh--a student--are you?--that is--have I the pleasure of speaking to

a painter?" enquired Miss Arabel with great dignity.

"Oh no, madam; only an admirer of the art."

"And you are disappointed at the want of recent female portraits,"

said Arabel more graciously, the faintest possible hope springing to

her heart that he was disappointed at the absence of her own.

"I should like to have heard the opinion of a competent judge on so

interesting a subject. A comparison between Kneller for instance and

Sir Joshua would be worthy of your taste."

"Oh, Kneller by all means, and Lely better than both! I believe, now

that you put me in mind of it, there is a pale colourless Sir Joshua

in the nursery--the school-room I mean."

"A lady?" enquired the stranger.

"A person," replied Miss Arabel, who never allowed lady's rank to any

one whose status she did not know--"with long hair falling about her

face, and a little boy lying asleep in her lap. Whether she was a lady

or not, I don't know, but I rather think not, for I never heard of her

being connected with our family. Perhaps she was a nurse."

"And are you sure it is a Sir Joshua?"

"Oh, yes!--His name is written on the back; and Mr Ochre, my

drawing-master, says it is all out of proportion, and of no merit at

all. But why are you so anxious about the daub? Mr Ochre wishes to be

allowed to retouch it."

"If he lays a brush on it"--the stranger began in a furious tone, but

checked himself--"if he lays a brush on it, he will spoil an old

master."

"A master!" said Miss Arabel with a contemptuous giggle. "I only wish

you could see it."

"I wish I could," replied the young gentleman; "but I am afraid I

shall never be so happy."

"Oh!"--The young lady did not say any thing more, but looked at the

stranger, as if taking measure of his respectability to see if an

_entree_ to Surbridge Hall was really above his hopes. He was tall,

well made, with an air such as she had not seen in any of the visitors

at that aristocratic mansion.

"I'm sure," she repeated, looking down and speaking with interesting

hesitation, "my papa would be happy to show his gallery to any

gentleman in the neighbourhood. Perhaps you know papa?"

"I have not the honour, but since I know what a treasure he possesses,

I should think it a great happiness to make his acquaintance."

The lady said nothing, but thought it the most neatly turned

compliment she ever heard in her life.

"I am on a visit to a family near this," he continued, "and may

perhaps have the opportunity of meeting Mr Howard.

"Oh, where is it?" exclaimed Miss Arabel. "What is their name? We know

every body in the neighbourhood--that is, of course, you know"----

"Every body that's worth knowing," said the stranger with a smile.

"Exactly. Is it the Rayleighs of Borley Castle, we know them very

well; or the Manbys of Flixley Abbey, delightful people, we are quite

intimate with them; or the Sundridges of Fairley Manor, there are no

pleasanter people in the world--so good, so ladylike, and yet they say

Mrs Sundridge's father was something very low, a Calcutta merchant, or

India director, or something of that sort. Is it any of these?"

"No! It is with a gentleman who has lately taken a small villa in the

neighbourhood, and I am afraid he will think I have been absent from

him too long. Do you sketch here every day?"

"Till I have finished this tiresome building," replied Miss Arabel. "I

must avail myself of the fine weather, and not miss a single morning."

The gentleman smiled, and so did the lady. With another apology for

having intruded, he bowed and withdrew.

Miss Arabel continued where she was, till she lost his graceful figure

among the windings of the shrubbery.

"He is a charming man," she thought, "and might easily manage to get

acquainted with papa if he chose. Who can he be?--he's very clever and

very accomplished--and walks so nobly. I wonder if he is in the

Guards."

She opened her sketch-book once more, and was busy with her pencil,

and her thoughts at the same time. She had not seen what necessity

there was for taking his leave so hurriedly, and perhaps a faint idea

came to her, that it was not impossible he might return. While she was

new-pointing her pencil, and recalling all that the stranger had said,

she heard a footstep coming through the plantation.

"Hush! He is coming again. He can't stay away."

"Servant, young mum--servant, and all that," said a voice close behind

her;--"Scratch! scratch! there you go, painting bricks as if they was

Christians, and all that."

"Sir! Are you aware this is private property. Papa would be very angry

if"----